Line #9 EldritchLocation/Literature


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6	{{Eldritch Location}}s in literature.
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9	* In ''Literature/FourteenPeterClines'', the Kavach Building ''seems'' innocuous enough. It's not. [[spoiler:It has a door into ''space'', for starters.]]
10	* Hinted at in ''Literature/TwentySixSixtySix''. All of the characters notice that something's... off about Santa Teresa, a fictionalized version of Ciudad Juarez, where some 3000 women have disappeared or been murdered since the 1990s. And then there's the mysterious nature of the book's title, which is hinted at in other Bolaño works as well. [[http://blog.semcoop.com/2008/11/10/2666/ As one reviewer puts it:]]
11	-->There is something secret, horrible, and cosmic afoot, centered around Santa Teresa (and possibly culminating in the mystical year of the book's title, a date that is referred to in passing in ''Amulet'' as well). We can at most glimpse it, in those uncanny moments when the world seems wrong.
12	%%* Ahriman in the ''Literature/AhrimanTrilogy''. It's definitely a heavenly body of some kind, though it's vague as to exactly what type. It's also sentient in some way, so it's kind of also a god.
13	* In ''Literature/{{Animorphs}}''' ''The Andalite Chronicles'', Elfangor, Loren, and Visser Three get hold of the Time Matrix, a time machine, at the same time and each simultaneously tries to use it to take them back to their home planets. The result is a horrifying mishmash of their memories of all three. At the edge of that world, there's nothing but zero space, and Loren's arm gets bent spatially back into her face when she tries to reach out there. At the center is the Time Matrix itself, which is the key to getting out of there, but time speeds up for all matter that comes close, causing Elfangor and Loren to age five Earth years before they reach it, and are unable to change back after they escape.
14	* ''Literature/AzothExpress'' has the titular train, which is made of an unspecified stony black material, traversed by a lattice of filaments providing illumination. It travels through an unknown land, which is constantly covered by a thick white devouring fog, and any attempt at localization on board is bound to fail.
15	* ''Literature/BasLagCycle'': Bas-Lag is a strange place to begin with, featuring dozens of sentient races, a city built in the corpse of a dead giant, bears built from flocks of birds and more, but any place that's been touched by the Torque is considered an EldritchLocation in-universe. Torque is a special kind of magic that, as its name suggests, twists things. The primary villains of ''Literature/PerdidoStreetStation'' are from the Cacotopic Stain, Bas-Lag's premier Torque locality. There is mention of the city of Seuroch, which was hit with a FantasticNuke to ''cover up'' what the Torque bombs it was initially hit with did. The Stain itself is probed in ''Literature/IronCouncil'', and it isn't pretty.
16	* Giant country and The Land of Dreams in ''Literature/TheBFG''. They're somewhere on Earth, but they've never been seen by man before the events of the book, no one had even suspected they may exist, and not even the BFG, who lives in the land of Giants, knows where it is. He gets there by homing instinct. The animated movie depicts it as actually being in another dimension entirely.
17	* Karzahni in the ''Toys/{{Bionicle}}'' books ''Dark Destiny'' and ''BIONICLE World'' is the series' version of Hell where bad workers were sent as punishment, at least in legend. In truth, Karzahni was where workers were meant to be ''fixed'' but the ruler the place was named after ended up weakening and deforming his subjects rather than fixing them, so the world cut all contact with him and Karzahni became a SmallSecludedWorld for 100,000 years. Surrounded by a dried up sea and mountains patrolled by [[GiantEnemyCrab Manas]], the ground turned anyone sitting down for a rest to stone, while the earth came alive and screamed whenever someone took a step. Burning-hot ice erupted from volcanoes, waterfalls were made of dust, and microscopic flying animals zipped around, slowly eating the machines and the inhabitants, ancient patients that Karzahni never allowed to leave and over time became mad, lifeless ghouls. According to illustrations, it's also polluted by smoke from forges and red lightning bolts flash in the sky.
18	* Glen Cook's ''Literature/TheBlackCompany'' novels feature the Plain of Fear. The Plain is a vast wasteland that is home to [[FlyingSeafoodSpecial wind-whales, flying mantas]], walking trees, talking stones (called "menhir"), coral reefs (despite being a desert), and "change storms" that temporarily distort reality. In the third book, it is revealed that the strange denizens can leave the Plain if they so desire, though most of the world doesn't know that. It's also revealed that [[spoiler: the Plain is the way it is because "Old Father Tree," the giant tree at the Plain's geographical center, is actually a PhysicalGod summoned from AnotherDimension thousands of years ago to serve as the [[SealedEvilInACan can]] for a now-forgotten BigBad. The oddities of the Plain are actually pieces of Old Father Tree's home world seeping into the Company's reality]].
19	%%* Carlos Castaneda continually pumps too much Peyotl with his Yaqui-Indian friend and starts to see the whole world as an Eldritch Place, then writes books about it. Dreamtime!
20	* The city in ''Literature/BlackTrip'' may look like Cleveland or Baltimore of TheSeventies, but the buildings change every day, the houses may or may not turn into immense mazes and staying there too long has a derimental effect on the health.
21	* There's the horrific Metropolis-Utopia in R.S Belcher's ''The Brotherhood of the Wheel'', it's a city where all times and dimensions meet. The place is a hungry, roaming mish-mash fusion of broken down cities from various histories and worlds, wizards gone mad and fused alive to it, and the body parts of victims to the city. When a viamancer (a "road-witch") uses their powers over time and space too much, they eventually disappear and become a new ornament/inhabitant of Metropolis-Utopia.
22	* The titular building in ''Literature/CharlieAndTheChocolateFactory'' and its [[Literature/CharlieAndTheGreatGlassElevator sequel]] is imposing from the outside, but ''inside'' it turns out to be a BigLabyrinthineBuilding / ElaborateUndergroundBase that gets stranger and stranger the further one goes into it. There are chocolate rivers and fields (the latter work the way ''oil'' fields do), rock candy mines, fudge mountains, all in a curious variety of rooms and corridors. They can exist at least 10,000 feet below the surface of the Earth (in [[Theatre/CharlieAndTheChocolateFactory the 2013 stage musical adaptation]], one character points out in vain that this can't be possible). Should one dare to go down deep enough via the Great Glass Elevator, a sinister MinusWorld where the spirits of people de-aged out of existence go can be accessed. The '''really''' unsettling thing is that, rather than a preexisting location that unknown forces might have left in this world, this [[TheWonderland wonderland]] was the secret work/design of a human being who doesn't have any magical abilities, but ''does'' have an ''extremely'' [[TheWonka eccentric way of thinking]].
23	* ''Literature/ChasingTheMoon'': On top of being some kind of CosmicKeystone for the universe, the apartment complex Diana moves into acts as a sort of prison for various {{Eldritch Abomination}}s that find themselves in our reality and it randomly opens portals into other worlds.
24	%%* ''Literature/TheChroniclesOfNarnia'' has several. The Dark Island from ''Literature/TheVoyageOfTheDawnTreader'' is the only truly frightening one, though -- more pleasant or neutral ones include Bism and the Wood Between the Worlds.
25	* ''Literature/TheChroniclesOfDorsa'': The Shadowlands appear as a barren wasteland, with a dimly lit sky, filled with {{living shadow}}s as its denizens. It is also DreamLand, with both time and space distorted for this reason. Even so, it's also capable of containing a physical object if magically placed there.
26	* ''Literature/ChroniclesOfTheEmergedWorld'': The layout of the sanctuary of time, due to the power of its element, has very little to do with regular laws of time and space. Sennar and Nihal are first faced with a room filled with a chaotic tangle of stairways; the first one they try leads to a dead end, and leaves them in a completely different, empty room when they go back down. They are afterward left wandering in a seemingly infinite maze of rooms and stairways connected by doors that often vanish when crossed, and when comparing notes cannot agree on how much time they passed there -- Sennar believes they were only in there a few hours, but Nihal experienced several days.
27	* ''Literature/TheCityAndTheCity'' includes a rare non-supernatural example. The titular cities of Beszel and Ul Qoma occupy the same geographic area, but are separate political and cultural entities. Residents of one city are taught from birth to completely ignore the existence of the other, using among other things body language and color cues. Breaking this rule will invite a visit from the SecretPolice that enforces the cities' separation, which never ends well. This means that next-door neighbors can be living in two separate countries and be completely unaware of the other's life. It gets particularly unusual in so-called "crosshatched areas", where the cities intersect and their citizens come within hair breadths of one another. However, there's nothing magical enforcing the separation: only tradition and the aforementioned police.
28	%%* The world described in ''Literature/CodexSeraphinianus''.
29	* The Black Cathedral in ''Literature/CthulhuArmageddon'' is a location which is made of organic and inorganic material, is made of non-Eulicidean geometry, and is located in several dimensions. It's also the base for the BigBad and a former domain of the Elder Things.
30	* Creator/HPLovecraft's ''Franchise/CthulhuMythos''.
31	** R'lyeh, the abode of Great Cthulhu, as described in "Literature/TheCallOfCthulhu", is a city where angles of buildings seems to make little to no sense, creating optical illusions at every turn, and even gravity seems to not work entirely as expected. Of note, when Cthulhu himself awakens and chases down the unfortunate crew of sailors who have ended up there, one of them ends getting caught and eaten when he gets stuck by "an angle of masonry which shouldn't have been there; an angle which was acute, but behaved as if it were obtuse."
32	** Lovecraft's writings have several of these in addition to R'lyeh. These include the subterranean N'knai, [[Literature/TheWhispererInDarkness the planet Yuggoth with its black towers and rivers of pitch]], and the Outer Void that exists beyond our four-dimensional space and is the dwelling place of the Outer Gods. The Dreamlands may also count, as it's apparently a separate plane of existence that shares a connection with our world.
33	** The Plateau of Leng, that may exist somewhere in the Himalayas, in Antarctica, or in the Dreamlands, or possibly in all these places.
34	** Wherever (or whatever) it was that could be seen from Erich Zahn's balcony, and drove him to compose such music. Probably extends somewhat to the entire street, given the narrator's [[TheLittleShopThatWasntThereYesterday later incapacity to locate it]].
35	* Bellona in Samuel R. Delany's ''Literature/{{Dhalgren}}''. Bellona is a city located in the American Midwest, isolated from the rest of the world by some unknown space/time glitch. You can still get to it on foot. It is now inhabited mostly by gangs of various couleurs and civilians unsure about leaving for good. The most eldritch thing about it is that the sky, when rarely seen, can have different celestial bodies than are seen from elsewhere.
36	* Pandemonium and Heaven in ''{{VideoGame/Diablo}}''. Both appear in the games, but the books go into more detail. Pandemonium is a chaotic never ending wasteland filled with the remains of fallen Angels and Demons, and scavenging predators. In addition to being made of marble, silver, and crystal buildings, Heaven is blindingly bright with the sun never setting, permeated with never ending music, and has no moisture in the air. Storm of Light shows that being in either place is extremely disorienting and hazardous to Humans, and Tyrael must train several characters to be able to withstand both places.
37	* The titular Dis of ''Literature/DisAcedia'', a universe-sized, living maze composed of smaller worlds patchworked together.
38	* ''Literature/{{Discworld}}'':
39	** The Dungeon Dimensions, which are basically an elemental plane of chaos. It exists outside of the borders of reality, and the Things that live there are just as shapeless and mind-bending as the place itself. It extends infinitely in all directions and completely lacks magic of any kind.
40	** Death's Domain is definitely this. While it appears normal at first glance, the house is much BiggerOnTheInside than it appears, there are a wide variety of shades of black, a peculiar blue glow appears on the horizon, the mountains can never be reached, time does not pass for mortals, and peculiar and unsettling shadows appear.
41	*** And in ''Literature/TheLightFantastic'', when [[spoiler:Rincewind and Twoflower]] pay Death a visit, they use a picture-taking imp to take a picture. The imp sees what is really there, is confused at the location ("Where ARE we? Three bloody years at F8 if you ask me.") When they look at the picture later, it is extremely unsettling and was NOT remotely what the visitors saw.
42	** Death's boss [[CosmicEntity Azrael]] potentially qualifies as an eldritch location in and of himself.
43	** Time's glass house and the Tooth Fairy's castle also count as this. The Tooth Fairy's castle is surprisingly creepy, even the portions not influenced by [[spoiler: the Tooth Fairy's previous job as the first Boogeyman]]. Justified because the Tooth Fairy is the ''protector'' of the teeth to ensure [[BlackMagic no one uses the teeth to control the children.]]
44	** On the subject of Time, the monastery of Oi Dong probably also counts, as time functions differently there.
45	** Lancre contains a few places like this, including the portal to the elves' world from ''Literature/LordsAndLadies'' and the "gnarly" ground in ''Literature/CarpeJugulum''.
46	** As seen in ''Literature/{{Pyramids}}'', time is rather screwy in Djelibeybi due to the massive presence of pyramids. Since in the Discworld pyramids accumulate time over the day, and release it back through their tips in the night only to reabsorb again during the day. This was originally made as a way to sharpen razors (or rather, as a way to "remind" razors of a time in which they were sharper and let them revisit it for a little while), but then proceeded into burial arrangements until there were so many pyramids around that time was always the same. Not a GroundhogDayLoop; there was a yesterday, there'd be a tomorrow, but the day was ''always'' the exact same 24 hours, causing heavy stagnation. [[spoiler:And the very last pyramid stockpiled so much time during construction while unable to release it that it suddenly turned around 90 degrees, and dragged the rest of reality along, turning Djelibeybi into a whole pocket dimension inside a one-dimensional crack where all periods of time were simultaneous even if the day advanced normally, causing the whole ContinuitySnarl of a pantheon to come to life and battle for dominance. Once this pyramid is detonated, along with all the rest, the whole land returns to a proper timeflow]].
47	** Unseen University, especially the library, which, in addition to being bigger on the inside than on the outside (quite possibly to the degree of being significantly larger than the entire rest of the planet including Great A'tuin) also, among other things, has corridors that lead off to other points in time.
48	--->'''Rule 3 of the Library:''' Do not meddle with the nature of causality.
49	*** Note that most of the library's strangeness has nothing to do with being part of a WizardingSchool. On the Disc, [[InsaneTrollLogic Knowledge = Power = Energy = Matter = Mass]], and sufficient quantities of this "mass" can warp space until it creates a portal to an extradimensional library filled with every book that could ever possibly exist. "L-space" is connected to every library and bookshop in any given time period, which makes ''all of them'' eldritch to some degree and allows anyone familiar with it to travel between them.
50	*** The whole university in general is so magically charged that it randomly causes weird phenomena like animals spontaneously becoming sapient. Also, most of the rooms are larger inside than out (although not as much as the library). At one point a specialist wizard provides the main faculty a map that he thinks should be accurate for at least a few days; it's compared to an exploding chrysanthemum.
51	** The [[Literature/{{Thud}} Empirical Crescent houses]] designed by Bloody Stupid Johnson, who managed (as usual) to create an Eldritch Location [[EpicFail by mistake]]. The place is livable, but disquieting -- for example, the front door of No.1 opens into the back bedroom of No.15, the ground floor window of No.3 showed the view from the second storey of No.9 and smoke from the dining-room fireplace of No.2 came out of the chimney of No.19.
52	** The Desert is a massive, vast, sandy plane full of dunes and surrounded by mountains that never seems to get any closer, but is also ultimately what most souls must traverse to pass on. All beings end up there where they die, until they journey to the end to accept their afterlife. Despite this being where Death deposits everyone after harvesting their souls, it's incredibly rare for two individuals to meet in The Desert, and in fact only happens [[Literature/SmallGods once]] in the series which surprises and impresses Death.
53	** Inverted in ''Literature/TheScienceOfDiscworld'' books, where the mundane physics of the Roundworld universe -- i.e. our own -- seem like this trope to the wizards, who are used to things [[TheoryOfNarrativeCausality running on narrativium]] rather than rules.
54	%%* The titular City in Literature/TheDoomedCity, also by the Creator/StrugatskyBrothers, qualifies as well.
55	* The Immanent Grove from the ''{{Literature/Earthsea}}'' books, a place where the trees themselves seem to be teaching advanced magic. It is stated that for the people outside, the Grove seems to be moving all over the island of Roke. In reality, it is anchored in the very fabric of reality; the Grove cannot move, Earthsea does.
56	* ''Franchise/DoctorWhoExpandedUniverse'':
57	** [[MentalWorld The Doctor's mind]] in ''[[Recap/DoctorWhoNewAdventuresTimewyrmRevelation Timewyrm: Revelation]]'' after the Timewyrm gets into him. It comprises of a well-kept garden, a library and even a ferry piloted by one of the Doctors. No wonder the Doctor's companion Ace is rather confused as to [[MindScrew what is happening]].
58	** The City in ''[[Recap/DoctorWhoNewAdventuresCatsCradleTimesCrucible Cat's Cradle: Time's Crucible]]'', an insane crumbling ruin where three timestreams and their respective inhabitants, past, present and future (or to be 100% accurate, present, future, and further future), exist side-by-side, separated by rivers of mercury. The entire place turns out to be made from the salvaged remains of the TARDIS after it was destroyed in a time collision and pulled back together by the emergency system known as the Banshee Circuit, with the mercury rivers representing the ship's fluid links and the Doctor is able to control and reshape parts of the city by accessing the ship's surviving systems.
59	** ''Franchise/FactionParadox'':
60	*** The Eleven-Day Empire, a [[MundaneMadeAwesome tract of space/time, shaped like XVIII century London]], ritualistically separated from reality by eleven days that never existed. Specifically, when the 18th century British Empire shifted from the Julian to the Gregorian calendar, the date changed from the 2nd to the 14th of September. Figuring that nobody was using them, the Faction took those eleven days, cut them off from the rest of causality, and turned them into a twisted shadow version of Victorian London under a [[RedSkyTakeWarning perpetually burning sky]]. It's a weird place. (In its introduction, it's explained that if you were to [[LampshadeHanging point out]] that the above [[ItRunsOnNonsensoleum doesn't really make sense]], because a shift in the calendar doesn't "create" unused days, Faction Paradox would say that [[TimeyWimeyBall that's rather the point]].)
61	*** And then there's the City of the Saved: the result of the fusion of the ultimate sum of all human technology in all of history merged with a ''[[LivingShip goddess]]'' from the end of time. What does that equate to? A ''galaxy-wide'' [[GeniusLoci sentient]] space station, containing all humans to ever exist in immortal, perfect bodies, including [[HalfHumanHybrid all hybrids]] and virtually all fictional characters ever, permanently anchored at the edge of the Universe in its last nanosecond before the birth of the next. Unfortunately, there was an infection of ''[[PsychoPrototype something]]'' that came out of the other end, and now the normally very pleasant City's infected with nightmarish industrial wastelands specialized in [[BodyHorror human experimentation]]. It's as horrific as it sounds.
62	* The inner circles of Hell in ''Literature/DraconianSymphony'' seem to make sense at first glance, but Lascivus reveals that the landscape is an incestuous labyrinth of mismatched spatial dimensions.
63	* The Realm in ''Literature/{{Dragoncharm}}''. The Naturals have no inkling of it, and the Charmed can only see it by imagining a gateway so that they can choose whether or not to enter. If they do, masses of [[EldritchAbomination Eldritch Abominations]] are waiting to prey on the weak. [[TheComicallySerious Cumber]] chooses to see it as a thick membrane and to scratch a gash in it as his means of getting through.
64	* ''Literature/TheDresdenFiles'':
65	** The Nevernever. In size, it is to Australia what Earth is to Rhode Island[[note]]Roughly speaking surface area of the Earth is 162,443 times the area of Rhode Island. So with Australia having a rough area of 7,692,024 square kilometers, then the area of Nevernever is close to 1,249,517,855,327 square kilometers. For reference, that is about 20 times greater than the surface area of the planet Jupiter[[/note]], and the laws of physics just don't work the way they do in our world. In fact they almost ''never'' do. What goes beyond that is the dimensions between entrances isn't 1 to 1. There is a portal in Chicago that leads to a trail. Following the trail, one can get a person to Edinburgh, Scotland in a 30 minute walk. Even just moving a few feet in one direction can change where you enter into. Open a portal in a cemetery or shady area and expect a place with negative attributes, but move away from that to the nice home close by and you could find a veritable paradise. And that said, just because the place looks like a nice visit, LightIsNotGood may apply. The region Harry Dresden's apartment connects to is a beautiful garden [[spoiler:with a giant killer centipede that if cut in half, now one has ''two'' centipede monsters to fight.]]
66	** Demonreach, introduced in ''Literature/SmallFavor'', is a less alien but no less powerful site. Aside from being the source of a massive dark energy ley line, it is also [[GeniusLoci self-aware]] and does not show up on any maps because ships disappear around it and aircraft navigation goes out close to it.[[note]]Also, there have been some deliberate government efforts to keep it off the map, after... incidences... affecting those that did manage to land on the island in previous centuries. They don't want the curious to explore it, after that.[[/note]] In ''Literature/ColdDays'', it is revealed to be [[spoiler:a prison for {{Eldritch Abomination}}s with {{skinwalker}}s being only in ''Minimum Security''. And Harry's connection to the place sensed in ''Small Favor'' was the possibility where he become the Warden of the entire island, with the power to free everything inside on a whim.]]
67	* ''Literature/{{Echo}}'' has the Maudith, a mysterious mountain in the Swiss Alps that is not on any map. Physical space is implied to warped there, leading most mountain climbers foolish enough to scale it to never return. The story focuses on a climber who does manage to rerturn, but appears strangely haunted afterwards.
68	* ''Literature/TheFacelessOldWomanWhoSecretlyLivesInYourHome'' has a scene set in the nation of Franchia, a country which is covered in archways, staircases, and courtyards despite apparently never having been inhabited by any humans at all. No one has ever been able to conquer it, as whole armies have disappeared within its borders with the handful of survivors swearing they've wandered through [[BiggerOnTheInside far more territory than its borders should be able to hold]].
69	* In ''Literature/TheFarthestAwayMountain'', the reason it's called the Farthest-Away Mountain is because no matter how far anyone has traveled, the mountain remains the same distance on the horizon. It turns out the only way to approach is to be called by it, like it does with the protagonist Dakin.
70	* In ''Literature/FengshenYanyi'', many Jie Taoists can set up a "Formation" [[note]] (the same hanzi can also mean a trap or an enchantment or even a period of time) [[/note]], a restricted fenced area where they can bend the laws of Yin and Yang, the forces of the five elements, four heavenly divisions and other primal forces to manipulate nature. The Ten Lethal Formations of the Ten Heavenly Lords of Jinao Island are not very big but still ominous, but the Immortal-Slaughtering Formation and the Ten Thousands Immortals Formation set up by the head of Jie Taoism Tongtian Jiaozhu take the cake: they are enormous, especially the latter, covered in a deep strata of cold mists and ominous clouds, the aura of death is so thick over it that even the wise and enlightened Twelve Immortals of Kunlun are left quaking with fear as they gaze upon them. The former has four gates adorned each by a deadly precious sword which can instantly annihilate any Immortal passing under them, while the latter (occasionally depicted as a FloatingContinent under a whirpool of clouds with a giant Yin-Yang emblem in the middle) is so large it can host many lesser Formations inside and host a whole army of Immortals and monsters.
71	* In ''Literature/TheFirstLaw Trilogy'', the House of the Maker qualifies. A massive, mysterious structure that nobody has been in for thousands of years that completely defies physics, such as the ability to ascend floors without the use of stairs or any other means.
72	* Creator/JohnLangan's Black Ocean setting, which includes several short stories and one novel, ''Literature/TheFisherman'', features a Platonic ideal of reality, the world of the Black Ocean, of which our own is merely a sort of reflection or distillation. In this other world, time runs at various speeds in different locations, there are "Vivid Trees", or the platonic ideal of trees, with razer sharp leaves and strange leaf configurations like a child's drawing, and cities inhabited by sorcerous civilizations whose streets are winding mazes and which have stairways to nowhere. Also, Odin's lost eye is simply floating in the locked basement of a church in the city, and there is a lake with a tower of cold flame above it where artistic inspiration may originate from, but which is guarded by an AnimalisticAbomination.
73	* The setting of ''Literature/FullTilt'' is superficially an AmusementParkOfDoom, but the "rides" expand into mini-worlds, ranging from a burned-out slum to a [[TheThemeParkVersion mock-up]] of ancient Egypt to [[spoiler:an asteroid field made of [[EveryCarIsAPinto Pintos that explode when touched]].]] According to throwaway dialogue from [[HumanoidAbomination its creator]], it's less "real" than our own world, but it will become more real as more and more people are drawn into it, and all other worlds will become mere shadows.
74	* In ''Literature/TheGreatDivorce'', Heaven is a terrifying, incomprehensible place to all Hellish ghosts. Everything is alive, or an incarnation of an Angel. Creatures real and mythological live there. Everything from grass to sunlight hurts and disorients them as they find out that they are less-than-real.
75	%%* Most Creator/SimonRGreen novels feature at least one of these, if not more.
76	* The further West you go in the titular ''[[Literature/TheHalfMadeWorld Half-Made World]]'', the more the world becomes this. Since the world is still in the process of being created, the West exists in a constant state of flux where reality is more mutable. This manifests in the settled portions as the appearance of various supernatural entities or spirits [[note]]This allows for the existence of the Line and the Gun, the two major factions of the West[[/note]]. The wild portions are significantly stranger. Notably, YourMindMakesItReal but your mind also ''defines'' them and makes them concrete, so the further West people settle, the less strange the West becomes.
77	* ''Literature/HelenAndTroysEpicRoadQuest'': The Sacred Glen is a liminal space where "neither mortal nor immortal treads lightly", existing in-between "you name it". With industrialization in the mortal world on the rise, it currently takes the form of an empty suburb, and it's where most quest-havers meet with the {{Herald}} Pollux Castor.
78	* The ancient, expansive mansion of Evenmere in James Stoddard's ''The High House'' certainly is one. It is BiggerOnTheInside with several rooms being able to support entire kingdoms, oceans and climates. Some sections are more surreal than others and the attic has an eldritch dinosaur (who is really a shape-changing, draconic, [[AnthropomorphicPersonification personification of despair.]]) It proves to be a benevolent example [[spoiler: as the House is a mechanism for [[GodIsGood God to keep Creation from falling prey to entropy and chaos.]] ]]
79	* The cave in ''Literature/HollowPlaces''. It changes layout with every visit, contains a pool of water with strange restorative/wish granting properties, and features an anomaly that transports whoever takes eighty-one steps past a mysterious column to wherever they most desire to go (So long as such a place exists). In addition, there are a number of smaller phenomena, including a hall full of quartz formation that change shape depending on the explorer’s mood, preoccupations, or future concerns, and an echo that occurs in places it shouldn’t.
80	* The Literature/HouseOfLeaves. According to some, [[TomeOfEldritchLore the whole book qualifies]]. The house itself seems normal for the most part, but it can grow new doors, shift dimensions and be BiggerOnTheInside -- and that's before you find the entrance to the insane, endless, dark labyrinth.
81	* William Hope Hodgson's ''Literature/TheHouseOnTheBorderland'' is a portal into vast abysses of time and space. Additionally, the surrounding countryside is infested with things from BeneathTheEarth.
82	* In the ''Literature/InheritanceCycle'', the island of Vroengard is left contaminated with magical radiation after the equivalent of a FantasticNuke goes off. A century later, it's warped the few organisms that remain into alien forms.
83	* In the ''Literature/IncarnationsOfImmortality'' series, the raw, unmade substance from which Clotho spins thread is deep within one of these. Trees start to become geometric abstractions, and she walks on a path which goes upside down, and everything breaks down as she reaches the area from which she must collect the raw material from which to spin her threads.
84	* ''Literature/IntoTheBrokenLands'': Being [[WithGreatPowerComesGreatInsanity power-mad]] {{Reality Warper}}s, mages occasionally create these, intentionally or not:
85	** The mage road always takes precisely one lunar month to travel into the Broken Lands regardless of pace, much less time to go the other way, and can ''only'' be traveled by beginning at one end.
86	** The mages' war left the Broken Lands a DeathWorld where the terrain rearranges itself from day to day, and the internal layout of the buildings is impossible in three-dimensional space. Some of its oddities were deliberately designed; others are the result of undirected residual mage-craft distorting over decades.
87	* Geoph Essex's ''Jackrabbit Messiah'' has the place that Jack and God go when they [[spoiler: enter the Princess's mind]] in the climax. Weird skies? Check. A river that flows both ways simultaneously? Double check. And the fact that it takes [[TalkingToThemself Jack]] and [[HelpfulHallucination God]] and [[spoiler: splits them into two separate, physical people?]] That's just weird. Not to mention what it [[BecomingTheCostume does to Jack]].
88	* The Duat in ''Literature/TheKaneChronicles''. It's the expansion pack version of the Underworld from the ''Literature/PercyJacksonAndTheOlympians'' series by the same author (and canonically in the [[ArcWelding same universe]]). There are the shallower regions where we find the Halls of Maat, the center of Order in the universe and stronghold of the Egyptian Gods. And, presumably, the region controlled by the Olympians for their underworld and imprisoning the odd EldritchAbomination. But then there are the deep reaches of the Duat, where there are vast gulfs even the gods fear to tread and Apophis lurks. This corresponds to the reaches where the Olympians tossed the remains of Kronos.
89	* ''Literature/{{Momo\|1973}}'': Never Street is a place beyond the edge of the time. The streets leading to it are devoid of all life, and the atmosphere is still and quiet, flooded by a fading light which seems simultaneously to come from nowhere and everywhere. As walking through the place, Momo can see strange monuments and weird houses which haven't been built for people at all, and realizes what the slower she walks, the quicker she advances...until she steps on the proper Never Street and she cannot move at all until she walks backwards because Time itself flows backwards through that place.
90	* Creator/StephenKing:
91	** ''Literature/TheDarkTower''
92	*** ''Literature/TheWasteLands'', a radioactive rift in the fabric of existence populated by MixAndMatchCritters; [[Literature/SongOfSusannah Thunderclap]], a {{Mordor}}-like desert; and [[IDontLikeTheSoundOfThatPlace End-World]] where the Dark Tower resides (a sort of [[WorldTree Yggdrasil]]-like entity). [[spoiler:This is because the evil PowersThatBe have occupied [[DefinitelyFinalDungeon the Dark Tower and are trying to destroy it from within]].]]
93	*** Also the castle that Susannah's doppelganger visits in her dreams is described as an eldritch location filled with [[NothingIsScarier unknown horrors]] in the machinery-filled rooms below, on the edge of End-World which is portrayed as an even worse EldritchLocation with a [[{{Mordor}} pulsating red light]] coming from it.
94	*** [[AlternateUniverse Mid-World]] as a ''whole'' is an EldritchLocation, albeit in varying degrees. While the above mentioned End-World and the Wastelands beyond Lud are certainly the weirdest Mid-World gets, the entire place is pretty strange, and is described as having [[AfterTheEnd "moved on"]]. The sun doesn't always set in the west, time dilates and constricts at will, and the very nature of Mid-World is increasingly metaphorical. Eddie summarizes the place best in ''The Wolves of the Calla'', when he describes Mid-World as feeling bizarrely ''off'', like a movie set or stage.
95	** Derry, Maine in ''Literature/{{IT}}'' was built on top of the place that Pennywise arrived on Earth. The town itself is so suffused with his evil that even a minor inconvience for IT means that a part of the town will be destroyed by some kind of tragedy. Whether it be a storm, a fire or an explosion of some kind. And that's not even mentioning how IT has a psychic hold on every adult in the city and keeps them blind to his presence.
96	** ''Literature/FromABuick8'' theorizes that the eponymous car is a portal to such a place. Possibly subverted, as the... ''[[EldritchAbomination things]]'' that come out of the car seem to find humans just as horrible and terrifying as we find them.
97	** The titular hotel room in ''Literature/FourteenOhEight'' is a GeniusLoci that tortures it's guest ForTheEvulz. It can warp reality, cause time dilations, reads it's guest minds, and call up monsters. What's especially weird is that it's just the one room that's eldritch and the rest of the Dolphin Hotel is perfectly normal. Both the short story and the movie are insistent that there's no ghosts, it's just "an evil fucking room".
98	** The Overlook Hotel is even more clearly this trope in the original novel of ''Literature/TheShining''. Not only does it retain the spirits of dead guests, it seems to control them and has an active intelligence and an agenda (specifically, murdering Danny so that it can absorb his psychic powers). At various portions in the book it actually speaks directly to characters, either through the ghosts or via direct telepathy (and it isn't particularly [[PoliticallyIncorrectVillain polite]] when it does). Furthermore, when [[spoiler: the hotel explodes]] at the book's climax, one character sees [[EldritchAbomination something that cannot be described]] fly out of it and disappear into the sky.
99	** The standing stones on Ackermann's field in ''N'', from the ''Literature/JustAfterSunset'' collection. And similar to that, the field, home of the ancient stone in Stephen King and Joe Hill's ''In the Tall Grass''.
100	** His forays into the Cthulhu mythos has Crouch End, which is perfectly normal if you overlook the multiple portals to a version of London filled with {{Creepy Child}}ren and monsters, and street signs bearing names from Lovecraft's work.
101	** Another, less outwardly malicious eldritch location in King's work is the gentlemen's club at 249B East 35th, as featured in [[Literature/DifferentSeasons "The Breathing Method"]] and [[Literature/SkeletonCrew "The Man Who Would Not Shake Hands"]]. It is filled with books and art that do not exist in our world, and is implied to be a gateway to several other universes.
102	** Many of King's works include places that, while not necessarily supernatural by themselves, seem to attract evil. Such places include the Marsten House from ''Literature/SalemsLot'', the Literature/BlackHouse and, perhaps most interestingly, the Texas School Book Depository[[note]]The building from which Lee Harvey Oswald shot UsefulNotes/JohnFKennedy in 1963[[/note]] from ''Literature/ElevenTwentyTwoSixtyThree''. When Jake Epping saw the latter for the first time, he was deeply disturbed by its ugliness and described his feelings as being the same that when he met [[EldritchAbomination Pennywise the clown]].
103	* The lost city of Carcosa, "where black stars hang in the heavens; where the shadows of men's thoughts lengthen in the afternoon, when the twin suns sink into the lake of Hali. . ." From Robert Chambers's ''Literature/TheKingInYellow'', which he borrowed from Creator/AmbroseBierce's [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/An_inhabitant_of_carcosa "An Inhabitant of Carcosa"]]. Later used by Lovecraft and his successor, August Derleth.
104	* Charles Stross' ''Literature/TheLaundryFiles'': In ''Literature/TheAtrocityArchive'', a portal to another universe is opened in which Heinrich Himmler and the Ahnenerbe SS managed to make a deal (via mass human sacrifices, natch) with EldritchAbomination s (the Ice Giants) to win WWII. Guess what happened next in that universe. While you can admire Hitler's portrait [[spoiler: chiseled onto the moon's surface by giant hands]], it just so happens that [[spoiler: alter-earth is now frozen to near absolute zero while the universe itself has redshifted into collapse mode and has just a few hours left to go]]. And something wants to get back through the portal to our side. This is bad!
105	* Wonderland in Geoph Essex's ''Lovely Assistant'', which is a place that Grim Reapers use to get around without having to travel through the real world. It's an eerie "echo" of everything in the real world, but as the protagonist muses, the reason it looks the way it does (and why some things have Wonderland parallels and some don't) seems to have something to do with how ''permanent'' a thing is in the real world.
106	* ''Literature/TheMachineriesOfEmpire'': Technology in the Hexarchate GalacticSuperpower runs on ClarkesThirdLaw, so spaceships have a "variable layout" system that connects rooms through {{Extradimensional Shortcut}}s irrespective of their spatial locations. It's very convenient for large ships, so long as one doesn't mind walking into walls or along hallways that look infinitely long until an exit door manifests.
107	* Tar-Net from ''Literature/{{MARZENA}}'' is a cyber prison meant for AI super criminals, but don't think that would keep anybody from putting real humans in there too.
108	* Creator/RobertHoldstock's Rhyhope Wood saga, starting with ''Literature/MythagoWood''. The titular wood is BiggerOnTheInside, stretching far back into the mists of pre-literate human history and mythology. It's also something of a GeniusLoci, with ways to prevent those who don't understand it well from penetrating beyond the outer fringes.
109	* Brian Lumley's ''Literature/{{Necroscope}}'' novels have the vampire world which is home to a [[NegativeSpaceWedgie White Hole]] that plunged half the planet into and towered eternal night, and the Möbius Continuum.
110	* ''Literature/TheNeverendingStory'' has quite a few of these:
111	** The Wandering Mountain, an incomprehensibly large glacier-covered mesa said to be the size of an ''entire country'', yet never occupying the same place twice, making the journey different every time. Additionally, no one may journey there until the last person to do so has not only died but passed out of all memory, or the mountain will simply not be accessible.
112	** The Southern Oracle, which can only be entered through a Stargate-like door called the No-Key Gate. This door simply stands alone in an open field, and the only way to unlock it is to forget the reason you came in the first place.
113	** Salamander, a city whose buildings and people are made entirely of fire. Atreyu's horse, quite naturally, would not go near the place.
114	** Fantasia itself, if the incident at the Star Cloister is any indication. Bastian uses an enchanted stone to produce a light so blinding it pierces the heavens, and the space beyond is revealed to be... ''the attic of Bastian's school''. In other words, he is looking out through the pages of the book. Not only this, but it's hinted that the real world is [[RecursiveReality actually another Neverending Story that someone is reading in another universe]].
115	* Hodgson's ''Literature/TheNightLand'' is a portrait of a sunless earth inhabited by ghosts, phenomena and monsters closing in on the Great Redoubt, the last city of humans, now a DyingRace. There are guys in the Redoubt whose job description is to peer into the Night Land from the pyramid's top and write down any changes, occurrences or notable events. Maps can be found [[http://www.thenightland.co.uk/nightmaps.html#content at www.thenightland.co.uk]].
116	* ''Literature/OldKingdom'':
117	** [[AfterlifeAntechamber Death]]. It's divided into Nine Precincts, each separated by a gate, with a river running through them all. In all but the Ninth Precinct, the light is grey and has a closed-in quality that makes it difficult to see far. The water is always trying to pull people in, which is particularly not good if you're an Abhorsen or necromancer traversing it while alive. In the first eight precincts, it's also consistently chilly. The Fifth Precinct has water so deep that anything submerged in it comes out looking no longer human, and the Fifth Gate at the end is a water''climb'' instead of a waterfall, which unsettles people. The Sixth Gate can open up at random, which is also dangerous. The Eighth Precinct has wandering clumps of smokeless fire. And this isn't even getting in to the Dead lurking about, who can be ''quite'' dangerous.
118	** ''Goldenhand'' visits the Great Rift in the far north. [[spoiler:It's indicated to be a connection between the world of the Old Kingdom and the remnants of one destroyed by [[EldritchAbomination Orannis]]. The Rift's first mention in ''Clariel'', coupled with its appearance, suggest that it can link to both the destroyed world and an endless forest. The world beyond the Rift is an airless desolation filled with Free Magic.]]
119	* The Abyss in ''Literature/{{Pact}}'' is a place where ground-down and worn out things, people and Others wind up when they are mostly forgotten or have had their metaphysical connections with the rest of the world cut. It is designed (or [[GeniusLoci reconfigures itself]]) to further wear down and strip away the humanity and compassion of anyone who winds up there in order to create more malevolent Others and spread its influence into other realms. It comes in several sections, each with their own special "flavor". Standard perceptions of time and space do not apply inside each; each section seems infinite yet also has distinct entrances and exits.
120	** The Drains is a series of underground pipes, sewers, and cisterns.
121	** The Woods is a creepy, perpetually dark forest.
122	** The Tenements is a city made entirely of rickety, crumbling apartment buildings with bottomless pits between them instead of streets.
123	** The Library is the interior of an impossibly large, rickety old creepy house, filled with bookshelves, [[spoiler:created when the Hillsglade House and Jacob's Bell are collapsed into the Abyss to prevent Demons from taking them over and turning them into a foothold in the mundane world.]]
124	* ''Literature/ThePerfectRun'': Monaco teleports anyone who enters it into the Monte Carlo, a hotel casino you can never leave with never-ending rooms, hallways, and various [[MonsterClown servants]] that go hostile when the casino "closes".
125	* Several in ''Literature/ThePowerOfFive''.
126	** Lesser Malling and the surrounding countryside.
127	%%** Whatever dimension is on the other side of the Gates.
128	%%** Hong Kong is turned into one over the course of ''Necropolis''
129	** Anywhere that the influence of the Old Ones is particularly strong begins to smell awful and naturally repel people.
130	** The enormous hidden ice palace in Antartica that [[spoiler: the King Of The Old Ones makes its base in after being summoned in ''Evil Star''.]]
131	%%** The Nazca Desert. Yes, the whole thing.
132	* The ''Literature/PerryRhodan'' setting has seen its share of these. A prominent example used as the backdrop for basically an entire arc was the Land in the Deep ("Tiefenland" in the original German) -- an artificial construct ''built'' into [[VoidBetweenTheWorlds the void between the universes]], a light-year across but with a nigh insurmountable ceiling only a couple thousand and change meters above its surface, populated by all manners of weird lifeforms whose ancestors were usually recruited from all over the universe millions of years ago... And then the subtle influence of the Deep eventually proved ''hostile'' to lifeforms from "above", with the results of overexposure resulting in anything from death (often via [[TakenForGranite petrification]]) to corruption into antagonistic "grey life". By the time the protagonists Atlan and Jen Salik finally ended up there, things had already gone much as one might expect.
133	* ''Literature/TheRedTower'' seems to be haunted by the spectres of its own machinery, which was ''evaporated'' by a retaliation of the wasteland. The narrator believes the building originated as a crude sketch in the empty landscape that slowly solidified and reddened like a sore, and talks as though the Tower and the wastes are [[GeniusLoci alive]] and [[OrderVersusChaos mutually hostile]]. Two levels below ground, the Tower has a CreepyCemetery packed with blank headstones and lit by phosphorescent paint on the stone walls. No one is buried there - they are the factory's highly experimental "birthing graves".
134	* ''Literature/TheReynardCycle'': Vulp Vora, a land twisted and broken by ancient Demonic sorcery. Its cities rot beneath toxic jungles, wastelands burn with invisible fire, and mutants and monsters that defy easy description prowl in the shadows. It says a lot about the place that its best known functioning settlement is ''[[Literature/TheKingInYellow the haunted city of Carcosa]]''. Needless to say, no one is keen on the prospect of traveling there.
135	* Zones in Arkady and Boris Strugatsky's ''Literature/RoadsidePicnic'' are areas afflicted maybe by the passage of aliens. Magic physics, acausal occurrences, strange (and monetizable) objects and sudden death can be found therein. Rumour has it that the Zone near Harmond, Canada contains a ''Wish Granter''. Used by Andrei Tarkowski as the basis for the movie ''Film/Stalker1979''. No special effects were used; weird foam and snow are actual carcinogenic chemicals unloaded from industry around Tallin. This actually gave Tarkowski and several other people, as well as the dog, terminal cancer.
136	%%* The Mysterious Castle from ''Literature/SeaOfThePatchworkCats''.
137	* The land of the elves from the ''Literature/{{SERRAted Edge}}'' series, at least those parts not formed by a sufficiently strong will into some definite state. As with all travels into the realms of the Elves in this series, it is EXTREMELY hazardous to enter an unformed region without adequate (usually magical) assistance, and anything one can imagine (and many things one would rather not) may be found there. Entering with an unfamiliar Elf is actually MORE dangerous, because an untrained mortal is effectively incapable of distinguishing the Seelie (relatively benign) Elves from the Unseelie (AlwaysChaoticEvil) Elves until it's FAR too late.
138	* In Creator/DeanKoontz's ''Literature/{{Seize the Night}}'', military scientists have found a way into some kind of parallel universe of red skies and black, fungus-like trees. The protagonists initially believed the scientists had been building a time machine to the future. Actually, [[spoiler: they may have opened a doorway to Hell - so to speak. One of the characters later postulates that our ideas of Heaven and Hell may have come from genuine mystics who were able to glimpse alternate dimensions, some incredibly alien to our own]].
139	-->''"That's not the future. That's... ''sideways''."''
140	* The Darke Halls in ''Literature/SeptimusHeap'' are described as this, having the power of driving people to madness.
141	%%* Everywhere in the Creator/DrSeuss books, especially "Oh, the Places You'll Go!"
142	* The setting of ''Shadowbridge'' by Gregory Frost is a plane of truly endless ocean that is occupied by newly forming large landmasses with a platform that's only one section of the bridge. Each section has its own realm of gods and cultures. Day and night cycles are because of divine action rather than planetary rotation.
143	* ''Literature/TheSisterVerseAndTheTalonsOfRuin'' is set within a sentient book that actively makes the reality of its occupants as miserable and bizarre as possible, including toxic landscapes of meat and teeth that exhale benzene into the atmosphere, and a world composed entirely of liquified flesh.
144	* Stanislaw Lem's ''Literature/{{Solaris}}'' is a planet with an ocean not made of water that is alive and can manipulate the orbit of the planet (so that it stays in a stable orbit around its two suns) and reach into the minds of the research expedition to bring to life their inner daemons. Luckily for the protagonist, this turns out to be his late girlfriend. Which he drove to suicide.
145	* ''Literature/ASongOfIceAndFire'':
146	** The House of the Undying, home of the Warlocks of Qarth. It only appears once, but as soon as she starts walks through it, [[spoiler: Daenerys]] realises that the path she's taking [[BiggerOnTheInside should be impossible due to the positions of the building's outside walls]]. This is in addition to the various visions and illusions she sees while inside. It's unclear whether there is anything special about the building itself, or if it's simply the power of the its inhabitants that causes these effects, or what the intentions or morality of the Warlocks/the House/the Undying really are, since [[spoiler: the Undying give Dany cryptic visions and prophecies and then try to eat her, but certain hallucinations she receives seem to be trying to draw her to some different eventuality from this, and the warlock is furious that she set fire to the place as she tried to escape]].
147	** The series also has the Ruins of Old Valyria. Valyria was TheEmpire of its day, a [[TheMagocracy Magocracy]] that discovered dragons and used them to conquer much of the known world before the (thus far unexplained) Doom destroyed the heart of the empire in a single day. Now the coast of Valyria is known as "[[IDontLikeTheSoundOfThatPlace The Smoking Shore]]", which according to legend is haunted, (or worse) and any ships or explorers who try to visit it tend to vanish. The only exception to that thus far is Euron Greyjoy, a cunning and sadistic {{Pirate}} who practices BlackMagic, (in a series where magic is usually extremely rare and limited) and returned from Valyria with numerous artifacts, some of which are hinted to be powerful magic. Prequels would establish one other person as having gone there - and coming back horribly mutated, burned, and [[spoiler:host to a ChestBurster monstrosity.]]
148	** Then there is the city of Asshai in the [[IDontLikeTheSoundOfThatPlace Shadowlands]]. It mainly consists of the ruins of an ancient and forgotten civilization, and it is bigger then all other great cities ''combined'', though its population is quite small. The buildings are made of a black, greasy stone that drinks light, casting the city in an eternal gloom. All food has to be imported, as plants don't grow and animals die shortly after being brought there. The river 'Ash' is phosphorous, green and its fish are twisted and misshapen, with only very few able to eat them. Due to these conditions the only ones living there are powerful sorcerers practicing all kinds of forbidden BlackMagic. And if all of this isn't enough to showcase just how ''wrong'' this place is, there is the fact that in the entire city there are absolutely no children.
149	** Just in case you thought Asshai sounded too much like a tropical vacation getaway spot, in a river valley to the northeast lies the corpse city of Stygai. A city of perceptual shadow and darkness where the sun's light cannot reach, barring a few minutes at noon. A place that is apparently infested with demons, dragons, and all sorts of twisted creatures. Beyond that, no one knows much about the city because there is no one brave enough to travel there, even the aforementioned black magic sorcerers and shadow binders are absolutely terrified of this place.
150	** In the spin-off book, ''Literature/TheWorldOfIceAndFire'' there's a reoccuring element of "Oily, black stone" which seems to have been left behind by these strange alien superbeings that don't really fit anywhere in the lore of the setting as we know it. Every location where it's found is ''wrong'' in some way.
151	*** In the jungles of Sothoryos (A fairly horrible land already) there's a mystery ancient city called "Yeen." This city is made out of the oily black stone and completely abandoned. It's said to be so evil and rejecting of life that not even the jungles of Sothoryos can penetrate it. Once, a group of the Rhoynar under Princess Nymeria tried to settle the city only to mysteriously vanish without a trace.
152	*** Also on Sothoryos is the Isle of Toads. Another location where the oily black stone is found, the inhabitants are said to be vaguely fishlike and they worship the Toad Stone. A 40-foot monolith carved to resemble a toad of some kind, said to be extremely discomforting to look at, like a visage of pure evil.
153	*** Leng is another ancient kingdom in the far east that's similar to Ancient Japan in much the same way that Yi Ti is a stand-in for Imperial China. While the actual country is beautiful, if not surrounded by a jungle full of monsters, beneath it is another story. Under Leng is a series of ancient and unknowable ruins that lead to beings called "Old Ones" who are the true rulers of the country. The Old Ones occasionally command the empresses of Leng to kill all the foreigners once every few years and are said to still be down there even after Yi Ti had the tunnels sealed.
154	* The Wildeeps in ''Literature/TheSorcererOfTheWildeeps'' is a largely impassable jungle through which only one safe road exists. Said road changes locations almost by the hour and to step off it means certain death, reputedly by the hands of monsters that live in the Wildeeps, [[spoiler:but actually by getting lost between worlds, as the Wild Deeps, as they are actually called, are a place where unnumbered universes and times intertwine]].
155	* ''Literature/ASorrowFierceAndFalling'': The Fae World half of Sorrow-Fell Manor is described by [[TheProtagonist Henrietta]] as "not built for humans". It has spiralling hallways, ceilings so low she can scrape her head against them, and [[ArsonMurderAndJaywalking unevenly placed stones on the floor]].
156	* ''Literature/TheSouthernReachTrilogy'' is about expeditions into an eldritch location called Area X. It is separated from the rest of the world by an invisible barrier, with the only access being through a disorienting glowing corridor. The landscape inside seems similar to the environment outside, but the wildlife behaves strangely and the stars are in the wrong positions...
157	* ''Franchise/StarWarsLegends'': Nathema from ''Literature/{{Revan}}'' appears pretty normal at first glance, albeit devoid of life. However, anyone that comes close enough senses an immense emptiness. The entire planet is devoid of the Force itself, the thing that is omnipresent everywhere else in the galaxy, even [[HyperspaceIsAScaryPlace hyperspace]]. Being on the planet itself causes discomfort even in those who aren't sensitive to the Force, and it gets gradually worse the stronger ones connection is. Theron Shan, who has no sensitivity to the Force, expressed discomfort. The Exile felt the vacuum pull on her, trying to consume her to fill itself. Revan, one of the strongest Force users in history, was knocked unconscious before he even set foot on the planet.
158	* ''Literature/TheStormlightArchive'': Shadesmar. It is a parallel realm of reality built up entirely of tiny black glass beads, which represent the ideas of various things. One bead, for instance, is everything that people know about a certain stick in the wilderness, plus everything the stick knows about itself and the relevant portions of what humans think about sticks in general. Oh, and land here is sea there, and vice-versa. ''Technically'', it's not a location, just another layer of reality. It is the Cognitive Realm, the realm of the mind, just as the normal world is the Physical Realm. Different worlds in Literature/TheCosmere have their own Cognitive Realms, which look different but function identically. [[Franchise/{{Mistborn}} Scadrial's]] Cognitive Realm, for example, has bundles of mist instead of beads.
159	* In ''Literature/SweetStory'', the blurry side of town is [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin a side of town where everything is blurry.]] No matter what you do, nothing ever comes into focus there and it's impossible to see any details of anything. People living there are poor and usually illiterate (it's hard to learn how to read when reading is impossible in your home) and it doubles as TheCityNarrows.
160	* In ''Literature/SwordOfShadows'', the Great Want is a cold subarctic desert where [[{{Hell}} the Blind]] closely overlaps the physical world. Time, space and distance are all warped so that it's almost impossible to find your way out before you die once you get in (to the point that at one point a character who is lost in the Want sees the Sun rise from six different directions at once) and that's just what it's like normally - it's also full of places where the boundary between life and death is so thin that the [[TheUndead Unmade]] and potentially their [[HumanoidAbomination masters the Endlords]] can cross over and walk the living world. The worst of these gateways is the Rift, a seemingly bottomless canyon whose human inhabitants toss their dead into it in the desperate hope such sacrifices will keep the gate shut. It's worked... so far.
161	* ''Literature/ThirdTimeLuckyAndOtherStoriesOfTheMostPowerfulWizardInTheWorld'': In "And Who Is Joah?" Magdelene's house shifts its structure around frequently, which confuses and scares Joah as a result.
162	%%* The titular body of water in Hugh Walpole's short story "The Tarn". It is oddly sentient, in a nonhuman way.
163	* The titular dungeons in ''Literature/ThisUsedToBeAboutDungeons''. Their interiors are produced from nothing the moment a group enters. Each one has a unique layout that changes from group to group, but will tend to play on certain themes and features found in the hex, if in bizarre and sometimes impossible ways. They often appear to have an open sky, but there's nothing on the surface if you try to climb out.
164	* In ''Literature/ThoseThatWake'', the tower is only visible to the protagonists and opens up into many different buildings across the city. There's also an endless looping forest.
165	* The [[IntelligentForest ''Vorrh Trilogy'']] by Brian Catling has the Vorrh, a vast forest tract in Africa that holds the Garden of Eden. Time breaks down inside the Vorrh and it is a place haunted by ghosts, fallen angels plus things that no longer exist such as cyclops and cannibalistic anthrophages.
166	* ''TabletopGame/Warhammer40000'':
167	** In Creator/DanAbnett's ''Literature/{{Eisenhorn}}'' series, there is a similar place; the AlienGeometries is taken to its describable extreme (for instance, there are triangles that clearly have more than 360 degrees internally) and every little thing is another impossibility made possible. Most of those who enter lose their minds in a short while.
168	** John French’s ''Literature/ThousandSons'' trilogy takes place within the Eye of Terror and various other Warp-tainted regions of space, so it should come as no surprise that Ahriman visits such locations at least once a book:
169	*** Several locations in the trilogy are connected to the Crystal Labyrinth of Tzeentch, where stray thoughts and telepathic messages echo off the walls as audible sound, and where travelers can wander the seemingly endless corridors for long stretches of time before suddenly finding themselves in cavernous chambers with no visible entrances or exits. ''Unchanged'' shows that another part of the Labyrinth is a misty void full of floating stairways that veer off randomly and change directions when not observed, or in response to a person’s thoughts.
170	*** ''Ahriman: Exile:'' The MadOracle Menkaura lives within the hollow core of a perfectly smooth, spherical moon made of a single piece of black crystal. Its interior is implied to be part of the Labyrinth, and ''The Tale of Ctesias'' reveals that [[spoiler:the moon is a "fane of oracles" which compels any daemon that takes up residence there to answer any question asked of it truthfully]].
171	*** ''Ahriman: Sorcerer:'' Apollonia appears to be a normal moon on the surface, but its interior is riddled with perfectly circular tunnels that were formed by the stray thoughts of Magnus the Red. The place has been so heavily eroded by the Warp that the Athenaeum of Kallimakus (a psychic conduit into Magnus’s mind) is the only thing holding it together, and Apollonia implodes once Ahriman takes the Athenaeum for himself.
172	*** ''Ahriman: Unchanged:'' The Planet of the Sorcerers exists in a state of constant change. The buildings and streets of the capital city shift around on a daily basis, the streets echo with whispers and conversations that happened centuries ago, and the only semi-fixed landmark is the Tower of the Cyclops, which only appears when Magnus chooses to manifest on the planet. Magnus himself has complete control over the planet’s weather and geography, and he can grant this power to anyone he chooses. In the same book, Prospero isn’t just a dead world with a corrosive atmosphere and frequent acid rainstorms. The planet is surrounded by a Warp storm born from the pain and terror felt by its long-dead inhabitants, and several characters describe Prospero as a bleeding scar in the Warp. Anyone who enters the storm or sets foot on Prospero’s surface will be plagued by the whispers of the dead and vivid hallucinations of marauding Space Wolves.
173	** In Creator/GrahamMcNeill's ''Literature/{{Ultramarines}}'' novel ''Dead Sky Black Sun'', Uriel and Pasanius find that a Chaos-warped AfterlifeExpress has carried them into the Eye of Terror. Hideous, impossible landscapes haunted by monsters and holding many dead bodies, with tunnels that can [[DrivenToSuicide drive people to murder and suicide]], and a city of AlienGeometries with [[LightIsNotGood strange light creatures]] and [[MobileMaze impossible to trace routes]], pollutants that come to life as {{Living Shadow}}s and an EvilTowerOfOminousness. In fact, this sort of thing is common in Warpspace, AnotherDimension which spaceships use for all interstellar travel. Also, there's a few regions where Warpspace and real space overlap, the largest one being the Eye of Terror.
174	* ''Literature/{{Ward}}'': The alternate plane of reality the shards/agents/passengers exist on (unnamed in story but referred to as "Shardspace" by readers). It is described as an endless landscape of dark red crystalline formations, with "lightning"-like bursts of light frequently moving from person to person, from shard to shard, and from person to their associated shard. Within the crystals, a person can see themselves reflected... but often with slight differences, described as being similar to viewing alternate timeline versions of yourself, or what you would be if a different set of events had happened. It's even possible to "exchange" aspects of yourself with those of your reflections, if you take the right actions. The shards themselves also have their physical bodies located here, and their appearances vary in incredibly extreme ways. [[spoiler:Following the reality fracture at the end of "Sundown", this space begins overlapping with reality, in the form of "cracks" appearing and spreading through space, through which this alternate realm can be seen, and even entered, if the crack is wide enough.]]
175	* Most of ''Literature/WaysideSchool'' is just an AcademyOfAdventure and not this trope. Its nineteenth story, however, is a classroom that does not exist run by a teacher no one has heard of whose students do the same mind-numbingly repetitive task over and over again forever, and those unfortunate souls who wind up there eventually find that after a while they lose all memory of the world outside the nineteenth story. One character even sincerely speculates that it may be [[ThisIsntHeaven hell]].
176	** Bizarrely, the one constant about this place is that it's apparently home to imaginary/fictional things, including Bebe's brother (who she made up as a scapegoat for her pranks), Mark Miller (a name accidentally assigned to Benjamin Nushmutt due to some misfiled paperwork), and even the severed ear from a classmate's blatantly made-up story. Somehow, a real student and a real cow both somehow get trapped there, though the former escapes eventually. Weirdly, only the ([[MysteriousStranger equally enigmatic]]) [[TheMenInBlack three men]] can see or access this place and its denizens at will, and apparently it serves ''some'' vital function at the school. Whether it's an extremely localized "Imagination Land" PocketDimension or something else entirely is never elaborated upon.
177	* ''Literature/WelcomeToNightVale'', besides the titular Night Vale under WebOriginal, has King City, a small town in California that is impossible to reach if you try to drive to it.
178	* The realm of the Aelfinn and the Eelfinn in ''Literature/TheWheelOfTime'' is a pocket dimension full of bizarre {{Alien Geometr\|ies}}y.
179	%%* Creator/AlgernonBlackwood's "The Willows" takes place in such a setting. A [[spoiler:possibly sentient]] setting, no less.
180	* The Short Cut or Between in ''Literature/WildCards" is an alternate dimension that some wild carders can access. It is an alien world woth a green sun populated by aggressive, nightmarish creatures, and guns do not work there. Most teleporters actually travel through this dimension when they use their powers, but it's so sudden that most of them aren't even aware of that, while aces like Hellraiser and Highwayman can dwell there for longer periods of time.
181	* In ''Literature/WyldingHall'', the titular Wylding Hall is a downplayed example. It appears to shift layouts as the Windhollow Faire band move around inside it, hiding rooms at times and even trapping characters in them in others. Band members describe areas of the building that appear to have no doors to get inside, hallways and stairs that at times appear to stretch infinitely in ways that do not match the structure of the house, doors that lock and unlock seemingly on their own, and rooms and wings that weren't there yesterday and aren't there the next. However, it's noted that the areas that confuse and bewilder them are areas they're less familiar with, that the very old building has innately confusing architectural features that can make the entrances to passages difficult to spot, and that all of the interviewees were intoxicated for most of their stay, [[MaybeMagicMaybeMundane leaving this trope open to more mundane explanations]].
182	* In Creator/JRRTolkien's ''Literature/TheSilmarillion'' The mountains of Ered Gorgoroth and Nan Dungortheb, the valley (of Dreadful Death) below them. Not only do the descendants of [[EldritchAbomination Ungoliant]] make this their home, but [[TheDragon Sauron's]] evil magic and [[BigGood Melian]]'s protective, maze-like magic get caught up in each other and combine horrifically. Beren is the only one to have gotten through both alive, and (despite all the other stuff he goes through in ''Literature/BerenAndLuthien'') doing so is the one thing he can't talk about, lest it all come back. It really can't be overstated how ''wrong'' this place must be: Ungoliant dwelt here for a time after she grew into an incomprehensibly powerful, light devouring monster that even (a weakened) Melkor was afraid of. The creatures she left behind are her no less horrifying if lesser offspring, in direct response to her threat and Morgoth's forces, Melian of Doriath used her divine powers to keep everything out, and this is all before Sauron took up residence nearby. It should be noted that in this setting supernatural creatures manifesting their powers involves changing the laws of physics within an entire area. So we're talking about an entire mountain range and valley full of mortal, half-demonic monstrosities in the form of bugs and spiders that produce a material that cancels out light, that is concurrently the site of an endless battle between 2 angelic beings. Beren had to blot out his memories of this journey just to stay sane.
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Context EldritchLocation / Literature