The Nightmare Box

Interesting viewpoint, I never viewed it like that.

Although these stories are all supposed to be true works on behalf of the writers, we can presume they are being filtered by the minds of the narrators. All non-fiction works are only as true as the storyteller allows them to be. Somone else pointed out a plot hole in 'hot potting', an my response was the author probably exagerrated a detail to make it seem more dramatic. Perhaps the name thing could be evidence that the story is fiction, or perhaps it is all symbolic, something Mrs. Clark wasn't supposed to be conscious of, but worked for the story. Or perhaps it was just coincidence - which I doubt, because Chuck puts so much time into each piece that he probably wouldn't throw out random names that happen to coincide with the MC of the retreat.

[QUOTE=Tesseractivity;910293]I've noticed an interesting trend among posters in the [I]Haunted[/I] forums - at least, regarding The Nightmare Box and Cassandra's character. For that matter, the idea that [I]any[/I] of the short stories are entirely true or (auto)biographical strikes me as... fallacious.

The amount of truth contained in any of these vignettes is irrelevant, however, as long as you take into account that none of them is without embellishment.

Neither is the novella weaving them together, and not for the reasons people have pointed out. (Director Denial still had a paddle of flesh on one side, and a thumb and index finger on the other - sufficient surface area with which to gather up her skirts.) As many posters have already pointed out, it is the "Mythology of Us." Facts and fiction wrapped up together, assembled in a way that attempts to makes sense of the chaos of life.

Anyway... The Nightmare Box is a work of fiction, an extended metaphor by Tess Clark to explain what happened to her daughter - a placeholder for the 'real' explanation she would learn when she gathered the courage to put herself in the same position Cassandra had. When she joined the Writer's Retreat. When she "looked in the box." The character Rand is an extension of B[B]rand[/B]on, as is the creator of the box, Roland [B]Whittier[/B].

Oh, and Cassandra was saved by Whittier - that's why her fate was different. It had nothing to do with The Nightmare Box.

Or I'm totally wrong...[/QUOTE]

Wow. I didn't consider that the box wasn't real. That's an interesting thought. I guess I just accepted everyone's stories as true. That might've been a bad call...

I kept waiting for the end of the book to explain the "whittier" relation and the contents of the nightmare box. It makes sense to view her story as a way of explaining to herself what happened to her daughter.... especially when Cassandra tells her "I don't need to brag about my pain..." something that all the other story tellers tried to do in the retreat.