Johnny and his friend Lude discover the sealed apartment of a recently deceased elderly man named Zampanò, containing a massive manuscript.

Johnny takes Zampanò's manuscript home and begins adding his own footnotes, gradually losing himself in its pages.

Will Navidson, a Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist, moves into a house on Ash Tree Lane in Virginia with his partner and children.

Will measures the house repeatedly and confirms the interior is larger than the exterior, a physically impossible discrepancy.

A dark hallway appears inside the Navidson house with no explanation, its interior temperature inexplicably freezing cold.

Will explores the hallway alone for the first time and finds it branching endlessly, with new rooms and passages constantly appearing.

Explorer Holloway Roberts leads a team into the hallway, where they discover a massive staircase, vast chambers, and hear a threatening growl.

Holloway shoots Wax in the armpit, believing Wax is the creature he is convinced is stalking the expedition.

Will and his brother Tom enter the hallway to rescue Holloway's stranded expedition team.

Holloway shoots Jed in the skull during the rescue mission; Billy returns fire at the retreating figure in the darkness.

The rescue rope snaps, leaving Will stranded impossibly deep in the hallway with supplies for only three days.

As the house violently collapses around the family, Tom rescues Daisy through a window before a vertical shaft swallows him.

Karen steps into the collapsing hallway and finds Will alive; the house dissolves and they emerge onto the front lawn.

Will is hospitalized and frostbite claims his right hand, left eye, and patches of skin.

Will and Karen marry and move with their children to Vermont to begin a new life.

House of Leaves begins when Johnny Truant and his friend Lude discover the sealed apartment of a recently deceased man named Zampanò, containing a vast manuscript analyzing a documentary film. The manuscript describes the Navidson family's move into a Virginia house whose interior is impossibly larger than its exterior, a mystery that deepens when a dark hallway appears from nowhere. Will Navidson enlists a team of explorers led by Holloway Roberts to investigate, but Holloway loses his grip on reality and begins shooting his own companions. Will and his brother Tom mount a rescue mission, during which Jed is fatally shot and Will is ultimately left stranded alone deep in the hallway. As the house itself turns violent, Tom is swallowed into a shaft and presumed dead, but Karen enters the darkness and rescues Will. Will survives with permanent injuries, and he and Karen marry and move to Vermont to rebuild their lives.

The core story of the Navidson house from discovery to resolution.

The Navidson family returns from a trip to find a mysterious new door and closet configuration in the master bedroom.

Will enlists his twin brother Tom, with whom he has not spoken in eight years, to help measure the house.

Billy Reston brings advanced measuring equipment and the team discovers a full foot of space behind Karen's new bookshelf.

Karen develops sudden and severe claustrophobia the first time she looks down the newly appeared hallway.

The family dog and cat venture into the hallway and reappear outside almost immediately, and nobody investigates further.

Wax and Karen share a kiss in the kitchen before the expedition, which Will discovers later on tape.

During Exploration Three, Holloway's team spends seven of twenty hours descending the spiral staircase without ever reaching the bottom.

After finding supplies disturbed deep in the hallway, Holloway refuses all appeals to retreat and runs deeper alone to confront the beast.

Tom constructs a makeshift pulley and gurney at the top of the staircase to hoist the injured men up.

Will emerges from the hallway after surviving alone for weeks, and Karen immediately tells him she is leaving.

Karen takes Chad and Daisy back to New York while Will remains alone in Virginia.

Karen reignites an affair with an actor named Fowler after returning to New York without Will.

Karen assembles a thirteen-minute film from Will's footage of the hallway exploration and sends it to famous people.

Will falls or floats through total darkness in the final recorded frames of his solo exploration.

Karen is diagnosed with breast cancer and undergoes chemotherapy after the family settles in Vermont.

Pool 2 covers the supporting beats that shape the novel's full arc, beginning with the Navidson family's discovery of a strange new door configuration and the expert help they seek to explain it. The hallway's effect on the household — Karen's sudden claustrophobia, the strange behavior of the family pets, and the breakdown of Will and Karen's intimacy — sets the stage for deeper disaster. During the hallway expeditions, details like Wax and Karen's stolen kiss and Holloway's final reckless decision deepen the human drama unfolding alongside the supernatural horror. While Will is lost in the hallway, Tom improvises a rescue system, and Karen's departure to New York marks the family's fracture point. In Will's absence, Karen throws herself into editing footage, reignites an affair, and eventually distributes a film of the expedition to the wider world. The story closes with Will's fall into final darkness on film, and Karen's later diagnosis with breast cancer — quiet devastation after the house's spectacular violence.

The supporting moments and human drama that fill out the full narrative arc.

Johnny researches the manuscript and concludes that The Navidson Record does not exist as an actual documentary film.

While working at the tattoo shop, Johnny senses a threatening presence crouching in the shadows and glimpses eyes with no whites.

Karen and Will stop having sex entirely after the hallway appears, their emotional distance growing in step with it.

Holloway's expedition team discovers their neon markers have been badly mauled and water is missing from their supply caches.

After shooting Wax, Holloway pursues Jed and Wax through the hallway and continues firing at them as they flee.

Johnny receives a prescription for sedatives but destroys the pills along with all his remaining alcohol and drugs.

Johnny arrives at work to discover he has been absent for three weeks and someone has already been hired to replace him.

Holloway films himself confessing to shooting Wax and Jed, then shoots himself; the camera records a terrifying growl shortly after.

Lude visits Johnny's sealed, egg-crate-covered apartment and urges him to throw away the manuscript, leaving only his lighter behind.

A short film Karen makes reveals a photograph of a starving Sudanese girl named Delial — a name Will has cried out in sleep.

Will writes a farewell letter to Karen and Billy explaining the meaning of Delial, then secretly returns alone to the house.

Karen returns to the house on Ash Tree Lane and finds the hallway has completely reverted to a normal closet.

Johnny sells his mother's locket, resolves to travel to Virginia to find the house on Ash Tree Lane, and departs Los Angeles.

Johnny breaks into the now-closed Whalestoe Institute and sits alone in his deceased mother's former room.

Johnny encounters a band in Arizona performing songs inspired by the manuscript he believed was locked safely in storage.

Pool 3 tracks the pivotal revelations and decisions that redefine the characters' journeys, beginning with Johnny's unsettling conclusion that the film at the heart of the manuscript may not actually exist. Early warning signs accumulate — Johnny's first encounter with the beast, the collapse of Will and Karen's physical relationship, and the expedition's discovery that something in the hallway is destroying their equipment. Personal crises crystallize as Johnny destroys his substances and loses his job, while Holloway's breakdown culminates in a filmed confession and self-inflicted death. The revelation of the Delial photograph and Will's secret farewell letter expose the true depth of Will's obsession, while Karen's return to find a normal closet where the hallway once existed upends everything that came before. Johnny's own journey toward confronting his past takes him to his mother's former psychiatric hospital and finally to the disturbing discovery that the manuscript he locked away has somehow spread out into the world.

The key discoveries and decisions that reshape the characters and drive the story forward.