The purpose of this article is to attempt to read Thomas Ligotti’s The Shadow, the Darkness as a story of the uncanny of the body. Ligotti showed what happens to the world when any sanction that guarantees order and the possibility of meaning is taken away. One of the story heroes, Reiner Grossvogel, called these sanctions mirages and illusions that hide the truth about the condition of reality. Thus the truth, according to Ligotti, is the existence of only the materiality of the body, terrifying in itself because it does not refer to any higher meanings. The sculpture, which is a central element in the plot, clearly shows the demonic aspect of corporeality: clouds of the bodies gathered in a mass, deprived of any meaning. In this sense, the body disclosed in the artifact is the Unheimlich (after Freud), because it leads us back into the realm of visibility which is a monstrous materiality, driven from the offi cial order and overshadowed by illusions of the soul and mind. As a result the artist’s show causes the disintegration of reality, whose meaninglessness proves to be paralyzing.