A person’s desk can tell you a lot about them…
A person’s desk can tell you a lot about them…
MAG 5 - ‘Thrown Away’ - Nonspecific accusations.
Conceptually, this episode is not particularly scary. There’s no horrible monster, no universal risk of death, no massive terrifying reveal; its a highly specific experience. Yet it still hits that place of fear, causes that nagging feeling, the type that makes you cover your ears or close your eyes, to hide in some small way.
I think one of the reasons for this is that it starts by taking about you. The listener. Even the most devout anti-waste activist has thrown something away before, and almost anyone in a position to be listening to a podcast has ended up with their waste in the hands of a binman. The statement doesn’t start with information on the setting or the thing the statement is about, but rather on you.
This reach out towards the audience puts you on a back foot. You don’t expect to be confronted with considerations about your own, mundane life, during a horror podcast, and it weakens your defence. It’s easy to gloss over the scary parts in any piece of horror if you stay true to the 'that could never happen to me’ mentality, but it’s a hard one to maintain when you’re initially forced to think about yourself, what you throw away.
Although the statement is very clearly angled towards the stranger or the spiral with its doll heads, inexplicable teeth, religious texts, and final gift for the initial victim, as an audience experience it leans also towards the eye. That subtle reminder that you’re being watched in ways you would never consider, that even if you never really leave the house its impossible to escape perception.
You, the audience, are being watched by one just like the statement giver, and there’s no way you can opt out.