Have you ever felt as though you were being watched, even when you were alone? Or perhaps you’ve found yourself feeling uneasy in the dark, with no obvious reason for your discomfort. There are moments when even the most familiar objects can suddenly appear strange or menacing, causing an unexpected jolt of fear. These are all examples of uncanny experiences—those fleeting yet powerful moments that sit on the border between unsettling and creepy.

The uncanny can be described as a mysterious sensation that is both bewildering and disconcerting. It is typically brief, but its impact can linger, sometimes provoking a profound sense of dread. This feeling emerges when the familiar becomes strange, or when something unexplainable interrupts our sense of normality, leaving us with a lingering sense of unease.

An Uncanny Landscape

Uncanny experiences happen all the time.  Most people can tell of their own encounter with an eerie moment or two – the reluctance to enter the room at the top of the stairs, or a premonition about the arrival of an unexpected visitor perhaps.  They don’t seem to trouble us much – a shiver down the spine and they’re filed away with the rest of the day’s events.

But still…

The uncanny continues to unsettle.  It’s interwoven with common experience, but at the same time invisible, or at least little discussed.  So I thought that in this blog I’d look at how the novels, films, images, sounds, and even created objects that make up our popular culture deal with uncanny experiences, events and situations, and perhaps try to shed a little light on the topic.

There’s no logical order in the blogs I’ll be posting (just as there’s nothing logical about the uncanny itself). I’m just going to write about what catches my imagination as I go along.  Hope you enjoying reading!

Here’s the blog.