Haptic sound for trauma storytelling in a cinematic virtual reality poetic documentary – The Road to Yesterday

Cinematic Virtual Reality (CVR) documentaries offer new possibilities for narrating trauma, yet their narrative grammar remains underdeveloped. This article examines how haptic sound supports trauma storytelling in my autobiographical CVR practice, The Road to Yesterday (2025). Drawing on Marks's concept of haptic perception, I develop a haptic sound framework grounded in the materiality of sound, low-frequency resonance, spatialised ambience and vibration-based haptics to explore how haptic sound can evoke embodied access to traumatic memory beyond linguistic or cognitive representation. I further argue that, within the documentary context, animated re-enactment and sound design beyond realism do not replicate reality but constitute an inquiry into reality and trauma. These nonrepresentational strategies offer an aesthetic buffer that creates distance from forced identity substitution or overstating “experiencing the other,” thereby reducing the risk of improper witnessing. The Road to Yesterday positions the immersant as a proximate third-person witness, maintaining psychological autonomy while enabling ethical witnessing. The findings suggest that multisensory approaches, particularly haptic sound, may help mediate traumatic experience and open a potential therapeutic space. In contexts where mourning rituals are disrupted, such as pandemic-era bereavement, CVR can facilitate symbolic closure and sustain continuing bonds through sensory and imaginative engagement.