House of Horrors

Copyright 2010 by Gary L. Pullman

Horror stories are like houses. In constructing a domicile, builders lay a foundation and, then, according to the blueprints designed by the architect, with the needs and desires of its future residents in mind, the construction crew builds the residence.

 

After the family moves into the house, they must furnish it and maintain it, repairing fixtures and appliances, repainting the interior and the exterior, landscaping the yard. They may also improve the property, adding rooms or, perhaps, a backyard swimming pool or tennis court.

 

Some houses--bungalows, perhaps--are short stories; others, such as mansions, are novels. In any case, particular rooms are provided for specific needs and purposes: a living room for socializing, a dining room for enjoying meals, a kitchen for preparing the meals to be enjoyed, bedrooms for sleeping, one or more bathrooms for bathing, an attic for storage, and so forth. The narrative equivalent to the room is the scene, just as its counterpart to the yard is the setting.

 

The family, of course, corresponds to the narrative’s characters. As any television sitcom shows, conflicts arise from the interactions of the family members. Consider the horror stories which take place in a house (or, for that matter, a castle or a hotel): The Exorcist, The Amityville Horror, The Haunting of Hill House, The Castle of Otranto.

 

Of course, a community is an extension of a family, in which case, the rooms, as it were, of the house, are not chambers but other buildings: the library, stores, the police station, the fire station, the hospital, the high school or college campus, the dentist’s office, the community swimming pool, the movie theater.

 

The characters are the townspeople, and the setting is the landscape both in and around the town. As Stephen King’s novels show, a story becomes more complicated and more sophisticated when it takes a village to tell a story. Most horror writers have written one or more short stories or novels set in small towns or even big cities. Rather than the personal or the familial, such stories typically deal with the social aspects of human existence.

 

If houses and families can be expanded into villages and communities, small towns and their residents can be extended into nations and nationalities or, for that matter, into the entire world and its global community, the human race. Think Stephen King’s The Stand, Robert McCammon’s Swan’s Song, or H. G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds.

 

The concerns of such narratives expand accordingly: instead of rooms, cities; instead of yards or landscapes, nations; instead of a family, humanity itself. The theme of such stories is typically scientific (whether in the biological or sociological sense), for these narratives are often about the survival of the species itself.

 

Whether it is housed in a single-family residence, a small town, a nation, or the planet itself, horror is primarily a family affair. It’s just that the concept of family changes at each level, from mom, dad, and the kids to the townspeople to one’s fellow citizens to humanity itself. At every level, problems arise, helping writers to define and to redefine what it means to be a human being living in a world of menaces and malevolence. Hank Ketchum never had it so good.