The Astral Annex began as a question about records: what happens when the archive does not preserve the past, but edits the person reading it? That idea let the book move away from simple haunted-house grammar and into something colder.
The annex is not just a place. It is a system with preferences. It files people, rearranges testimony, and makes ordinary documentation feel predatory. A form can be scarier than a scream if the form already knows your answer.
I keep thinking about horror as a failure of categories. Room, hallway, file, witness, memory. The annex works because those labels remain visible even after they stop protecting anyone.