Monster of the Week: the Stranger

Origin: Cry of Fear

Appearance: The Strangers are tall and well dressed men. Till here nothing strange… well except that they have a giant book as a face. If the dress is very well maintained, the hands are ruined and rotten. These creatures walk very slow toward the player. They make a clear sound, an heavy breath, discontinue and creepy. Sometime this sound looks like an animal, more than an human. They don’t attack directly the player. They just walk toward him. The closer they are, the more the damage the player receives. From their body, the Strangers irradiate a sort of evil aura. They are tough and need a serious amount of damage to be killed.

Symbolism: The Strangers are a very rare enemy and usually they appear alone in narrow corridors. The symbolism here is easy, since their face is a giant book. Probably Simon, the main character, spent a lot of time stacked in an hospital bed. If you ever been there you will know that the books are the main diversion to save you from the boredom. But why a representation of a book will hurt the player instead to help him? Sometime an hobby can become a nightmare, especially if you are forced to do that because you don’t have other alternatives. This is the point when the books become a sort of enemy. Simon would like to do something else, like going outside of the hospital and having a life. But he is imprisoned in an bed. He cannot do nothing, except read a book. This heavy and contradictory feeling is symbolized by the behavior of the Strangers. The player wants to run from them, avoiding their aura of damage. But the Strangers can block your way in little corridors with their presence. You can run from them, but they will continue to follow you slowly. Sometimes the Strangers will not hurt you. They will just stay there in front of you, with their pages open. A bug in the code of the game or a symbolic moment to enjoy an old hobby?