"This may sound really off the wall, but listen to me. You've got to believe me. I haven't gone crazy, and I'm not fooling around. At first I thought I was losing my mind. But now I know I'm not. It's not just me, it's this whole town. It's being invaded by the otherworld. A world of someone's nightmarish delusions come to life..." --Harry Mason, "Silent Hill" THE ANNOTATED "SILENT HILL": A COMPLETE OVERVIEW AND FAQ for the Sony Playstation game "Silent Hill" by J. Moore Unpublished work Copyright 2004 Jeff Moore This essay is for private and personal use only. It can only be reproduced electronically, and if placed on a web page or site, may be altered as long as this disclaimer and the above copyright notice appears in full. This essay may not to be used for profitable/promotional purposes in way without prior permission from the author. This essay was created and is owned by Jeff Moore . All copyrights and trademarks not specifically mentioned are acknowledged. Silent Hill and all related characters are (c) Konami. All rights reserved. -------- CONTENTS -------- 1. Important Concepts 2. Main Characters 3 The Silent Hill Storyline 3.1 Before the Fire 3.2 Cheryl and Alessa 3.3 Alessa's Revenge 3.4 Saving Cheryl 3.5 Nowhere and Beyond 4. Appendix 5. Frequently Asked Questions 6. Updates 7. Special Thanks and Contact Info ------------------------------------------------- SECTION 1: CENTRAL CONCEPTS ------------------------------------------------- Aglophaitis: Within the game, a red liquid, possibly derived from White Claudia, and most definitely used to exorcise demons. Astral Projection: A very rare ability, related to out-of-body experiences, that parapsychologists believe allows a person to be in two or more places simultaneously. Under enough trauma, the real person is thought to project herself into a second form that seems real enough, except that it vanishes when the primary person wishes it. The few modern astral-projection cases on record seem to be unconscious, and the two shapes are virtually never seen together. Other names for an "astral projection" are a fetch, doppleganger and double. Dissociative Identity Disorder: The psychological process through which a person deals with a traumatic event by creating other personas, each one with a unique set of personality traits and imagined history, to avoid confronting the pain. More commonly known as multiple-personality disorder. Flauros: The Flauros is a magical artifact, a "cage of peace" that binds the target's spiritual powers. Innerspace: A parapsychological term to describe a space that seems real and yet is contained within a smaller space, like the Tardis in Doctor Who. The most famous kinds of innerspace are those involving ghost stories in which demolished houses and rooms seem to reappear for brief periods of time. Poltergeists: Not currently believed to be ghosts at all, but rather the unconscious telekinetic projections of emotionally volatile people. Poltergeist phenomena seem to accompany certain adolescent girls, especially emotionally repressed teenagers--much like Stephen King's Carrie, except on a vastly smaller scale. PTV: Within the game, an illegal hallucinogenic drug made and distributed exclusively in Silent Hill. Regression: Under extreme psychological trauma, people often regress to earlier and less-mature stages of development, trying to find a form of behavior that'll allow them to cope with the situation; an adult can even adopt infantile behavior, such as assuming a fetal position and refusing to speak. Samael: Within the game, Samael seems to be a demon, possibly the demon that Silent Hill's founders worshipped. In folklore, Samael was a Hebrew demon, a counterpart to the Christian Satan. White Claudia: An hallucinogenic herb found in Silent Hill that was used by the town's founders in religious ceremonies, and used by the modern drug dealers to make the drug PTV. Wraith: A physical projection of a dying person, usually to someone who is emotionally close to the dying person and usually under grueling circumstances, such as a painful illness or traumatic accident. Parapsychologists believe that the mind can project itself to other locations under extreme circumstances. One of the most fundamental parapsychological concepts is that the mind and the environment are intimately connected and that repressed emotions can be manifested physically outside the self. -------------------------------------------- SECTION 2: MAIN CHARACTERS -------------------------------------------- Main Characters: Harry Mason: Harry is a widowed writer who followed his adopted daughter Cheryl into Silent Hill; he has no real connection with the town or its secrets, apart from being a regular tourist. Cheryl Mason: A seemingly normal 7-year-old girl, she was found abandoned as an infant by Harry and his wife outside Silent Hill. In reality she is an astral projection of Alessa Gillespie, a comatose teenager whose mind was shattered by the horrible fire that nearly killed her seven years ago. Cybil Bennett: Cybil is a young police officer sent into Silent Hill to investigate a mysterious phone call. Like Harry, she is in the town through circumstance rather than design. Dahlia Gillespie: A reclusive old woman who lives in Silent Hill; the mother and caretaker of Alessa Gillespie. She's a witch and one of the few people in Silent Hill who still practices the old religion of gyromancy. The townspeople thought she went mad after her daughter seemed to die in a fire and perhaps she did; she concocted a plan to use her daughter's comatose condition to create a new being, one she believed would be God. She enlisted the aid of the corrupt, drug-dealing Doctor Kauffman to help bring this about. Alessa Gillespie: The fourteen-year-old daughter of Dahlia Gillespie and the cause of Silent Hill's destruction, Alessa has been in a coma for the past seven years. She was a psychically talented child and Dahlia often used those abilities in occult ceremonies. When a mysterious fire nearly killed her, Alessa projected a part of her mind into a new life, one where she became known as Cheryl Mason. Dahlia and the doctors of Alchemiella Hospital kept her alive with a combination of medical technology and magic, leaving her trapped within a comatose nightmare filled with monsters, darkness and charred ruins. As Alessa grew older, her psychic abilities became stronger, and her dreams began to leak out into the town itself, ultimately leading to its destruction. Doctor Michael Kauffman: Doctor Kauffman seems to have been the hospital director at Alchemiella Hospital; at any rate, he definitely was a leader in a local drug cartel that manufactured and distributed a hallucinogen made from the native plant White Claudia. He helped Dahlia keep Alessa alive in exchange for a promise of vague powers drawn from Alessa. What exactly it was that Dahlia promised is never known, but it most certainly was a lie to gain his assistance, for he is as shocked and horrified by the town's transformation as the rest of the characters. Lisa Garland: A nurse at Alchemiella Hospital who attended to Alessa Gillespie; she knew nothing of the conspiracy and was forced to treat Alessa by Kauffman, who blackmailed her with her addiction to the drug that he provided. She has a quiet, gentle, and yet haunted soul. Samael: It's uncertain whether Samael was a real demon actually involved in the transformation of the town or whether Dahlia simply mentioned it as a red herring. If Samael was real, then it most likely was a spiritual force manifested through Alessa's unconscious fears, a demonic will possessing her own and driving her to cast its magical marks throughout the town so that Silent Hill would be pulled into her dreams. ---------------------------------------------------------- SECTION 3: THE SILENT HILL STORYLINE ---------------------------------------------------------- 3.1 Before the Fire The story begins with the founding of the small mid-western town of Silent Hill by a cult of black magic worshippers. They apparently worshipped the demon Samael and used the hallucinogenic herb called White Claudia in their ceremonies. Aglophaitis, believed to banish evil spirits from those who either drank or touched it, was also used in those ceremonies. Samael sometimes took children as sacrifice. (1) As the town began to grow, however, people abandoned the old ways and began to hide the town's sordid history from the growing number of tourists. Soon only an old witch named Dahlia Gillespie publicly remained of the town's occult background. She had a 7 year-old daughter named Alessa, a child with strong psychic abilities. (2) Ironically, the native plant that had attracted the attention of Silent Hill's original founders, White Claudia, had now become the ingredient in a hallucinogenic drug marketed by local drug- traffickers to the summer tourists. Alchemiella Hospital's own Dr. Michael Kauffman led this underground trade. Dahlia eventually grew impatient with the blasphemy of the rest of the town and decided to bring her own vision of Paradise, a vision shaped by her occult beliefs, to life. Alessa's abilities could accomplish this, but not at the level of strength she possessed as a child. Instead, Dahlia needed to focus and refine her daughter's abilities, until she truly possessed the power to create her vision of God, and to bring about the world she envisioned. To this end, Dahlia concocted a horrible plan--to sacrifice her daughter in a fire, to trap the young girl's psyche within her own tortured mindscape and allow that nightmarish existence to serve as a crucible for her powers. Dahlia Gillespie approached the drug-dealing Kauffman with an offer--the promise of magical power for his help in keeping Alessa alive after the sacrifice. With his assistance secured, she burnt her own daughter alive in a horrible fire; the child was kept alive with both magic and medicine in the hopes that her comatose nightmares would increase her spiritual powers, which Dahlia could then harness for her own plans. (3) ---------------------- 3.2 Cheryl and Alessa Unknown to the conspirators of Silent Hill, however Alessa had been deeply traumatized by the fire and had projected a regressed part of herself into a new form on the outskirts of the city--the form of an infant. This astral shape was discovered by freelance writer Harry Mason and his wife. After a failed search for the infant's parents they adopted her and gave her the name Cheryl Mason. However, Harry's wife soon began to succumb to her long illness. (4) Dahlia and the doctors quickly realized that Alessa had projected herself into another life; so long as her spirit was divided among two lives, her powers would be weakened and she would be useless to them. So they used a spell to try to summon the missing portion of Alessa's soul, to reunite Alessa's fractured mind. Meanwhile Alessa's powers, now twisted by the pain of the fire and her burns, were channelled by Dahlia; she used them to kill the leaders of the town, such as the anti-drug mayor and the police chief, by stopping their hearts. (5) Kauffman, meanwhile, had faked Alessa's death certificate to keep officials from asking questions, but he needed an accomplice to care for the unconscious Alessa without revealing her existence. To this end, he recruited Lisa Garland, a young nurse at Alchemiella Hospital, and swore both her and the other nurses to never reveal the existence of Alessa's hidden room, nor to even enter that section of the hospital without his permission. Seven long years passed since the fire and Alessa's near-death. The unconscious child soon grew into a teenager with formidable powers...and the nightmares that had filled half her inner life now began to leak out into the town itself, brought to life by a power that Alessa's shattered mind could no longer control. The first person to be affected by Alessa's projected fear was her attending nurse, Lisa, whose confusion and guilt over her role had been assuaged only by her compassion for Alessa. However, Lisa soon began to experience horrible visions of insects and blood. She tried to resign from the hospital, swearing her secrecy in exchange for Kauffman's permission, but Kauffman refused to let her leave--she knew too much about Alessa's condition and he could hardly afford to involve anyone else in the conspiracy. Whether Lisa had been addicted to PTV prior to her reassignment by Kauffman, or whether he deliberately introduced her to the drug, he was able to use his position as her provider to blackmail her into staying. This was, perhaps, a moot point since Lisa quickly discovered that only PTV could give her relief from the nightmarish visions; she needed to keep her job, not simply to stay out of trouble, but to stop the hallucinations Alessa's powers had unleashed. (6) After the death of Mrs. Mason, Harry and his seven-year-old daughter decided to visit the small resort town of Silent Hill. It seemed the summoning spell had finally begun to work. (7) Alessa, though, had become hopelessly enmeshed within the endless nightmare of monsters and scorched metal wastes, which both enhanced her power and corrupted her thoughts. Her increasingly horrifying dreams began to infect more people; insanity spread like a plague through the town until the psychic tempest began to condense into corporeal shapes, creating such forms as winged beasts and monstrous dogs. Brahms, a neighboring town, received a frantic call from Silent Hill's Police Department. They sent Officer Cybil Bennett into Silent Hill to investigate the mysterious phone call. ---------------------------------- 3.3 Alessa's Revenge As Harry and Cheryl near the edge of Silent Hill, they suddenly see Alessa in the road before them; the town is being engulfed by her delusions and, as reality and fantasy bleed together, her dream-shape now walks the streets. The jeep crashes into the side of the road and Harry awakens to find Cheryl missing. He pursues her into a nearby alley, where she and Alessa are being drawn to one another. Within the alley, she returns to Alessa's psychotic mind, and the union brings the innerspace of Alessa's nightmare to life around Harry. He's attacked by the monstrous parodies of the taunting children Alessa remembers from school and falls unconscious. (8) Cybil, whose motorcycle had wrecked along the edge of Silent Hill, ventures into the alley mere moments after the now-whole Alessa's departure, and finds Harry unconscious in a seemingly normal alley. She brings him back to the cafe and he awakens to discover that the townspeople seem to have completely vanished; they've been drawn into the dark rainy underworld that Alessa's power and fear is creating, where most of them adorn the landscape as bodies while the few survivors stagger about the nightmarish innerspace like half-dead puppets. (9) Back in the desolate town, Cybil tries to leave the town for reinforcements, and Harry begins his search for Cheryl. Lisa Garland had discovered that PTV could stop her increasingly disturbing visions, but even it couldn't protect her from being pulled into the growing innerspace that Alessa's dreams had begun to create, just like everyone else. The nurses and doctors of Alchemiella hospital quickly fell victim to parasitic creatures, worm-like things that controlled their bodies like puppets in a unique, and grotesquely symbolic, revenge; just as they had been the unwitting puppets of the conspiracy that had victimized Alessa, they were now reduced by her madness to literal walking puppets. Lisa was also infected by such a creature, but the White Claudia in her system seemed to protect her from its effects, at least for a time. Knocked unconscious by its infection, she awoke to find herself alone in the charred ruins of the hospital, surrounded by darkness, her memories scrambled by the parasite's influence. (10) The town of Silent Hill is now being completely distorted by the restored psychic abilities of Alessa, so much so that its physical properties are beginning to change. Snow and fog engulf the town, whole sections have collapsed into misty chasms, and day and night follow no pattern. There is no way out of the town anymore and the creatures that once existed only in Alessa's childhood imagination are now running loose through the town. (11) The town hovers on the brink, reality straining as the world of Alessa's nightmares threatens to break through into the physical reality of the misty, deserted town. Those places which were most important to Alessa begin to collapse into the otherworld first; the elementary school first falls into the dream-state, then the hospital where Alessa has spent the past seven years. Soon the antique shop that served as a front for Dahlia's cult is changed, then the lighthouse and amusement park. Each of these points is spreading and devouring the whole town, erupting into the world from the "marks" that Alessa leaves at each one. (12) Now that Alessa has been restored to one being, she is using her unleashed mental powers to pull the entire town into the otherworldly darkness of her dreams. Whenever Harry gets too close to Alessa or one of the six marks, the power emanating from them shifts him into the nightmare world. Once drawn into that world, his only means of escape is to defeat the subjects of Alessa's nightmares, which causes the nightmare to relent for a time. (13) Alessa herself is enveloped by the nightmare but it fades as she moves away, as it did when she left the alley; the six "marks of Samael" serve as anchors, stable points that draw everything around them into the nightmare. Once all the marks have been set, it will be complete, and Silent Hill will physically shift into the nightmare. Within that nightmare world, Harry begins to hear and see images of Cheryl bound somewhere, crying for help. However, he only makes contact with her in Alessa's psychically-projected innerspace, never the real world. She is, in fact, merely a memory within Alessa's delusions, a personality struggling to break through to Harry. She is the part of Alessa that still remembers her life with Harry and, confused and terrified by what has happened to her, she tries to reach out to her father for help, only to have the nightmare swallow her up each time. --------------------------------- 3.4 Searching for Cheryl Harry soon meets Dahlia, who quickly deduces his identity as the half-soul's adopted father. She plays on his love for that child and uses him to capture Alessa. She does tell him the truth, that darkness is devouring the town, that the six marks will seal it forever, and that the Flauros will stop Alessa. Her lies are lies of omission: she neglects to tell Harry that she is responsible for Alessa's condition, she does not reveal to him Cheryl's true role in what's happening to the town, and she hides the fact that she has a far worse scheme than Alessa's madness-driven revenge. Of course, Dahlia herself cannot use the Flauros to capture Alessa because Dahlia can't get close to Alessa; her daughter's uncontrolled powers cause everything around her to shift into her nightmare and, as the main target of her rage, Dahlia wouldn't last a minute against the monsters of Alessa's fractured mind. (14) Harry also meets Lisa several times in the nightmare hospital. She tries to help him, but she cannot leave the hospital or the nightmare world: the parasite has made itself part of her and she is now just as much a part of the nightmare as the other doctors and nurses who now stagger about as murderous puppets. When Harry shifts from the nightmare back to the real town, she vanishes back into the innerspace of Alessa's nightmare landscape. As the effects of PTV slowly wear off, however, Lisa begins to fall under the influence of the same parasites that have already taken her undead colleagues, and gradually begins to change into one of them. (15) Harry races through Silent Hill, guided by Dahlia's cryptic advice, trying to save his daughter and stop Alessa from sealing the whole town into her nightmarish abyss. As he reaches the resort district, the mark nears completion, and the nightmare world begins to physically overlap the real town. Harry is no longer being pulled into the parallel space of Alessa's nightmare: the nightmare itself is now erupting and taking over the town. At the site of the final mark, the amusement park, Harry finds that his former ally Cybil has been possessed by one of the very same parasitic creatures that have infected the hospital staff. During the subsequent he learns that a red liquid he found in Kauffman's hospital office, Aglophaitis, can dispel these creatures and restore people to normal. Harry and Cybil then discuss Cheryl and he reveals that she is his adopted daughter. --------------------------------- 3.5 Nowhere and Beyond In the final act of the game, Harry confronts Alessa at the amusement park, the last place to be marked. He uses the Flauros and stops Alessa, but now Dahlia reveals her true motives; she appears and takes Alessa with her to complete the plan she began seven years before. Dahlia has no concern for the town, though and so she simply allows it, and Harry, to collapse into the nightmare. Spatial relationships cease to exist, buildings that were miles apart now share rooms, and the only reference to the town's new location is the cryptic phrase "nowhere." (16) The town now shifts and ebbs within Alessa's own inner world. The only way for Harry and the others to escape back into the real world is to put an end to the nightmare, even if it means killing Alessa. Having been deprived of PTV and the White Claudia that had protected her, Lisa gradually becomes aware of the parasite, her fractured memory, and her connection to the other doctors and nurses. Her fate is perhaps the most horrible of any in Silent Hill: as Harry watches, she becomes a staggering blood-soaked monster even as she retains her humanity, pitifully aware of what she is becoming and begging Harry to help her. Terrified by what she's become, and not wishing to hurt her, Harry instead flees, leaving Lisa to face her doom alone. Dahlia had used Harry to find and capture Alessa, so that she can use that power to create a new being similar to the astral projections that had created Cheryl and that are now spawning the monsters and dark rainy otherworlds within the town Silent Hill. Dahlia thinks that this new astral entity will become God and that she'll be able to control or guide this new being, and hence she no longer has any use for Harry or Kauffman. (17) Her plan nearly succeeds; Alessa, now fully subjugated by the demonic entity her psychosis has spawned, transforms into a seemingly beautiful being of light. This being is hardly angelic, however, as it would quickly kill Dahlia and Harry given the change. Alessa does become a god, but she is a god of destruction. (18) But Kauffman, who, like everyone else in the town, had been pulled into "nowhere" when the town collapsed into the mark, had kept one vial of Aglophaitis as a trump card against Dahlia. Outraged by what's happened to the town, he threatens her with it, demands that she restore the town--and then uses the vial on the goddess. Alessa is exorcised of the creature that her fear and hatred has created, but this creature is far bigger and more powerful than Kauffman had anticipated. Harry fights against Alessa's embodied psychosis and when he finally defeats the "god" that Dahlia tried to create, he mortally wounds Alessa: the god is a part of her dream and part her own psyche, all her fear and anger given flesh, and their wounds are one and the same. With Dahlia dead and her psychoses driven away, Alessa is at last whole again, aware of both her former life as Alessa Gillespie and her life with Harry as Cheryl Mason. Now dying, Alessa uses her powers of projection to restore part of herself as infant, to survive her own death and to return to Harry the daughter he called Cheryl. (19) As the dream begins to collapse into fiery chaos, Alessa opens a path out of the nightmare and gestures for Harry and Cybil to flee the dying otherworld. A rain of fire nearly puts an end to their flight, but Alessa uses the last of her power to stop the fire in mid-air; she has finally learned to control her dream, but it's now too late for her. Kauffman also tries to flee the nightmare world, but he is stopped by the now-monstrous Lisa; she has more reason to hate him than any of the others and their shared death is her final, tragic revenge. Harry and Cybil escape the dying dream and find themselves back in the real world with an infant, Alessa/Cheryl's chance at a happier life than the one that Dahlia and the rest of Silent Hill put her through. (20) ------------------------------------------------- SECTION 4: APPENDIX ------------------------------------------------- Notes and Remaining Questions (1) Although the translation is sketchy, this seems to be what Lisa was talking about when she said the townspeople used to think that missing children had been "summoned by the gods." (2) Dahlia seems too old to be the natural mother of 14-year-old Alessa. The game doesn't specify whether she is Dahlia's natural daughter, a stepdaughter, or an adopted child. It is even remotely possible that Alessa herself is the wraith or projection of a still-earlier child who has long since died. The fact that Alessa is, in fact, fourteen is almost beyond doubt- -her bedroom contains a dress for a seven-year-old girl and she has been in a coma for seven years. All the flashback scenes prior to Alessa's coma show a child apparently comparable in age to Cheryl. The book in the alternate school refers to certain teenage girls as being predisposed toward psychic projection, a plot element that is rendered meaningless if Alessa were any older. Cheryl is seven, the same age that Alessa would've been when she lost her normal life; this is not a coincidence. (3) Near the end of the game, there's a flashback involving Alessa and Dahlia, in which Dahlia seems to decide to take action. Of course, Dahlia's cryptic as ever so it's unclear as to what exactly happens: she seems to try to convince Alessa to "share her power," probably in a seance-like ceremony, then decides that she doesn't need Alessa's cooperation at all. There seems to be a reference to another being within Alessa, perhaps the demon Samael; Alessa is far too young to be pregnant. It is possible that Dahlia is referring to herself when she speaks of power being sheltered the womb, saying, in essence, "I gave birth to you, therefore I must be more powerful than you." The fire presumably occurred shortly after this conversation. (4) Nothing is told of Harry's wife except that she was chronically ill with an incurable disease that finally took her life four years ago. One could easily assume cancer or any other chronic, fatal illness. (5) The evidence of this is indirect--Dahlia's in alliance with the drug dealers, several of Silent Hill's leaders died of sudden and inexplicable heart failure several months before Silent Hill began to collapse, and Lisa Garland mentioned the rumors of a curse being placed upon the town's leaders. All the clues point to Dahlia and she has two motives; she might have been fulfilling a promise to the drug-dealers and she might also have sought personal revenge on the leaders for abandoning the town's original faith in favor of money and prestige. (6) An assumption, but a logical one. The opening sequence shows Kauffman and Lisa having a violent argument. Kauffman was a dealer and Lisa an addict; Kauffman was her boss. Lisa's diary and resignation-tape show that she wouldn't have stayed at the hospital if she'd any choice in the matter. Lisa's diary also indicates that she began seeing grotesque images of blood and insects--visions of Alessa's nightmare--after she started working with the comatose girl. It also reveals that she tried to use White Claudia to stop them, hence those last lines: "Need drug...help me..." (7) The instructions make a passing reference at one point to Cheryl having decided where to go on their vacation. Combined with what Dahlia said about Alessa's soul being rejoined in the Alchemiella Hospital flashback, this indicates that Cheryl was unconsciously drawn back to her real hometown and identity. (8) The alley is one of the few nightmare places where the mark of Samael is not seen, and the only nightmare-space where the mark's presence isn't implied. Cheryl's reunion with Alessa would have at least doubled Alessa's psychic resources, causing the nightmare to flare up briefly around her. Harry happened to be too close to the event, which is why he was caught up in the nightmare alley as well. This scene also shows why the marks are necessary; without it, the innerspace is so unstable that just a few moments after Alessa left the alley, Cybil was able to venture into the alley without seeing any hint of the nightmare world. (9) There are a few people in the town who don't seem to be affected by the shift, and thus remained in the misty, ruined town. Dahlia is seen in the opening running through a church. Perhaps she knew she would be safe in the church. Kauffman also seems to be unaffected by the shift. Maybe his exposure to White Claudia has protected him or perhaps he truly was taking a nap during the shift, and that somehow protected him from it. It is also possible that Dahlia is protecting him, as part of their agreement. Cybil hasn't been pulled into the nightmare for the same reason that Harry isn't; they both came from outside Silent Hill and weren't actually there when the split occured. In the end, however, all of them end up in Alessa's dreamworld. (10) This might be the most controversial aspect of the theory. However, the game establishes White Claudia as a mystical substance used by the cult, and the drug PTV is made from White Claudia. It practically says that Lisa is addicted to PTV--no other drug is mentioned--and it reveals Kauffman as one of the manufacturers. Kauffman also makes Aglophaitis, which exorcises demons and protects the user from evil, and which, like White Claudia, is then used in a ceremony. It's not a far stretch to suggest that it might be made from White Claudia and that, if White Claudia in Aglophaitis dispels the parasites, PTV's diluted amount can suppress them for a time. (11) This actually explains how the radio can detect the monsters; since Alessa is creating them through her own psychic projections, her brain activity must spike every time she projects. The increased brainwave activity would produce a radio pulse--which interferes with the radio. Since the signal's coming from Alessa rather than the monsters themselves, the radio won't work in the metal sewers. Perhaps this is the reason why none of the town's technology, such as vehicles, telephones, lights and television sets, works; a kind of psychic EMP spawned by Cheryl's arrival has cut off the town. Also, the monsters don't actually appear in the town until after Cheryl and Alessa are rejoined in the alley; this strengthens the idea that Alessa's powers, seperate from Cheryl, were only able to create the parallel nightmare world and draw the townspeople into that world--Cheryl's return is what gave her the power to give her nightmares substance and merge the two realities. (12) This is essentially what Harry tells the incredulous Cybil in the boat and I see no reason to doubt his theory. While Dahlia and Cheryl's roles in the events are only revealed later, the process itself has already been seen; it merely becomes more intense and widespread later in the game. The marks themselves seem to be centered on six locations, of which we actually see four: the alternate schoolhouse, the alternate antique shop, the lighthouse, and at Dahlia's house in the climax. The presence of a mark is implied at the alternate hospital and the amusement park. Smaller versions of the mark adorn many of the walls in the nightmare world, but the important marks are the ones on the floor. Since the marks are focal points anchoring the nightmare world, they are not visible in the normal town. (13) Harry's periodic shifts between the normal and increasingly deserted town and the netherworld version of Silent Hill aren't fully explained, but it is told that the dark otherworlds are projections of Alessa's comatose dreams. There's a lot of evidence to support this: many of the monsters can be traced back to the girl's own interests, such as the moth, the lizard, and the wolves. The nightmare-world looks burnt as if by fire and there are distorted sirens in the distance, probably the last thing Alessa heard after Dahlia's sacrificial burning. Harry usually returns to the daylight real-world after defeating a giant boss-creature; it'd seem logical that Harry is the hero of Alessa's inner fairy-tale and that his defeating the monsters calms her and causes her psychically-projected nightmares to fade away for a time, leaving him back in the real town. (14) Whether Dahlia truly knew that Harry would come, or she's bluffing to gain his trust, is debatable. It's possible that she protected Kauffman from the town's shift in order to have him chase after Alessa. Harry's ignorance of the conspiracy, however, made him much easier for Dahlia to manipulate than Kauffman. (15) This begins to happen even before the shift to "nowhere," when Lisa says that she feels cold and strange while telling Harry about the waterworks that lead to the resort district. (16) One of the locations within "nowhere" is Alessa's classroom. Her desk is sitting in the center of the room and there are words scratched into it, reading "Thief. Go home. Drop dead." They don't seem to correspond to any puzzle: are they clues to the story itself? What do they mean? Was this meant to show that the other kids didn't like Alessa or is there a deeper meaning to the message? (17) Dahlia may have been many things, but she certainly wasn't very bright if she really thought that a demonic entity formed out of a child's nightmares could be anything other than evil. (18) We actually see the destructive nature of this "god" in the final battle of the "bad" endings. Apart from its beauty,. it is little different in behavior or powers from the grotesque creature in the good endings. (19) Dahlia makes a very cryptic reference at the beginning of this scene; she tells Cybil that she's surprised to find that the Talisman of Metraton is being used, but that it is no longer of consequence. You can't find the Talisman in the game and there's no further mention of it. Cybil doesn't seem to know what Dahlia is talking about. What is the Talisman and who's using it? Dahlia only mentions it if you save Cybil from being possessed and get the Good+ ending, so perhaps it's simply a reference to the Channeling Stone, which the Good+ ending unlocks. (20) There are other endings to the game. The most mysterious of them are the two bad endings, which seem to imply that the whole game is occurring within Harry's dying thoughts. These seem to show what happens if Alessa is killed directly; apparently, she isn't able to send Harry out of her nightmare as she does in the good endings. Although the town and Harry return to the real world, he is dead, killed by the physical shock of being within the dreamworld when it collapsed. ------------------------------------------------------------------ SECTION 5: FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS ------------------------------------------------------------------ Question: Why didn't you mention Silent Hill 3? It added a lot of new information about Alessa! Answer: If I'd added Silent Hill 3's info to the analysis, it wouldn't be a "Silent Hill" guide! Although this guide only refers to the story elements in the first game, it is consistent with the new information given in Silent Hill 3. In time, I may write a series guide incorporating all three games into a single essay. That guide will be the one to deal with Hope House, Claudia, Vincent, the Seal of Metraton, and other facets unique to Silent Hill 3. --- Question: But what about Samael and Metraton? You didn't explain their history at all. I don't think they're very important in the game, other than just occult labels Dahlia uses to describe what's happening to the town. She only indirectly refers to Samael once, calling Alessa's mark "the mark of Samael," which just seems to be her way of saying "black magic mark." The name "Metraton" is given an even less significant role, in a bit of dialogue which only seems to portend the channeling stone and UFO ending. The most direct explanation of the game's storyline is one that focuses on Alessa's psyche and projective abilities, not on the occult red herrings. --- Question: What's going on when Dahlia, Kauffman and the rest are talking about putting Alessa under a spell? Well, here's the dialogue's answer... They say that, although Alessa's now a "charred husk," "half the soul is lost." Without that half-soul, according to a doctor, the "power we could draw now would be weak, almost nothing." But Dahlia says that these are "just stalling tactics," and they decide to "cast a magical spell" to ensure that the half-soul will "sense this child's pain" and return to Silent Hill. But, as one doctor says, "that will take time." The half-soul is clearly Cheryl, as Dahlia's later dialogue reveals, because she and Alessa are, as she said, "the same person." Since they share the same soul, it would seem that, during the fire seven years ago, Alessa's soul fractured and created Cheryl, the baby Harry and his wife found. With the unconscious Alessa's soul split apart, Dahlia's plans to harness her power were useless, so they needed to bring Cheryl back to Silent Hill somehow. They had no idea where she was, but they used Alessa and a magical spell to unconsciously lure Cheryl back, projecting Alessa's pain so that Cheryl would someday drawn back to the town, where she would rejoin Alessa as a single being and regain her former power. --- Question: What was the purpose of awakening the goddess? Dahlia has some really big plans for the world, such as "returning us to the true paradise" where "all our sorrows will be washed away," among many other mad ramblings. She apparently wanted to use Alessa's powers to make her apocalyptic, fanatical visions come true and create a god that, deep down, she knew didn't exist. --- Question: Who is the baby Alessa hands over to Harry? In my interpretation of the game, she's Cheryl 2.0; Cheryl was created when Alessa's soul splintered, and Alessa, with her dying strength, splits a part of herself once more, creating the baby. --- Question: Why does Cybil replace Harry's wife in the opening FMV? Just to show that the story shown in the opening sequence is now complete. --- Question: How do you solve the piano puzzle? Sorry, this is just a storyline FAQ. Check one of the other walkthroughs for more information. --- Question: What's up with the sirens in this game? The sirens were probably the last thing Alessa heard, and the transition between her life as a normal child and her "life" as a fractured mind trapped in her own nightmares. So now they mark the transition between the misty, real town and the nightmare version of the town, playing every time Harry shifts between them. --- Question: Was there any symbolism to the dead body impaled in the center of the room where you fought the giant lizard? Or the fact it caught on fire right before you fought? It's a reference to the ceremonies and sacrifices of the old religion, and Alessa's own burning. --- Question: Was the moth boss a reference to Phantoms, by Dean Koontz? Quite possibly so, since Koontz is the name of one of the streets. Within the story, it's a reference to the butterfly collection we see in Alessa's room at the end of the game, another hint that the nightmare imagery is derived from her psyche. --- Question: With Samael/Alessa - was the intent for a separate entity/baby to be created...or was the intent for Alessa to be transformed into Samael (as signified by the light before she gets hit by Aglophaitis)? If you see both the good and bad ending, this'll make more sense. In the bad endings, Kauffman never shows up, and Alessa never gets hit with Aglophaitis. In those battles, the demon never emerges, and Alessa herself changes into a glowing, angelic being who throws lightning bolts at you. In other words, the intent seems to have been for Alessa herself to transform into a higher being, rather than anything else to appear. Kauffman just screwed it up with the Aglophaitis so that, instead of Alessa wielding the powers and destructive will of Dahlia's "god," the creature itself emerged. --- Question: Alessa did want to do any of these things, correct? No, Alessa seems to have been innocent. The whole dark world was a nightmare that she couldn't escape, and she was as much a prisoner of her own fears as anyone else. --- Question: OK, so I believe the metal/dark SH was an illusion/ alternate reality, or whatever. Was it being manipulated to by Alessa, or Samael? Personally, I believe it was being manipulated by Alessa's fears and insanity. She'd been locked in that comatose nightmare for so long that she believed it was real; that delusion is what was infecting the town and changing it into a living nightmare. Alessa herself wasn't directly controlling it--her powers had basically gone haywire and her fears were being brought to life by them, driven by her raw emotions rather than her conscious will. --- Question: Was the snowy SH also fake? If so, why did it exist? The fact that you found the police car with a broken windshield and other signs of people of disappearing makes it seem the ACTUAL SH... No, that was the remains of the real Silent Hill, as evidenced by its existence in the other games. --- Question: If Dahlia was controlling reality at the end, why did she let you get anywhere near the house? She wasn't controlling reality at the end, the town had totally collapsed into the innerspace of Alessa's dreamworld. That's why rooms led randomly about the town, and it's how Harry, Cybil, Kauffman and Lisa all ended up at her house, which was the center of the distortion. Dahlia herself couldn't have been controlling reality, or she would never have allowed Kauffman anywhere near the ceremony, nor would she have been surprised by Cybil's presence. --- Question: After using Aglophaitis on Cybil, my impression was that it is designed to extract an spirit that is possessing a person. So why was Kauffman surprised when this happened in the good ending? Kauffman most likely expected one of those little puppet-larva things to pop out of her back, so that he could just step on it, as Harry did with Cybil. He was surprised by how gigantic and powerful the entity that emerged from Alessa actually was. --- Question: After reading the book at the school about girl's ESP and the note in Police station about White Claudia having hallucinogenic properties, I thought maybe the nightmare world was being created by a girl (or people) who were being forced to take White Claudia and experience severe hallucinations. Is there any evidence for this, or was it all because of Samael's power? There's no direct evidence that Dahlia used White Claudia on Alessa to promote her nightmares, but it's an interesting theory. I think her nightmares can be explained by natural causes: the fire, her occult background, and her mental isolation over the past seven years. --- Question: When exactly did Alessa wake up from the coma? Or did she ever? Because if she didn't, then shouldn't the person kneeling (at the end of the game) next to the burned figure in the wheelchair looked like Cheryl? She seems to have woken up at about the same time that Harry arrived in Silent Hill; there are several shots in the opening that show events prior to the game, such as Cybil receiving the call and Dahlia fleeing to the church. One of those scenes shows the scarred Alessa lifting herself out of bed. However, the girl Harry sees running around Silent Hill seems to be a kind of projected dream-form rather than the real Alessa- -especially since she was walking on air according to Cybil, she's undamaged by the collision with the jeep, and Harry only encounters her in the nightmare-world. She vanishes when he returns to the real world, such as the boiler room scene. The two figures at the end of the game are that dream-shape and the real Alessa. Since Cheryl herself was a projection of the real Alessa, the dream shape is essentially Cheryl, except now a true astral projection of Alessa herself, rather than a separately manifested personality. --- Question: If we do suppose that the snowy Silent Hill was real, where did all the people go? Ever wonder where all those bodies in the nightmare came from? Things started to fall into chaos as Alessa's psychic powers grew stronger, resulting in a panic that led to the police calling the town of Brahms for help. At some point, all the combined fear and energy was enough to physically pull the townspeople into the nightmare. Most of them were killed quickly, their corpses strung up all over the place, while the doctors and nurses faced a worse fate: since they were puppets to the conspiracy in the real world, Alessa's deluded imagination has taken revenge by making them grotesque half-living puppets. In other words, the townspeople vanished into the nightmare first, and then, after Cheryl and Alessa rejoined, the nightmare began to physically invade the town, devouring it piece by piece. --- Question: If the monster that first filter over to reality and also infest her nightmare are based on her fears, the pterodactyl (dinosaurs), skinless dog (Doberman pincher/most common attack dog), and medical personnel make sense. But wouldn't the children and babies have been friends of acquaintances of hers? And girls of that age usually like monkey/chimps, so the apes don't make sense... Well, the writing on the desk in Nowhere ("go home," "thief," "drop dead"), along with it being a solitary desk in the middle of the classroom, suggests that Alessa was isolated and shunned by the rest of her classmates--which makes sense, considering that she's the strange daughter of a woman known to be a hermit and witch. She was probably tormented by the other children. As for the apes, I think Alessa's seven-year nightmare has rewritten practically her whole life into a living hell. She had a butterfly collection, which would suggest that she wasn't afraid of them, but the caterpillar and moth are two bosses in the game. Even teddy bears appear as monsters, suggesting that everything she remembers has been tainted and corrupted by her nightmare. --- Question: If Alessa finally reabsorbed Cheryl at the beginning of the game, then wouldn't she have been the only person at the end scene? Who was in the wheelchair, if Alessa was up and walking around (since she seems to wake in the intro)? This is where it kinda gets tricky. Alessa did awaken from her coma, but she's too weak to go running around town, and she's still quite lost in the nightmare. She's almost completely insane, and sleepwalking through a world that she still perceives as the rusted, cage-like otherworld. Anyway, I think the shape you see walking around Silent Hill is a projection of the real Alessa, who's mind is still walking about in her dreams. That projection is the same projection that used to be Cheryl, except Alessa has regained conscious control of this form. So, at the end, there are two girls: the projected Alessa who used to be Cheryl and has been running around town, and the physical body of Alessa who, although awake, is still too weak to physically walk. Their minds, however, are one, and the projection is not really a separate being anymore. --- Question: Just to clarify, you DON'T believe Harry actually died in the alley at the beginning of the game, rather he slipped out of the nightmare world just before, and that is how Cybil found him? You've got it. I think Harry happened to be too close when Cheryl reverted back to Alessa, which caused the alley around her to get pulled into the nightmare. He was attacked by the mumblers until Alessa's dream-shape walked off, which caused him to slip back out into normal space. Cybil most likely happened upon Harry while she was wandering 
around the town, and to her it simply looked like he was wounded 
and unconscious at the entrance to the now-collapsed alley, with 
no hint of the nightmare-world. She brought him back to the cafe 
and waited for him to wake up, hoping that he could tell her what 
had happened to the rest of the town.

---

Question: Cybil and Dr. Kauffman just wandered around normal SH, 
noticing the roads were blocked, people gone, telephone lines out, 
and the monster Kauffman saw, but the two of the never saw the 
nightmare till it actually transposed it self onto reality?

Exactly, and I think the reason they never saw the nightmare world 
was because they weren't chasing after Alessa. Harry was following 
Alessa's movements, thanks in large part to Dahlia's clues, and 
every time he got too close to either Alessa or one of the marks, 
he got pulled into the nightmare-world.

Kauffman and Cybil, on the other hand, never encountered either 
the marks or Alessa, and so they never got pulled into the 
nightmarish otherworld that Alessa's mind had created.

It's only when Alessa had nearly completed the marks, and the 
nightmare actually began to physically pull the town into itself, 
that they got pulled into it and realized that Harry wasn't crazy.

However, Alessa's powers have gotten so strong that, from the
moment she and Cheryl are rejoined, her nightmare world is
constantly "leaking" into the normal reality, which is where the
monsters are coming from. Reality itself is starting to strain
and fracture against her growing powers, hence the mist and
the random shifts between day and night...

---

Question: In the normal town, where did the Clock tower in the 
school go?

I don't think it went anywhere before the mark was set. You'll 
notice that it leads down into a perfectly symmetrical room, with 
two ladders leading up to two clock-towers. The only difference is 
that one ladder has a rusted sign over it, and there are medicine 
bottles around that ladder.

I think that originally there was only one ladder and one small 
storage area.  When Harry crosses the middle of the room, into the 
part of the room littered with bottles, he's actually crossing 
into the nightmare world, like stepping through a mirror. When he 
climbs up the second ladder, he's actually climbing the first one; 
except he's now in the nightmare world rather than the real world.

One definite clue toward this is the medicine bottles, which only 
appear in the nightmare, and also only appear in the second half 
of the room, as though the boundary between the two worlds is in 
the middle of the room. Also, the sirens are heard in this room, 
indicating the shift between realities.

A diagram might help visualize this explanation...

BEFORE THE MARK WAS SET...

  ------
  I     I
HHI     I
  I     I
  ------

This is looking down at the room, with the first ladder being on 
the left-hand side.

The H is the ladder, the I's are the walls of the storage room.

AFTER THE MARK WAS SET...

  --------------
  I     S      I
HHI  1  S   2  IHH
  I     S      I
  --------------

This is the same view, except now with the mark and the nightmare 
world in place.

The "S" is the boundary between the two worlds, with the "1" room 
being the normal room, and the "2" room being its counterpart in 
the nightmare world. When Harry stepped through the "center" of 
the room, he actually crossed over from one to the other without 
knowing it.

---

Question: The gratings/road and buildings in alternate Silent Hill 
all seemed to be built on top of something else. That is, when you 
look at the trees and windmills, they are rising from somewhere 
below. Is there any significance to this?

There are two versions of Alternate Silent Hill. In the first, 
before the marks start pulling the town into the nightmare, the 
platforms are simply hovering in an endless abyss. The windmills 
and other structures rise out of nowhere, and the general 
impression is that the nightmare town is just a speck in the 
middle of an infinite void, in its own separate reality.

Once the nightmare begins to physically change the town, in the 
tourist district, it changes a little. Sometimes, in this version 
of the nightmare-world, you can see fragments of road and cars 
hanging beneath the steel grates, and in this version of the 
nightmare, there are a few trees and normal buildings mixed into 
the nightmare landscape.

At this point, the significance is that the nightmare-reality is 
physically overlapped with normal reality, so that the normal 
cars, roads and so on are still visible, but shattered and 
replaced by the nightmare-world. As Harry said, reality is 
actually turning into the nightmare world.

---

Question: How involved do you think Samael was in the whole thing? 
I guess you could have a continuum of sorts, where at one extreme 
Samael told the cult what to do, manipulated members, and was just 
biding his time. The other end of the continuum would be where 
Samael was just sitting on the couch watching TV and suddenly got 
stuffed in to some girls dormant body. Where along this continuum 
do you think your views/theory fall?

I'm actually torn as to whether Samael was a real presence in the 
game or not; it's possible for the game to take place without 
Samael at all, with the nightmare-world coming from Alessa's own 
powers and mind.

In that case, Alessa's powers would simply be her own nature, 
making her a gifted psychic prodigy rather than a supernatural 
agent, and Dahlia's plan was to use Alessa's powers to create a 
new being, rather than simply unleash or awaken an existing demon.

Remember, the only direct mention of Samael is Dahlia saying that 
Alessa had cast "the mark of Samael," and that might have just 
meant that Alessa is using black magic to seal the town, rather 
than any direct involvement by the specific demon Samael.

However, if we assume that the literal demon named Samael is 
involved in the story, and that he's the source of Alessa's 
reality-warping powers, then I would say that he does have some 
active influence in what's happening. Something's driving Alessa 
to wander about the town, casting the marks and seal the town to 
the abyss, and if it's not her own insanity, then it might be 
Samael.

Samael's motives for doing so were given by Dahlia in the boat; 
he's simply hungry for the sacrifices that the town had promised 
when it was founded but long since abandoned, and apparently using 
Alessa to drag the whole town into a world of nightmares would 
even the balance.

But either way, Samael didn't exist in this world until Dahlia 
used Alessa to create/restore him, so the scheme probably came 
from Dahlia's own twisted mind, rather than any sort of 
possession.

---

Question: If Samael is a fallen angel that is now a lesser demon, 
how come a hunting rifle killed him?

One answer is that Aglophaitis manifested the demon into a 
physical form and that Harry only killed that form, not Samael 
itself. Presumably the demon just went back to the underworld to 
sulk after losing his newly-formed body to a guy with a hunting 
rifle.

However, my theory is actually very different. I think that the 
creature at the end of the game was a manifestation of Alessa's 
psychosis--the Aglophaitis exorcised her inner demons and caused 
them to take on a separate form. You'll notice that the demon 
seems to be feminine, with breasts for example, and that killing 
the demon also kills Alessa, as though the two were connected.

In that theory, the beast was a projection of Alessa's rage and 
insanity, and when you killed it, Alessa was cured of it. Although 
dying from the wounds Harry inflicted on the beast, Alessa is now 
lucid and has regained conscious control of her powers. She uses 
them to project herself into the infant, just as she did with 
Cheryl seven years before, and to open a gate for Harry and Cybil 
to escape the nightmare, which is now collapsing because Alessa, 
the source of it, is dying.

---

Question: Was there any symbolism to the giant fan in the 
alternate school?

Not that I know of, just one more gruesome and mystifying image to 
take in.

---

Question: Are the day and night versions of misty Silent Hill also 
alternate realities, like the misty and nightmare versions?

No, the day and night versions are the same town, just in day and 
night.  If you turn around and go back through the "eclipse" house 
after it turns to night, you can explore the town in darkness.  
Unlike the parallel reality of the nightmare, the items you picked
up, the monsters you killed, and the puzzles you solved when the
town was daylight will still be the same.


--------------------------

SECTION 5: UPDATES
--------------------------

1/27/04 - This is the first version of this document, so there
aren't any updates yet.  I don't foresee any major updates, not
unless the upcoming Silent Hill 4 changes everything, but I will
continue to add to the FAQ section as people write
and ask more questions.

----------------------------------------------------------------

SECTION 7: SPECIAL THANKS AND CONTACT INFORMATION
----------------------------------------------------------------

A very special thanks goes out to the Gamefaqs "Silent Hill" board 
and members such as Ruvan22, aragorn3 and TUS Valentine, and many
more, for their support and input in putting together this document.
Many of these initial questions were first asked on the board, and
those discussions helped bring together the ideas in this guide
and encouraged me to compile and publish it.

Thanks to Konami for putting together the single scariest video-
game series ever, and a storyline that took players to 
intellectual and emotional levels many people thought impossible 
in a game.

And thanks to the friends and family who smiled politely and
tolerated days of mad ramblings after I'd finished each Silent
Hill game, and for the future ramblings they'll endure
once Silent Hill 4 comes out...

If you have any questions you'd like answered and added to the FAQ 
section, just write to me at the address below.  If that question
has never been asked before, I'll add it to this document; if it
has been asked, I'll probably still reply to it through e-mail,
it just won't be added here.

Since I haven't written an SH2/SH3 guide yet, I'll accept and post 
questions concerning them as well, so long as they somehow connect 
to the first game.  For example, "why did James kill his wife" 
would not be a valid question, although I might answer it through 
e-mail, but "is the nightmare world in SH2 the same as Alessa's 
nightmare" could be answered and published here.

And, of course, if you just want to talk about Silent Hill, horror 
movies, or games, or want to offer feedback on the guide, feel 
free to write me as well!

Just write to: brittle_bullet@yahoo.com