The Horror of Abandonment

Copyright 202 by Gary L. Pullman 

 

Although the evil in Cujo takes the form of a rabid dog, this poster suggests the true evil of the movie based on Stephen King's novel: the adulterous affair that arises from neglect and represents an abandonment of the adulteress's husband and son; it is her unfaithfulness that tears her family apart.

A major theme of horror stories, in both film and in print, is abandonment. Often, such desertion is symbolically represented by an abandoned house or by empty rooms. It is also frequently suggested by images of crumbling stone castles or manor houses or by dilapidated houses or other symbols of neglect, including yards overrun with weeds, uncut grass, and overgrown sheds or other structures. In itself, isolation can also be representative of abandonment: a remote cabin in the woods, a castle atop a lone promontory, an expanse of empty beach, an uninhabited island, the middle of a desert, a narrow trail through a rain forest, an oil rig at sea.

The type of edifice or landscape can also imply what has been abandoned or what is at risk of abandonment: a church may suggest that religious faith has been abandoned; a hospital, the attempt to control or cure a rampant disease; a manor house, a family and its connection to the community of which it was once a vital part; a military barracks, war or peace (depending on the reason for abandonment); a strip mall, a dearth of customers.

In every case, the common element is change: something has occurred that has caused the clergy or the congregants, the medical staff or the patients, the family members, the troops, or the business owners or the customers to leave their beloved or customary place of worship, medical center, home, installation, or shopping center. The “something” is apt to be the story's villain, whatever form it takes.

Being abandoned is horrific because it results in the loss of social, psychological, commercial, medical, and other forms of support vital to the abandoned individual's or individuals' safety, health, and welfare. Being abandoned forces the abandoned to fend for themselves, even when they do not have the expertise to do so. In a highly technologically advanced society, no one can know all things or do all things. Assistance in many, not a few, endeavors is both essential and necessary. Most cannot diagnose and treat health complaints, especially horrific injuries or potentially fatal diseases; resist or defeat an army; or provide the products of the marketplace crucial to individual and communal survival.

We are, each and all, much more dependent than we might like to admit; we owe our continued happiness, safety, health, and welfare to others much more than we do to ourselves. That is the message of horror stories in which a villainous force or being lays waste to the infrastructure of religious, psychological, social, medical, commercial, and other means of support essential to human life. We like to think of ourselves as independent, as able to fend for ourselves, as self-sufficient and autonomous individuals.

Horror stories that rely on the theme of abandonment beg to differ; they take, as their implicit or explicit task, the teaching of the lessons of our mutual dependence, of our need for one another, of our need to rely on each other rather than to deceive ourselves with the erroneous belief that we are, each and all, self-reliant. The recognition of such a reality should promote humility and compassion and generosity. In horror stories, it is characters with these attributes who, generally speaking, survive, while the arrogant, the indifferent, and the parsimonious do not. In the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, these are wise, worthwhile lessons, to be sure.

 

Ray Bradbury's "The Island"

Copyright 2019 by Gary L. Pullman

 

Although The Cat's Pajamas, published in 2004, may not be one of Ray Bradbury's finest collections of short stories, it does contain some good ones.

“The Island,” in which a family of four (Mrs. Benton, her daughters Alice and Madeline, and her 15-year-old son Robert) live in a large house, isolated from the larger world and imprisoned by their paranoia, may not be an altogether successful story. It does, however, show Bradbury's talent for indirection.

It seems that Mrs. Benton's fears have infected her children. Bedridden, the matriarch fears that her home may be invaded, either by robbers seeking to steal the $40,000 she's hidden beneath her bed, to rape her and her daughters, or to do both before killing them all. The children share her fears. Their defenses are to arm themselves and to ensure that “the house was locked and bolted” (15).

They have also discontinued their telephone service, except for a battery-powered “intercommunication phone circuit” (18) that lets them talk to one another in their separate rooms. Preferring not to rely upon the world beyond their own house, they've also discontinued the electric service, opting for “oil lamps” and the light and heat of logs blazing in the house's fireplaces (20). To protect themselves, each of the family members, except Mrs. Benson, keeps a pistol at hand in his or her bedroom. These decisions add to their jeopardy after they hear one of the downstairs windows break and fear that a stranger has invaded the sanctuary of their isolated home.

 

Their maid does not live in the family home, and she does not share the family's fears: “She lived but a few hours each day in this outrageous home, untouched by the mother's wild panics and fears. [She had been] made practical with years of living in the town beyond the wide moat of lawn, hedge, and wall” (20).

According to the omniscient narrator, everyone hears the breaking of the window. The family responds as the reader might predict, based upon Bradbury's characterization of them: “Rushing en masse, each [to a] room, a duplicate of the one above or below, four people flung themselves to their doors, to scrabble locks, throw bolts, and attach chains, twist keys” (20). (Bradbury makes a mistake in having his omniscient narrator declare that “ four people flung themselves to their doors,” etc., since Mrs. Benton is bedridden. Confined to her bed, she would not be able to rush back to her room or lock her door; indeed, she would never have gotten out of bed to begin with.)

By contrast, the maid does the sensible thing, as she performs “what should have been a saving, but became a despairing gesture”: she rushes from the kitchen, where she'd been cleaning and putting away “the supper wineglasses,” and “into the lower hallway,” where she calls the family members' names (20). After the family hears her “one small dismayed and accusing cry,” the mother and her children wait “for some new sound” (21).

They seem to want to confirm their worst fear (the invasion of their home) the same way that they earlier confirmed, to their own satisfaction, that their house had been invaded, by taking the sound of “metal rattling” as proof that the earlier sound of a breaking windowpane was not due to “a falling tree limb” or to a snowball (19). In other words, the residents interpret a succession of incidents as confirming one another (or as failing to do so), whether the incidents have anything to do with one another or not.

The Maid as Killer

Has the maid been killed by an intruder, someone who'd entered the house, perhaps to steal the money hidden under Mrs. Benton's bed, to rape her and her daughters, or to kill the family?

Or is the maid really dead? Has she only faked her own murder? Is she herself the killer?

The maid might have a motive: the $40,000. As the person who cleans the house, she might have found the cache, although, since Mrs. Benton is bedridden, it seems unlikely. The maid could have heard of the money, perhaps when, “in the years before,” Alice and her mother debated the wisdom of locking the house and of keeping the large sum of money on hand:

“But all a robber has to do,” said Alice, “is smash a window, undo the still locks, and—”

 

“Break a window! And warn us? Nonsense!”

 

“It would all be so simple if we only kept our money in the bank.”

 

“Again, nonsense! I learned in 1929 to keep hard cash from soft hands! There's a gun under my pillow and our money under my bed! I'm the First National Bank of Oak Green Island!”

 

“A bank worth forty thousand dollars?!”

 

“Hush! Why don't you stand at the landing and tell all the fishermen? Besides, it's not just cash that the fiends would come for. Yourself, Madeline—me!” (17)

All the maid would have to do is to break a window. Then, as panic ensues among the members of the family, she could visit the room of each, individually, and murder them, one by one. Neither Mrs. Benton nor Robert is said to fire a weapon at their killer. Madeline does and miss her aim. Alice also fires at her attacker—three times, in fact—but with her eyes closed, so it is easy to imagine that Alice misses her target, as the omniscient narrator verifies for the reader, stating that one bullet penetrates “the wall, another . . . the bottom of the door, [and the] third . . . the top” of the door (26).

The failure to fire a gun or poor aim protects the maid. As a result, the money is hers, and she can retire from the “outrageous home.” In 1952, the year in which Bradbury wrote this story, $40,000 was a lot of money, after all. As a suspect, the maid has the same three requisites for murder that a stranger would have: means, motive, and opportunity.

Alice as the Killer

Three of the family members are attacked and killed (or otherwise dies) in their respective bedrooms. Alice, who is in the library, alone survives. Shooting three times at the stranger who seeks to enter the library—and missing each time—Alice falls from the window she's opened, the sill of which she straddles, and makes good her escape through the snow. Was the maid also murdered? Is Alice, the sole survivor, the killer?

Because of the indirect style that Bradbury employs, which often describes actions, frequently in fragments without much context, and offers only snippets of conversation, while flitting from one character to another, either possibility seems to exist: either the maid or Alice, it appears, could be the killer.

Either could have broken a downstairs window, thereby precipitating the family's panic, and picked the victims off, one by one.

If Alice is the murderer, she certainly has the means (her gun) and the opportunity (she lives in the same house as the victims, her family), but what about the motive? What reason would she have to kill her mother, her sister, and her brother? After all, as a member of the family, she already enjoys the benefits such status confers upon her: food, clothing, shelter, even luxury.

However, she also must suffer the isolation, the deprivation (there is neither telephone service beyond the house nor electricity; nor is there much companionship, and there is no normalcy) in the “outrageous house,” which is occupied by eccentric and paranoid family members. With $40,000, she might start life anew. She alone is in the library, which suggests she has an interest in the wider world and in art and culture, articles which are in short supply in the madhouse in which she lives.

At the end of the story, objectivity appears in the figure of “the sheriff and his men” (26). Finally, there are individuals from the wider world, authorities trained to respond to emergencies and to solve crimes. Alice has been away; she has escaped; now, “hours later,” she has returned “with the police” (26).

The sheriff, observing the open front door, is surprised by the audacity of the intruder: “He must have just opened up the front door and strolled out, damn, not caring who saw!” (27)

The sheriff and his men also confirm the second set of footprints leading “down the front porch stairs into the white soft velvet snow.” The footprints are “evenly spaced,” suggesting “a certain serenity” and confidence (27).

Alice is amazed at the size of the footprints and the implication of their dimensions: “Oh, God, what a little man” (27).

But are the footprints those of a man?

Could they be the maid's footprints? Alice thinks they are the footprints of a man, but Alice never saw the person at the door to the library who'd sought to get to her; she'd fired at the library door with her “eyes shut” when she'd observed the doorknob turning, and all three of “her shots had gone wide” (26).

If the maid faked her own death, prior to killing the other family members, maybe the footprints are the maid's and not those of a male intruder. Maybe Alice has merely supposed the footprints are those of a man. After all, her mother often warned that rapists could assault them: “Besides, it's not just cash that the fiends would come for. Yourself, Madeline—me!” she'd told Alice (17). In this case, the maid left the footprints descending the front porch stairs and parading from the house “neatly” and “evenly spaced, with a certain serenity,” and Alice left the other set of footprints, those that begin outside the library window and run “away from silence” (26-27).

The first set of footprints could also be those of Alice herself. But what about the other set of footprints that Alice sees when she returns with the police, those “in the snow, running away from the silence” of the house? They are not the same set of footprints that she sees and calls to the attention of the sheriff and his men, those which lead down the front porch's stairs and across the lawn, “vanishing away into the cold night and snowing town” (27). Does this second set of footprints constitute an insurmountable problem for the idea that Alice is the killer?

After opening the front door, she could have left it open and run down the porch stairs and across the lawn to notify the police of the alleged intruder's dastardly deeds. This would be the reason that the footprints are small for a man; they were not left by a male intruder at all, but by Alice herself. The footprints that Alice sees fleeing from the library's open window could be imaginary footprints, which only she alone sees, possibly as a means of supporting her fantasy that an intruder, rather than she herself, murdered her family.

If this is the case, it makes sense that, suffering guilt, she would try to obliterate the only set of footprints at the scene, those of the “little man” (Alice herself): “Alice bent and put out her hand. She measured then tried to cover them with a thrust of her numb fingers.” And it makes sense that she stops crying only after “the wind and the winter and the night did her a gentle kindness. . . [by] filling and erasing” the incriminating evidence “until at last, with no trace, with no memory of their smallness, they were gone” (27).

Interestingly, the omniscient narrator states only that Alice saw the set of footprints leading from the open library window, but acknowledges that both she and the police see the footprints descending the front porch stairs and heading across the lawn, toward the distant, “snowing town.” Is one sight a hallucination, the other a reality?

Thanks to Bradbury's indirect communication, maybe not. The omniscient narrator does not tell the reader that the police see this second set of footprints. The omniscient narrator states only that “she [Alice] saw her footprints in the snow, running away from silence.” If Alice is the killer, after dispatching the maid, her mother, her brother, and her sister, she could have “fallen” out the library window and run to the front porch, covering her footprints as she went, the same way the wind eliminates the “small” footprints of the presumed intruder, by “smoothing and erasing them until at last . . . they were gone” (27).

An Intruder as a Killer

Alternatively, the killer could be a stranger, an intruder, come to rob or rape the women of the house, as Mrs. Benton has long imagined and feared might happen. This is the story's straightforward interpretation, and, despite a few incredulities, such as the intruder's remaining alive despite being the target of several shots fired by different individuals, the small footprints said to be his, the unlikelihood of his knowing about the cache of cash, and his breaking and entering without knowing what he risks he might face from the family inside the house, is a plausible—and perhaps the most plausible—interpretation of the plot.

Thee Family Are the Killers

Finally, another interpretation is possible concerning the killer's identity—or identities.

Maybe neither an intruder, the maid, nor Alice is the murderer. Perhaps the family members each killed him- or herself or died of fright. They are paranoid. Each has a loaded gun at hand. Although panicked by the breaking of a window, they allow (at first) that the broken window could have resulted from nothing more sinister than “a falling tree limb” or a thrown snowball. It's only after they hear a second sound, that of “metal rattling,” that they irrationally conclude that a window has been raised and that an intruder has entered their home (19). Their frantic telephone calls to one another fan the flames of their panic, as do the sounds of each successive gunshot, as the family members suppose one of their own seeks to defend him- or herself against the intruder.

While such defenses are possible, it's also possible that the disturbed, terrified mother and children, afraid of being robbed or raped and murdered, dispatch themselves, preferring a bullet to the savagery that the intruder might unleash upon them. Certainly, Bradbury's omniscient narrator impresses their terror upon the story's readers. Each is shut up alone, behind a locked door, separated from each other and from society at large.

Mrs. Benton sees (or imagines) her door opening, and she does not respond thereafter to Alice's frantic pleas over the telephone (24). Did she somehow take her own life?

Robert expires with a groan, perhaps dying of fright: “His heart stopped” (24).

Madeline says the intruder is at her door, “fumbling with the lock,” and the others hear “one shot and only one” (25). Has Madeline shot at the intruder—and missed? Or has she killed herself?

Only Alice now survives (unless the maid faked her own death and is, in fact, the killer). When Alice sees the knob to the library door turn, she also shoots, with her eyes closed—three times—and also misses the intruder (if there is an intruder).

How unlikely is it that two armed, terrified, paranoid people—Madeline, and Alice—would fail to kill their attacker or that Madeline would fire only once at someone she feared was trying to rob, rape, or kill her? Yet precisely this happens!

But what about the maid? In this scenario, how is her death explained? She is not like the family for whom she works. She does not share their paranoia. She is not isolated by choice, but lives in the town and works only a few hours each day in the family's home. She is “practical.” As far as we know, she is unarmed. Besides, even if she has a gun, why would she kill herself? The story is all but silent as to her demise (if she does die). All the omniscient narrator tells readers is that the maid has entered the “main lower hallway,” calling the names of the family members, apparently trying to get them to assemble.

Previously, however, readers have learned that Mrs. Benton objects to and discourages shouting, afraid that it could attract the attention of “fiends” (17). Alice thinks, as, in their panic, the others begin to scream, “I hear . . . . We all hear. And he'll hear . . . too” (22). Using their intercommunication phone service, Alice tells Mrs. Benton, “Quiet, he'll hear you” (23). Later, she is more direct: “Mother, shut up” (24). After her mother's death, Alice thinks, “If only she hadn't yelled. . . . If only she hadn't showed him the way” (24). Alice is downstairs, as is the maid. Could Alice have shot the maid to silence her and protect herself and her family?

As we've seen, there are at least four possibilities for interpreting Bradbury's story. So, what does happen in “The Island”?

Does an intruder actually enter the house and kill its occupants?

Does the maid fake her own death and then execute the members of the family, except Alice, who escapes?

Does Alice kill everyone else, the maid included, before she “escapes” an imaginary killer?

Do the family members kill themselves, while Alice kills the maid?

Thanks to Bradbury's indirect style, the possibilities multiply. While some may seem less likely than others, each is apt to have its own subscribers. 

 

Among the other stories in The Cat's Pajamas that I found particularly interesting are “Ole, Orozco! Siqueiros, Si!” and “The Completist,” each of which will be murdered and dissected in future Chillers and Thrillers posts.

Building Fear

Copyright 2018 by Gary L. Pullman

The architecture common to horror stories, whether novels, short stories, or movies, is conducive to the evocation of fear. Although this statement may seem something of a truism, it may be less obvious that it seems. What, precisely, makes a building evoke fear? By using the Aristotelian approach—that is, by analyzing mages of haunted buildings—we can identify the exact mechanisms of this evocation.

Size matters.

Size matters. Large spaces, especially when they appear labyrinthine, disorient us, confuse us, frustrate us. When we're not sure where we are, we don't know what places—what rooms, for example—are safe or in which direction our escape lies. Therefore, our ability to fight or to take flight is hampered. Spacious buildings of uncertain layout are frightening because, well, they could be the death of us.

Probably the best-known example of “size matters” is Stephen King's Overlook Hotel (The Shining [1977]), the mansion in his Rose Red, or the house in the Spierig Brothers' 2018 movie Winchester. (Full disclosure: the house in Winchester and the house in Craig R. Baxley's 2002 television miniseries Rose Red, written by King, were both inspired by the Winchester Mystery Mansion in San Jose, California.)

Books in print, including The Shining; Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House (1959); and Horace Walpole's The Castle of Otranto (1764), an early Gothic novel that, when it comes to haunted houses, was one of the prototypes that started it all, are first-rate examples of the principle that size matters.

Darkness matters.

Darkness matters. When it's dark, we can't see; we are blinded. We rely most heavily on our ability to see. When we cannot see, we are handicapped; our ability to observe, to conduct visual surveillance, to reconnoiter, is impeded. What we can't see could be dangerous, even deadly. We could be attacked. We could run into a wall or fall down stairs. We could lose our way.

Many horror stories are shot mostly in the dark, including Alejandro Amenábar's 2001 film, The Others; Victor Zarcoff's 2016 movie, 13 Cameras; and Wes Craven's 1991 film, The People Under the Stairs, to name but a few.

Stephen King's novel 'Salem's Lot (1975), Dan Simmons's novel Summer of Night (1991), Bram Stoker's short story, “The Judge's House” (1891), H. G. Wells's short story “The Red Room” (1896) are excellent examples of printed works that take place largely in the dark.

Isolation matters.

Isolation matters. When alone, we are cut off. There are no emergency medical personnel, no firefighters, no police, no military. We do not have access to stores, utilities, or repairers. Our society is sophisticated and complex. None of us knows enough to be entirely self-sufficient. We rely on experts. We're helpless without them. When no one's home but us (and the monster), we're in a whole world full of hurt. Here, King scores again with The Shining. Other stories in which out-of-the-way buildings evoke fear include The Hills Have Eyes (1977), Psycho (1961), Wrong Turn (2003), and The Cabin in the Woods (2012).

For in-print stories of horror in isolated settings, try Stephen King's novel, The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon (1999) or his Despeation (1996), James Rollins's novel Subterranean (1999), and Denise Lehane's novel Shutter Island (2003). Sir Winston Churchill's short story “Man Overboard” (1899), H. G. Wells's short story “The Cone” (1895), Edgar Allan Poe's short story “The Masque of the Red Death” (1845), and Charles Dickens's short story “The Signal-man” (1866) are superb examples of the isolated horror story as well.

Neglect matters.

Neglect matters. If someone cannot (or will not) look after his or her own home, he or she probably won't look after us, either, should we need help. Neglectful people are usually careless people. Think about that for a moment: careless people = people who care less; in fact, they may not care at all. People who don't give a damn are not survival assets; quite the contrary, their negligence could get us killed.

Of course, a building, especially a house, in a state of neglect, suggests a negligent resident or owner. Do we really want to trust our lives to such an individual. The answer is simple, and it isn't no; it's hell no! The Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode “Out of Sight, Out of Mind” (1997) is an example of what can happen as the result of neglect, as is the movie Hide and Seek (2005).

Neglect also happens in Stephen King's novels Carrie (1974) and in Bentley Little's novel The Ignored (1997).

Disrepair matters.

Disrepair matters. Disrepair may be caused by neglect, but it goes well beyond the effects of inattention and laziness. It suggests unsoundness verging upon collapse. Symbolically, a building in a state of disrepair suggests madness. A house in such a state implies that its resident or owner may also be unsound, verging upon mental collapse. Certainly, that's the case in Edgar Allan Poe's “The Fall of the House of Usher” (1839) and a host of other haunted house horror stories.

Location matters.

Location matters. We've already mentioned how isolation can evoke feelings of helplessness. A house on a hill can dwarf us. Looking up at something implies that we are smaller (and lesser) than it, that we are inferior to it. That's why judges and legislators sit on high, to impress us with their superior status, to help us remember our place, our subordinate positions in society. Elevation confers status and authority, weheras the lower the station, the less importance and standing one has. The house in Psycho (1961) suggests its de facto owner, Norman Bates's “mother,” rules the roost; Norman, her caretaker, works for her, much of the time in the motel on the grounds below.

Personification matters.

Personification matters. Most of the buildings we've considered are frightening, each in its own way. More frightening than most—perhaps all—others, however, is the house with a personality of its own. A house to which human attributes (in the case of horror, horrible ones) have been assigned are more than just creepy; they can think, feel, and, worst of all, accomplish their will through action. They can injure, maim, or commit premeditated murder. The house in The Amityville Horror (2005), we can tell by the “eyelike windows,” to borrow a phrase from Poe's “The Fall of the House of Usher,” indicate there's a twisted, maniacal madness to the place. It's a house with a personality. It even has curb appeal. To enter, though, is tantamount to suicide.

As the opening paragraph of Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House indicates, her haunted house is also personified:

No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream. Hill House, not sane, stood by itself against its hills, holding darkness within; it had stood for eighty years and might stand for eighty more. Within, walls continued upright, bricks met neatly, floors were firm, and doors were sensibly shut; silence lay steadily against the wood and stone of Hill House, and whatever walked there, walked alone. 

 

In a later post (maybe the next one), we'll take a look at the interior of buildings built to evoke fear.

Isolating Your Characters

Copyright 2010 by Gary L. Pullman

In a previous post (“Horror as Image and Word”) , I spoke of the benefit that authors of horror stories can derive from physically isolating their characters. By locating the story’s action in a remote setting, a writer heightens their vulnerability. They are more helpless than they might be otherwise, had they not been cut off from the larger community, society, or nation in which they live, having no access to emergency medical services, law enforcement personnel, financial institutions, or even friends and family. They are on their own, with no one and nothing else to assist them.

There’s another way to isolate characters besides that of locating them in remote places, far from the madding crowd: separate them from others by making them shy, emotionally detached or withdrawn, or even antisocial. (I touch upon this topic in my earlier post, “Ray Bradbury’s ‘Love Potion ’: Learning from the Masters.”) Psychological or emotional isolation has similar effects to physical isolation, making it difficult for a character to share his or her true and deepest thoughts and emotions with others. A shy or socially withdrawn character is likely to be incommunicative beyond the most superficial level, and an antisocial character is apt to go so far as to lie to others, even on a routine basis.

Wikipedia describes shyness as a manifestation of such tendencies as an avoidance of “the objects of their apprehension in order to keep from feeling uncomfortable,” which initiates a vicious circle of sorts, in which “the situations remain unfamiliar and the shyness perpetuates itself.” Shyness, the article indicates, may be a temporary or a permanent condition, and it may be mild or extreme, adding:

The condition of true shyness may simply involve the discomfort of difficulty in knowing what to say in social situations, or may include crippling physical manifestations of uneasiness. Shyness usually involves a combination of both symptoms, and may be quite devastating for the sufferer, in many cases leading them to feel that they are boring, or exhibit bizarre behavior in an attempt to create interest, alienating them further. Behavioral traits in social situations such as smiling, easily producing suitable conversational topics, assuming a relaxed posture and making good eye contact, which come spontaneously for the average person. . . may not be second nature for a shy person. Such people might only effect such traits by great difficulty, or they may even be impossible to display. . . In fact, those who are shy are actually perceived more negatively because of the way they act towards others. Shy individuals are often distant during conversations, which may cause others to create poor impressions of them, simply adding to their shyness in social situations (“Shyness”).

Jack Torrance, the protagonist of The Shining isn’t shy as much as he is socially detached from the world, or socially withdrawn. He is a mystery, if not exactly a stranger, even to his own wife and son. In discussing this character in an earlier post, “Narrative and Dramatic Techniques,” I indicated how, according to literary critics, the filmmaker, Stanley Kubrick, used his motion picture camera’s photography of a mountain to characterize Torrance as emotionally cold and detached.

Extremely wide vistas of the mountainous landscape induce a cold, detached and depersonalized perspective. Humans are unimportant in this vast physical, and metaphysical, terrain. . . .

Jack undergoes a freezing of emotional warmth and empathy. His blood runs cold, both figuratively and literally, as he becomes one with the forces of winter and death (Anna Powell, Deleuze and Horror Film, 43-44).

As a result of his detachment, Torrance both becomes a monster, and his cold-heartedness becomes the death of him when, trapped inside a maze following a blizzard, he freezes to death as he pursues his young son, intent upon murdering the boy.

The antisocial personality disorder is different than shyness. Recognizing it as a mental illness of sorts, the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual defines this condition as “a pervasive pattern of disregard for, and violation of, the rights of others that begins in childhood or early adolescence and continues into adulthood.” (“Antisocial Personality Disorder,” Wikipedia). Serial killer Ted Bundy, among others, is said to have had such a condition. The disorder is marked by such symptoms as

[a] persistent lying or stealing; [an] apparent lack or remorse or empathy for others; cruelty to animals; poor behavioral controls. . ; a history of childhood conduct disorder; recurring difficulties with the law; [a] tendency to violate the boundaries and rights of others; substance abuse; aggressive, often violent behavior. . . [an] inability to tolerate boredom; [and a] disregard for safety” (“Antisocial Personality Disorder”).

Such additional conditions are often associated with ant personality disorder as “anxiety disorder, depressive disorder, substance-related disorders, somatization disorder, pathological risk-seeking, borderline personality disorder, histrionic personality disorder, [and] narcissistic personality disorder” (“Antisocial Personality Disorder”).

In short, those who are afflicted with the antisocial personality disorder are hard to get along with. They are dangerous not only to themselves, but to others as well. Moreover, despite the dazzling array of symptoms and associated disorders, such individuals can, and do, pass as normal among others. Bundy was not only considered sane by the team of psychiatric and psychological doctors who examined him, but by the coworker (and author of The Stranger Beside Me) Ann Rule, who worked alongside him in a Seattle crisis clinic for a year and a half. Young women often found the brutal killer attractive, and he had no problem in finding victims among the college coeds he frequently targeted. Even during his incarceration and trial, he had suitors among the female sex, one of whom, Carole Ann Boone, married him on the witness stand as Bundy cross-examined her, allegedly bearing the serial killer a daughter. During his career as a serial killer, however, Bundy killed somewhere between thirty and a hundred and thirty young women, one as young as twelve years old.

Interestingly, one critic, John E. Reilly, diagnoses the narrator of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Tell-tale Heart” as a “paranoid schizophrenic” (“The Lesser Death-Watch and ‘The Tell-Tale Heart’,” American Transcendental Quarterly, Vol. 2, Second Quarter, 1969, 3-9), a diagnosis with which another critic, Brett Zimmerman, agrees in “‘Moral Insanity’ or Paranoid Schizophrenia: Poe’s ‘The Tell-Tale Heart,’” Mosaic, Vol. 25, No. 2, Spring, 1992, 39-48). This storyteller’s mental illness has obviously alienated him (or, some critics recently claim, her) from both reality and his (or her) kinsman, whom he (or she) murders.

One need not suffer from either antisocial personality disorder or paranoid schizophrenia to be emotionally detached or withdrawn. Shyness will also accomplish the goal of psychologically isolating a character from his or her peers and making him or her emotionally (and, indeed, physically) vulnerable to the monster, human or otherwise, who stalks a group of men and women, and a shy person may be regarded with sympathy on the part of the reader, whereas, despite his or her mental illnesses, neither an antisocial nor a paranoid schizophrenic is likely to garner much in the way of the reader’s compassion or even understanding. The writer may want to make a character who is stalked but not killed shy, but the character who is both stalked and killed antisocial or schizophrenic--or, for that matter, make the killer him- or herself antisocial or schizophrenic. There is, of course, another option for writers who want to isolate their characters so as to cut them off from all outside support and assistance: isolate them physically, by locating the story’s action in a remote and inaccessible setting, and then further isolate them by making one or more of the characters shy, antisocial, or schizophrenic.

Horror as Image and Word

Copyright 2009 by Gary L. Pullman

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.