Why Horror?

Horror, to me, isn’t just a genre of writing, storytelling, or, really, a genre of anything. This medium is the type that doesn’t just scare us. It doesn’t just make us jump out of our skin, or make us scream out in terror, or wake us up in the middle of the night with nightmares or night terrors. Horror is the type of medium, when executed well, that will make us take a step back and ask those big questions that we’re either taught not to ask, or are taught not to search for the answers for.

It’s the type of genre I call a ‘medium’, because it’s so much different from most of the storytelling genres. Rather than being there as mere entertainment, to me, it’s about the theme, and the lessons that could be learned from each tale.

I write horror because I love asking those questions, the ones people are taught not to ask, think about, or talk about. Vehicles of characters surrounding a lightbulb of plot keeps stories continuing on the question of, ‘why?’ This is the most important thing to ever ask, simply because it reminds us the reasons we are here, the ideas behind evolution, and the ideas behind all of our beliefs.

Most of us don’t like when our beliefs fall into question. We want to believe what we believe because we believe it, not because it ‘makes sense’, but because that is what we are taught and we are hardpressed to believe or want to believe in anything else.

But, to me, the horror genre is about getting people to question their beliefs, it’s about evolution — both personal evolution and generational evolution —, and it’s about asking why we are here, and what our purposes are as human beings, as animals, as aliens, as whoever we are and wherever we come or came from.

My story, “Charlie”, asks the question, which is typical of most horror, ‘what is the meaning of life?’, and ‘what is the meaning of death?’, and ‘what is rebirth, if we are given it at all?’ For most of the narrative, it’s exposition, it’s thought processes, and then when things start happening, my intent is to make readers go, ‘huh?’ Once you get to the ending, if you’re not at least a little angry, then I’ve done my job wrong. You can read that tale, here.

Continuing on the discussion of this story, without giving anything away, “Charlie” brings darkness in order to shed light on a subject that is rarely, if ever, discussed. What happens when we die? Where do we go? Is light always light? Is darkness always darkness? The exposition allows for the character’s fears to become real and his beliefs to become reality, all before becoming something who forgets where it was and why it existed. 

Most of my stories don’t belong under the label ‘cosmic horror’, the way this one does, but each tale attempts to peel back the layers to get underneath the iceberg as well as whatever lays on the surface. Life is a question, and if life is a question, then it is our job as human beings to also try to peel back the layers of any icebergic conscious thought.

If we think about it, ‘theme’ is a device which allows us to place ideas and lessons inside of stories to teach people about a particular way of thinking. In the same way, ‘horror’, if we let it, could also be labeled a device that could perform the same function. Horror, the genre, allows the mood of what we are creating to be the vehicle to drive theme. 

Many people believe horror stories are only about death, but, in reality, death is only a piece of what this genre is or can be. Sometimes, there is no blood shed. Sometimes, there is life instead of death. Sometimes, the pain is psychological and we discover who we are on the journeys of our characters. Horror is much more than pure fear, and much more than applying pure fear to jump scares, gory deaths, and tropes like zombies, werewolves, or vampires. Instead, it’s the act of applying fear and using fear in order to get an idea across.

Most horror stories, such as Night Of The Living Dead, use these tropes use them to get a broader theme across, such as civil rights of the sixties when this movie was made, and a terrible feeling of claustrophobia which spread through communities of minorities during that decade.

This is only one example of how tropes are used, but they’re usually best used as vehicles rather than the entire idea of a story. The lightbulbs in this genre come from what we are afraid of, and how we can use a story to discuss, just like Night Of The Living Dead did, the way communities of entire peoples were separated from the population in order to alienate them.

In the stories I choose to tell, theme tends to be more obvious, especially when you hit the ending. That, or the entire narrative is too much of a confusion to bring about an inkling of what I am talking about. It depends on what I am trying to tell, and why I am trying to tell it.

If we remember what is possible with the horror genre, then we can allow ourselves to learn how think about topics we’ve been taught not to discuss, and also learn how to talk about deeper meanings behind narratives, and why we’re afraid of certain parts of humanity. The first step is allowing that discussion, which is something the medium of horror has always been good at.