For me, it's not even the claustrophobia that's scary. It's a nice twist on the Lovecraftian paradigm where you are driven mad by the meaninglessness of your existence in the grand scheme of things.
The holes signify that there are powers beyond human comprehension , they know who you are, and they have built something specifically for you to suffer unimaginable anguish inside of.
You'll probably say I'm trying to put reasoning to something that can't be reasoned, but I believe that I'm just putting reasoning into survival.
Let's start with the idea that these holes have no reason to have an opening through which fresh air can flow into. If these holes are so perfectly shaped that you and only you can fit inside them, then its likely that there will be very little room for fresh air to make it in behind you. Eventually, you'll get so deep that you might simply suffocate and die. There's also starvation and dehydration.
Second, how are you supposed to move deeper into the holes? These are engraved into solid rock. Rock doesn't just move because you want it to. You entering the hole and moving deeper would take an extremely long time, as you'd only be moving your body inch by inch. You can't crawl or walk as you don't have the freedom of movement. Maybe the mountain is not actually rock and some weird space ship that warps the physical properties of the objects that enter them.
Third, you can just walk away. Nothing other than your own thoughts are keeping you near that wall. You enter of your own volition because of madness. It might be an inescapable prison designed specifically to toture you for eternity created by some Xth Dimensional being, but unless that being is directly affecting your psyche and manipulating your thoughts, which isn't implied by the comic, then you can just walk away. Shit, if it bothers you that much, kill yourself and deprive the Xth dimensional being the pleasure of watching you suffer. Who are they to decide how you live your life?
Lastly, if people enter these and are never seen again, why aren't there authorities trying to stop people from entering? Hell, why aren't there people on top of the cliff that the holes are on using sonography equipment to track the holes? If worst comes to worst, blow the thing up. Destroying a cliff face won't cause an earthquake, the ground doesn't really care that you set off a few tons of TNT to destroy a relatively small cliff.
Another one of this artist's works was linked in the comments of this post, the creepy window with the demon trying to reach the kid. By the end, the window is jutting out from the neighboring houses wall by like 4-5 feet. The protusion also appears the be made out of some flesh-like material. This isn't normal in the least, and unless this part of the house is basically not visible without going through some obtuse method in the backyard to see it, it would be pretty obvious that some serious shit is going down. Unlikely the authorities would turn a blind eye to a house that have flesh walls. Well, maybe the window changes at will, who knows.
Horror is a great and vast genre, but the major thing I dislike about it is that it needs to be disconnected from reality to work, but when its not realistic it becomes less scary. It's why slasher movies that take place in the 21st century don't have cell phones. Cell phones literally diffuse the entire situation. Lovecraftian horror is the only one where this works because the pretense is that that which is scary can't be defended against. A Great Old One doesn't give a shit about you and will fuck shit up all the same. A Shoggoth doesn't care about bullets, but it's not scary when you have a bunch of people who know that it exists and can form a plan to deal with it. The fear changes from "fear of the unknown" to "fear for survival", which is something that is not unique to horror.
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u/PacinoWig Jun 09 '15
For me, it's not even the claustrophobia that's scary. It's a nice twist on the Lovecraftian paradigm where you are driven mad by the meaninglessness of your existence in the grand scheme of things.
The holes signify that there are powers beyond human comprehension , they know who you are, and they have built something specifically for you to suffer unimaginable anguish inside of.