Preface

In 2023, I did my first Darkness Retreat.

For four days, I lived in complete darkness.

One of my big insights was that I felt like a hypocrite.

I had discovered Existential Risk Theory in 2022 and it completely derailed my life. My dreams didn’t make sense anymore in the light of the truth that Western Civilization was caught in a malignant momentum that could cause an extinction event.

I began to talk and write passionately about existential risk, but as I attracted attention and admiration for it, I began to feel a subtle sense of self-loathing.

I didn’t have the language for it then, but I knew I was still spending almost all of my waking hours sleep-walking. Consistently contributing as an accomplice to the malignancy.

It wasn’t until my second darkness retreat a year later, in February of 2024, that I realized what I needed to do.

I needed to learn how to tell a good horror story.

My conception of a good horror story is something like Stephen King’s magnum opus The Stand.