Shea Hale

This paper develops a phenomenological account of liminal space aesthetics through an analysis of "The Stanley Parable". Drawing on Mark Fisher’s account of the eerie as a disturbance of presence or absence, I argue that the game’s empty office aesthetics function as paradigmatic liminal spaces that stage a crisis of agency. The player’s navigation of repetitive corridors, predetermined choices, and cyclical endings produces an experiential confrontation with constrained freedom, framed through Janet Murray’s concept of agency and extended by Martin Heidegger’s analysis of Angst as an encounter with the Nothing that underlies everyday meaning. This tension is further clarified through a phenomenology of the eerie that foregrounds questions of hidden agency and determinism, where the absence of visible actors intensifies suspicion of unseen forces. The analysis situates liminal spaces within broader affective patterns of nostalgia, isolation, and disorientation, connecting their familiarity to experiences of routinized life and diminished autonomy. I also develop a hauntological reading, drawing on Derrida and Fisher to argue that liminal spaces are saturated with traces of past forms of life that continue to structure present experience. These spaces evoke lost futures through the persistence of outdated environments and memories of perceived freedom, deepening the player’s confrontation with their lack of agency. The paper concludes that the eerie force of liminal spaces lies in their capacity to expose the conditions of control while opening a reflective space in which meaning emerges through that exposure.