498 Words About: The Paperbag in P.T.
Screenshot from Survival Horror Network(SHN)
I’ve never known whether the other me is me, but reality is a difficult concept for me anyway. If a paper bag (probably)filled with rotting flesh spoke to me in riddles I would just assume that it was a Tuesday rather than if I had murdered my entire family.
These thoughts are important when I consider P.T., an incredible videogame that I have never, and probably will never play.
Released on 12 August 2014 for the Playstation 4, P.T. was a videogame demo developed by 7780s Studio which was a precursor of Hideo Kojima’s eventual development company. The game itself was designed by Kojima and Guillermo del Toro as a demo for a new Silent Hill videogame before Konami axed the project and removed P.T. from the Playstation Network. P.T. is a first person survival horror videogame in which players control a protagonist who is caught in an endlessly recurring hallway that, through narrative clues, we determine was his home before he murdered his entire family. Based entirely upon player choices, the hallways will range from mundane and harmless to surreal and horrific. For example one hallway iteration will have portraits of the family while the radio announces the murder, while the next iteration includes pictures of rotating bloody eyeballs and a hanging refrigerator in the foyer leaking blood onto the floor.
In one iteration the player will wake up in the concrete room where the game begins, and waiting on a wooden table will be a brown, blood stained paper bag that talks to the player. In a low register the Bloodied Bag says,
I walked. I could do nothing but walk. And then, I saw me, walking in front of myself. But, it wasn't really me. Watch out. The gap in the door... it's a separate reality. The only me is me. Are you sure the only you is you?
The Bloodied Bag is an intellectual obsession of mine, mostly because I struggle with perceptions of reality. Depression and dissociation have impacted my life in ways I can’t even fathom at times; I suspect it’s one of the reasons I enjoy the genre of horror as much as I do. But the bag offers more than just a surreal, aesthetic riddle.
Screenshot from Survival Horror Network(SHN)
P.T. offers players an eternal recurrence where they’re caught in a loop manifested out of guilt and psychosis. This man, whoever he is, has done something horrible and every loop of the room is another reminder of his actions. Guilt, as a thought, is a similar loop in that it keeps someone separate from the present reality they exist in and remains fixed in what used to be.
The Bloodied Bag, in its horrific fashion, is a mindfulness exercise.
It offers players a reminder that this loop is reinforcing negative cognitive behavior and keeping the father in a loop of anger, sadness, fear, and disgust at his own actions.
The question is, does he deserve to leave this loop?
Joshua “Jammer” Smith
9.1.2025
All images in this essay are screenshots from the YouTube channel Survival Horror Network. At this time I do not have a Playstation 4 with P.T. installed which is still the only way to play the game (legally anyway). The images are from one of two playthroughs from that channel and I’ve included a link to that video below. If you’ve never watched P.T. before I would recomend this playthrough simply because Survival Horror Network brings a beautiful concern for quality in everyone of their videos. Please watch it, give it a like, and a follow. And most importantly try not to get too sad that we’ll never get to play this game.
P.T Silent Hills 👻 4K/60fps HDR 👻 Game Movie Walkthrough Gameplay No Commentary (youtube.com)
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