🕯️ The Nightly Storyteller Presents: House (1977)

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Monologue

I remember a house.

But not my house.

The wallpaper pulsed with flowers I don’t recall planting. The stairs sighed beneath my weight, though I never walked them. And in the doorway stood a boy.

He held a chipped toy soldier in his fist. His smile stretched wider than it should have.

“Don’t you remember me?” he asked.

But I didn’t.

I don’t.

Even now, when I try to summon his face, it blurs—like a painting smeared with water. The more I chase the memory, the further it runs.

And yet… I know I’ve been inside that house before. I know the boy knew me.

I just don’t know why.

Perhaps it’s better that way.

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Movie Review: House (1977)

Few films manage to be both nightmare and dream at once, but Nobuhiko Obayashi’s House does exactly that.

On the surface, it’s simple: a group of schoolgirls visit a country house, only to be consumed—sometimes literally—by its secrets. But beneath, it’s surreal, experimental, and unhinged. The film breaks every rule of horror and invents its own, creating something equal parts absurd comedy, colorful fantasy, and genuine nightmare fuel.

There’s stop-motion animation, disjointed editing, and visuals that feel ripped from a fever dream. A piano eats a girl. A cat’s eyes glow with malice. Blood sprays like watercolors across the canvas of the screen.

What makes House so terrifying isn’t its violence—it’s the unpredictability. You don’t know if you’re about to laugh, scream, or lose your grip on reality.

A haunted house story should feel familiar. House makes it alien.

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Did You Know?

Director Nobuhiko Obayashi took inspiration from the nightmares of his pre-teen daughter. Many of the film’s strange dangers—killer pianos, severed heads, carnivorous furniture—were things she imagined.

Each of the girls’ names (Gorgeous, Fantasy, Kung Fu, etc.) reflect exaggerated archetypes, almost like cartoons.

Though many Western audiences see House as an underground cult film, it was a surprising box office success in Japan upon its release.

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Tidbits

The film’s playful yet grotesque tone has influenced countless directors, including Guillermo del Toro, who praised its originality.

The piano scene remains one of the most iconic—and unsettling—moments in Japanese horror.

House feels like walking into a child’s drawing come to life… then realizing the child who drew it might be something not entirely human.

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Lore Connection

What’s most disturbing about House isn’t what’s on the screen—it’s what’s left unsaid. Rooms vanish. People forget who they are. Memories fracture and dissolve.

The house itself feeds on the past.

And maybe… so do I.

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📖 The Nightly Storyteller Chronicles

The night was torn open by a scream. Ravann’s scream.

It echoed through Elyndor like a blade dragged across stone.

Orven, his eyes hollow yet resolute, whispered an incantation. A small skull—its sockets glowing faintly with sickly light—formed in his hand. He pressed it into Nyra’s trembling palms. “It will heal you,” he said, though the skull’s faint whisper suggested otherwise.

Korrath led us onward, Nyra limping, myself reeling. As dawn broke, Elyndor revealed itself in unnerving beauty: rivers of liquid silver winding through grass that shivered at our passing, trees whose branches bent as though listening, and blossoms that opened with audible sighs.

We reached a grove where three Bookworms awaited.

They bowed, one after another:

Seraphis —who shed his human skin in a ripple of tearing flesh and coiled into a serpent. His scales glowed like emerald glass, but his eyes were clouded white. Blind, yet he saw. His visions dripped from his mouth in riddles, venomous and binding.

Calwyn —who transformed into a swan, though her feathers were ash-gray. Where her shadow fell, grass blackened, only to grow back sharper, more dangerous. She healed wounds, yes—but left beautiful scars like brands, reminders that you would never be whole again.

Dromir —who twisted grotesquely into a beaver, his stone-like teeth glowing wet. When he dragged them across the soil, earth and water bent to him, reshaping into walls, dams, and burrows. But his constructs pulsed faintly, as though something inside them was alive.

Korrath departed, vowing to uncover who had ordered the attack.

The Bookworms turned their gaze to me. Their eyes fixed not on me—but the necklace at my chest. Or rather, the missing shard.

“You are incomplete,” Calwyn whispered.

“What happened to the missing piece?” hissed Seraphis.

“I… I don’t know.”

Dromir’s teeth clattered like stones grinding. “Then how do you feed?”

My throat tightened. “I haven’t. Not in a while.”

Seraphis’s scales rasped against each other. “Lies. You are feeding—on yourself. On your memories. That is why you do not remember the boy. That is why your life slips like sand through your fingers.”

The words sank deep. I staggered, breath ragged. The necklace pulsed like a heartbeat.

Calwyn’s gaze sharpened on my shirt. “What wounded you?”

“The Wendigo.”

Silence.

Then Seraphis hissed again, tighter, sharper. “Why would a Wendigo come for you?”

I had no answer.

But goosebumps spread across my arms. My breath grew shallow. One of them was lying.

And the necklace agreed.

As they bickered in low, serpentine tones, my pocket buzzed.

I froze.

My phone.

No reception. No signal. No tower for miles.

And yet…

The Mysterious Caller was waiting.

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Closing Lines

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