Chillers and Thrillers: fear

Showing posts with label fear. Show all posts

Thursday, March 31, 2011

Chillers and Thrillers: The Fiction of Fear

I once read somewhere that, although there are many ways to inflict death, there is, ultimately, only one cause of death--cessation of oxygen to the brain.

Something is similar with regard to the ultimate object of fear. Many persons, places, and things instill fear, but they all do it the same way--by threatening us with loss. The loss with which we're threatened is related to a significant possession, to something that we value highly: life, limb, mind, health, a loved one, and life itself are some possibilities.

It's been argued that we fear the unknown. I think that, yes, we do fear the unknown, but only because it may be associated with a possible threat to us or to something or someone else we value.

What is death? Simply annihilation? Or, as Hamlet suggests, is death but a prelude to something much worse, to possible damnation and an eternity of pain and suffering in which we're cut off from both God and humanity? That's loss, too--loss of companionship, friendship, communion, fellowship, and love. Against such huge losses, annihilation looks pretty cozy.

Horror fiction--the fiction of fear--wouldn't have much to offer us, though, if all it did was make us afraid of death and/or hell. It does do more, though, quite a bit more, as it turns out, which is why it's important in its own way.

First, if Stephen King (by way of Aristotle) is right, horror fiction provides a means both of exercising and of exorcising our inner demons. It allows us to become the monster for a time in order to rid ourselves of the nasty feelings and impulses we occasionally entertain. Horror fiction is cathartic. It allows us to vent the very feelings that, otherwise, bottled up inside, might make us become the monster permanently and drive us, as such, to murder and mayhem.

Horror fiction provides us with a way of exercising and of exorcising our inner demons, but it also reminds us that life is short, and it suggests to us that we should be grateful to be alive, that we should appreciate what we have, and that we should take nothing for granted--not life, limb, mind, health, loved ones, or anything else. Horror fiction is a literary memento mori, or reminder of death. In the shadow of death, we appreciate and enjoy the fullness of life.

No one ever wrote a horror story about a man who stubbed his toe or a woman who broke a nail. Horror fiction's themes are bigger; they're more important. They're as vast and profound as the most critically important and most highly valued of all things. Horror fiction, by threatening us with the loss of that which is really important, shows us what truly matters. As such, it's a guide, implicitly, to the good life.

Horror fiction also shows us, sometimes, at least, that no matter how bad things are, we can survive our losses. We can regroup, individually or collectively, subjectively or objectively, and we can continue to fight the good fight.

Chillers and thrillers are important for all these reasons and at least one other. They're entertaining to read or watch; they're fun!

Sources Cited:

Aristotle, Poetics.

King, Stephen, "Why We Crave Horror Movies," originally published in Playboy, 1982.

Tuesday, August 3, 2010

Quick Tip: Make Your Villains Both Timely and Timeless, Both Particular and Universal

The nature of a monster is determined partly by the sociopolitical and cultural milieu of its time. It is also determined, in part, by the group of individuals for whom it is an embodiment of one or another fear. For example, the Dracula of Bram Stoker’s novel and the Dracula who appears in an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer share the same name and, ostensibly, at least, the same aristocratic and historical backgrounds, but the medieval Dracula is an altogether different vampire than his modern counterpart. Likewise, the invisible man, a scientist named Griffin, who appears in H. G. Wells’ novel, is motivated first by an ambition to make a name for himself, then by theft, and finally by revenge for his old mentor’s betrayal of him, whereas the invisible teenage girl, Marcie Ross, in the “Out of Mind, Out of Sight” episode of Buffy is motivated strictly by revenge : she wants to settle the score with those of her fellow students who have ignored or ridiculed her throughout her school years.

The monster, in other words, reflects the background of its times. Writers retool their villainous fiends and ogres so that they are representatives of the periods that help to spawn them. Since Buffy is a bildungsroman, or a story concerning “the moral, psychological, and intellectual development of a usually youthful main character,” as Yahoo! Education’s dictionary feature defines this term, its monsters tend to reflect the moral, emotional, and philosophical problems and issues that typically confront teenagers and young adults. As the series creator, Joss Whedon, himself puts it, “The show is designed to . . . work on the mythic structure of a hero’s journey. Just to reframe that as the growth of an adolescent girl. . . . The things she has to go through--losing her virginity, dying and coming back to life--are meant to be mythic, and yet they’re meant to be extremely personal” (The Monster Book viii)

Dreams are a good source for obtaining customized monsters. Because no two individuals are the same, their dreams will differ from one another, even when they are about the same general topic, such as vampires or ghosts, and each individual dreamer will project his or her own attitudes, beliefs, emotions, thoughts, and values onto the monsters that he or she creates in his or her dreams. In other words, such nightmarish creatures will reflect the anxieties, insecurities, fears, and worries of the man, woman, boy, or girl who creates these monsters. If monsters are projections of unconscious feelings, they must and will differ with respect to the particular unconscious in which they are rooted and from which they arise. Therefore, in this sense, they will be novel and original.

As individuals, though, no one exists in a vacuum. As John Donne wrote, no one is “an island.” In countless ways, each day we affect one another, as our common culture, language, and society suggests. Therefore, the monsters that any one of us creates in his or her nightmares, while rooted in and arising from his or her own unconscious mind, is also rooted in and arises from the common experience of his or her nation, culture, and species. The monsters that we make are both particular and universal. They are timely when we apply them to our own time and the current events of our day; yet, they also remain timeless, because the hopes and fears of humanity are not those of any particular time and place, but of all times and all places.

Nevertheless, by letting ourselves be inspired, and even guided, to some extent, by, our nightmares, we can render the representations and reflections of our own personal fears and those of our own particular day and age in such a way that the worn and tattered monster is retooled and renewed yet again. . . and again.

Thursday, April 29, 2010

Discovering the Elements of Fear

Would you be afraid if you were alone in an isolated cemetery at night? Perhaps, if there were also a full moon, you might be a little anxious? After all, you are alone. You are on your own. No help is available--no police, no rescue personnel, no paramedics. You are isolated. There is no one near. No one to come to your aid or even to hear you scream (should you scream). The full moon is bright, but it, too, is distant and its light, rather than comforting or reassuring, seems eerie. It illuminates shadows, but it is not bright enough to light up the night.

The preceding paragraph is not intended to set the mood of a scene. Instead, it is meant merely to identify elements of a setting which could be the bases of such a paragraph or passage and to suggest why these elements might be frightening. Notice the commonality among them: the external, natural object or phenomenon (an isolated cemetery, darkness, a full moon) are linked to emotional states (fear, anxiety, distress). With this in mind, this analysis might lead to a passage such as this:

The sun had set, and a slight breeze stirred the leaves on the few scraggly trees that stood sentinel over the headstones and crypts of the isolated rural cemetery. High in the darkness of the sky, a full moon leered down upon the graveyard. The darkness seemed to press down upon Kim as if it were a heavy, hostile thing, a force that meant to crush her, and the absolute silence of the distant city of the dead was unsettling.

Kim felt not merely alone; she felt lost, wraithlike, as if she were herself the ghost of one of the corpses interred within the neglected, overgrown grounds. There was nothing to fear. She knew that--and, yet, she was afraid. She was terribly afraid. Her isolation was total. There was nothing and no one for miles in any direction. If she should fall or lose her way, if thugs were to happen along and discover her--or, worse, if the dead were to rise; if revenants were to return; if--she laughed at the
absurdity of these ideas, born as they were of unreasoning emotion, of blind fear akin to panic.

She’d meant for her laughter to dispel the sense of panic that had risen within her, for no reason, but the sound of it seemed raucous and forced, strained somehow, and false. It was anything but heartening.

Nor was the light of the moon, for it was not bright enough to light the night; its radiance did nothing more than to show the shadows of furtive things darting and scurrying among the gravestones and crypts.

Rats? Wolves? Worse, nightmarish things? Kim’s imagination suggested several creatures possible, if at all, only in hell. It had been a mistake to come here alone, she thought, especially at night. It had been a mistake to come here at all.

Somewhere in the darkness, among the graves, a twig snapped. Or a bone. Or a spine. Kim froze, staring wide eyed, straining to see, to hear, to think.
Clouds obscured the moon, and the darkness of the night was complete.

Tuesday, March 16, 2010

Techno- and Other Phobias

Rubens' Medusa: an image of both gynephobia and serpentephobia?

There seems little doubt that there are some real phobias. Plenty of people seem to be genuinely afraid of snakes, for example, and most people have met others who are terrified by just the thought of germs. However, it also seems clear that some “phobias” are products of little more than political correctness. Perhaps homophobia fits into the latter category.

Man-made phobias are a horror writer’s dream come true, because by inventing irrational fears, authors of such fiction have a means of creating an all-but-inexhaustible supply of fears, and, of course, fear (and disgust) is the mainstay of horror fiction.

Take technophobia--the irrational fear of technology. This phobia is the basis for all kinds of short stories, novels, and films. In fact, technophobia is the subject of an entire book, Technophobia!: Science Fiction Visions of Posthuman Technology by Daniel Dinello.

Technophobia knows many forms. According to Dinello, it is evident in science fiction’s (and, one might add, to a lesser degree, horror’s) “obsession with mad scientists, rampaging robots, killer clones, cutthroat cyborgs, human-hating androids, satanic supercomputers, flesh-eating viruses, and genetically mutated monsters” (2).

The most extreme expression of technophobia--and one which may soon be not only feasible, but also “inevitable,” according to artificial intelligence expert Raymond Kurzweil,” Dinello says--is the transfer of “human minds into death-free robots” as what science fiction writer Vernor Vinge predicts may be “the next stage of evolution,” which could end in the “physical extinction of the human race,” Hans Moravec, a “robotics pioneer,” warns(4).

Some of the stories in which such transformations are portrayed include Terminator, I, Robot, Blade Runner, Robocop, and, of course, Matrix. Likewise, such novels as H. G. Wells’ The Island of Dr. Moreau and The Food of the Gods, Dean Koontz’s Demon Seed, Michael Crichton’s Jurassic Park, and Robin Cook’s Coma are based upon similar technophobic fears.

By adding “phobia” to the ends of other words that refer to basic human enterprises, scientific, cultural, social, or otherwise, might produce similar subgenres of science fiction and horror: biophobia (fear of life or maybe just biology), statuarophobia (fear of statues), cinematophobia (fear of motion pictures), gardenophobia (fear of gardens), meterophobia (fear of weather), androphobia (fear of men), gynophobia (fear of women), ephebiphobia (fear of children), serpentophobia (fear of snakes), and so on, ad infinitum.

Thursday, February 25, 2010

Horror vs. Humor: A Case in Point

“The Haunted House” episode of The Andy Griffith Show could easily have been a horror story rather than an installment of the famous television sitcom. It has all the elements of a classic horror story: a decrepit, abandoned house that is allegedly haunted, a visit to this house by law enforcement personnel, frightening and bizarre incidents of an apparently supernatural character, and a rational explanation for these incidents. However, the story is comical, not horrific. Why?

The answer to this question takes us a long way toward understanding not only the affinities between humor and horror but the nature of horror fiction itself.

Let’s start with a summary of the story’s plot, courtesy of Dale Robinson and David Fernandes’ The Definitive Andy Griffith Show Reference: Episode-by-Episode, with Cast and Production Biographies and a Guide to Collectibles (McFarland and Company, Inc., Publishers, Jefferson, NC, and London, 1996):

Opie hits a baseball thrown by a friend and breaks a window at the abandoned Rimshaw house. Both boys are nervous about retrieving the ball because the house is rumored to be haunted. As they approach the door, they hear a spooky noise that scares them away. They go to the courthouse and tell their story to Andy and Barney. The men tell them it was probably just the whistling wind. Andy wants them to stay out of the house because it is likely that the floorboards are loose. Then, sensing that Barney was putting up a false front when he said there was nothing to be afraid of, Andy asks his deputy to go get the ball for the boys. While it is clear that Barney doesn’t want to do it, he can’t back out now. When Gomer suddenly comes by, Barney quickly enlists him to come along.
The nervous deputy enters the house first--”Age before beauty,” says Gomer. Unfortunately, they don’t get much farther than the boys did. Ghostly moans send them scrambling for the door.

Back at the courthouse, Andy chides Barney for failing to get the ball and for believing the house is haunted. Barney says that he recalls that when old man Rimshaw died, his last wish was for his home to remain undisturbed. Otis Campbell chimes in with rumors he has heard: the walls move, the eyes on the portrait of Mr. Rimshaw seem to follow a person around the room, and axes float through the air.

Andy dismisses all this as nonsense, and he goes to the Rimshaw house with Barney and Gomer in tow. They quickly locate the baseball, and despite objections from his
cohorts, Andy insists they look around the place. While he wanders off into another room, Barney and Gomer slowly move around the room, looking scared to death. Suddenly, Gomer disappears! Barney panics, and Andy returns. Gomer suddenly reappears. He had inadvertently stepped into a closet or something. The eerie thing is, Gomer says that someone or something pushed him out. Next, Andy notices that the wallpaper above the fireplace is peeling and the wall is warm. Barney suggests that maybe an old tramp has been using the fireplace.

Andy ventures upstairs and asks Barney and Gomer to check out the cellar. Gomer correctly surmises that the cellar is downstairs. When Barney opens the cellar door, he sees an ax. Too scared to go down the stairs, he softly inquires, “Any old tramps down there?” then quickly shuts the door. Gomer tells Barney that legend has it that Rimshaw put chains on his hired hand and then killed him with an ax.

Barney notices the eyes on the Rimshaw portrait following him. When he tells Andy, Andy responds that it’s probably a trick of the light.

Barney knocks on the wall--and his knock is answered. Andy gets the same result when he knocks. Suddenly, Andy appears frightened. He orders loudly, “Let’s get out of here!” Barney and Gomer quickly bolt out of the house, but Andy remains. He has a plan in mind.Suddenly, we see Otis and the notorious moonshiner Big Jack Anderson in the house. They are laughing, and Big Jack is quite proud of the fact that his scare tactics have worked. He has found the perfect spot for his still, and claims he could probably stay there for twenty years.

As they come out of their hiding place, believing the house is empty, they get the shock of their lives. They witness an ax hanging in the air, a baseball rolling down the stairs, and the eyes moving on the portrait. They make tracks leaving the house. Meanwhile, Barney has bravely determined he must go rescue Andy, so he comes in the rear entrance. He sees the suspended ax and hears moaning. He nearly passes out from fright before Andy can explain things.

The lawmen later use the infamous ax to smash Big Jack’s still. Andy captures Anderson and surrenders him to Federal Agent Bowden of the Alcohol Control Division. Mr. Bowden has been after the tough and tricky outlaw for years. As usual, Andy generously shares the capture credit, in this case with both Barney and Gomer.

Since much of the plot, just as it stands, could be used for a horror story, the key difference that differentiates it from that of a horror story is not the action--the series of incidents, including characters’ behavior--but the characters’ comical reactions to these incidents. In a horror story, the elements of humor--exaggerated facial expressions and physical gestures, poses and postures, attitudes and responses, slapstick, clowning, and farce, irony and satire--would be minimal, if they were included at all, and the story would focus upon the evocation, through the characters’ responses to the situation, of revulsion and fear. It’s possible--probable, even--that the rational explanation of the incidents--a tramp has been residing in the house--would be shown to be false and that the incidents would, in fact, have a paranormal or a supernatural cause.

Largely, then, horror stories stress elements of the uncanny and the inexplicable and concentrate upon feelings of revulsion and fear, rather than offering rational or natural explanations for suspected supernatural phenomena and poking fun at characters’ foibles. To better see how a master of the horror story might handle a similar storyline to that of The Andy Griffith Show’s “The Haunted House,” read H. G. Wells’ short story, “The Red Room.” Both stories are concerned with an allegedly haunted domicile, and both focus on their characters’ reactions to uncanny incidents which may or may not have a natural or a rational as well as a paranormal or supernatural explanation.

Note: For a discussion of this same television episode from a humorous perspective, visit my other blog, “Writing Hilarious Humor

Sunday, February 7, 2010

What Constitutes Horror?

What constitutes horror? The answer is both simple and complex.

To understand the meaning of a word, it helps to know its origin. Originally, words usually have simple meanings which relate either to the body or to the world at large. It is only through repeated usage and adaptation of meaning that they develop more complex significance.

According to Online Etymology Dictionary (a great resource for writers), “horror” made its debut in the fourteenth century, from Old French horreur, meaning “bristling, roughness, shaking, trembling.” In other words, it referred to the standing of hair on end and to the shuddering of the body, not from cold, one may surmise, but from fear--to the physiological manifestations of terror.

It is similar, the Dictionary suggests, to the Sanskrit word harsate (“bristles”), to the Avestan term zarshayamna (“ruffling one’s feathers”), to the Latin noun eris (“hedgehog”), and to the Welsh word garw (“rough”). The Latin word horrifus (“horrific”), the same source informs its readers, means “terrible, dreadful,” or literally “making the hair stand on end,” and the Latin adjective horrendous, likewise, means “to bristle with fear” and to “shudder.”

Scientists tell us that animals make themselves as big as they can by assuming an erect posture, rearing upon their hind legs, and raising their forelegs; by bristling their fur or quills; ruffling their feathers; or, in the case of frogs, for example, puffing up. These physiological responses to a perceived threat are intended to intimidate and warn. They are protective postures. People have similar responses: their hair stands on end. They swell their chests and raise their arms.
They glower. Perhaps they will even display their teeth in a snarl.

Horror fiction concerns both the physiological effects of fear: the standing of hair on end, an increased heart rate, hyperventilation, the widening of the eyes and the gaping of the mouth, and so forth, and the objects of fear--that is, the causes of such physiological responses. The horror writer, in fact, brings the two together in a cause-and-effect relationship: the appearance of the monster (or the monstrous) causes the standing of hair on end, an increased heart rate, hyperventilation, the widening of the eyes and the gaping of the mouth, and so forth. In a nutshell, horror writers use words to create pictures and situations that produce a fight-or-flight response in their readers.

How writers perform this amazing feat is the complex part, but it is answered, more or less, in many of the articles I have already posted on Chillers and Thrillers, and, no doubt, it is an issue that I will continue to revisit and update.

Friday, December 18, 2009

Horror as Image and Word

What’s scary? Deprivation. No, I don’t mean missing a meal or not being able to buy an outfit. I mean not being able to see. Or hear. Or missing an eye, an arm, or a leg. Of course, physical injury or mutilation can deprive a person--or a fictitious character--of such body parts and the physical abilities associated with them, but the deprivation can be subtler. A thick fog, maybe rolling across a cemetery, darkness, or an impenetrable forest or jungle can deprive one of sight, in effect rendering him or her blind. A waterfall that’s so loud that it blocks out all other sounds in effect deafens anyone nearby.

What else is scary? Being isolated, which means being cut off--from society, from civilization, from help. There are no police or fire and rescue personnel or stores or hospitals or friends in the Amazon rain forest, on a deserted island, or atop the Himalayan mountains. However, there could be an undiscovered predatory beast, a tribe of cannibalistic headhunters dedicated to human sacrifice, or a Yeti. With nowhere to run and no one to help, the isolated character is on his or her own.

Being at the mercy of another person or group of persons, especially strangers, who not only intend to do one harm, but may well enjoy doing so, is scary. A relentless torturer or killer who just keeps coming, no matter what, is terrifying. Sleeping with a serial killer might be, too, especially if he or she is given to nightmares or sleepwalking.

Typing “scary,” “eerie,” or “uncanny” into an Internet images browser will turn up hundreds of pictures that other people consider frightening, giving a writer the opportunity to analyze what, in general, is scary about such images. Completely white eyes--no irises or pupils--are scary, because they suggest that the otherwise-normal--well, normal, except for the green skin and fangs--is inhuman. Bulging eyes can be scary because they suggest choking, which suggests the possibility of imminent death. Deformity is sometimes frightening, because it suggests that what has befallen someone else could befall you or me. Incongruous juxtapositions--a crying infant seated upon the lap of a skeleton clad in a dress, for instance--can be frightening because incongruity doesn’t fit the categories of normalcy. Blurry or indistinct images can be scary because they deprive us of clear vision and, therefore, represent a form of blindness or near-blindness. Corridors, alleyways, and channels can be frightening, because they lead and direct one, compelling him or her to travel in this direction only--and maybe trap the traveler by leading him or her into a dead-end terminus or into the jaws of death. Many other images, for various reasons, are scary, too; I will leave the “why” to your own analyses.

We think we know the meanings of terms, but when we’re considering words that are supposed to mean more or less the same thing, it’s easy to overlook distinctions that could make a big difference in writing horror--and in understanding just how and why things are scary. It makes sense for a horror writer to keep handy a glossary of terms related to horror, possibly with an account not only of the terms’ definitions but also of their origins and histories, or etymologies.

These, lifted from Online Etymology Dictionary, will get you started:

FEAR

O.E. fær "danger, peril," from P.Gmc. *færa (cf. O.S. far "ambush," O.N. far "harm, distress, deception," Ger. Gefahr "danger"), from PIE base *per- "to try, risk, come over, go through" (perhaps connected with Gk. peira "trial, attempt, experience," L. periculum "trial, risk, danger"). Sense of "uneasiness caused by possible danger" developed c.1175. The v. is from O.E. færan "terrify, frighten," originally transitive (sense preserved in archaic I fear me). Sense of "feel fear" is 1393. O.E. words for "fear" as we now use it were ege, fyrhto; as a verb, ondrædan. Fearsome is attested from 1768.

“Ambush,” deceive, trial--these meanings of the word suggest movies like Saw.

PHOBIA

1786, "fear, horror, aversion," Mod.L., abstracted from compounds in -phobia, from Gk. -phobia, from phobos "fear," originally "flight" (still the only sense in Homer), but it became the common word for "fear" via the notion of "panic, fright" (cf. phobein "put to flight, frighten"), from PIE base *bhegw- "to run" (cf. Lith. begu "to flee," O.C.S. begu "flight," bezati "to flee, run," O.N. bekkr "a stream"). Psychological sense attested by 1895; phobic (adj.) is from 1897.

“Panic” suggests the movie Panic Room, which, although a thriller rather than a horror movie per se, certainly presents elements of the horrific.

TERROR

great fear," from O.Fr. terreur (14c.), from L. terrorem (nom. terror) "great fear, dread," from terrere "fill with fear, frighten," from PIE base *tre- "shake" (see terrible). Meaning "quality of causing dread" is attested from 1520s; terror bombing first recorded 1941, with reference to German air attack on Rotterdam. Sense of "a person fancied as a source of terror" (often with deliberate exaggeration, as of a naughty child) is recorded from 1883. The Reign of Terror in Fr. history (March 1793-July 1794) so called in Eng. from 1801.

O.E. words for "terror" included broga and egesa.

Critics usually distinguish terror, as a formless fear that results from the perception of an unseen menace, from horror, which is comprised of both fear and revulsion and derives from the perception of a clear and present danger, a distinction that many horror writers find invaluable.

EERIE

c.1300, north England and Scot. variant of O.E. earg "cowardly, fearful," from P.Gmc. *argaz (cf. O.N. argr "unmanly, voluptuous," Swed. arg "malicious," Ger. arg "bad, wicked"). Sense of "causing fear because of strangeness" is first attested 1792.

Here is a reminder that the weird in itself may occasion fear, as it does in countless horror stories.

Some of the words that one encounters in tracking through the lexicon of horror may themselves suggest stories (or themes). Consider the term “Luddite,” for example:

LUDDITE

1811, from name taken by an organized band of weavers who destroyed machinery in Midlands and northern England 1811-16 for fear it would deprive them of work.
Supposedly from Ned Ludd, a Leicestershire worker who in 1779 had done the same
before through insanity (but the story was first told in 1847). Applied to modern rejecters of automation and technology from at least 1961.

Couldn’t this word have inspired The Terminator series or, for that matter, the mad computer in 2001: A Space Odyssey or the antagonist of Dean Koontz’s Demon Seed or the “I Robot, You Jane” or “Ted” episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer?

UNCANNY

1596, "mischievous;" 1773 in the sense of "associated with the supernatural,"
originally Scottish and northern English, from un- (1) "not" + canny.

Okay, this is Poltergeist sand its sequels, right?

ABSURDITY

absurdity 1520s, from M.Fr. absurdité, from L. absurditatem (nom. absurditas)
"dissonance, incongruity," from absurdus "out of tune, senseless," from ab- intens. prefix + surdus "dull, deaf, mute" (see susurration). The main modern sense (also present in L.) is a fig. one, "out of harmony with reason or propriety."

The attack of the birds in The Birds is scary because it is “out of harmony with reason.”

There are many, many other words related to horror that could be listed, but, again, you get the idea. Language itself, as a repository of ideas and understandings, can suggest stories to the imaginative reader, and a good dictionary can be as fruitful as an Internet image browser in suggesting ideas for novels and short stories, or even screenplays, in the horror mold.

Saturday, November 7, 2009

Click the link associated with the article that you want to read.

Chillers and Thrillers: The Fiction of Fear
http://writinghorrorfiction.blogspot.com/2007/12/chillers-and-thrillers-fiction-of-fear.html

Eighteen Things I Learned from Watching Buffy the Vampire Slayerhttp://writinghorrorfiction.blogspot.com/2009/12/eighteen-things-i-learned-by-watching.html

Paranormal vs. Supernatural: What’s the Diff?

Copyright 2009 by Gary L. Pullman

Sometimes, in demonstrating how to brainstorm about an essay topic, selecting horror movies, I ask students to name the titles of as many such movies as spring to mind (seldom a difficult feat for them, as the genre remains quite popular among young adults). Then, I ask them to identify the monster, or threat--the antagonist, to use the proper terminology--that appears in each of the films they have named. Again, this is usually a quick and easy task. Finally, I ask them to group the films’ adversaries into one of three possible categories: natural, paranormal, or supernatural. This is where the fun begins.

It’s a simple enough matter, usually, to identify the threats which fall under the “natural” label, especially after I supply my students with the scientific definition of “nature”: everything that exists as either matter or energy (which are, of course, the same thing, in different forms--in other words, the universe itself. The supernatural is anything which falls outside, or is beyond, the universe: God, angels, demons, and the like, if they exist. Mad scientists, mutant cannibals (and just plain cannibals), serial killers, and such are examples of natural threats. So far, so simple.

What about borderline creatures, though? Are vampires, werewolves, and zombies, for example, natural or supernatural? And what about Freddy Krueger? In fact, what does the word “paranormal” mean, anyway? If the universe is nature and anything outside or beyond the universe is supernatural, where does the paranormal fit into the scheme of things?

According to the Online Etymology Dictionary, the word “paranormal,” formed of the prefix “para,” meaning alongside, and “normal,” meaning “conforming to common standards, usual,” was coined in 1920. The American Heritage Dictionary defines “paranormal” to mean “beyond the range of normal experience or scientific explanation.” In other words, the paranormal is not supernatural--it is not outside or beyond the universe; it is natural, but, at the present, at least, inexplicable, which is to say that science cannot yet explain its nature. The same dictionary offers, as examples of paranormal phenomena, telepathy and “a medium’s paranormal powers.”

Wikipedia offers a few other examples of such phenomena or of paranormal sciences, including the percentages of the American population which, according to a Gallup poll, believes in each phenomenon, shown here in parentheses: psychic or spiritual healing (54), extrasensory perception (ESP) (50), ghosts (42), demons (41), extraterrestrials (33), clairvoyance and prophecy (32), communication with the dead (28), astrology (28), witchcraft (26), reincarnation (25), and channeling (15); 36 percent believe in telepathy.

As can be seen from this list, which includes demons, ghosts, and witches along with psychics and extraterrestrials, there is a confusion as to which phenomena and which individuals belong to the paranormal and which belong to the supernatural categories. This confusion, I believe, results from the scientism of our age, which makes it fashionable for people who fancy themselves intelligent and educated to dismiss whatever cannot be explained scientifically or, if such phenomena cannot be entirely rejected, to classify them as as-yet inexplicable natural phenomena. That way, the existence of a supernatural realm need not be admitted or even entertained. Scientists tend to be materialists, believing that the real consists only of the twofold unity of matter and energy, not dualists who believe that there is both the material (matter and energy) and the spiritual, or supernatural. If so, everything that was once regarded as having been supernatural will be regarded (if it cannot be dismissed) as paranormal and, maybe, if and when it is explained by science, as natural. Indeed, Sigmund Freud sought to explain even God as but a natural--and in Freud’s opinion, an obsolete--phenomenon.

Meanwhile, among skeptics, there is an ongoing campaign to eliminate the paranormal by explaining them as products of ignorance, misunderstanding, or deceit. Ridicule is also a tactic that skeptics sometimes employ in this campaign. For example, The Skeptics’ Dictionary contends that the perception of some “events” as being of a paranormal nature may be attributed to “ignorance or magical thinking.” The dictionary is equally suspicious of each individual phenomenon or “paranormal science” as well. Concerning psychics’ alleged ability to discern future events, for example, The Skeptic’s Dictionary quotes Jay Leno (“How come you never see a headline like 'Psychic Wins Lottery'?”), following with a number of similar observations:

Psychics don't rely on psychics to warn them of impending disasters. Psychics don't predict their own deaths or diseases. They go to the dentist like the rest of us. They're as surprised and disturbed as the rest of us when they have to call a plumber or an electrician to fix some defect at home. Their planes are delayed without their being able to anticipate the delays. If they want to know something about Abraham Lincoln, they go to the library; they don't try to talk to Abe's spirit. In short, psychics live by the known laws of nature except when they are playing the psychic game with people.

In An Encyclopedia of Claims, Frauds, and Hoaxes of the Occult and Supernatural, James Randi, a magician who exercises a skeptical attitude toward all things alleged to be paranormal or supernatural, takes issue with the notion of such phenomena as well, often employing the same arguments and rhetorical strategies as The Skeptic’s Dictionary.

In short, the difference between the paranormal and the supernatural lies in whether one is a materialist, believing in only the existence of matter and energy, or a dualist, believing in the existence of both matter and energy and spirit. If one maintains a belief in the reality of the spiritual, he or she will classify such entities as angels, demons, ghosts, gods, vampires, and other threats of a spiritual nature as supernatural, rather than paranormal, phenomena. He or she may also include witches (because, although they are human, they are empowered by the devil, who is himself a supernatural entity) and other natural threats that are energized, so to speak, by a power that transcends nature and is, as such, outside or beyond the universe. Otherwise, one is likely to reject the supernatural as a category altogether, identifying every inexplicable phenomenon as paranormal, whether it is dark matter or a teenage werewolf. Indeed, some scientists dedicate at least part of their time to debunking allegedly paranormal phenomena, explaining what natural conditions or processes may explain them, as the author of The Serpent and the Rainbow explains the creation of zombies by voodoo priests.

Based upon my recent reading of Tzvetan Todorov's The Fantastic: A Structural Approach to the Fantastic, I add the following addendum to this essay.

According to Todorov:

The fantastic. . . lasts only as long as a certain hesitation [in deciding] whether or not what they [the reader and the protagonist] perceive derives from "reality" as it exists in the common opinion. . . . If he [the reader] decides that the laws of reality remain intact and permit an explanation of the phenomena described, we can say that the work belongs to the another genre [than the fantastic]: the uncanny. If, on the contrary, he decides that new laws of nature must be entertained to account for the phenomena, we enter the genre of the marvelous (The Fantastic: A Structural Approach to a Literary Genre, 41).

Todorov further differentiates these two categories by characterizing the uncanny as “the supernatural explained” and the marvelous as “the supernatural accepted” (41-42).

Interestingly, the prejudice against even the possibility of the supernatural’s existence which is implicit in the designation of natural versus paranormal phenomena, which excludes any consideration of the supernatural, suggests that there are no marvelous phenomena; instead, there can be only the uncanny. Consequently, for those who subscribe to this view, the fantastic itself no longer exists in this scheme, for the fantastic depends, as Todorov points out, upon the tension of indecision concerning to which category an incident belongs, the natural or the supernatural. The paranormal is understood, by those who posit it, in lieu of the supernatural, as the natural as yet unexplained.

And now, back to a fate worse than death: grading students’ papers.

My Cup of Blood

Anyone who becomes an aficionado of anything tends, eventually, to develop criteria for elements or features of the person, place, or thing of whom or which he or she has become enamored. Horror fiction--admittedly not everyone’s cuppa blood--is no different (okay, maybe it’s a little different): it, too, appeals to different fans, each for reasons of his or her own. Of course, in general, book reviews, the flyleaves of novels, and movie trailers suggest what many, maybe even most, readers of a particular type of fiction enjoy, but, right here, right now, I’m talking more specifically--one might say, even more eccentrically. In other words, I’m talking what I happen to like, without assuming (assuming makes an “ass” of “u” and “me”) that you also like the same. It’s entirely possible that you will; on the other hand, it’s entirely likely that you won’t.

Anyway, this is what I happen to like in horror fiction:

Small-town settings in which I get to know the townspeople, both the good, the bad, and the ugly. For this reason alone, I’m a sucker for most of Stephen King’s novels. Most of them, from 'Salem's Lot to Under the Dome, are set in small towns that are peopled by the good, the bad, and the ugly. Part of the appeal here, granted, is the sense of community that such settings entail.

Isolated settings, such as caves, desert wastelands, islands, mountaintops, space, swamps, where characters are cut off from civilization and culture and must survive and thrive or die on their own, without assistance, by their wits and other personal resources. Many are the examples of such novels and screenplays, but Alien, The Shining, The Descent, Desperation, and The Island of Dr. Moreau, are some of the ones that come readily to mind.

Total institutions as settings. Camps, hospitals, military installations, nursing homes, prisons, resorts, spaceships, and other worlds unto themselves are examples of such settings, and Sleepaway Camp, Coma, The Green Mile, and Aliens are some of the novels or films that take place in such settings.

Anecdotal scenes--in other words, short scenes that showcase a character--usually, an unusual, even eccentric, character. Both Dean Koontz and the dynamic duo, Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child, excel at this, so I keep reading their series (although Koontz’s canine companions frequently--indeed, almost always--annoy, as does his relentless optimism).

Atmosphere, mood, and tone. Here, King is king, but so is Bentley Little. In the use of description to terrorize and horrify, both are masters of the craft.

A bit of erotica (okay, okay, sex--are you satisfied?), often of the unusual variety. Sex sells, and, yes, sex whets my reader’s appetite. Bentley Little is the go-to guy for this spicy ingredient, although Koontz has done a bit of seasoning with this spice, too, in such novels as Lightning and Demon Seed (and, some say, Hung).

Believable characters. Stephen King, Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child, and Dan Simmons are great at creating characters that stick to readers’ ribs.

Innovation. Bram Stoker demonstrates it, especially in his short story “Dracula’s Guest,” as does H. P. Lovecraft, Edgar Allan Poe, Shirley Jackson, and a host of other, mostly classical, horror novelists and short story writers. For an example, check out my post on Stoker’s story, which is a real stoker, to be sure. Stephen King shows innovation, too, in ‘Salem’s Lot, The Shining, It, and other novels. One might even argue that Dean Koontz’s something-for-everyone, cross-genre writing is innovative; he seems to have been one of the first, if not the first, to pen such tales.

Technique. Check out Frank Peretti’s use of maps and his allusions to the senses in Monster; my post on this very topic is worth a look, if I do say so myself, which, of course, I do. Opening chapters that accomplish a multitude of narrative purposes (not usually all at once, but successively) are attractive, too, and Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child are as good as anyone, and better than many, at this art.

A connective universe--a mythos, if you will, such as both H. P. Lovecraft and Stephen King, and, to a lesser extent, Dean Koontz, Bentley Little, and even Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child have created through the use of recurring settings, characters, themes, and other elements of fiction.

A lack of pretentiousness. Dean Koontz has it, as do Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child, Bentley Little, and (to some extent, although he has become condescending and self-indulgent of late, Stephen King); unfortunately, both Dan Simmons and Robert McCammon have become too self-important in their later works, Simmons almost to the point of becoming unreadable. Come on, people, you’re writing about monsters--you should be humble.

Longevity. Writers who have been around for a while usually get better, Stephen King, Dan Simmons, and Robert McCammon excepted.

Pacing. Neither too fast nor too slow. Dean Koontz is good, maybe the best, here, of contemporary horror writers.

Recommended Blogs

PAULA D. JEWELRY: Hand-made jewelry, vintage jewelry, and jewelry supplies.

An Artistic Place: An artist's blog that expands the definition of the term.

Buried.com: A great resource for all things horror!

Chester's Mill, Maine: Get to know the persons, places, and things of Chester's Mill, Maine, the setting of Stephen King's novel Under the Dome!

Dark Roads: A novel in progress. read each new chapter as it appears, hot off the press of the writer's fevered imagination!

E-Sword: Free downloads of Bibles and study aids.

FANCY THAT BAUBLE: Beautiful handmade jewelry.

HASSLE FREE SMALL CLAIMS AND COLLECTIONS SERVICE: Collect your court-ordered judgments; serve papers.

Horror Writing: Bury Yourself In It: A scientist-turned-horror-writer offers his unique takes on the genre.

Internet Archive: The Way-back Machine.

The James Randi Educational Foundation: A skeptical take on the bizarre, the mysterious, and the occult.

Literature.org: Online literature library--free!

PAULA D. JEWELRY: Fine jewelry.

PIZZA MY DEAR: Las Vegas' finest, where good taste is a sure bet.

Sandra Cormier: A romance author who also paints and maintains a blog that writers, painters, and just us ordinary people can enjoy.

Prayer Post: Prayer requests and applications of Christian faith.

Project Gutenberg: Free downloads of the world's classic literature.

Roadside America: Road trips don't have to be boring (or even sane).

Scribe Scrawlings: Christian book reviews and more.

The Skeptic's Dictionary: A sketrical take on the bizarre, the mysterious, and the occult.

Winki's Home Away From Home: A tribute to a woman of faith.

The Wild Rose Press: Romance in full bloom!

JaneEspenson.com: A Buffy writer shares screenwriting tips.

Quote, Unquote

A bodily disease which we look upon as whole and entire within itself, may, after all, be but a symptom of some ailment in the spiritual part.

No man, for any considerable period, can wear one face to himself and another to the multitude, without finally getting bewildered as to which may be true.

The world owes all its onward impulses to men ill at ease. The happy man inevitably confines himself within ancient limits.

What other dungeon is so dark as one's own heart! What jailer so inexorable as one's self!

-- Nathaniel Hawthorne

Those who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night.

I have no faith in human perfectability. I think that human exertion will have no appreciable effect upon humanity. Man is now only more active - not more happy - nor more wise, than he was 6000 years ago.

It may well be doubted whether human ingenuity can construct an enigma... which human ingenuity may not, by proper application, resolve.

Never to suffer would never to have been blessed.

Scorching my seared heart with a pain, not hell shall make me fear again.

Sleep, those little slices of death; Oh how I loathe them.

The nose of a mob is its imagination. By this, at any time, it can be quietly led.

To be thoroughly conversant with a man's heart, is to take our final lesson in the iron-clasped volume of despair.

With me poetry has not been a purpose, but a passion.

-- Edgar Allan Poe

The only obligation to which in advance we may hold a novel, without incurring the accusation of being arbitrary, is that it be interesting.

Do not mind anything that anyone tells you about anyone else. Judge everyone and everything for yourself.

It takes a great deal of history to produce a little literature.

-- Henry James

The road to hell is paved with adverbs.

Any word you have to hunt for in a thesaurus is the wrong word. There are no exceptions to this rule.

Let me say it again: you must not come lightly to the blank page.

If you don't have the time to read, you don't have the time or the tools to write.

-- Stephen King

Some people think only intellect counts: knowing how to solve problems, knowing how to get by, knowing how to identify an advantage and seize it. But the functions of intellect are insufficient without courage, love, friendship, compassion and empathy.

-- Dean Koontz

It is difficult to produce a television documentary that is both incisive and probing when every twelve minutes one is interrupted by twelve dancing rabbits singing about toilet paper.

-- Rod Serling

Drama is life with the dull bits cut out.

In films murders are always very clean. I show how difficult it is and what a messy thing it is to kill a man.

The length of a film should be directly related to the endurance of the human bladder.

-- Alfred Hitchcock

Our remedies oft in ourselves do lie.

This above all: to thine own self be true; And it must follow, as the night the day; Thou canst not then be false to any man.

Have more than thou showest; Speak less than thou knowest.

We know what we are, but not what we may be.

In time we hate that which we often fear.

Brevity is the soul of wit.

There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.

Though this be madness, yet there is method in 't.

-- William Shakespeare

The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents.

-- H. P. Lovecraft

There is nothing new under the sun but there are lots of old things we don't know.

Experience is a revelation in the light of which we renounce our errors of youth for those of age.

Conservative. noun. A statesman who is enamored of existing evils, as distinguished from a liberal, who wishes to replace them with others.

-- Ambrose Bierce

We serial killers are your sons, we are your husbands, we are everywhere. And there will be more of your children dead tomorrow.

You feel the last bit of breath leaving their body. You're looking into their eyes. A person in that situation is God!

Sometimes I feel like a vampire.

Then I learned that all moral judgments are ‘value judgments,’ that all value judgments are subjective, and that none can be proved to be either ‘right’ or ‘wrong.’ I even read somewhere that the Chief Justice of the United States had written that the American Constitution expressed nothing more than collective value judgments. Believe it or not, I figured out for myself–what apparently the Chief Justice couldn’t figure out for himself–that if the rationality of one value judgment was zero, multiplying it by millions would not make it one whit more rational. Nor is there any ‘reason’ to obey the law for anyone, like myself, who has the boldness and daring–the strength of character–to throw off its shackles…I discovered that to become truly free, truly unfettered, I had to become truly uninhibited. And I quickly discovered that the greatest obstacle to my freedom, the greatest block and limitation to it, consists in the insupportable ‘value judgment’ that I was bound to respect the rights of others. I asked myself, who were these ‘others?’ Other human beings, with human rights? Why is it more wrong to kill a human animal than any other animal, a pig or a sheep or a steer? Is your life more than a hog’s life to a hog? Why should I be willing to sacrifice my pleasure more for the one than for the other? Surely, you would not, in this age of scientific enlightenment, declare that God or nature has marked some pleasures as ‘moral’ or ‘good’ and others as ‘immoral’ or ‘bad’? In any case, let me assure you, my dear young lady, that there is absolutely no comparison between the pleasure that I might take in eating ham and the pleasure I anticipate in raping and murdering you. That is the honest conclusion to which my education has led me–after the most conscientious examination of my spontaneous and uninhibited self.

-- Ted Bundy

THE HORROR WRITER’S SHADOW-MUSE: A CAUTIONARY TALE

Shadows crawl across my wall,
Dark remnants of Eden’s fall,
Due to Adam’s sin; again,
My brain reels in garish pain;
I rise, eyes fixed on nothing,
Put pen to paper to sing,
In poetry, my memory
Of primordial, eerie
Things, which, both fanged and clawed,
Squirm and writhe upon my wall. . . .

Our ancestors, daughters of men
And sons of angels fallen,
Produce monsters such as Grendel,
Brute minions, all, of deepest hell;
Some beauteous of face and form,
Others of aspect like the worm,
And others still of shadowy
Appearance, but strange and eerie,
Whose task is mine to give full voice,
Not that vile Satan may rejoice,
But that all the sons and daughters
Of ancient Cain who do yet stir
May be heard--and thus evaded--
By the living who are not dead
To the antediluvian
Origins of death and sin,
Mystery of iniquity
That, like a spider on a wall,
Crawls across us, one and all,
Leaving, in its wake, gossamer
Threads of desire, dark and deep,
Our hearts and souls to keep.

“Out, out, damned spot!” the Lady said,
Unaware that she was dead;
Shadow, spider, and spot alike
Are but mute brutes whose terrors strike
From within, their banshee’s voice
An echo of an ancient choice
As much our own as our heartbeat,
From which there is no retreat
But to return, a prodigal
Son, who once was hell’s spawn and thrall,
A shadow writhing on a wall,
As are, or once were, each and all.

(The next time you see a shadow,
Ask not, as Plato did, to see
Its form, for that which comes from Below
Takes its shape from iniquity!)

-- Gary L. Pullman

Chillers and Thrillers

Thursday, March 31, 2011

Chillers and Thrillers: The Fiction of Fear

Tuesday, August 3, 2010

Quick Tip: Make Your Villains Both Timely and Timeless, Both Particular and Universal

Thursday, April 29, 2010

Discovering the Elements of Fear

Tuesday, March 16, 2010

Techno- and Other Phobias

Thursday, February 25, 2010

Horror vs. Humor: A Case in Point

Sunday, February 7, 2010

What Constitutes Horror?

Friday, December 18, 2009

Horror as Image and Word

Saturday, November 7, 2009

Table of Contents

Paranormal vs. Supernatural: What’s the Diff?

My Cup of Blood

Popular Posts

Thursday, March 31, 2011

Tuesday, August 3, 2010

Thursday, April 29, 2010

Tuesday, March 16, 2010

Thursday, February 25, 2010

Sunday, February 7, 2010

Friday, December 18, 2009

Saturday, November 7, 2009

Paranormal vs. Supernatural: What’s the Diff?

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