Generating Horror Plots, Part II

Copyright 2008 by Gary L. Pullman

A careful analysis of the storylines of motion pictures, novels, narrative poems, and short stories in the horror genre discloses recurring plot motifs, or formulae. Here are the first three of a baker’s dozen (plus one) of them, each of which is complete with one or more examples to get you started on the compilation and maintenance of your own list of such plot patterns.

1. Find the ugly within or among the beautiful. We discussed this strategy in a previous post.

2. Develop a continuing theme. We discussed this strategy in a previous post.

3. Enact revenge. We discussed this strategy in a previous post.



4. Rescue a damsel in distress. Perhaps Dean Koontz uses this technique for generating horror plots more than any of his contemporaries, especially in his more recent novels, including The Husband and The Good Guy. In Koontz’s universe, a woman can seldom protect and defend herself, or even find her way through life, without relying upon a strong, competent, able-bodied, and taciturn man. The women’s ineptitude in this regard often cause rather improbable plots on Koontz’s part. Nevertheless, his stories tend to be suspenseful, fun reads. In The Husband, Mitch Rafferty, a gardener, receives a telephone call from his wife’s kidnapper. He tells Mitch to watch a man who is walking his dog across the street. The man is shot and killed on the kidnapper’s orders, demonstrating that he is dead serious about killing Mitch’s wife, Holly, if Mitch tips off the police or fails to provide the hefty ransom that the abductor demands--one which is way beyond Mitch’s financial scope. Fortunately, as it turns out, Mitch’s brother is wealthy, but, of course, the plot twists and turns to the point that the reader wonders whether Mitch will ever rescue Holly or even manage to stay alive himself. The Good Guy’s storyline is similar. This time, the blue-collar worker is Tim Carrier, a stone mason. He’s having a drink at a local bar when a man arrives and, mistaking him for the hit man he’s hired to kill a woman, hands him his $10,000 fee and a photograph of the intended target, Linda Paquette, a Laguna Beach writer (like Koontz himself). Minutes later, the hit man, Krait, enters the bar, mistaking Tim for his client. Tim hands him the money he’s just received, telling Krait that he’s changed his mind about having Paquette killed. Then, he finds the intended target, and he and Paquette flee, the killer on their trail. Fortunately, Tim’s past has well prepared him to be Paquette’s protector, for Krait is an able and relentless, conscienceless killer. Koontz’s modern knights in white armor will uphold the tradition of chivalry, no matter how dead it may be in the everyday world in which the rest of us have to live.

5. Find the strange in the familiar. Two specimens of this approach may be offered, one as much a failure as the other is a success. Although we have discussed them previously, we offer a truncated version of our previous discussions here to demonstrate the technique of finding the strange in the familiar. The failure is the film, The Happening (2008), which was directed by M. Night Shyamalan. As most horror stories of this kind begin, the movie starts by showing a series of bizarre, seemingly inexplicable occurrences: mass suicides and murders by individuals and groups whose behavior is markedly aberrant. As the series of such incidents continue, spreading from person to person, from group to group, and from town to town, various theories are considered and abandoned as to the cause of the strange happenings. Is a bio-terrorist attack behind the events? Is it an epidemic of some kind? A botanist thinks that plants may be responsible for the murder and mayhem, releasing airborne toxins to defend themselves against humanity. The protagonist, a scientist named Elliot Moore, and his wife Alma take refuge with an murdered friend and colleague’s orphaned daughter Hess inside an eccentric old woman’s house as the plants continue to press their attack. Their hostess becomes infected, but they escape her attempts to kill them and, later, leave the house, surprised to find that the attacks have ceased. Three months later, watching TV, Elliot, Alma, and their adopted daughter hear a newscaster warn that the mysterious happening might have been but “the first spot of a rash” to come. Alma discovers she is pregnant, and, as she and Elliot celebrate, another series of bizarre suicides and murders take place in France. The film seeks to find the strange in the familiar, seeing flowers and shrubs and trees, especially those which blow in high winds, to be as menacing as poisonous weeds, but it is difficult to fear vegetation, wind or no wind, and the suspense simply doesn’t build, despite the mad and dangerous behavior of the infected humans whom the plants are bent upon exterminating. The heavy-handed, moralistic environmentalist theme of the movie is about as profound in its delivery as a PETA ad. The plot suffers in other ways, as does the characterization of all the players, but these are matters outside the present concern. A story that is more successful in eliciting the strange within the familiar is Bram Stoker’s short story “Dracula’s Guest.” Stoker suggests, far more subtly and effectively than Shyamalan, that there may be prodigious unseen powers operating behind the scenes, so to speak, of the natural events that take place in a remote stretch of forested countryside outside Munich on Walpurgis Night. Stoker he suggests that a tall, thin man who’d appeared seemingly out of nowhere and vanished as abruptly after frightening the coachman’s horses and leaving the Englishman stranded in the countryside as twilight gathers toward Walpurgis Night may be the unseen watcher, and perhaps also the occult, supernatural force that seems to control such natural forces as the weather, the wolves, the effects of the blizzard, and the hail. Alternatively, a note to Herr Delbruck by Dracula suggests that Transylvanian count himself may be opposed to whatever supernatural force is controlling these forces of nature and that, as this power’s adversary, he is acting, for reasons of his own, as the Englishman’s protector, however short-lived this self-assigned role may turn out to be. Examples of other stories that are more or less successful in seeking the strange within the familiar are Stephen King’s From a Buick 8 and most of the stories by H. P. Lovecraft. Concerning the finding of the strange in the familiar, the reader is advised to peruse the several articles that we have posted previously on Thrillers and Chillers, under the heading “Everyday Horrors.”



6. Bring up the past (and relate it to the present). The past is prologue to the present. Stephen King employs this technique in It, in which an ancient evil makes a reappearance in Derry, Maine, every 27 years. In its last previous appearance, it was defeated by the Losers Club, who reunite as adults to take it on when it makes its next appearance in town. In Summer of Night, a novel that is similar in both plot and theme to King’s It, Dan Simmons’ ancient evil, associated with the House of Borgia, seeks to establish itself in the small town of Elm Haven, Illinois, but it encounters the determined resistance of five pre-teen boys and a street-smart girl from the wrong side of the tracks. Bentley Little also employs the technique of bringing up the past and relating it as prologue to present catastrophes on several of his novels, including The Resort, in which a former nightmarish resort, although razed long ago, somehow determines the fate of a present, nearby resort and what befalls its staff and guests. A movie that takes this tack is Poltergeist, wherein, because a housing development has been built upon an Indian burial ground, there is hell to pay.

Stay tuned: We will explore additional horror plot staples in subsequent posts.

Generating Horror Plots, Part 1

Copyright 2008 by Gary L. Pullman

A careful analysis of the storylines of motion pictures, novels, narrative poems, and short stories in the horror genre discloses recurring plot motifs, or formulae. Here are the first three of a baker’s dozen (plus one) of them, each of which is complete with one or more examples to get you started on the compilation and maintenance of your own list of such plot patterns.

1. Find the ugly within or among the beautiful. We can thank Edgar Allan Poe for this one. The narrator of his short story “Berenice” asks, “How is it that from beauty I have derived a type of unloveliness?” In most beautiful persons, places, and things, there is the potential for hidden ugliness. Nathaniel Hawthorne’s short stories “The Birthmark” and “Rappaccini’s Daughter” are examples, as is Oscar Wilde’s novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray. In “The Birthmark,” Georgiana is an exquisitely beautiful young woman with but one defect. She has an unsightly birthmark that prevents her husband, a scientist named Aylmer, from viewing her as physically perfect. He becomes obsessed with this blemish, and Georgiana comes to share her husband’s fixation. Together, assisted by Aminadab, Aylmer’s aide, the couple seeks to remove the birthmark, but, when they succeed, Georgiana dies. The ugliness, of course, is not in the birthmark, but in Aylmer’s attitude and superficiality. In “Rappacinni’s Daughter,” a scientist, conducting a secret experiment with exotic poisonous plants, keeps his daughter, as a research subject, locked inside the garden that doubles as his laboratory. A medical student, Giovanni, falls in love with Beatrice, visiting her in the garden, whereupon he falls victim to plants’ poison--and to the now-poisonous Beatrice as well. In The Picture of Dorian Gray, the oil portrait of the title character ages and becomes uglier and uglier, suffering the consequences of his sins while Gray himself remains youthful and healthy, right up to the moment that he plunges a knife into his likeness and dies, a withered and grotesque old man.

2. Develop a continuing theme. Again, Poe exemplifies the process. In “The Philosophy of Composition,” he argues that the death of a beautiful young woman is the most poetic topic in the world, and this theme is the basis for not only his poems The Raven and “Anabelle Lee,” but also such of his stories as “The Oval Portrait” and “Berenice.” Since we have discussed both The Raven and “The Oval Portrait” in previous posts, we will restrict our current consideration of Poe’s works to “Anabelle Lee” and “Berenice.” “Anabelle Lee” recounts the suspicions of the narrator that angels killed his beloved Anabelle because they were jealousy of her surpassing beauty. Nevertheless, he believes that their love for one another transcends time and space and that, once he is dead, he shall be reunited with her for eternity. Meanwhile, he sleeps beside her tomb by the sea each night, where, in the stars, he imagines he sees her loving gaze. In “Berenice,” Egaeus, planning to wed his cousin, becomes obsessed with the beauty of her teeth. Berenice’s health fails, and, after she dies, Egaeus’ servant brings him the horrible news that Berenice’s grave has been violated. Covered in blood, and with dental instruments beside him, Egaeus realizes that, in a somnambulistic-like state, has robbed his beloved’s grave and extracted the teeth from her corpse. (The fact that Berenice may have suffered from catalepsy and may, therefore, have been mistakenly buried alive, adds to the horror of the story.)


3. Enact revenge. Poe, once again, exemplifies this approach in “The Cask of Amontillado,” and Stephen King’s novel, Carrie, also demonstrates how the theme of vengeance can advance a horror story’s plot. In Poe’s story, Montresor, believing that his guest, a wine expert named Fortunato, has insulted him, lures Fortunato into Montresor’s wine cellar, on the pretext that he wishes Fortunato to evaluate a cask of Amontillado wine Montresor has purchased recently. Instead, after getting Fortunato drunk by pausing to have him sample various other wines along the way, Montresor walls his guest up, alive, behind bricks he lays while Fortunato is chained to a wall, leaving him to die. King’s Carrie White has telekinetic powers, which she uses to avenge herself against her cruel classmates and her insane mother, whose religious fanaticism has been a vehicle of psychological abuse for years, leaving Carrie ill prepared to deal with such matters as adolescence, sex, and the society of her peers. Of course, many other horror stories also employ the revenge motif. It is one of the staples of horror plots, both past and present, and, it seems safe to predict, it will continue to remain such in the future.


In subsequent posts, we will consider some of the other techniques by which horror writers develop storylines.

Making a Scene

copyright 2008 by Gary L. Pullman

The scene is the building block of the short story, the novel, or the screenplay. It features one or more characters; a conflict; dialogue, interior monologue, stream of consciousness, or some other representation of the character’s or characters’ thoughts and feelings; and, like the full-fledged story of which it is a part, a scene has a beginning, a middle, and an end that is developed climactically; and the scene advances a larger, specific purpose, such as developing the narrative’s overall plot, introducing an important character, intensifying suspense, complicating the story’s basic conflict, introducing or developing a related subplot, characterizing an important character, delineating the setting, and so forth.

In horror stories, whether in print or on film, the scene also usually (but not always) communicates something terrifying, horrific, or repulsive. What Edgar Allan Poe advises, in “The Philosophy of Composition,” concerning the short story (or narrative poem) as a whole applies also to the scene: it must be carefully plotted, with the single, unifying effect that is to be created in mind from the start, and everything in the scene should lead to the development of this effect. In short, one must know one’s purpose in writing the scene--what he or she means to accomplish by it--before putting pen to paper or fingertips to keyboard. One must remember to connect one scene with the next through a series of cause-and-effect relationships. One scene, in other words, must logically lead to the next, and it, in turn, must lead to the one after it, and so forth, throughout the story. There mist be a reason, or purpose, for each scene. Otherwise, irrelevancies and confusion will be introduced into what, otherwise, might have been a meaningful and intelligible, perhaps even gripping, story.

In fact, whether the writer also happens to be an illustrator or not, he or she can make some rough pictures, similar to the sketches that make up a film’s storyboard, to indicate the scene’s basic purpose, structure, and Storyboards: What Are They? offers tips for storyboard construction that could aid writers in developing story scenes. The website’s article reduces the process to six steps:

1. Think of your story as a video.
2. In your first frame show an overview of your primary setting. Let the setting help communicate the point you want to get across or the mood you want to set.
3. Make frames that show the 5 W’s. [These elements are identified as the scene’s “who,” “what,” “when,” “where,” and “why” elements.]
4. Identify the characters. [These characters are identified as the protagonist and the antagonist.]
5. Plot. [Specify the problem, the climax, and the resolution, or the means by which the “problem is solved--which can lead directly to your message.”]
6. Message. [This is the “moral, perspective on life or observation about life,” the theme, that the scene is intended to convey.]

Here is an example of Saul Bass’ storyboarding of the famous shower scene in Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho:


Although it is not a horror story, the original Karate Kid movie offers a good model of the construction and use of scenes, as does It’s a Wonderful Life, My Fair Lady, The Wizard of Oz, and The Sound of Music, to name but a few of many well-made stories.

In horror, Poe is a superb storyteller. Each of his scenes is deliberate and purposeful and leads plausibly to the next. Other master craftsmen and artists who are especially adept at the construction and sequencing of horror story scenes include Alfred Hitchcock, Ridley Scott, Stephen King, Dean Koontz, Wes Craven, Christian Nyby, H. P. Lovecraft, H. G. Wells, Mary Shelley, Shirley Jackson, Bram Stoker, H. P. Lovecraft, and Ray Bradbury. By studying how they create and use scenes, others may benefit, improving their own fiction by dissecting the work of the accomplished others who have gone before them.

"Christabel": The Prototypical Lesbian Vampire, Part II

Copyright 2008 by Gary L. Pullman

As we saw in a previous post, the first part of Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s narrative poem Christabel ends with the protagonist imperiled by the strange, abducted woman, Geraldine, whom Christabel met while at prayer in the woods near her father’s castle and invited to share her bedroom--and then her bed--for the night, after being seduced by her houseguest’s beauty and spellbound by her magic breasts.

In Part II of the poem, as the castle’s bell rings to announce the dawn, Geraldine awakens and dresses before awakening Christabel. Although she seems a bit confused, it seems to Christabel that she has “sinned” somehow. Her confusion may be the result of her sleep, but it also seems, as does her forgetfulness of how, exactly, she has “sinned,” that she is also perplexed as a result of the spell that Geraldine has cast upon her. Christabel is still under the influence of her houseguest’s enchantment. The women visit Sir Leoline’s bedchamber, wherein the baron has himself just awakened. Geraldine has assumed the form and appearance of the daughter of a neighboring nobleman, a former friend and present foe of Sir Leoline named Lord Roland de Vaux of Tryermaine. When Sir Leoline hears how Geraldine was abducted, he determines to avenge Geraldine’s honor by sponsoring a tournament at which he may “dislodge” the “reptile souls” of her abductors “from the bodies and forms of men” which they have adopted. As her father embraces Geraldine, Christabel has a momentary, highly disturbing vision of Geraldine’s true form and nature:

And fondly in his arms he took
Fair Geraldine, who met the embrace,
Prolonging it with joyous look.
Which when she viewed, a vision fell
Upon the soul of Christabel,
The vision of fear, the touch and pain!
She shrunk and shuddered, and saw again--
(Ah, woe is me! Was it for thee,
Thou gentle maid! such sights to see?)
Again she saw that bosom old,
Again she felt that bosom cold. . . .

However, Christabel comes at once back under Geraldine’s spell, and Sir Leoline sends his bard, Bracy, to fetch Lord Roland, to retrieve his daughter (i. e., Geraldine, who impersonates the girl), promising to meet him upon his way. He regrets that he and Roland are no longer friends, repenting “of the day/When” he “spake words of fierce disdain/To Roland de Vaux of Tryermaine.” Bracy begs Sir Leoline not to do so, however, advising him of a dream he’s had in which Christabel, in the form of a dove, is being squeezed to death by a green snake at the base of a tree in the forest near the baron’s castle. Again, the poem’s narrator calls upon Jesus and Mary to protect and defend Christabel, implying that the young woman is in spiritual danger. However, Sir Leoline, having fallen under Geraldine’s spell, as has his daughter, says that he and Sir Roland will crush any such serpent, at which point the narrator describes Geraldine as a lamia, or serpent-woman:

A snake's small eye blinks dull and shy;
And the lady's eyes they shrunk in her head,
Each shrunk up to a serpent’s eye,
And with somewhat of malice, and more of dread,
At Christabel she looked askance!--
One moment--and the sight was fled!

In case the reader, being, perhaps, a little slow, has missed the previous implications, Coleridge makes it clear that Geraldine is the very serpent (or serpent-woman) of which Bracy dreamed. It is she who threatens the imperiled Christabel.

When Geraldine’s spell begins to lose its force upon Christabel, she, recalling the true appearance and nature of the lamia, bids her father to send Geradline away at once. However, the baron, still under Geraldine’s sway, is ashamed at his daughter’s inhospitable attitude and sends Bracy upon his way, ad Christabel quickly comes again under Geraldine’s enchantment.

Here, the poem (another of Coleridge’s “fragments”) ends, although, as we saw in the previous post concerning this work, the poet is alleged to have intended to finish it according to this storyline, identified by Coleridge’s biographer, James Gilman:

Over the mountains, the Bard, as directed by Sir Leoline, hastes with his disciple; but in consequence of one of those inundations supposed to be common to this country, the spot only where the castle once stood is discovered--the edifice itself being washed away. He determines to return. Geraldine, being acquainted with all that is passing, like the weird sisters in Macbeth, vanishes. Reappearing, however, she awaits the return of the Bard, exciting in the meantime, by her wily arts, all the anger she could rouse in the Baron's breast, as well as that jealousy of which he is described to have been susceptible. The old Bard and the youth at length arrive, and therefore she can no longer personate the character of Geraldine, the daughter of Lord Roland de Vaux, but changes her appearance to that of the accepted, though absent, lover of Christabel. Now ensues a courtship most distressing to Christabel, who feels--she knows not why--great disgust for her once favored knight.

This coldness is very painful to the Baron, who has no more conception than herself of the supernatural transformation. She at last yields to her father's entreaties, and consents to approach the altar with the hated suitor. The real lover, returning, enters at this moment, and produces the ring which she had once given him in sign of her. . . [betrothal]. Thus defeated, the supernatural being Geraldine disappears. As predicted, the castle bell tolls, the mother's voice is heard, and, to the exceeding great joy of the parties, the rightful marriage takes place, after which follows a reconciliation and explanation between father and daughter.

Since Coleridge never ended the poem, it’s not possible to say how he would have developed its overall theme, but, of course, the idea that the Christabel’s true love is a knight whose arrival in the proverbial nick of time brings the lesbian lamia’s plans to wed Christabel to naught is fraught with difficulties, to say the least, and seems to support the patriarchal and heterosexual status quo, as horror typically does, both identifying the matriarchal and homosexual threats that Geraldine represents with the monstrous Other which is to be vanquished so that normal order may prevail and all may, once more, be right with the world. In this regard, as in equating lesbians to female vampires, Coleridge’s poem also sets the tone for many movies that take up this motif.

"Christabel": The Prototypical Lesbian Vampire

She’s sweet and chaste and pure and innocent and sexy and girl-next-door and religious and probably blonde, and she’s named Christabel. She’s the victim.

Her dark half and lover is mysterious and sexually experienced and seductive and exotic and blasphemous and probably brunette, and she’s named Geraldine. She’s the prototypical lesbian vampire.

Reveler upon opium when he was not writing poetry or literary criticism (or dodging bill collectors), poor, but brilliant, Samuel Taylor Coleridge wrote, among other eerie poems, such as The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and “Kubla Khan,” a narrative ditty about a lesbian vampire named Christabel. It has gotten relatively short shrift among publishers and is not as well known among the general public as other of the poet’s works. If one has encountered the poem at all, it was most likely during a class concerning poetry or English literature. It is a disturbing poem, and, since it involves a good deal of horror, terror, revulsion, and abnormality, it is a good subject for study by horror writers, professional and aspiring.

While praying beside an oak tree in the wee hours of the morning, Christabel encounters a strange stranger named Geraldine, who says men have abducted her from her home. Enchanted by Geraldine’s seductive beauty, Christabel, perhaps knowing a good thing when she sees it (she may even regard Geraldine as a response to her prayer), takes the stranger home with her, whereupon Christabel’s father, Sir Leoline, a baron, becoming infatuated with Geraldine, orders a celebratory parade to declare her rescue. Here, the poem (another of Cole ridge’s “fragments”) ends, although the poet is alleged to have intended to finish it according to this storyline, identified by Coleridge’s biographer, James Gilman:

Over the mountains, the Bard, as directed by Sir Leoline, hastes with his disciple; but in consequence of one of those inundations supposed to be common to this country, the spot only where the castle once stood is discovered--the edifice itself being washed away. He determines to return. Geraldine, being acquainted with all that is passing, like the weird sisters in Macbeth, vanishes. Reappearing, however, she awaits the return of the Bard, exciting in the meantime, by her wily arts, all the anger she could rouse in the Baron's breast, as well as that jealousy of which he is described to have been susceptible. The old Bard and the youth at length arrive, and therefore she can no longer personate the character of Geraldine, the daughter of Lord Roland de Vaux, but changes her appearance to that of the accepted, though absent, lover of Christabel. Now ensues a courtship most distressing to Christabel, who feels--she knows not why--great disgust for her once favored knight.

This coldness is very painful to the Baron, who has no more conception than herself of the supernatural transformation. She at last yields to her father's entreaties, and consents to approach the altar with the hated suitor. The real lover, returning, enters at this moment, and produces the ring which she had once given him in sign of her. . . [betrothal]. Thus defeated, the supernatural being Geraldine disappears. As predicted, the castle bell tolls, the mother's voice is heard, and, to the exceeding great joy of the parties, the rightful marriage takes place, after which follows a reconciliation and explanation between father and daughter.

The verse is almost adolescent, or, as critics prefer to say, when addressing the work of a member of the literary canon, childlike:

‘Tis the middle of night by the castle clock,
And the owls have awakened the crowing cock;
Tu--whit!-- Tu--whoo!
And hark, again! the crowing cock,
How drowsily it crew.

Sir Leoline, the Baron rich,
Hath a toothless mastiff bitch;
From her kennel beneath the rock
She maketh answer to the clock,
Four for the quarters, and twelve for the hour;
Ever and aye, by shine and shower,
Sixteen short howls, not over loud;
Some say, she sees my lady's shroud.
Is the night chilly and dark?
The night is chilly, but not dark.
The thin gray cloud is spread on high,
It covers but not hides the sky.

Coleridge not-so-subtly plants some clues that Geraldine may be as monstrous as she is beautiful, for she refuses to thank the Virgin Mary for her rescue:

So free from danger, free from fear,
They crossed the court : right glad they were.
And Christabel devoutly cried
To the Lady by her side,
Praise we the Virgin all divine
Who hath rescued thee from thy distress!
Alas, alas! said Geraldine, I cannot speak for weariness.

Uh oh!

The fire likes her, too; it leaps in her presence, to show the reader, again, that there’s something odd about Geraldine:

They passed the hall, that echoes still,
Pass as lightly as you will!
The brands were flat, the brands were dying,
Amid their own white ashes lying;
But when the lady passed, there came
A tongue of light, a fit of flame;
And Christabel saw the lady's eye,
And nothing else saw she thereby. . . .

Smitten by her seductress, mesmerizing houseguest, Christabel assures Geraldine that Christabel’s father sleeps: “O softly tread, said Christabel,/ My father seldom sleepeth well.” Is Christabel’s caution a concern for her father’s rest or an invitation of sexual dalliance with Geraldine? Their destination, and they stealthy way in which they approach it, suggests that Christabel may not be as innocent and virtuous as she appears to be, for she leads her houseguest, with the utmost caution, to her bedroom, where she offers her a glass of wine that Christabel’s now-deceased mother (and, presently, her “guardian spirit”) made from wildflowers:

Sweet Christabel her feet doth bare,
And jealous of the listening air
They steal their way from stair to stair,
Now in glimmer, and now in gloom,
And now they pass the Baron's room,
As still as death, with stifled breath!
And now have reached her chamber door;
And now doth Geraldine press down
The rushes of the chamber floor. . . .

. . . O weary lady, Geraldine,
I pray you, drink this cordial wine!
It is a wine of virtuous powers;
My mother made it of wildflowers.

The next moment, her name having been mentioned, the spirit of Christabel’s mother appears, but only Geraldine can see the phantom, and she orders the ghost to leave.

O mother dear! that thou wert here!
I would, said Geraldine, she were!

But soon with altered voice, said she--
`Off, wandering mother! Peak and pine!
I have power to bid thee flee.'
Alas! what ails poor Geraldine?
Why stares she with unsettled eye?
Can she the bodiless dead espy?
And why with hollow voice cries she,
`Off, woman, off! this hour is mine--
Though thou her guardian spirit be,
Off, woman. off! 'tis given to me.'

Invoking her authority to be alone with Christabel, Geraldine enforces her right, not wanting to be bothered by her enchanted hostess’ mother’s spirit hanging about like a spectral chaperone. Once the ghost has departed, Geraldine wastes no time in further seducing Christabel. She instructs Christabel to “unrobe” herself and to get into bed. Christabel does as she’s directed, obviously still under Geraldine’s spell. Unable to sleep, she studies Geraldine’s beautiful face and form, and the young hostess’ voyeurism is rewarded by a glimpse of Geraldine’s breast, which elicits a cry from the poem’s narrator for divine protection for Christabel:

But now unrobe yourself; for I
Must pray, ere yet in bed I lie.'

Quoth Christabel, So let it be!
And as the lady bade, did she.
Her gentle limbs did she undress
And lay down in her loveliness.

But through her brain of weal and woe
So many thoughts moved to and fro,
That vain it were her lids to close;
So half-way from the bed she rose,
And on her elbow did recline
To look at the lady Geraldine.

Beneath the lamp the lady bowed,
And slowly rolled her eyes around;
Then drawing in her breath aloud,
Like one that shuddered, she unbound
The cincture from beneath her breast:
Her silken robe, and inner vest,
Dropt to her feet, and full in view,
Behold! her bosom, and half her side--
A sight to dream of, not to tell!
O shield her! shield sweet Christabel!

Her charms having worked their magic, Geraldine, after a moment’s confused hesitation (probably included to make the meter work), gets into bed with Christabel, wherein they stretch out alongside one another, lay in one another’s arms, and, presumably, experience greater intimacies than those that a mere embrace may provide:

Yet Geraldine nor speaks nor stirs;
Ah! what a stricken look was hers!
Deep from within she seems half-way
To lift some weight with sick assay,
And eyes the maid and seeks delay;
Then suddenly as one defied
Collects herself in scorn and pride,
And lay down by the Maiden's side!--
And in her arms the maid she took. . . .!

At last, the mesmerizing Geraldine explains the magic of her enchanted “bosom” to her victim:

And with low voice and doleful look
These words did say :
`In the touch of this bosom there worketh a spell,
Which is lord of thy utterance, Christabel!

So ends the first part of the poem, in which the princess Christabel, having befriended a strange, abducted woman, Geraldine, whom she’d met while she’d been praying in the woods near her father’s castle, shelters her for the night, only to be seduced by her houseguest’s beauty and to be spellbound by her magic breasts.

Despite the adolescent versification and the clumsy plot, the poem does have a certain seductive and mesmerizing effect upon the reader, drawing him or her into the magic of Geraldine’s enchanted “bosom” and suggesting that the poor, chaste Christabel, despite the narrator’s continued pleas for her protection, is, both sexually and otherwise, her houseguest’s victim:

It was a lovely sight to see
The lady Christabel, when she
Was praying at the old oak tree.
Amid the jaggéd shadows
Of mossy leafless boughs,
Kneeling in the moonlight,
To make her gentle vows.

Her slender palms together prest,
Heaving sometimes on her breast;
Her face resigned to bliss or bale--
Her face, oh call it fair not pale,
And both blue eyes more bright than clear.
Each about to have a tear.:

With open eyes (ah, woe is me!)
Asleep, and dreaming fearfully,
Fearfully dreaming, yet, I wis,
Dreaming that alone, which is--
O sorrow and shame! Can this be she,
The lady, who knelt at the old oak tree?
And lo! the worker of these harms,
That holds the maiden in her arms,
Seems to slumber still and mild,
As a mother with her child.

A star hath set, a star hath risen,
O Geraldine! since arms of thine
Have been the lovely lady's prison.
O Geraldine! one hour was thine--
Thou'st had thy will! By tairn and rill,
The night-birds all that hour were still.
But now they are jubilant anew,
From cliff and tower, tu--whoo! tu--whoo!
Tu--whoo! tu--whoo! from wood and fell!

And see! the lady Christabel
Gathers herself from out her trance;
Her limbs relax, her countenance
Grows sad and soft; the smooth thin lids
Close o'er her eyes; and tears she sheds--
Large tears that leave the lashes bright!
And oft the while she seems to smile
As infants at a sudden light!

Yea, she doth smile, and she doth weep,
Like a youthful hermitess,
Beauteous in a wilderness,
Who, praying always, prays in sleep.
And, if she move unquietly,
Perchance, 'tis but the blood so free
Comes back and tingles in her feet.
No doubt, she hath a vision sweet.
What if her guardian spirit 'twere,
What if she knew her mother near?
But this she knows, in joys and woes,
That saints will aid if men will call :
For the blue sky bends over all!.

No wonder lesbian and feminist critics regard this fragmented poem as one of the great ones of world lit.

The lesbian vampire has since become a staple of erotic horror, appearing in many legitimate, if “R”-rated, films, including:

Eternal (2004): Detective Raymond Pope’s search for his missing wife leads him to the estate of a wealthy woman, Elizabeth Kane, who may be the latest incarnation of Countess Elizabeth Bathory, the vampire who bathed in virgins’ blood.

Lost for a Vampire (1971): A writer researching a book visits an all-girls’ boarding school inhabited by lesbian vampire students.

Vampyros Lesbos (1971): In Turkey, American lawyer Linda Westinghouse’s dreams about being harassed and seduced by a dark-haired lesbian vampire beauty come true.

Les Frissons des Vampires (1970): Honeymooning couples are victimized by a castle of lesbian vampires.

Vampyres (1974): A lesbian couple lures innocent passersby to their deaths, one of the seductresses finally falling prey to a woman she seduces.

The Velvet Vampire (1971): A vampire woman comes out of the desert to seduce a hippie couple.

The Vampire Lovers (1970): The first of a trilogy of films about lesbian vampires, this one recreates, more or less faithfully, Sheridan LeFanu’s novel, Camilla. The lesbian is rival against a man for the affections of a woman whom both desire. He wins.

Blood and Roses (1960): A dead vampire’s spirit lives again by possessing Camilla, who narrates the tale.

Daughters of Darkness (1971): A honeymooning couple encounters Countess Elizabeth Bathory, who seduces the bride.

The Hunger (1983): Miriam Blaylock seduces scientist Sarah Roberts.

One into which it was harder for some critics to sink their teeth into is Lesbian Vampire Killers (to be released in 2009), a comedy in which men seek to rescue their women from a gang of lesbian vampires who have victimized a small Welsh town.

Some Thoughts on Horror

If a man harbors any sort of fear, it makes him landlord to a ghost. -- Lloyd Douglas

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Where there is no imagination, there is no horror. -- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Perfect order is the forerunner of perfect horror. -- Carlos Fuentes

Jennifer Love Hewitt

I'd never watch a horror film, but after I found out I was going to be in one, I watched, like, four of them, including The Shining. I was terrified--I couldn't sleep for days. But I wanted to get myself used to things I was going to see on the set. -- Jennifer Love Hewitt

Eric Hoffer

You can discover what your enemy fears most by observing the means he uses to frighten you. -- Eric Hoffer

There is a sacred horror about everything grand. It is easy to admire mediocrity and hills; but whatever is too lofty, a genius as well as a mountain, an assembly as well as a masterpiece, seen too near, is appalling. -- Victor Hugo

Terror. . . often arises from a pervasive sense of disestablishment: that things are in the unmaking. -- Stephen King

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Music, even in situations of the greatest horror, should never be painful to the ear but should flatter and charm it, and thereby always remain music. -- Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Acting is like a Halloween mask that you put on. -- River Phoenix

You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience by which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself, ‘I lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along.’ -- Eleanor Roosevelt

Men fear thought as they fear nothing else on earth--more than ruin, more even than death. -- Bertrand Russell

Civilization is hideously fragile [and] there's not much between us and the horrors underneath, just about a coat of varnish. -- C. P. Snow

He's not stupid; he's possessed by a retarded ghost. --Unknown

One might say that the true subject of the horror genre is the struggle for recognition of all that our civilization represses and oppresses. -- Robin Wood

Fallacious Horrors

copyright 2008 by Gary L. Pullman

According to The Skeptic’s Dictionary, an ad hoc hypothesis “is one created to explain facts that seem to refute one’s theory.” As an example of this hypothesis, the lexicographer of doubt states, “For example, ESP researchers have been known to blame the hostile thoughts of onlookers for unconsciously influencing pointer readings on sensitive instruments. The hostile vibes, they say, made it impossible for them to duplicate a positive ESP experiment.”
A nice bit of pseudo-logic, to be sure, but this one, reported in the same article, is even more unseemly and amusing:

Ad hoc hypotheses are common in defense of the pseudoscientific theory known as biorhythm theory. For example, there are very many people who do not fit the predicted patterns of biorhythm theory. Rather than accept this fact as refuting evidence of the theory, a new category of people is created: the arhythmic. In short, whenever the theory does not seem to work, the contrary evidence is systematically discounted.

The true believer, a stereotypical horror story character--one who believes in all manner of strange events for no other reason than that he wants to believe--often uses the ad hoc hypothesis in reverse. Instead of seeking to explain away facts that refute his theories, the true believer uses them to refute more commonly accepted (i. e., scientific) explanations for various phenomena and effects. For example, a scientific observer might argue that a person discovered his car keys in an unexpected place because he’d forgotten that he’d placed them in this location earlier in the day. The true believer would argue, instead, that the keys’ being found in an unexpected location proves that the house is haunted, for it was the ghosts who haunt the house who’d moved the keys to the new location.

Other examples of fallacious reasoning that can benefit writers of horror fiction include communal reinforcement, selective thinking, subjective validation, testimonial evidence (anecdotal evidence), and wishful thinking. The Skeptic’s Dictionary defines and exemplifies these and many other fallacies as well, but, of course, it is up to the writer of horror fiction to apply them to his or her--or to his or her characters’--thinking in the service of his or her storylines.

Another good source for skeptical wisdom is James Randi Educational Foundation’s An Encyclopedia of Claims, Frauds, and Hoaxes of the Occult and Supernatural.

What’s So Scary About. . . .

copyright 2008 by Gary L. Pullman

Too often, writers write the way people too often speak: without thinking or, more specifically, without planning. They hope for inspiration as they put pen to paper or (more typically fingertips to keyboard). However, a bit of forethought could go a long way, in horror writing or in the writing of any other genre of fiction. By brainstorming as to what’s so scary about a potential or chosen setting, the horror writer is better able to capitalize upon features of the locale that are uniquely or especially eerie, frightening, or repulsive. Here are a few key settings for horror stories. The aspiring horror writer can add more of his or her own and update the list as new elements of the horrible and the terrible occur to him or her concerning such places.

Attic

It is seldom visited, and its contents, to some extent, are apt to be forgotten; therefore, the attic is more or less unfamiliar and may house dangers, such as bats, rats, spiders, rabid squirrels, or human intruders.

It is unlit or dimly lit and full of shadows in which dangers may lurk or be concealed.

Its contents may be old or unused and may, therefore, represent mementos of death.

It is not spacious, and it lacks headroom, making one feel trapped.

Depending upon the weather, it could be hot, humid, musty, or damp.

It could smell of mold decay (if the body of an animal that has died in the attic’s walls or elsewhere has begun to rot).

Because of the boxes, crates, and other containers it often contains, the attic features many potential hiding places from which one may be ambushed.

It may lack continuous flooring, which impedes movement and escape.

Its being little visited and kept locked suggests that the attic is a “forbidden” place.

It seems unnaturally quiet.

Noises, lights, and smells, in a closed or locked attic suggests that something is amiss (i. e., that the attic is occupied by an animal, a human intruder, or a ghost, perhaps).

The ladder or the narrow, steep flight of steps leading to the attic suggests the unusual character of the attic.

It is isolated from the rest of the house and, therefore, from the rest of the family.

Its floorboards and hinges may creak.

It is likely to be unfurnished, undecorated, and unadorned; it may be unfinished as well, suggesting a place that has been abandoned and lacks the typical comforts of home.

Note: Flowers in the Attic is set, in large part, in an attic.

Basement

Many of the eerie elements associated with an attic are also associated with a basement, making a basement scary for the same reasons that an attic may be frightening. In addition, these other eerie elements are often specifically associated with a basement:

The knowledge that, in descending a ladder or a flight of steps, one is going underground (where things are often buried) enhances the uneasiness one may feel
in entering a basement.

Its windows, if any, are apt to be small, perhaps mere vertical slits, which obscures one’s vision to the outside world and makes escape impossible.

It may contain a furnace, the fiery grate or interior of which, in the otherwise relative darkness, may appear eerie or even hellish.

Its cupboards, if any, may contain unusual odds and ends or “secrets” that are better left unknown.

Its walls may be stained or discolored or in disrepair.

Note: The movie The People Under the Stairs is set mostly in a family’s basement.

Crawlspace

Many of the eerie elements associated with an attic are also associated with a basement, making a basement scary for the same reasons that an attic may be frightening. In addition, these other eerie elements are often specifically associated with a basement:

It is even more cramped and inspires claustrophobia even more than an attic or a
basement, reducing movement to a slow, even potentially painful, crawl.

It is dirty and may be stuffy or musty.

Its pipes, joists, beams, and other obstructions impede movement and/or escape.

Animal carcasses could be present or their bones may be scattered inside the crawlspace. (John Wayne Gacy buried the bodies of many of his victims in his house’s crawlspace, and a lesbian stalker lived in her victim’s crawlspace.)

Tunnels from the crawlspace could lead elsewhere.

Note: As its title implies, the movie Crawlspace featured this setting.

Hotel

It is large, both in space and in the number of rooms, allowing multiple possibilities of ambush, for being trapped, or for having one’s escape cut off.

It is full of strangers, some or all of whom may be hostile or untrustworthy.

As a guest, one is in a dependent role.

Others have keys to one’s room or suite.

It could be haunted.

It operates on a 24-hour, seven-days-a-week basis, even while one is asleep and, therefore, vulnerable).

One could get stuck in an elevator, between floors.

Who knows what extra ingredients could be added to a drink in the hotel’s cocktail lounge or to a meal served in the hotel’s restaurant or delivered by room service?

One or more of its employees could be replaced by imposters.

Any weakness in its security could be exploited.

Its surveillance cameras are watching guests all the time, everywhere.

It could be isolated; even when it is not, it is a self-contained and relatively self-sufficient world unto itself (a total institution) of great resources.

It can feature fountains or statues in its lobby and courtyards or grounds.

It can harbor strange sights and sounds (and smells).

Its floor plans could be like a mazes, and, behind each door, a possible threat could wait to ambush a guest.

Power may fail.

Fog or other atmospheric or meteorological effects may occur.

Insects, animals, or humans may intrude.

Note: Stephen King’s short story “1408” takes place in a hotel, as does the movie, 1408, based upon it; King’s novel (and the movie based upon it), The Shining also takes place in a hotel.

Mansion

Many of the eerie elements associated with a hotel are also associated with a mansion, making a mansion scary for the same reasons that a hotel may be frightening. In addition, these other eerie elements are often specifically associated with a mansion:

Things look different in the dark than they do in the light.

It is isolated behind walls and iron gates, obscured by trees and other vegetation.

Its ornamentation and decoration may be odd (demon doorknockers, gargoyles,
bizarre statues or portraits).

It is associated with an ancestry and heirs (in other words, the house has a past, as it were, which may be filled with guilty secrets).

Its library may contain forbidden books.

“What are they doing in the Hyacinth House?” What, indeed!

It may have an evil-looking façade or aura (as does the House of Usher, the
Amityville house, and Ed Gein’s house).

Its grounds may contain the family’s private cemetery.

It can be personified (“if these walls could only talk!”).

Almost by definition, abandoned houses are scary (they suggest the fragility of life, or relationships, of stability, and a person, too, as a former resident, may be fragile, unstable, or abandoned.)

It could be really haunted or it could become “haunted” (e. g., as a Halloween fund-raiser), attracting real ghosts or demons.

Its various rooms symbolize various aspects of the personality, as dream dictionaries indicate.

An ascent can become a descent.

What was left behind in an abandoned mansion (a mirror, a birdcage, a cabinet, an organ) could be demonic.

Abandoned and in a state of disrepair, it is apt to be unsafe because of weak floors or stairs or crumbling ceilings or walls.

Note: Many horror stories, both in print and on film, including The Amityville Horror, Rose Red, ‘Salem’s Lot, Psycho, and The Haunting of Hill House being but a few of the better known among them, are set, in full or in large part, in mansions.

Island

It is remote and inaccessible.

It may be inhabited by “savages” and/or strange and dangerous plants and animals.

It is at the “mercy” of the sea.

It may contain caverns, mountains, or forests that are habitats for unusual, or even bizarre, and threatening menaces of a vegetative, animal, or human nature.

It may have an odd shape (Skull Island) that is frightening in itself.

It may have been used for nefarious purposes.

It may be volcanic.

It may suggest an alternative evolutionary origin.

Note: The Island of Dr. Moreau, King Kong, Jurassic Park, and many other novels and movies take place upon islands.

Music Hath Alarms To Evoke The Savage Beast

copyright 2008 by Gary L. Pullman

As we saw, in an earlier post, the lyrics to The Doors’ songs can be suggestive of horror stories. We imagined, based upon the following words, to “L‘america,” the coming of apparently “friendly strangers”--perhaps aliens disguised as humans--to a small town for the purpose of abducting the village’s women so that the abductors might ravish them, thereby perpetuating a hybrid version of their own race, the men of the town seeking, in vain, to prevent the women’s abductions and rape:

Friendly strangers came to town
All the people put them down
But the women loved their ways
Come again some other day
Like the gentle rain
Like the gentle rain that falls. . . .

The lyrics to the band’s song “The End,” with their obviously Freudian undertone, could easily be the basis of a horror story in which a killer kills because of unresolved Oedipal feelings:

The killer awoke before dawn
He took a face from the ancient gallery
And he walked on the down the hall
He went into the room where his sister lived
And then he
Paid a visit to his brother
And then he
He walked on down the hall, and
And he came to a door
And he looked inside
Father. Yes, son? I want to kill you
Mother, I want to [epithet deleted] you
Oooh, all last night. . . .

Couldn’t the following words, from “Riders on the Storm,” have inspired a movie like The Hitcher or even Flannery O‘Connor’s short story, “A Good man Is Hard To Find”?

There’s a killer on the road
His brain is squirming like a toad
Take a long holiday
Let your children play
Give this man a ride
Sweet family will die

In fact, as Songfacts explains, “‘killer on the road’ is a reference to a screenplay” that Jim Morrison “wrote called The Hitchhiker (An American Pastoral),” in which he “was going to play the part of a hitchhiker who goes on a murder spree.”

The words to songs like these stir the creative juices in writers, especially horror writers, because they are evocative and because they touch upon macabre subject matter. At the same time, they are vague or ambiguous, open-ended enough to allow one to place his or her own interpretations upon their possible meanings and to develop even a single block of verse or an entire song’s body of lyrics into not merely one, but several, possible plots. As Morrison said, concerning “The End,“ the song’s meaning “could be almost anything you want it to be” (Songfacts).

The Doors’ songs are especially rich in evoking images of horror that could be developed into complete stories, but other bands’ songs also can inspire horror story ideas. Take this line, for example, from The Beatles’ “I Am the Walrus”:

Yellow matter custard, dripping from a dead dog’s eye. . . .

As Songfacts indicates, John Lennon, who wrote this particular song, said he penned these lyrics to vex scholars who might attempt explications of the song’s lyrics, some lines of which, by Lennon’s own admission, were inspired by his ingestion of lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD). (As Songfacts indicates, there are many other sources for the lines of this song as well.)

If Stephen King’s Desperation starts to get creepy with a family’s spotting of a dead cat nailed to a highway sign, where might King be led by such an image as The Beatles have created? Such images can lead any writer of horror down a similar highway.

Not only can song lyrics inspire horror stories, but, in some cases, the opposite is also true: horror stories have also occasioned songs. An example? The title of The Jam’s song, “The Dreams of Children,” was inspired, Songfacts explains, by Clive Barker’s short story “The Forbidden,” in which the villainous Candyman “kills to preserve his reputation, so he can haunt ‘The Dreams of Children,’” and the song itself was inspired, in part, by The Beatles’ “Revolver”:

Prior to writing the song Paul Weller had been listening to his favourite album, The Beatles “Revolver.” Weller recalls in the book 1000 UK #1 Hits by Jon Kutner and Spencer Leigh, “After we'd finished recording the album Setting Sons, I asked the engineer if he could record the album backwards and put it on cassette. When I listened to it there was one piece of vocal that I really liked and wrote "The Dreams Of Children" around it.”

Musicians tell us that music is an expression of emotion; as the name by which the genre is known indicates, so is horror fiction. The emotion, horror (or one of its close relatives, such as anxiety, fear, or revulsion), is evoked by many of the same images and sentiments that music with a macabre theme expresses. Therefore, music and fiction, including horror fiction, are natural complements to one another, at times, at least, and the writer should not overlook the millions of possibilities for inspiration that exist in music. (In fact, Stephen King often listens to rock and roll as he writes his novels, and many of his books contain excerpts of song lyrics or acknowledgments to various musical artist’s works.)