Siren is a creepy, creepy game. Holy cow is it ever creepy. It is the sort of thing you should never play alone. When you are through with it for the evening and you switch it off, and quiet settles over your house, broken only by the wind and the gentle patter of raindrops on the aluminum roof of the garden shed, you will begin to hear a faint wailing in your mind's ear. You will hear a siren. You will hear it calling to you. You will find yourself desperate for someplace to run. But there will be nowhere to run, so you will brush your teeth instead. Then you will lie in bed all night with your eyes wide open.

There are people who enjoy experiences like that. They call themselves "horror aficionados." Or, if they are less pretentious, "buffs." They like being scared. They seek out the goosepimply thrill of paranoia. They are happy when their breathing goes all quick and shallow and needing a paper bag to puff in. They will really, really like Siren.

The game tells an elaborate story of something horrible and supernatural. An earthquake, or something like an earthquake, strikes a little Japanese town. A wailing, eerie siren rings out. It sounds a bit like an air-raid warning and a bit like a fire engine, but mostly -- and this is the deeply unsettling thing -- it sounds lovely. Somehow the game's sound designers have managed to turn one of the harshest, ugliest noises in all modern experience into something that could have bewitched Odysseus. It is literalism taken to bizarre extremes. It will give you the willies.

Right, the story. When the dust settles nearly everyone in the town is dead, but somehow still walking. They are a bit like zombies, but they can still talk and run and shoot guns at you. Think of them as high-functioning zombies. The game calls them shibito. What is important is that they want to kill you.

Red rain falls constantly. Where the mountains once stood there is an endless sea of blood. Somehow a few people have avoided the fate of the others. They creep from darkened corner to darkened corner, hiding from the shibito and looking for a way out. You play as nearly all of them.

The game unfolds in scenes. You watch a little movie sequence, then you take control of one of the citizens. You get a "mission objective," which usually amounts to simply finding your way from one side of a room to another without getting shot or eaten. Then you must cower in the corners and crawl through the darkness and break into the occasional terrified run, hoping not to draw the attention of the swarming shibito. Basically you must hide and survive. There is not a lot of fighting here, or at least not much worthwhile fighting. The shibito can be hurt and they can be stunned, but they can always get back up to chase you. They are immortal. They are already dead.

If you stay alive and accomplish your objective, the story advances a little more with another video, and you take control of another citizen. In time, after many clips and many frights, an overall picture emerges. You are glad you saw it through.

Whatever it was that turned the townsfolk into beasts also did something horrible to all the people you control. You have the ability to see through the eyes of the shibito, so that as you hide in the darkness you can see from the point of view of the monster waiting for you to come around the corner. You spend a lot of time "sightjacking," as it is called, because if you do not you will blunder into the path of something horrid.

You will do that anyway. You will look through the eyes of the monsters. You will think your path down the left is clear. You will realize the one shibito was not where you thought it was. You will die an ugly and bloody death. You will try again.

You will try again a lot. This might break up the chills a bit for you, spoiling the mood and taking the edge off the fear. Maybe you will be grateful.