Eerie Paintings and Their Equally Eerie Interpretations

Copyright 2018 by Gary L. Pullman

In an interesting article, “8 Eerie-Looking Paintings People Believe To Be Haunted,” Anantha Sharma provides the scoop on the reasons for this strange belief.

Prints of Giovanni Bragolin's The Crying Boy were found among the debris of burned-down buildings. Correlation became cause as believers claimed the fires resulted from the presence of the prints in the destroyed homes. Without its alleged association with fires, the painting, of itself, doesn't seem all that eerie—at least, not to me. You be the judge:

A painting rendered in oil and the anonymous artist's own blood does look eerie and would look so even if one wasn't aware of its bloody background. Not long after painting his masterpiece, the artist committed suicide. Its present owner, Sean Robinson, attributes the paranormal phenomena he says occurs inside his home, where the painting hangs, to the work of art. Of course, instead of a cause-and-effect relationship between the painting and the alleged paranormal phenomena, there could be only a correlation.

According to Sharma, the present owners of Bill Stoneham's The Hands Resist Him believe the painting is “cursed,” so, to get rid of it, they're selling it on eBay. Apparently, they're not as concerned about passing the curse on to the painting's next owners, whoever they are, as they are of getting rid of the damned thing.

The presently cursed owners claim the children represented in the painting move at night and sometimes, feeling a bit claustrophobic perhaps, step out of the frame and into the chamber wherein it is displayed. The reason they believe the children are alive seems to be their own firsthand experience in having observed the rather animated painting's subjects.

A gift in one hand, a bouquet of rises in the other, a young redheaded girl in a pink dress, a blue sash around her waist, smiles slightly, perhaps hesitantly, as she looks forth from her frame. According to the staff of the Driskoll Hotel in Austin, Texas, the portrait, Love Letters Replica, has attracted the attention of a dead four-year-old girl, Samantha Houston, a US senator's daughter, who tumbled down the hotel's grand staircase as she pursued a ball.

Some believe the girl in the painting seeks to “communicate with them” and witness her “expressions change” when they observe her “too long.” Might young Samantha be trying to communicate with the hotel's staff or guests through the portrait of this young lady with whom Samantha's ghost identifies for some mysterious reason?

Sharma's article, which discusses these and four other mysterious paintings, is well worth a read.

What I'm most interested in, though, are the means by which people assign supernatural or paranormal significance to ordinary objects—in this case, paintings. Obviously, such works or art are paint on canvas, so how and why do they become something more, something else, something otherworldy?

One reason, as mentioned, is that people confuse or replace the idea of coincidence, or correlation, with the concept of cause and effect. As Robert T. Carroll points out in his Skeptic's Dictionary article, “parapsychology,” correlation is not causation and the very notion of correlation is itself complex and problematic:

. . . correlations don't establish causality. Finding a correlation that is not what would be predicted by chance does not establish a causal event. Nor does it establish that if it is a causal event, it is a paranormal event. Furthermore, even if there is a causal event, the correlation itself isn't of much use in determining what that event consists of. What you think is cause may be the effect. Or, there may be some third, unknown, factor which is causing the effect observed. Or, the correlation may be due to chance, even if it is statistically unlikely in a certain sense. Or the correlation may be illusory and due to an experimenter expectation effect rather than to any real causal event.

The ability, Carroll says, to “duplicate the results” of experiments “with more and more rigorous tests” is necessary to determine whether a possible causal relationship is “highly probable.” Otherwise, he suggests, a cause-and-effect relationship between two incidents (discoveries of prints of The Crying Boy at multiple fire sites or the presence of a particular painting in a home in which paranormal events are said to occur) should be taken with a grain or two of salt.

What about seeing something happen with one's very own eyes? Is seeing believing? Not according to Carroll. Eyewitness, or anecdotal evidence, is weak and perhaps even more problematic than determining whether a relationship between the occurrences of two incidents is correlative or causal in nature:

Anecdotes are unreliable for various reasons. Stories are prone to contamination by beliefs, later experiences, feedback, selective attention to details, and so on. Most stories get distorted in the telling and the retelling. Events get exaggerated. Time sequences get confused. Details get muddled. Memories are imperfect and selective; they are often filled in after the fact. People misinterpret their experiences. Experiences are conditioned by biases, memories, and beliefs, so people's perceptions might not be accurate. Most people aren't expecting to be deceived, so they may not be aware of deceptions that others might engage in. Some people make up stories. Some stories are delusions. Sometimes events are inappropriately deemed psychic simply because they seem improbable when they might not be that improbable after all. In short, anecdotes are inherently problematic and are usually impossible to test for accuracy.

Thus, stories of personal experience with paranormal or supernatural events have little scientific value.

Carroll's critique of anecdotal evidence applies to both the animated children in The Hands That Resist Him and the altered expressions of the subject of Love Letters Replica.

In the case of Replica, a few other connections between the painting and unrelated objective events are also identified or suggested:

• A four-year-old girl, Samantha Houston, a US senator's daughter, tumbled down the hotel's grand staircase as she pursued a ball.
• Samantha's ghost is attracted to the painting.
• Samantha's ghost is trying to “communicate” with hotel staff and guests through the painting.
• Observers witness the portrait's “expressions change” over time.

There is no evidence to connect any of these claims. Nevertheless, by drawing relationships that sound possible or, in some instances, perhaps even reasonable, where there are none, the incidents become linked in a seeming series of chronological and, in some cases, even (allegedly) causal sequences, unifying otherwise disparate and distinct events so that the impression is created that the chain of (supposedly) related incidents reinforces the likelihood that the painting's overall significance (i. e., its interpretation) is apt to be correct: Through the portrait of the girl in the hotel, Samantha's ghost seeks to communicate with the living. In fact, there is no evidence to support the linkages of these separate occurrences or to account for their significance as a whole.

So why do we tend to make such associations? Why must we seek to explain the inexplicable or, indeed, to invent explanations of things that need no explanation? Might a work of art, for example, have significance simply because, having been created, it exists, as proponents of the art-for-art's-sake movement suggest?

One view of the impulse that drives our need to know why is known as “cognitive closure.” Formulated in 1972, by psychologist Jerome Kagan, this theory holds that we are disturbed by uncertainty. When we don't know what causes something, we seek an explanation to “eliminate the distress of the unknown.” The downside to this need to know why is that

. . . cognitive closure can bias our choices, change our preferences, and influence our mood. In our rush for definition, we tend to produce fewer hypotheses and search less thoroughly for information. We become more likely to form judgments based on early cues (something known as impressional primacy), and as a result become more prone to anchoring and correspondence biases (using first impressions as anchors for our decisions and not accounting enough for situational variables). And, perversely, we may not even realize how much we are biasing our own judgments.

Each of these errors can, in turn, occasion situations which themselves present horrific possibilities ripe for the author of horror stories. We can settle for a possible explanation when, had we continued our quest for cognitive closure, we could have discerned more likely explanations with larger and more numerous capacities for application. Perhaps we could even learn how to combat or eliminate the threat our story's characters face (for, in horror fiction, characters always face some sort of threat of an unknown nature or origin: think of Them! or The Thing from Another World.)

Indeed, writers of horror (and other genres of) fiction often play upon this very array of possible explanations, suggesting several before the true one is understood or supplied. In deft hands, this approach heightens suspense, even as it complicates conflicts (think of The Exorcist or The Possession of Emily Rose); while, in less adroit hands, this approach converts the sublime into the ridiculous (think of almost any of Stephen King's or Bentley Little's novels—in regard to the former, I'm thinking, at the moment, of Under the Dome: King's list of possible causes of the dome's existence, among which are a foreign government's technology and the technology of a huge, wealthy corporation, are far superior to the actual cause—an adolescent female extraterrestrial's inversion of a gigantic celestial bowl over the town she thereby cuts off from the rest of humanity).

In horror fiction, as in life, it seems we expect incidents, including paranormal and supernatural ones, to be explained. Short story writers, novelists, or screenwriters who fail to explain such occurrences in emotionally and intellectually satisfying ways disappoint readers or moviegoers at their own risk. There are a wealth of stories to occupy our time; motivated by our need to know the whys and wherefores of events, by our need for “cognitive closure,” we're not likely to continue to read the work of writers whose explanations of bizarre incidents is either nonexistent or too ludicrous to satisfy us, especially after we've devoted hours to their tales of terror.

To be a satisfying horror writer, one need not be a scientist or a philosopher (although at least a basic knowledge of both disciplines can't hurt), but one must, at the very least, not disappoint one's audience with a tacked-on, dues-ex-machina type of ending that explains away, rather than explains, the strange phenomena that have occurred throughout the story.

Evolutionary Fiction

Copyright 2018 by Gary L. Pullman

According to the theory of evolution, species survive by adapting to their environment. For biologists—until recently, at least—the environment has been pretty much synonymous with the external, natural world. (More recently, a branch of psychology, evolutionary psychology, has suggested that certain mental processes and personality traits may have survived because they helped the human species to adapt to their physical environment and, therefore, to survive.)

Human beings differ from lower animals in several important ways, one of which is their possession not only of consciousness, but also of self-awareness, of consciousness of oneself as a self. Men, women, and children, in other words, live in two environments, that of the natural world without and that of the subjective world within, the world of beliefs, emotions, reason, will, and values.

In evolutionary fiction, a story begins when one or more changes in one or both of these worlds occur(s), disturbing the protagonist's equilibrium (his or her emotional balance, or calmness of mind), causing him or her to adapt to the environmental change(s) and thereby regain his or her equilibrium: in The Wizard of Oz (1939), Dorothy Gale becomes dissatisfied with her family life (a change in the inner world of her emotions); as a result, she runs away from home (seeks to adapt to the change in her emotions); she develops independence by acting autonomously, dousing the Wicked Witch of the West with water, thus melting her adversary (adaptation); having come to appreciate her home as a result of her experiences in Oz (adaptation), she returns to her family and friends, whom she'd left behind in Kansas. Dorothy's adaptations to the change in her inner world (her emotions) changes her: she recovers her equilibrium because she changes (i. e., adapts to her environment). In The Wizard of Oz, emotion drives Dorothy to act.

The external world can also introduce change to which the protagonist must adapt. In Backcountry (2015), Jenn and her boyfriend, Alex, leave their home in the city, driving to a national park in Canada. Their arrival introduces them to a different environment, a forest, with different challenges than those with which they are familiar. (Alex has some experience in camping, but his many mistakes show that he is by no means the master woodsman he believes himself to be.) Among the challenges the couple face are those of an intrusive and aggressive stranger, Brad; mountainous and forested terrain; and a bear. Alex does not adequately adapt, so he does not survive the couple's ordeal. Ironically, Jenn, who knows less than Alex about camping, but who has better judgment and makes better decisions, does adapt to the challenges of their new environment, and lives. (Alex's many errors of judgment are identified in my post, “Backcountry: A Study in the Cause and Effects of Poor Judgment”). In short, Jenn's intelligence and common sense prevail, while Alex's smug self-confidence and overestimation of his knowledge and abilities fail.

A similar “test” of mental processes and personality traits occurs in the 1993 thriller, Falling Down, with William Foster failing to adapt to the changes in his environments, both internal and external, and Sergeant Prendergast succeeding in doing so in regard to his own, similar challenges. Foster's marriage has ended in divorce; Prendergast's marriage is on life support. Both men encounter hostility, unfairness, and social decadence. They have both lost children, Foster to his wife in their divorce, Prendergast to death. Because he cannot adapt to the challenges these changes introduce into his life, Foster is killed, while Prendergast, who does adapt to similar challenges in his own life, survives.

With these examples in mind, we can construct the formula that is typical of evolutionary narratives:

1. A change in the protagonist's environment, internal, external, or both, occurs.
2. Experiencing disequilibrium as a result of the change(s), the protagonist successfully adapts to the change(s) (comedy) or fails to do so (tragedy).
3. As a result of the success or failure of his or her attempt to adapt, the protagonist survives or perishes, respectively.

Perishing can, but need not, be literal. A protagonist can “perish” figuratively: he or she can go to prison, lose his or her family or friends, go bankrupt, become disabled, lose dignity or respect, and so forth.

In evolutionary fiction, stories become “laboratories” of sorts in which beliefs, emotions, reason, will, and values are “tested” by changes in the external environment, the internal environment, or both environments. Thus, evolutionary narratives suggest the relative survivability strength of various subjective processes and personality traits, whether the stimuli (challenges) are imposed from within or from without the character him- or herself, thereby underscoring the fact that people are both subjects and objects simultaneously. Ironically, then, evolutionary fiction seems to support the idea that human beings occupy a dualistic world that is both matter and “spirit,” that we are ghosts in machines.

In future posts, we will apply the formula for evolutionary fiction to several horror narratives that appear as short stories, novels, or motion pictures.

Newspaper Plotting

Copyright 2018 by Gary L. Pullman

Many writers have developed plots for their stories, long or short, from newspaper accounts of actual events. A quick way to accomplish this procedure is to change, add, or delete a word or a phrase to make a mundane incident appear bizarre or sinister. Here are a few examples from the “State-By-State” column in the Tuesday, October 16, 2018, issue of the national newspaper USA Today. First, the actual news item is quoted, directly, and then the altered version is presented, the changes are indicated in bold font.

Alabama[,] Birmingham: Sheriff's deputies in Jefferson County are now armed with body cameras.

Alabama[,] Birmingham: Sheriff's deputies in Jefferson County are now armed with weaponized body extensions.

(What, exactly, are “weaponized body extensions”? Whatever you want them to be; have fun deciding.)

Alaska[,] Homer: After decades of serving independent movie selections, Barb's Video and DVD is closing its doors this month.

Alaska[,] Homer: After decades of showing snuff films, Thanatos Palace Video and DVD is closing its doors this month.

(For legal purposes, in fiction it is often advisable to change the names of actual persons and businesses; some writers also change the names of actual cities..)

Iowa[,] Des Moines: State law enforcement officials are warning of a scam in which callers pretend to be state police and demand payment.

Iowa[,] Des Moines: State law enforcement officials are warning of a scam in which callers pretend to be hit men and demand payment to call off the contracts on potential “target's” lives.

Nevada[,] Reno: The 1872 Reno Mercantile and Masonic Lodge, downtown's oldest building, has been found to be too unstable to save.

Nevada[,] Reno: The 1872 Reno Dry Goods Store and Satanic Lodge, downtown's oldest building, has been found to be too mentally unstable to save.

A mad, possibly demon-possessed personified building: now that's a twist!

Ohio[,[ Columbus: An exhibition of veterans' art will showcase works by former military service members from across the state.

Ohio[,[ Columbus: An exhibition of veterans' art will showcase photographs of combat fatalities caused by former military service members from across the state.

Pennsylvania[,] Pittsburgh: Authorities say a pizza deliveryman was shot and killed during a daytime robbery.

Pennsylvania[,] Pittsburgh: Authorities say a pizza deliveryman was shot, killed, and eaten during a daytime delivery to a family of cannibals.*

Rhode Island[,] Providence: Senator Jack Reed is helping to kick off a new apprenticeship program for people who want to build submarines.

Rhode Island[,] Providence: Senator Jim Kinkaid is helping to kick off a new apprenticeship program for people who want to build sanctuary cities for aliens (i. e., extraterrestrials).

An alternative:

Rhode Island[,] Providence: Senator Jim Kinkaid is helping to kick off a new apprenticeship program for people who want to build holding compounds for zombies.

(The beauty of this item is that the people—or creatures—to be housed in the new buildings can be pretty much anything, natural or supernatural. In one of the X-Men movies, a plastic room, suspended in midair, was built to confine Magneto.)

Washington[,] Cougar: Forecasters say strong winds are expected to blow volcanic ash on Mount St. Helens to nearby communities.

Washington[,] Cougar: Forecasters say strong winds are expected to blow mutagenic agents from a remote genetic engineering lab into certain unidentified communities.

Some of the reports in the column need no modification; they're already bizarre or sinister.

Arizona[,] Phoenix: A man, 59, is accused of killing his girlfriend and putting her body in a gun safe he welded shut and buried in the desert.

Massachusetts[,] Peabody: A house where a victim of the Salem witch trials once lived is on the market for $600,000.

Tennessee[,] Bristol: A man police say was run over with a lawn mower while trying to kill his son with a chain saw [sic] had his leg amputated.

A couple of items could be revised to include Bigfoot:

Idaho[,] Boise: An Idaho Fish and game Commission member is under fire after he shared photos of himself posing with baboons he killed while hunting in Africa.

Idaho[,] Boise: An Idaho Fish and game Commission member is under fire after he shared photos of himself posing with Bigfoot creatures he killed while hunting.

New Hampshire[,] Manchester: A New Hampshire Fish and Game official says a biologist shot and killed two bear cubs because they were causing a safety issue.

New Hampshire[,] Manchester: A New Hampshire Fish and Game official says a biologist shot and killed two Bigfoot cubs because they were causing a safety issue.

Once a possible plot has been obtained in this manner, t would need to be developed. A context would have to be created to account for the bizarre or sinister incident. Who caused it and why? What consequences ensued? Who was hurt or killed, how, and why? How was the incident brought to its end, by whom, and why? These are only some of the many questions that a writer would have to answer before the plot was ready to convert into a full-scale short story, novel, or screenplay.

But, hey, USA Today gave us a start!

Suburban Horror

Copyright 2018 by Gary L. Pullman

During the 1800s and the 1900s, as railroads developed enough to provide dependable, relatively inexpensive travel for many, suburbs began to appear. In England, members of the nascent middle class, having improved their fortunes through industrialization, purchased homes in the environs of densely populated, polluted cities in which the factories and other industries that had, ironically, made them rich were located. The development of subways and bus routes accelerated this exodus from urban to suburban communities. Following World War I, such suburban developments as those at Kingsbury Garden Village, Wembley Park, Cecil Park and Grange Estate, and the Cedars Estate were built by the Metropolitan Railway Country Estates Limited, located in London.

In the United States, suburbs appeared in Boston and New York. In the latter state, on Long Island, the planned community Levittown was constructed after the end of World War II, becoming a model for other such developments. Its five styles of the ranch house were replicated thousands of times. By the twentieth century, there were suburbs in most of America's big cites. Their existence encouraged the construction of shopping malls, the development of roadways, and the spread of chain stores.

Although, in time, commentators began to criticize these planned communities for their architectural conformity and the “bland” lifestyles they promoted, many residents of suburbia found their environments to be pleasant, serene, safe, and comfortable. These qualities, of course, make suburbs ideal settings for horror, for, in novels and movies in this genre, terror and disgust often follow a period of calm or happy existence which, until the horror begins, was the standard, everyday ambiance and milieu.

In Ginger Snaps (2001), horror comes to Bailey Downs, a suburbs in Alberta, Canada, in the form of a beast that's more lupine than canine. Attracted by the scent of redhead Ginger Fitzgerald's menstrual blood, the animal attacks, but it's beaten back by Ginger's brunette sister, Brigitte, before being struck by a van as it crosses a road through the forest upon resuming its pursuit of the sisters. 

Although she's been scratched by the predator, Ginger decides not to seek medical attention, since her wounds close quickly. Ginger's subsequent transformations, both physical and mental, make it clear that the animal that had clawed her was a werewolf, which is what Ginger herself has become.

As might be expected, violence, sex, and death ensue. In the process, Bailey Downs is changed forever, its residents suffering tremendously at the jaws and paws of Ginger, who pummels Trina Sinclair, the school bully; kills a neighbor's dog; turns boyfriend Jason McCardy into a werewolf by having unprotected sex with him; murders her high school's guidance counselor and janitor; and breaks drug dealer Sam Miller's arm before killing him. The suburbs proves to be anything but the sanctuary it seems at the movie's start.

It might seem as though a new house in the suburbs would be a safe place, but appearances, of course, can be deceiving. As Travis Newton observes in an article on his blog, “The wonderful thing about living in a new suburban house is that there are no ghosts in it. Right? Wrong. Paranormal Activity took the security and safety of a new, modern home and tossed it right out the window.”

As Newton further points out, one of the scariest things about Paranormal Activity (2007) is the fact that the paranormal phenomena occur not “in some old castle or space station or haunted forest. It takes place in the kind of house your neighbors could live in. The kind of house that maybe you live in.”

Katie Featherstone and Micah Sloat have just bought a new home in San Diego, California. Afraid of the demon that has been harassing her for as long as she can remember, Katie prompts Micah to set up a camera to record any paranormal activity that may occur in the house while they're asleep or away from home.

The camera does record some disturbing incidents: flickering lights, doors moving by themselves, a planchette moving under its own power over a Ouija board, and strange creaking sounds. When the activity intensifies, the couple asks Dr. Fredrichs, a demonologist, to investigate, but, too, afraid to remain in the house, he deserts them.

The demon bites Katie, transforming her into a fiend, and the camera records her, in her demonic aspect, grinning as she crawls toward Micah's body after he's been hurled across the bedroom. At the end of the film, on-screen text informs the audience that police discovered Micah's corpse, but Katie is nowhere to be found.

Some time ago in a suburban community, Nancy Thompson and her friends battled a nightmarish dream figure, Freddy Krueger, who attacked them in their sleep. His motive for doing so—and his supernatural nature—are explained on the Fandom site devoted to the movie franchise, A Nightmare on Elm Street, of which he is the central antagonist:

A family man on the surface, Krueger was actually the serial killer known as the “Springwood Slasher.” When he was caught and subsequently released on a technicality, the parents of his victims chased him to a shack out back of the power plant he once worked at and burned him alive. Rather than succumb to death, Krueger was offered the chance to continue his killing spree after death, becoming a Dream Demon that could enter his victims' dreams and kill them in the dream world, which would thus cause their death in the physical world and absorb their souls afterwards.

The murders he commits take place in two worlds: that of the dream in which he appears and the actual, “physical world.” The Fandom site does a good job of comparing and contrasting the two as it summarizes the details of the respective incidents. Here, for example, is the account of the death—or deaths—of Tina Gray, which occurs in the franchise's original, 1984 film:

Dream World description

Physical World description

Tina awakens to the sound of a stone, tapping on her window, breaking the contact area. Puzzled, Tina goes outside to hear Freddy Krueger calling her name. She walks out further. Just then, a trash can lid rolls in front of her making a startling noise. Then, Freddy's shadow appears around the corner, Freddy emerges. Tina says "Please God" and Freddy moves his claws threateningly saying "This... is God." He chases her down the alley. Tina turns back, he is gone. Just then he jumps from behind a tree and makes her watch as her cuts off his finger and it squirts green ooze. She runs, he chases her up the stairs, knocking her off and rolling around on the floor with her. She grabs his face which proceeds to tear off, he laughs.

Tina rolls all over her bed, her chest is slit with his claws, she floats up to the ceiling after being spun around in mid-air. Cutting continues until her bloody, lifeless body falls to the floor.

As a demon, Freddy is able to shift shape, and he has adopted a variety of forms, some human, others inanimate, including those of a hall guard; a telephone; a snake; a marionette; television talk show host Dick Cavett; a television set; a nurse named Marcie; Nancy Thompson's father, Donald; a model inside a water bed; a motorcycle; a video game character; a medical doctor, Christine Heffner; camp counselors; Jason Vorhees's mother, Pamela; and a caterpillar. Anything can happen in a dream, right?

The suburbs are no safer in Elm Street than they are in Ginger Snaps, Paranormal Activity, or several other horror movies with such settings. The franchise plays upon parents' concerns for their children's welfare, crimes against minors, physical and emotional abuse, psychological trauma, object permanence, the sometimes-fine line between fantasy and reality, the potential dangers of isolation and of in loco parentis, the effects of vigilantism and vengeance, and other unsettling themes. Apparently, if we are to believe horror movie directors, suburban life is far more dangerous and lawless than many might have imagined.

But it's not just moviemakers who suggest the suburbs may be the deaths of suburbanites. A number of novelists have also implied that such communities, in themselves neither urban nor rural, might well be the deaths of us: Stephen King in The Regulators, Bentley Little in The Association, and Ira Levin in The Stepford Wives venture forth into the forbidden lanes and cul-de-sacs of American suburbia, each offering a cautionary tale about the supposedly good life that's lived there.

Several of my own Sinister Stories (available at Amazon Books) also contain tales of terror associated with the suburbs.

Monsters in Our Midst

Copyright 2018 by Gary L. Pullman

In horror fiction, monsters originate from only a handful of sources:

• Natural
  • Physiological (e. g., mutation or birth defect)
  • Natural catastrophe
  • Human
    • Psychological
    • Social
    • Scientific/Technological
• Supernatural
  • Angelic/Demonic
  • Divine

Within this framework, the specific contents of these categories change, sometimes vanishing (at least for a time) or being replaced by newer understandings of the concept of the monstrous.

For example, among the ancients, hermaphrodites were considered omens from God. Signs of his displeasure, humans with both male and female sex organs were viewed as warnings form God. Their existence bespoke His wrath and the punishment that He would soon visit upon his sinful people.

Today, hermaphrodism is understood as an effect of male hormones, an adrenal glans disorder, or aromatase deficiency. In other words, the condition results from natural, not supernatural, causes. In male-to-female or female-to-male transgender transgender cases, the cause of gender dysphoria is corrected through hormone therapy, gender-confirmation surgery, and other surgical or medical procedures. Its cause is psychological; its remedy is medical and surgical.

With the change in the understanding of the causes of hermaphroditism and transgender conditions, intersex individuals are seldom cast as “monsters” in contemporary horror fiction, and, when they are cast as such, as in Sleepaway Camp (1983), critics, like much of the general public, movie-going and otherwise, are offended by such representations.

Likewise, zombies, as they are depicted today, more often result from radiation, mental disorders, pathogens, or accidents during scientific experiments than from voodoo or magic. These fundamental changes, both in the way we view the world and the basis of epistemology, have led to changes in the nature and origin of the zombie.

In short, the category of horror “monster,” which once included hermaphrodites as omens of God's displeasure and imminent wrath, are now more frequently seen as having experienced a hormonal or glandular problem or as having experienced gender dysphoria. Their conditions are caused by physiological or psychological, not supernatural or divine, agencies. Zombies, likewise, have been given a natural, rather than a supernatural, origin.

Frequently, horror movie monsters are seen as representing metaphors for political, social, or cultural events typical of particular time periods:

Godzilla (1954) has been seen as representing the nuclear bombs that the United States dropped on Nagasaki and Hiroshima, Japan, in 1945.

Them! (1954) ends with a caution about the dangers of “the Atomic Age,” as myrmecologist Dr. Harold Medford warns, “When Man entered the Atomic Age, he opened the door to a new world. What we may eventually find in that new world, nobody can predict.”

The 1966 science fiction-horror movie Invasion of the Body Snatchers, in which people were replaced with alien look-alikes, has been regarded as an allegory for both McCarthyism and communism.

Some critics regard The Fly (1986) as a metaphor for AIDS, although director David Cronenberg said he intended the horror movie to be a metaphor for “aging and death.”

Although no horror movie seems to sum up more recent decades, a film in which political figures instigate armies of ordinary citizens to go to war against one another might be just the type of film to symbolize the current state of affairs in the United States, wherein Antifa and Democratic protesters, encouraged and emboldened by otherworldly or demonic, hypnotic versions of Senator Maxine Waters, who exalts the public confrontation of individuals who disagree with her party, and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who claims civility is impossible between Democrats and those who oppose them, attack their opponents in the street, confront political appointees during meals in public restaurants, disrupt Senate hearings, and attack the Supreme Court Building, eventually precipitating a war that endangers the entire country. Such an allegorical film, called, perhaps, Demonic Uprising would certainly capture the spirit of our age.

"Hidden" Images and Texts

Copyright 2018 by Gary L. Pullman

Although the once-popular concept of subliminal perception has been debunked, the use of “hidden” images and text continues to be included in advertisements, including movie posters, and, indeed, in motion pictures, including horror movies. These posters, in which the word “sex” is discernible, are cases in point.

 (“S-e-x” appears in the woman's hair. There is also the image of a man's head among the palm trees at the bottom of the poster.)

(“S-e-x,” printed in blood, appears on the woman's upper left shoulder.)

(“S-e-x” formed by the branches of the trees, appears on to the right side of the woman's right outer thigh. There's also a vague representation of a female torso among the trees, bare breast in evidence.)

The idea is that such “hidden” text and imagery, registered consciously, but seemingly without notice, heightens the overall picture's erotic and horrific effects.

Novelists and short story writers also often use other “subliminal” ways to effect such emotions, as we have seen in my previous posts, “Background: The Key to Interpreting Foreground,” and “'Heavy-Set': Learning from the Masters,” “Learning from the Masters: Ian Fleming, Part 2,” among others.

One way of creating “subliminal” messages in horror fiction that we haven't discussed as yet is description. For example, in the manner of a fine, impressionistic painter, Stephen Crane describes a forest as if it were a cathedral, the resulting imagery imbuing his novel, The Red Badge of Courage, with symbolic and thematic depth and richness that the story would not possess otherwise:

At length he reached a place where the high, arching boughs made a chapel. He softly pushed the green doors aside and entered. Pine needles were a gentle brown carpet. There was a religious half light.

Near the threshold he stopped, horror-stricken at the sight of a thing.

He was being looked at by a dead man who was seated with his back against a columnlike tree. The corpse was dressed in a uniform that had once been blue, but was now faded to a melancholy shade of green. The eyes, staring at the youth, had changed to the dull hue to be seen on the side of a dead fish. The mouth was open. Its red had changed to an appalling yellow. Over the gray skin of the face ran little ants. One was trundling some sort of bundle along the upper lip.

The youth gave a shriek as he confronted the thing. He was for moments turned to stone before it. He remained staring into the liquid-looking eyes. The dead man and the living man exchanged a long look. Then the youth cautiously put one hand behind him and brought it against a tree. Leaning upon this he retreated, step by step, with his face still toward the thing. He feared that if he turned his back the body might spring up and stealthily pursue him.

The branches, pushing against him, threatened to throw him over upon it. His unguided feet, too, caught aggravatingly in brambles; and with it all he received a subtle suggestion to touch the corpse. As he thought of his hand upon it he shuddered profoundly.

At last he burst the bonds which had fastened him to the spot and fled, unheeding the underbrush. He was pursued by the sight of black ants swarming greedily upon the gray face and venturing horribly near to the eyes.

After a time he paused, and, breathless and panting, listened. He imagined some strange voice would come from the dead throat and squawk after him in horrible menaces.

The trees about the portal of the chapel moved soughingly in a soft wind. A sad silence was upon the little guarding edifice.

The trees began softly to sing a hymn of twilight. The sun sank until slanted bronze rays struck the forest. There was a lull in the noises of insects as if they had bowed their beaks and were making a devotional pause. There was silence save for the chanted chorus of the trees.

Then, upon this stillness, there suddenly broke a tremendous clangor of sounds. A crimson roar came from the distance.

The youth stopped. He was transfixed by this terrific medley of all noises. It was as if worlds were being rended. There was the ripping sound of musketry and the breaking crash of the artillery.

His mind flew in all directions. He conceived the two armies to be at each other panther fashion. He listened for a time. Then he began to run in the direction of the battle. He saw that it was an ironical thing for him to be running thus toward that which he had been at such pains to avoid. But he said, in substance, to himself that if the earth and the moon were about to clash, many persons would doubtless plan to get upon the roofs to witness the collision.

As he ran, he became aware that the forest had stopped its music, as if at last becoming capable of hearing the foreign sounds. The trees hushed and stood motionless. Everything seemed to be listening to the crackle and clatter and earthshaking thunder. The chorus peaked over the still earth.

It suddenly occurred to the youth that the fight in which he had been was, after all, but perfunctory popping. In the hearing of this present din he was doubtful if he had seen real battle scenes. This uproar explained a celestial battle; it was tumbling hordes a-struggle in the air.

The use of another type of “subliminal,” involving a shift in the story's point of view as it is read through the eyes of minor characters, rather than from the perspective of the protagonist, can provide yet another dimension to a story of horror, as we will see in a later post.