SÉANCE

Design thinking

The scariest 90s horror was quiet: an old mirror, candlelight, a face that wasn’t there a second ago. SÉANCE is a single rendered gothic mirror carved with screaming faces and grasping hands, and the video plays in the glass with fog drifting across it. I cut the horned mask’s eye sockets out of the render so real eyes live behind them: they glow, blink and follow your cursor while it plays, and go wide when the video ends. Pause and walk away and, after a few seconds, a pale face surfaces in the mirror. Loud moments let it slip through for a split second. The candles flicker and gutter with the sound.

The bone buttons run playback, the planchette rides the carved groove as the scrubber, the bone dial turns for volume (the whispers), and the left candle changes speed. Every control has an extended hit area and a visible focus ring, and with reduced motion the ghost never appears, the eyes hold still and the flames stop flickering. No flashing, no sudden full-screen scares: it creeps instead. On phones the mirror stands upright, with the bone dial and buttons below the glass at thumb size.

Controls

• Space Play or pause
• ← → Seek 10 seconds
• ↑ ↓ Volume
• 0–9 Jump to 0–90%
• M Mute
• F Fullscreen
• 2× tap Sides seek, center goes fullscreen