Let's Play 'Silent Hill' Part 3: The Nightmare Realm of Midwhich Elementary School

When we last left off in Let's Play Silent Hill Part 2, we had solved the clock tower puzzle and had just entered the Nightmare Realm of Midwhich Elementary School... man is this place creepy. You just never know when something is going to lunge out of the darkness and try to chew your ankles off.


Stepping through the entrance reveals the Nightmare Realm version of the elementary school. The foggy day time have been replaced by the oppressive pitch black darkness of night, the environment has visually changed to a more brutal, cold place filled with industrial clanking sounds, rusted chain link fences and tougher, more aggressive monsters. In the courtyard a huge magical symbol has been drawn in blood on the sidewalk. It's the mark of the demon Samael.



Harry always seems so confused by things.

Speaking of confusing, in the Nightmare Realm of Midwhich school, different doors will be locked, sections of the hallways are now blocked off by chain link fence and there is a new enemy to contend with, the giant cockroaches. The hallways of Midwhich are now darker, with Harry's flashlight illuminating only what  is right in front of him.

Outside the storage room, Harry has no choice but to run through the labyrinthine hallways and use the unlocked doors to get to the far north school room. Inside the classroom, there are several cockroaches, that are just a minor nuisance and easy to run away from. Exiting through the second door of the class room to get around the demon children and avoid having to confront them is the best course of action to take, so that is what I did.

After going through the double doors in the courtyard, I grabbed the ammo and first aid kit in the hallway, then entered the left room, which is the storage area. Inside, there are decapitated dolls crucified on the chain link fence walls, and a bright pink rubber ball sitting on what appears to be a gurney from a hospital.

This is the second time that eerie hospital imagery is used to horrific effect to add to the unsettling mood of the game.

After getting the pink ball, I left the room and ran past the two demon children that are now hanging out in the hallway. With the school now having locked doors where there were none, and doors that won't open at all, Harry has to run an obstacle course through the school in order to get the items he needs to leave the building.

The double doors at the end of the hallway are locked, so I had to go through a long classroom with giant cockroaches scuttling along the floor and out the side door into the next hallway. The next classroom has an open door, and inside are several long tables shoved together in the center of the room with a picture key card on one of them.

Gee, I wonder what this will do Harry. Let's go find out!

I picked up the card and inspected it. It has a picture of a key on it, and images that resemble the large painting that Harry came across in the room next door to the infirmary, near the reception area of the school.

At this point, it's time to return to the front entrance of the school by exiting through the door that leads to the adjacent classroom. Running through a classroom with scattered chairs lying about, I exited through the southern door into the hall and entered through the gray double doors to reach the front hallway on the first floor, and then ran back into the infirmary to save my game on a red notepad. While in the save point room I also picked up a health drink and a first aid kit.

The next room on the left was originally was the school entrance lobby. Now it has a wheelchair and several demon children in it. Yay.

After killing the two demon children, I took the ampoule from the wheelchair and then returned to the reception area, which now looks like the painting that used to be there with a grotesque corpse hanging on either side of a three windowed door.

It's interesting to see how the three windows on the door match the three squares on the picture card. I like that sort of visual clue and it's grotesque symmetry for some reason.

Examining the door will reveal that there is a horizontal slot in the center. I used the key card and shoved it into the slot to unlock the door. Entering the door leads to the other side of the hallway. I went over to the girl's bathroom as it is the only one that is unlocked. Exiting the girl's bathroom teleports Harry to the second floor, in a section of the hallways that he can't reach otherwise and access the boy's bathroom.

See the blue "Notice" sign? It says that "Hell is Coming." Is it a warning from Alessa?

Entering the boys bathroom on the second floor, I picked up several boxes of handgun ammunition, which will be needed for the boss fight. Afterwards I returned to the girl's bathroom and teleported back to the first floor.

Entering the boys bathroom on the first floor, one of the stall doors is closed. Examining the door will show a corpse crucified on the wall with the words written in blood "Leonard Rhine: The Monster Lurks."

This is thought by many to be an homage to a scene in Dean Koontz's "Phantoms" where the phrase "Timothy Flyte- The Ancient Enemy" is written on a mirror with lipstick.

In "Phantoms" Timothy Flyte wrote a novel titled "The Ancient Enemy" that catalogs the mass vanishings of people in different parts of the world. These strange incidences were caused by an amoeboid shapeshifter that attacks towns that are built over the ground where it is hibernating. The creature consumes life forms and can perfectly mimic them, similar to the monster in John Carpenter's "The Thing."

In "Silent Hill" the town is consumed by an unspeakable evil (Alessa) and transformed into a hellish landscape that creates monsters that mimic people's darkest fears.

Just like the pterodactyls that were inspired by creatures from "The Mist" by Stephen King, some of the monsters in "Phantoms" may have been used as inspiration for some of the creatures in "Silent Hill", such as the killer moth, which reflects not only Cheryl's interest in insects, but the overall theme of metamorphosis that is prevalent in "Silent Hill."

And now you know.

Beneath the decomposing body in the bathroom stall, there is a shotgun. Since I missed getting the good pipe and am stuck with the useless rusty pipe that does less damage, picking up the shotgun sounded to me like a great idea. You never know what you will encounter in Silent Hill after all.

Leaving the bathroom, I entered the teacher's room and made my way to the second room through the adjoining door. In this room there are several tables shoved together with blue telephones sitting on them. If you recall, blue is Cheryl and Alessa's color-- it's the color of their dresses and one of their symbols in the game.

         

Blue is also one of the symbols of the Virgin Mary, who is thought to be the mother of Jesus Christ, or God, depending on who you ask. Whether this symbolism was done on purpose or not, it is remarkable to note that one of Alessa's role in "Silent Hill" is to give birth to a god-like figure that will bring paradise into the world.

Just as you go to leave the room, the phone rings, even though it wasn't connected to anything. Spooky.

After the phone call from hell, I wandered up to the roof, where there is a rain gutter, a bloody stone bench and a water tower. Near the bench is the drain pipe hole of the gutter. There is a key in the drain, but Harry can't quite reach it.

Hmm... Looks like we have ourselves another puzzle to solve Harry.

By placing the pink ball in the drain hole located in the corner nearest the water tower, you will block it. Turning the valve on the water tower will cause water to flow out of it and into the drain.


Guess what happens next? That's right Harry, the key flows down the drain, even further out of reach than it originally was. I guess the man never heard of using a metal coat hanger to fish something out of a drain before...

The gutter drain leads down to the courtyard, where the clock tower is located. The key is on the ground near the bottom of the drain. After picking up the key and running away from the three demon children that were harassing me, I went through the double doors, back into the hallway and then over to the locker room where the cat scare occurred during the normal stage of the school.

Here the floor is covered in metal grating and the rattling locker where the cat was has blood dripping out of it. Fortunately, the locker is empty, well, except for all that blood...

This time the jump scare in the locker room is caused by a dead body falling out of a locker when you go to exit the room. There is a key on the body- the library reserve key.

Hey, I like books. What could possibly go wrong in the library? Let's go!

After navigating the labyrinthine hallways, I found the library and made my way inside. Upon closer examination...

What? What do you mean there aren't any useful books! There's one right there! Stupid Harry...

Heh.

On the shelf in the Library Reserve room there is a book titled "The Monster Lurks." Hmm... Let's read that one shall we?

It says:
Chapter 3: Manifestations of Illusions

...Poltergeists are among these Negative emotions, like fear, worry, or stress manifest into external energy with physical effects. Nightmares have, in some cases, been shown to trigger them. However, one such phenomena doesn't appear to happen to just anyone. Although it's not clear why, adolescents, especially girls, are prone to such occurrences.

After picking up a health drink, it was time to go through the door to the Library. With the radio bell ringing incessantly thanks to a squeaking ghost child, I found another open book on a shelf. This one reads:

Hearing this, the hunter armed with bow and arrow said, "I will kill the lizard." But upon meeting his opponent, he held back taunting, "Who's afraid of a reptile?"

At this, the furious lizard hissed, "I'll swallow you up in a single bite!" Then the huge creature attacked, jaws open wide. This was what the man wanted. Calmly drawing his bow, he shot into the lizard's gaping mouth. Effortlessly the arrow flew, piercing the defenseless maw. And the lizard fell down dead.

It's from a fairy tale that Harry read when he was a child. It's also foreshadowing the boss of Midwhich Elementary school, and how to defeat it.

Now we're off to the south side stairwell and down to the first floor. In the hallway there are cockroaches and demon children, which I ran past to the best of my ability, *ahem* but not without being attacked by the ankle biters in the process. Oops.

Upon reaching the chain-link gate with a golden handle, I unlocked the door and entered the hallway. Then it was a quick jaunt back over to the infirmary to save my game.

After the save, it's back to the stairs and down to the basement of the school. In the storage room, I picked up shotgun ammo and an ampoule, then I went to the boiler room.

Inside the boiler room there are two red valve wheels and a creepy turnstile gate. Harry has to move both of the wheels in a certain order to get the turnstile barricades to move and create a clear path for him to go through. Past the turnstile is a hallway that leads to an elevator that only goes one way: down to hell.


Soon, Harry finds himself in a large room surrounded by looming darkness, and he's not alone. The fire light coming from a spiky death pit reveals a giant monitor lizard, also called the "split head lizard" by fans, that is the game's first boss.

Lumbering around the strange contraption at the center of the room is the giant lizard that was foreshadowed in the fairy tale passage that Harry read in the library reserve room. It walks around the room in a weighty gait and it's great head splits open, much like a sandworm from "Dune." If Harry is too close, he is eaten. The only way to kill the beast is to shoot it's open mouth with a shotgun.

On a side note, the weird spinning ball at the center of the room located beneath the flames reminds me of the giant sphere in the engine room of the Event Horizon.

In "Even Horizon," the sphere was a gravity drive that folded space to jump the ship from one point of the galaxy to another. Unfortunately, it traveled through hell to get there.

Now, the first time I ever played this game, that damn lizard gave me one heck of a hard time. But now I know better. I kept my distance, running ahead of the thing as much as possible, and only stopping once it started to open its giant maw.

The lizard does lunge towards Harry, but this is a pattern that is easy to learn and apparently it doesn't do much damage when it does hit you. The trick is to walk backwards while it comes towards you and to shoot at its head to get it to open its mouth. Then it only took two good shots into its gullet with my trusty shotgun and it was finished!

Ha! Take that stupid lizard. That'll teach you to mess with Harry Mason! 

Soon after defeating the lizard, Harry has a vision of Alessa running past him and then disappearing into the darkness. She leaves behind a silver key that will open the door in K. Gordon's house, through which is the only path to reach the other side of the town.

The darkness has lifted outside, and it is once again day time shrouded in a thick heavy fog.

Comforted by the sight of sunlight, I picked up the key and made my way through the now normal halls of Midwhich school and out into the streets, where in the distance, there are church bells ringing.

Up Next: Let's Play Silent Hill Part 4: On the Path to Alchemilla Hospital!
                   

Let's Play Silent Hill Part 2

When we last left off in Let's Play Silent Hill Part 1, I somehow managed to run away from the murderous dogs and pterodactyls roaming the streets of Silent Hill and quickly made my way up the steps of the front entrance of Midwich elementary school.


Schools are always unsettling at night. If you have ever stayed after school for a function (in my case it was play practice) you would know that once the school has been vacated of children and teachers alike, it turns into a different, more sinister, place. In Silent Hill, an empty school at night turns into a hellish nightmare haunted by demonic children.


Midwich elementary school is named after the novel "The Midwich Cuckoos"  by John Wyndham. The same book was also the inspiration for the classic horror film, "Village of the Damned."

For those of you that don't know what the allusion is between "The Midwhich Cuckoos" and "Silent Hill," "The Midwhich Cuckoos" is about supernatural psychic children that manipulate people into doing what they want, which usually ends up with  people committing suicide. "Silent Hill" is about a girl who can supernaturally control the landscape and the monsters that now inhabit it with her subconscious mind.

The title of the book "The Midwich Cuckoos" is also a nod to the cuckoo bird, which lays its eggs in other bird's nests and gets them to raise its young; much like how Harry found Cheryl as an infant on the side of the road and raised her as is own daughter.

Something that is even more remarkable than the connection to "Village of the Damned" is the fact that Midwich elementary school's layout is based on the school in the Arnold Schwarzenegger movie "Kindergarten Cop." It is so surreal for me to learn this because I never really realized it until just recently, even though I saw "Kindergarten Cop" back when it first came out.

"Kindergarten Cop" is about a tough as nails cop (Schwarzenegger) who goes undercover at an elementary school to bust a drug dealer. There are hints of a large drug ring existing in Silent Hill as well. Interesting...

Arnie looks how I felt when I learned the truth about Midwich Elementary School being based on his movie.

Check it out, even the entrance is the same!

Someone at Konami must've decided to use the school from "Kindergarten Cop" as a model for Midwhich elementary school because they weren't familiar with the layout of American schools. Even some of the posters on the walls of of the school are from the movie. Weird...

Do you see it?

The dog. The crazy faced dog with its mocking smile. It's everywhere.

The poster either reads "Dog Kill Me," "Dad Kill Dog," or "Dog Hell Out" as in this artist's interpretation.

Upon entering the school lobby, I picked up the school map that was hanging on the wall.  Yet again, the map is a crucial tool to use during game play, as it is easy to get turned around when you step out of rooms and into the labyrinthine hallways. This trick of changing direction may not be intentional, but it certainly  makes it harder to avoid the demon children when you are trying to figure out what direction you are facing so that you run the right way down the hall to get to the next open door.

Like all of the buildings in Silent Hill, Midwhich is a labyrinth of locked doors. The few open doors are used to funnel you through the school in a haphazard manner so that you are forced to confront the demon children lurking in the darkness.

The steel pipe is the best weapon to use against the demon children and unlike "Silent Hill Zero," the weapons don't degrade during use and break on you during game play.

(I of course, forgot that there are certain weapons that can only be picked up at specific times during game play and missed picking up the better pipe. So I'm stuck with the rusty pipe for my play-through. *sigh*)

The demon children, aka grey children, were replaced in the PAL and NSTC-J (Japan region) versions of "Silent Hill" with the sewer dwelling Mumblers. The replacement probably had something to do with having to kill children (albeit evil undead children with a penchant for murder) in a video game.

The skins of the Mumblers are different, but they're still the same stature as the demon children. I suppose that the Mumblers could be considered evil midgets with knives for fingers. But come on, we all know that they're the same size as the demon children, which means that Mumblers are just another form of evil children in Silent Hill. Silly censors.

This is a Mumbler. It's scarier in the game than depicted here. Trust me.

Once in the main hallway, Harry comes across the front desk and the infirmary of the school. On the reception area  of the front desk is a book with a list of teachers: Johnson, Keith and K. Gordon-- which are members of the band  Sonic Youth. My bet is that Cheryl liked to listen to them and that is why there are listed.

Here Harry comes across books dripping with blood.

This clever riddle is just one of the many clues that help you solve the puzzle and open the foreboding door located on the front of the school's clock tower.

From the reception desk, you can enter the infirmary, where you can save your game and find a health drink and a first aid kit.  In the room adjacent to the infirmary  is a huge coffee table and a disturbing painting on the wall which foreshadows the change in scenery that will occur later on when the school enters the Nightmare Realm. Here I grabbed a few handgun bullets, stared at the awesomely creepy painting for a few moments and then left the room.

I don't know Harry, I rather kind of like it.
But, then again, I live in the House of Horror, so it would match my decor.

A search of the rest of the hallway reveals that only one more set of doors is open-- the double doors that lead through the courtyard.  It's still night time in Silent Hill, which makes it difficult to see the three demon children that are hiding in the courtyard, waiting to strike.

You can kill them, but they will respawn so it's best to use the pipe than to shoot them, as you will run out of bullets faster than you'd think. Me, well, I just ran around them and made my way to the clock tower in the courtyard.

At the far upper left corner is an ominous clock tower with a door on the front. Similar to the item puzzles in "Resident Evil," Harry must find two medallions; a silver moon and a golden sun which will be inserted into the holes on either side of the clock tower.

Also like "Resident Evil" there's a lot of backtracking in the buildings during game play and you will find yourself running back and forth several times through Midwhich elementary school while solving the clock tower puzzle.

After inspecting the clock tower, I made a hasty retreat out the nearest door and then across the hallway through the next set of double doors, which leads to yet another locked exit. The lobby here has the first squeaking black ghost that makes weird little chirps as it walks. It sets off the radio alarm, but doesn't attack you. You can't kill it either. It's just there to scare the crap out of you. Which it does. Every single time I come across it.

After picking up the handgun bullets, I left the back entrance of the school and tried all of the other doors in the hallway. The only other door that's open is the boy's bathroom. Which has a demon child lurking in it. Yay.

Let's kill it!

And I did.

After searching the first floor, I ran over to the stairs and went up to the second floor.  The first classroom on the right has a door that's open and two demon children waiting for Harry. Thankfully, they're easy enough to run around, so I ran over to pick up the health drink on the teacher's desk and then went through the side door into the next classroom.

The side doors of the classrooms come in handy as they allow you to bypass certain sections of the hallways and avoid coming into contact with the demon children that are there.

I've played through "Silent Hill" several times now, however, this time around I got a better look at the posters on the classroom walls because I was playing on a big screen HDTV. Because of the superior TV technology, I noticed something disturbing that I missed before by playing the game on a cathode ray TV; a lot of the posters in the classrooms have eyes on them.

Someone is watching Harry's every move. I wonder who that could be?

From the second classroom, exit into the hallway and go to the next door on the right to enter the boy's bathroom. Once inside, you will hear a disembodied voice of someone crying on the other side of the wall. Upon entering the girl's bathroom next door, you will find two demon children and some handgun bullets.

I killed the demon children and then picked up the ammo and left the bathroom.

Then, passing through the double doors in the hallway by the stairs, I entered the lab equipment room. Searching the dark shelves of the storage area, I came across a large purple bottle of "lab chemical" and picked it up. If you inspect the item in your inventory, you will learn that the label says that it's hydrochloric acid, which is needed for the next puzzle.

In the laboratory next door, there are the old style black-topped lab tables. I don't know about you, but they bring back memories of biology class and dissecting insects. (Which may have been intentional. There is a huge insect theme going on in "Silent Hill" that is made more apparent later on in the game.)

On one of the tables is a statue of a large pink old man's hand grasping an oval shaped plate with a gold medallion mounted on it.

The first riddle is used to solve this puzzle.

I used the "laboratory chemical" (the "sage's water") on the hand statue to dissolve it and then picked up the golden medallion. 

I then returned to the first floor and re-entered the courtyard. At the "a golden sun" hole on the side of the clock tower, I used the gold medallion to set it in place. There is a clicking sound of something unlocking, signaling that the next part of the puzzle is unlocked.

From the clock tower in the courtyard on the first floor, I headed back up to the second floor and over to the short hallway with the locker room and the music room. There are three demon children in this hallway that need to be killed because it's hard to avoid them and if you don't kill them, they'll kill you.

I know this because they killed me. Twice. Oops.

Yeah. It turns out that I'm fine dealing with two demon children, but add one more to the mix, and the damage they deal somehow seems to increase to the point where a few attacks will be enough to kill Harry. Strange that.

A thorough man, Harry always stomps on their heads once the demon children are down to ensure that they are dead.

Speaking of strange, there's a cat scare in the locker room on the second floor that's completely out of place for a spooky school setting. 

Upon entering the locker room, there's a rattling sound. Investigating the rattling locker door will cause a cat to leap out at you. The cat runs out of the room and is then killed by a demon child. 

Poor kitty.

This scene is a total cliche if there ever was one to be found in "Silent Hill." I mean come on, what's a cat doing in an elementary school that's been overtaken by demon children? 

If it was anything like my cat Skittles, it would've skedaddled and found the smallest, darkest spot of the building to hide in and not make a peep until the danger is over. Skittles certainly wouldn't be caught dead in a locker. Of course, he's probably too fat to fit in one. 

The room next to the locker room is the music room with a grand piano, where the next clock tower medallion, the silver moon, is stashed.  The piano keyboard cover is unlocked once the gold sun medallion is set in place in the clock tower.

When the keyboard cover is lifted, it reveals blood stained ivory keys.

Gee, I don't know Harry. What do you think?

On the chalkboard there's sheet music with another riddle written in blood.

Unfortunately, this riddle is so dense that even someone familiar with a piano keyboard will find it difficult to solve, which is why I looked it up in my trusty strategy guide. It's "Totally Unauthorized." 

On a funny note, Prima's "Official Strategy Guide" for "Silent Hill" is utterly useless. It omits crucial details such as secret endings, weapons, item locations and gave incorrect directions for solving puzzles. Relying on their information makes players utterly lost and unable to finish the game. I don't recommend it. 

Heck, I remember picking up a copy of the Prima version and the BradyGames version to compare them when I was out shopping for the strategy guide. Prima's official strategy guide struck me as being incomplete and useless, so I bough the BradyGames version instead. And I was right. It is better.

Once the silent piano keys are pressed, the silver medallion is released. I picked it up and then returned to the clock tower and set it into the silver moon slot.

Doing so however, does not immediately unlock the door on the clock tower.

There is still one more piece to this puzzle.

The answer is found in the last riddle from the books on the reception desk.

It reads:

5:00"Darkness that brings the choking heat"Flames render the silenceAwakening the hungry beastOpen time's door to beckon prey.

So, "Darkness that brings the choking heat" refers to the school's boiler-- which is used to heat the elementary school. In order to get to the basement, where the boiler room is located, I had to run back through the school, up to the second floor to the double doors and across the short back hallway to where there is a stairwell on the northeast side of the school. From there, I went down the stairs to reach the school's basement.

Entering the storage room, I picked up the shot gun shells and the ampoule, which completely heals all of Harry's health and is a life saver during the later boss fights.

The boiler room is next door to the storage room. Inside the boiler room is a large boiler (duh) with a bright red light. Pushing the light opens the door on the clock tower.

Entering the clock tower Harry finds a short walkway and a hole in the floor with ladder rungs on one wall.

At the bottom of the ladder, there is an entrance with a large "Keep Out" sign posted overhead. Yeah. That's not ominous and foreboding at all.

From this point on, it's obvious that Harry is about to venture into the Nightmare Realm version of Midwhich elementary school.

But, it's too late to chicken out now. Cheryl could be there and we have to save her!

Next Up: Let's Play Silent Hill Part 3: Midwhich School Nightmare Realm!