Describe the Darkest Dark to Me

Looking for some ideas and struggling to to figure out ways to say "it's dark", "its really dark" and "omg its just so dark"...


Imagine you are outside, at night. No sun, no moon. It's dark out. You have no cell phone, no flashlight. Some might call this pitch black.

Now all of the electricity goes out. No street lights, headlights, commercial signs. Nothing. How would you describe this blackness/darkness? How would you try to describe this to someone?

After that, you see another patch of darkness, only this one is even darker, like something supernatural. Up close, it almost looks like a wall. It's oppressive. What other words would you use to describe how dark it is, how it makes you feel?

 

For pitch black, I've had experiences where it was so dark I thought my eyes were closed.
Example description: I tried to open my eyes and failed before realizing they were open. Most night skies were the darkest of greys, but this one was pure black. It was like someone shut off the stars and moon.

For the patch, I'd say something similar to the way you described it here: supernatural and oppressive.
Example description: The darkness felt heavy, oppressive, almost supernatural. It was darker than vantablack, if that's even possible. I soon found myself swallowed up in the nothingness, not able to see my own two hands in front of my face.

 

To paraphrase Hitchhiker's: "darker than the darkest thing ever."

 

- like the blind man in the dark room looking for the black cat that isn't there.

 

In order to get awed about something so dark there needs to be a comparison to a light source and the effect that this darkness might have on it. If everything is dark, pitch-black around you, you are simply blind. No way to compare it to anything, so the "darkness" effect gets neutralized. If you take the negative film of a picture shot in daylight, that's where the dark magic starts to happen. Reversed roles of light and darkness, which make the picture seem like the darkness is something that emanates, in comparison to the light that seems to be consumed by it. In my dreams I've come across with such darkness, which looked as two-dimensional, chaotic polygon holes that transformed on the spot and moved around in the environment, consuming and bending the light like a black hole. For example, if this hole entered a well lite room, the room would immediately darken since the hole would swallow in a sense most of the light inside of it, with a great contrast to the hole that would be the blackest black, the complete absence of light. So, in my point of view, there is nothing darker and most oppressive than a black hole. You can form it anyway you like.

 

"Oliver opened his eyes and it was dark. Really dark. Oh my goodness, it was so dark he couldn't even begin to comprehend it.

Still not perfectly dark. Give your eyes a minute and you'll start seeing all kinds of things. For a small bit in high school I used to work as a printmaker back when photographs still needed too be developed. You'd seal yourself into a darkroom that was as light free as humans could make it, and you'd still never see complete black. It's something that's physically impossible for humans to see. The closest we can get is a colour called Eigengrau, or 'brain gray.'

 

Darkness in itself isn't so exciting in the scene. Nobody wants to write another series of hopping 'likes.'

...like a black and blacky, black as black ever blacked. But then the hot whisper on his earlobe raised those hairs on his earlobe, and he gushed in his pants, running from the panting and the paws and the publish publish publish the dogs in the graveyard.

 

I think the OP is looking for something supernaturally black.
Something that claws its way into your skull and sucks the neurotransmitters out of your visual cortex.

 

...the absolute abscence of light deprived him of his senses, even his hands didn't know anymore where they began.
...he stumbled into a pocket of density and for the first time ever, he understood the essence of darkness... it was crouched, a breathing terror delighting itselfs at devouring every last particule of luminosity...

 

Lights went out across the city and everything went dark. "Not completely dark," Oliver thought, "remember your Boy Scout training and you'll be fine. Breath through your nose and make eye contact?" No, that wasn't it. As he pondered, his eyes adjusted and he thought he saw something. Or rather failed to see something. Within the darkness surrounding him was another dark. A darker dark. A wall of it loomed in from of him that seemed to respect neither eigengrau nor phosphene. He was not a fan.

 

Like a black cat in a coal bin at midnight?

Actually, joking aside, I remember being up in Ullapool one time, in January, when the power failed for the entire town. Certain pockets of the town managed to light candles, etc. But I remember trying to get from where I was to where I was staying. I didn't have a torch with me (last time that will EVER happen) and I quite literally couldn't see my hand in front of my face. I felt my way along (fortunately I knew where I was) by shuffling cautiously. When I encountered either grass or a kerb, I knew I was straying off track. It was not a fun experience at all. The sky was no help because it was a cloudy night. Not even any stars, never mind a moon. It was definitely a taste of what it must be like to be blind.

 

Yeah, the ubiquity of cell phones (most can act as torches these days) has made it more difficult for certain kinds of tension to arise.
I wound up creating a plausible reason for my MC to not have one, for the first book and a half at least.

 

It was so dark, the glow of his phone was nothing more than a pinpoint of light, in a sea of nothing.

 

Note that many if nor most smartphones have a full-on flashlight function now, using the LED that also acts as a"flash" for the camera. They are quite bright, and wouldn't be considered a "glow."

 

Super extra dark+, now with inkiness!



You shouldn't be struggling to come up with mind blowing adjectives, as they are rarely mind blowing. Describe what happens to the character due to the lack of light and how it makes them feel or what it causes to happen. There really are very few amazing descriptions in language, just amazing situations.

 

Note that I also called it a "pinpoint." Even a bright LED might be nothing more than a glow if it was trying to penetrate the darkest darkiness that ever darked.

 

Sorry, that's not the darkest darkiness that ever darked: if it were, there wouldn't even be a glow.
Where talking a darkness of biblical proportions here.

 

In the beginning, it's been said, that the Earth was without form and void, and a darkness lay upon it. And since, such a darkness has never been seen by mortal man. Until now.

 

So dark that even the gods were blinded.

 

... and that's how mankind came to be....

 

And lo, they saw that man was naked. So the god of light brought back the darkness so he might not have to look at him, and thus was created night and day. The God of winds sent a chill in hopes that man would find coverings for himself, and thus was created winter. The God of greed was sneakier though, and he gave man the concept of social status, and thus was created Gucci.

 

The supernatural dark could have movement while the dark (where were you when the lights went out, in the dark) has a stillness that does not scare you.

 

Darkness ruled the air around us. It was as if the void had opened up and consumed all of the light from everywhere on the planet.