How Writing Horror Led Marcus Kliewer To an OCD Diagnosis

After a six-year hiatus, I returned to r/NoSleep, a subreddit dedicated to internet horror stories. At a time when the world felt unusually isolated and directionless, sharing my work with that community gave me the connection and purpose I so desperately needed.

I have participated several times in series with difficult titles. The man in my basement takes a step closer every week. When I received a DM asking if the story was about OCD. The message went on to say that the main characters’ inner monologues were related to their own experiences with OCD.

I was honored to hear that this story resonated with someone, but I remember thinking that the similarities were just a coincidence. At the time, my understanding of OCD was limited at best and ignorant at worst. Most of the representations I’ve seen of this disorder portray it purely as an obsession with cleanliness and symmetry. The possibility that I myself had OCD was just a distant thought.

But as I started reading about OCD, specifically harm and religious OCD, I began to wonder if the similarities in these stories were more than a coincidence after all. I spoke with a counselor and an OCD specialist and was soon officially diagnosed with the disorder. Today is my second novel, administrator (vaguely spiritual successor) man in the basement Reddit series) ended up being a thinly veiled metaphor for OCD and my own experiences with it. I hope this work resonates with people living with OCD and gives others a chance to learn about the exhausting, transforming, and often frightening nature of this disorder.