In a recent Twitter post, author Phil Athans asked “What’s the hardest part of writing horror fiction?” My response was I find most horror to be humorous and don’t know why they find it scary. In response, he suggested some books. I’ve read some of those, and I here’s why I think I don’t understand.
First, a quick note. Since I’m going to be describing what I got from some books, I may be giving away important plot elements. Read on at your own peril.
The Haunting of Hill House
At the top of the list was The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson. I’ve read this and thoroughly enjoyed it. Apparently, many see this as a story about a horrible house built by a horrible person, Hugh Crain, and the way the ghosts of the house persecute the living. My assumption is that such readers are not paying attention or live in a very small world.
If you read the story carefully, it is a tale about Eleanor, a woman who has lived for a very long time in an abusive environment. With the death of her abuser, Eleanor is cast out into the world with no support structure. In this odd house, she has a full mental break down. It is very sad, but is also a reasonably realistic representation of what a person in that situation would go through. You do not need ghosts anywhere in this tale.
With research, it becomes better established that the supernatural often derives from the structure of the brain. Because of this, insanity can resemble hauntings. As Joseph Campbell put it in the fourth volume of his Masks of God books, “The shaman swims where the madman drowns.” Some would argue that the brain is just reacting to the supernatural that already exists or that the brain interprets what is seen in a human way but does not create that object. Either way, poor Eleanor needed a good shrink more than an exorcist.
H. P. Lovecraft
Also on the list are the writings of H. P. Lovecraft. Most people know Lovecraft as the originator of the Cthulhu mythos. His writings tell of horrific, indescribable beasts from other dimensions and planets. He can easily spend several pages describing how indescribable these monsters are. When I first read his stories, in my teens, I found them dry. I read them later in life and decided they were okay.
I can see where being faced with the unusual can be unsettling. People are wired that way. Likewise, an encounter with something powerful that wants to harm you can also instill fear. That’s why most of us avoid lions. Even with my more mature reading, I found it hard to relate to the characters, who often brought about their own demise by being nosy.
Much as the Godzilla movies, and related giant creature flicks, were a response to the nuclear age, Lovecraft’s writings respond to early thoughts on multidimensional space. The math and physics were coming into place to tell us that the universe had sides we could not see. A beast lurking in another dimension could be just as much a threat as a beast behind the tree. This is not much different from old fairy tales of someone passing into the fairy realms and suffering their adventures there. Honestly, when walking in the woods, I will avoid walking through anything that looks like a door, but that is for my own amusement and not out of actual fear of ending elsewhere. If I did end up in another dimension, I could simply await rescue by the student loan people wanting their money.
Alien
The list includes the novelization of the movie Alien. This is getting closer to what I can see as scary. I’ve not read the book, but the film is one of my favorites. In this case, you have many great horror components. The setting is cramped, dark, and isolated. Even without the monster, if anything goes wrong you could die in the vast emptiness of space. Then they add the unknown that evolves into a predatory beast intent on killing everyone from the shadows. Those are good scary things. I don’t tend to be frightened by movies, but I can see the intensity of this flick and why people would see it as scary. It is not as supernatural as some others; it relies on primal fears.
And the Rest
I have yet to read the other books on the list, but I intend to. It should be educational. However, just analyzing the items I have read, I think I might be seeing part of my problem with understanding horror.
I tend to be a bit grounded. I blame all that math and science I studied to get my college degrees. It’s much more likely that it comes from a life of hard work (before college) and all the other banal things. That’s not to say that I haven’t seen some weird stuff, because I have, but it left me without fear of those supernatural things. The danger in the stories rarely seem believable to me, so I don’t get it. I can see the patterns and know generally why other people find them scary, but not me.
What Scares Me
What are the things that scare me? My usual response is, “idiots in large numbers”. It sounds flippant, but it is true. I don’t have the stamina to fight more than a dozen idiots in hand to hand combat before they overwhelm me. That’s assuming that they don’t take me down before then.
The other fears are mundane as well. When I walk in the woods, often at night, I worry about a few things, in order of likelihood: deer that feel cornered, belligerent drunks, feral dogs. My sturdy walking stick will take care of a frightened deer or a drunk; not so much feral dogs. There is nothing supernatural about any of these things.
What this suggests to me is that I may want to limit my horror writing to the more natural terrors. The bad thing in Stephen King’s Cujo is just a very naughty dog. There are plenty of mundane things that could frighten the casual reader. Most don’t like the idea of being swallowed up by the ground (partially happened to me as a kid). Parasites burrowing into the skin and slowly working their way to your tasty entrails should cause discomfort in a reader. It could be disconcerting if some psychopath is convinced that you are his father and now intends to eat you.
I think horror could be a lot of fun to create, but I will have to work on it. On the other hand, how does it make you feel to know there is someone out there who thinks horror is funny?