: Re: How to creep the reader out with what seems like a normal person? The person in question, though this is yet unknown, is not actually a person. Instead, they are some form of eldritch being
As I interpret your question, you're not interested in specific behaviors or traits that will mark the person as alien.
Though, they seem for all appearances and seemingly all mannerisms to
appear as human, they are not. The human eyes, but not mind, are
fooled. Something is very off about this being, and everyone knows it.
The characters instinctively, and maybe even consciously, understand that this other character is an eldritch abomination despite their behavior and appearance being entirely normal.
You just want to know how to convey this to the readers without outright saying it.
So, here's a few ideas:
Change your writing style when you're describing them. The descriptions can remain factually the same, so that the character's behavior is not necessarily different from that of any of the other characters, but the way you present them will be subtly different. Make the sentences describing the character's actions longer, more stream of consciousness. Make them shorter. Break them up. Into smaller fragments. Use certain words to describe them but not other characters. Maybe their shirt is verdant, even though it's the exact same shade as another character's green shirt. In this manner, the readers will get a sense that something is different about the character, even though nothing observable actually is—the same sense that the other characters in the story have.
Don't change their behavior or appearance. Change what happens around them. Alter the probabilities a bit. They react just the way any number of people would have act when confronted when they're almost hit by a car, or mauled by a bear, or when they win the lottery. Of course, it's awfully strange that all those things happened on the same day, but they did remark on what a crazy day they had, just as you'd expect...right?
Or whenever they hear someone say their name, even if they're not addressing them, they turn their head (or don't turn their head, or any number of the other things people do). But you start to realize that it's strange how many times you hear someone mention their name, especially considering that it's not really all that common, when you think about it.
Change how other characters react. Other answers have mentioned things along these lines, but maybe people's behavior is subtly different around them, something you can hint at in the text. For something like this, it would be good to have a foil who behaves mostly the same way, but doesn't elicit these different reactions, so that people don't just assume it's something idiosyncratic. For example, if they're a businessperson, they act and look much like the businesspeople in the story, but for some inexplicable reason people act different around them.
How do they act different? Maybe they say they love this person's company, and maybe they even act like they do, but they always seem to be in a hurry to finish talking to them. Maybe they're unusually honest around them, despite not meaning to be. Or always in a bad mood but they're not sure why. In other words, however other people normally behave, they inexplicably don't around the eldritch abomination.
This might not be what you're looking for, if you really want there to be nothing odd about their appearance. But, along the lines of appearances, you say they appear as human. But do they always appear as the same human? Maybe their face is a little different every time the characters see them, something that could be conveyed by descriptions. Maybe it's the opposite: they're always the same height, even though it should have changed a bit over the day. Maybe they're very good-looking—no surprise there, attractive people exist—but their face is more symmetric than is physically or probabilistically possible for a human being.
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