The Scary Thing About Horror
Find out why you truly love the blood and the gore. It's not what may you think.-by Stefan DeShazo
The horror genre has been pigeonholed as a genre for “hacks”. People often regard a horror novel as a kind of cheap thrill that’s to be thrown away when done. That’s because people have been reading the wrong kind of horror. For too long, people have associated the horror genre with gory images of young teenagers, attacked by a madman with no motivation other than an animalistic bloodlust. This is not the horror that has the ability to change the way we think, to completely adjust how we see ourselves. This specific kind of terror comes from subtle choosings of words, making the reader question their own being. Truly terrifying horror writing causes the reader to question whether they are doing the right thing, to question their actions and habits. The best horror writing is not just “scary”, it changes something deep inside of the reader, a viewpoint they held for a long time.
As author and Horror Writer’s Association member Nick Mamatas describes it, horror is unique in the fact that it is the only genre which has the goal of upsetting the reader. Most other works of literature may bring the reader through a wild ride of emotions and stresses, however at the end of the plot, the protagonist will remain relatively unscathed. Not horror. Horror plays with the reader’s emotions in an effort to make the reader upset, and then stops there. No resolution, no happy ending. Just emotional upheaval with a helping of terror to wash it all down. All while maintaining the necessary elements of any good story.
The origins of these different types and sub-genres is murky at best, as is the case with most literature, however, we are able to credit many with the advancement of the horror genre. Gothic literature is widely lauded as the forebear to modern horror fiction, and one work of gothic literature that is often called “the ancestor of the modern horror story” is Horace Walpole’s “The Castle of Otranto”. The reason for this is because of his placement of real people into fantastic events, something not seen before at the time. This, combined with Ann Radcliffe’s “The Mysteries of Udolpho”, which also used real people in fantastic events to create fear and confusion, made the basis on which horror rests on. Adding to that base with psychological anguish is Edgar Allen Poe, with works like “The Raven”, which focused more on the narrator and their own decline into madness. Along with Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein”, widely regarded as one of the first science and horror combinations in literature, the late 18th and early 19th centuries make up the majority of horror’s origins. These works would go on to inspire the modern era of quality horror fiction that we have today.
So what’s the point in all of this? Why put one of the most misunderstood genres of literature under the microscope and look at all the individual pieces that it’s formed by? It’s quite simple really. The goal here is to show you, the reader, that the horror genre has literary roots that go back hundreds of years, that it can cover a wide range of topics, and the storylines of horror can be equally meaningful as they are terrifying. The readers of today need not be plagued with the gimmick-filled and mindless works of horror that fill the shelves in your local drugstore. Those books are not what the genre should be defined by. The genre deserves to be remembered by the novels that push the mind to the limit, questioning the very state of being that we exist in today. All we need to do is open them up.
Now, horror falls into different categories. It’s first split up into 3 types. These types are named uncanny, marvelous, and fantastic. The first type of horror is called uncanny horror. This kind of horror is for the most part based in reality, straying very little from the realm of what is actually true in the real world. Certain parts of uncanny horror may contain snippets of the surreal, but these parts are the minority. Robert Bloch’s “Psycho” is a perfect example of uncanny horror as it is a story in which is totally possible in reality. The second kind of horror is marvelous horror. Now, this type of horror incorporates themes that are completely incomprehensible unless a second layer of reality is accepted. If that is done, everything that happens in the story will be within that second layer of reality. A shining example of this is H.P. Lovecraft’s “Cthulhu Mythos”. While not one specific novel, Lovecraft’s fictional universe requires the reader to completely buy into the augmented reality in order to tell a story. The third type of horror is the fantastic, where clear explanations are not provided for the phenomena occurring, but alternative explanations are provided. This type can be characterized by Stephen King’s “The Shining”, as the story mostly is based in reality, but there are some elements of fantasy throughout the work. These types of horror are in each sub-genre, and each combination creates a different story. These sub-genres include rural, cosmic, apocalyptic, occult, psychological, surreal, and visceral. Rural, as it sounds, describes horror in places far from civilization. Cosmic describes the type of horror where creatures from outer space come to do harm. Apocalyptic is focused more on the fears and struggles of the world ending. Occult horror is based more on the ideas of demons, exorcism, and curses. Psychological horror creates its conflict through the fear, guilt, and mental state of the protagonist. Surreal horror is designed to terrify the reader with elements of the fantastic. Finally, visceral horror is the most shocking and disturbing of all sub-genres, due to the use of excessive blood, gore, and brutality. Sub-genres can be combined with each other to create new avenues for storytelling.
