Actor Elijah Wood and director Daniel Noah were at a film festival in Colorado about 10 years ago, staying at the infamously-haunted Stanley Hotel in Estes Park, Colo. One night, the duo — as well as some others who were there — decided to use a Ouija Board.
After a few failed attempts to communicate with the paranormal, something shocking happened — it started to work. And before they knew it, they were communicating with a young girl. They asked her if there was anything she wanted them to do, and she spelled one word: F O L L O W. Then she gave them a number, 324.
Turns out, many guests have logged supernatural experiences at the hotel (which catalogues them in a binder, or did back then anyway) around Room 324 and — that’s right — a young girl. All of this story was shared by Wood and Noah Saturday at San Diego Comic-Con, at the SpectreVision Radio Live panel.
That panel was a collaboration between Noah and Wood’s podcast, SpectreVision, and comics publisher Oni Press. And during it, they focused primarily on their other forthcoming team-up, a relatively distinct new comic series, High Strangeness (details of which you can find here). In brief, that five-issue series is based on Noah’s own transformative journey from skeptic to believer in the paranormal, featuring his overarching story with a different writer and artist team working on each issue.
But at the panel, Wood and Noah weren’t the only ones sharing stories about the inexplicable and strange. They were joined on stage by two of the writers from the new book — Christopher Cantwell and Chris Condon — Oni Press editor Bess Pallares, and Oni Press President / Publisher Hunter Gorinson. All of whom shared some insights into their own relationships with the inexplicable.
What emerged though was a picture of a pretty ambitious book, one that doesn’t adhere to typical story structure, makes the case that we understand less than we think about the world and offers insights our very relationships with reality.
“There is no answer in the comic,” Condon said. “There is no explanation in the comic, but [the main character] is experiencing something and we are experiencing it with him.”
Another really interesting feature of High Strangeness is that it will include a set of non-fiction essays about various phenomena by Jim Perry, who works with Wood and Noah on the podcasts.
This book comes at an interesting time for Oni Press, too, which has been putting out some of my personal favorite original comics this year, with titles like Out of Alcatraz and Plague House. It really stands out among periodical comics publishers, who seem generally far more interested of late in known commodities and licensed material.
But High Strangeness is a series with individual chapters split among different creative teams, attempting to find some truth about the ineffable experience of grappling with the peculiar.
When asked about the approach Oni editorial is taking with its books and creators, Pallares said, “Really it’s about storytelling that allows people to be weird and explore their strangeness.”
High Strangeness #1 by Condon, Noah, and artist Dave Chisholm (with a cover by Jock) is due out Oct. 8.
Stay tuned to The Beat for more coverage from SDCC ’25.
English (US) · 