I don’t think that The Navidson Record is just something made up to write an unusual book (although it certaintly is!). However, I wouldn’t say The Navidson Record is real either, because the documentary doesn’t exist. I think House of Leaves is trying to take the conventions of the novel and manipulate them. This is a book analysizing a documentary, with Johnny commenting on the analysis. Everytime we read books, there are aspects of books that we don’t pay attention to: genre conventions, footnotes, decisions about font. Danielewski takes these choices and changes them, to make us aware of how books are structured and what they mean (or could mean). By paying attention to these details, we can gain more insight about the text and how we read.