It's not uncommon for Silent Hill fans to believe that shifting between parallel dimensions explains the town's horror.
Personally I subscribed to that theory for most of my life because it seemed so evident. Even the filmmakers for the movie adaptation
put forward this interpretation. However, three months ago
I began to research the various games in the franchise, and based on the documents
I found, the multiple dimension theory seems
to fail under minimal scrutiny. All of the primary
documents released by Konami outright say that Silent
Hill's horrors are manifested elements of the unconscious mind, and the shifts between
worlds are like the different stages of sleep brought to life. If that were the end of the story, however,
there wouldn't be several minutes left in this video
There is something about perceiving Silent Hill through this quantum lens of
multiple dimensions that is alluring - so alluring that I couldn't immediately
dispose of the theory. So I have spent the last couple of months trying to reconcile the established canon with the multiple dimension
interpretation. After all was said and done, I think I've come up with some ideas that you should consider.
Before I begin to address the multiple dimension theory, I need to define a completely separate
psychological concept called
"synchronicity".
Hopefully, doing this will bring some
credibility to my theories later on in the video. In case some of you have never heard of Carl Jung
He founded a school of psychotherapy called "analytical psychology". On top of this, a lot of his work sits at the base of Western psychological
education. In 1952, Jung published a paper called
"Synchronicity: An Acausal Connecting Principle"
For much of his life,
Jung shied away from discussing his theory of synchronicity out of fear of ridicule from his academic peers.
However, up until 1952, his experiences with synchronicity multiplied to such a point that he could no longer hold back
discussing it. So what is it, exactly? Synchronicity occurs when inner psychological
Images, like dreams or daydreams, match up with outer material
events and produce a meaningful experience. If that's too confusing, allow me provide an example. One of Carl Jung's
patients once dreamt that she was given an expensive piece of jewelry in the form of a golden
scarab. The very next day after having this dream, during a psychotherapy session with Jung, an
insect hit against his cabinet window. Jung caught it, and discovered that it was a golden scarab.
A very rare presence for the climate he was living in at the time. This event actually happened in real life.
Whether or not this event is some divine message, or just an unlikely coincidence,
it is undeniable that this particular event produced an emotional meaningful experience for both Jung and his patient.
I'm sure that for most of you watching this video, you've had some sort of experience like this,
I certainly have. So what do we make of this? Jung believed that if there's any validity to a paranormal
concept like synchronicity, it would be trying to demonstrate some deep expression of
order to life itself, and
trying to experience that order gives rise to inner enlightenment. If the psyche is, in part,
material, as Jung hypothesized, marrying one's psyche with the material world would create a wholesome, almost
divine union. In respect to the golden scarab, that expression of the inner psyche in the material world, even if it was
coincidental or acausal, probably made Jung and his patient feel
incredible, like they were one with the universe. Now here's the big question:
what does this have to do with Silent Hill? Well, let's hypothesize for a second that synchronicity is real.
What would the end of the synchronous process look like? I think it looks like Silent Hill.
Silent Hill is the ultimate marriage of the psyche and the
material world, and the proof for this lies directly in front of us.
We know the monsters in the world around the Silent Hill protagonists are the manifestation of one or many unconscious minds.
Confronting these manifested images, particularly for the characters in Silent Hill 2, is a
meaningful journey towards enlightenment or, in some cases,
eternal damnation.
Want some more proof?
What are the first wards of Mary's letter - or rather James's fake letter to himself in
Silent Hill 2? "In my restless dreams, I
see that town. Silent Hill."
The other characters, especially Eddie, mention that the town called to them in some way.
I can only suspect that this calling took the form of a dream. The Silent Hill games, consciously or unconsciously,
proposed that somebody who ignores natural processes of enlightenment and self-improvement, who ignore what our
unconscious minds are trying to communicate to us are bound to suffer for it. Some Jungian
analysts, like Jay Gary Sparks,
hypothesize that if we consistently miss the intent of the dream, the images our psyche produces, our physiology
reacts. In the case of Silent Hill 2, the physiology of the characters react in such a way that they fall into
madness for missing the intent of their dreams, and you know what happens to some people when they go mad - they start seeing things.
After all of that, it's time to marry the concept of synchronicity with the multiple dimension theory.
Thank you very much for sticking with me if you've made it this far. Once again. I ask you to hypothesize that
synchronicity is a valid concept, at least in the world of Silent Hill. What we now know is that the psyche is, in part,
material, and the psyche is trying to confront the images it projects from within with
occurrences in the material world. In respect to Silent Hill,
I theorize that if the psyche is material, at least in part, what if the reverse is true?
What if the material world is, at least in part, the psyche? The best way I can explain this is with a diagram.
I'm sure that you have all encountered the yin-yang symbol at some point in your lives.
Briefly, the symbol represents the duality of all things in life; light and dark, order and chaos, heaven and hell,
reality and void, etc. A few weeks ago, while contemplating how to
legitimize the multiple dimension theory, I found myself staring at this symbol for a few minutes.
Then suddenly, out of nowhere, an image popped into my head, and it looked like this:
I separated the yin-yang symbol into three circles and connected them into a Venn diagram.
I dubbed the left circle as "light", "order", "reality",
and the right circle as "darkness", "chaos", "void", and "psyche". Then I was left with the middle circle. For reasons
I can't explain, I dubbed the middle circle as "Silent Hill". Then there were the overlapping areas.
I dubbed the left overlap as the "fog world," the right overlap as "nowhere," the location from the first game, and
the middle as the "other world". If we work with the hypothesis that the psyche is, in part, material, and the material
world is, in part, psyche,
I think this diagram represents that duality. In respect to the psyche, the left circle is order and
consciousness. The right circle is disorder and
unconsciousness. In respect to the material world, the left circle is objective reality, and
the right circle is chaos and void. If you move between these two,
reality constructs itself and
deconstructs itself accordingly. It becomes lighter and darker; it becomes foggy and
clear. As for where the town of Silent Hill fits into this, the town sits on the edge between these dualities of the
material world and the psyche - between chaos and
order. It is the border world into which people enter from reality, and from the void, our unconscious imagery comes to life and
there, we confront one another. If some of you are confused, allow me to summarize.
What I am suggesting is that, in the world of Silent Hill, whatever one conjures in their unconscious mind
exists in a separate reality, a different dimension.
Because we are all individuals,
and what occurs in one person's mind doesn't occur in another's, there is a unique dimension for each human being, and those dimensions
exist simultaneously for each person who enters Silent Hill.
This is why some people in Silent Hill perceive the world around them differently.
This is why Heather Mason, in Silent Hill 3, sees the monsters as monsters, and Leonard Wolf does not.
"They look like monsters to you?"
To conclude, I'll bring forth the concept of synchronicity once more.
When I first started trying to marry the multiple dimension theory with the established canon
regarding the manifested unconscious, I tried to create a one sentence answer. After serious contemplation,
I determined that the marriage could be made if we assume that what occurs in a character's mind occurs in a separate dimension.
Then I started to do my research to try and prove that thesis. You want to know what I found? I came across a video
by a fellow YouTube user named "Mista Wolfie" where he discussed his own perception of the multiple dimension theory. In it,
he used visual aids in order to try and legitimize the multiple dimension theory and here's what he said:
"Then you look at this,
and I consider that dreams and your imagination, your system of beliefs, your nightmares, all that jazz
inside your head, is actually
another plane of existence, to you, as a individual.
I mean you think about it: when you're in a dream, you can almost never tell that you're in a dream.
You just do whatever you do, and, you know, you go through the dream like it was happening in real life.
But,
what if
the dream was happening in real life?"
I came up with my thesis about dreams being a reality in the Silent Hill universe before I ever watched his video,
and here is this man,
producing a picture of exactly what occurred to me inside my mind when I first developed that thesis. Is this a coincidence,
or...
is it synchronicity?