Something that I always found funny whenever I see people online or even my own friends and family when watching horror movies...is what it brings out of them. Hehehe! Like, be honest...how many times have you seen someone get a lucky shot in on one of the killers or slashers or monsters...and they scream, “YES!!! Now do it again! Stab them! Stab them! Stab them! Beat them! Rip their guts out! Yes!!!!” Which seems like a ‘normal’ reaction to most people in these situations...but ummmm...isn’t that a little excessive? LOL! I mean, what would you do if the police showed up and you were covered, head to toe, in blood and gore...and you had stabbed somebody 150 times in the chest? That would look a little suspect on your part, wouldn’t it? Justification be damned. But there’s a certain level of blood lust that exists in even the most well-mannered and docile people among us, isn’t there? Under the right circumstances, they get rather animated about it. That whole, “Keep STABBING him until you’re sure he’s dead! Again and again and again!” Where the hell does that come from? It didn’t just appear out of nowhere. Especially if you’re just watching a movie about someone else being in danger. What is that ‘animal’ within us? And how can we somehow trigger it and bring it out of them with our writing?

I believe that this is the very nature of horror. Not trying to get people to be scared of what is outside of themselves...but activating that hidden element that lies within...that frightens people the most. It’s not dark rooms or jump scares or bumps in the night that we can’t explain...it’s the idea that the dark shadows that live inside all of us might be freely expressed by people who don’t carry the same defenses and restrictions that we do to keep them under wraps. Hidden away from the rest of the world. What happens if those “Keep STABBING him!” voices were used against us, and we gave in to their demands? How different would we be from the devils we demonize on a daily basis? And how easy would it be...for us to become one of them?

Now I realize that this particular article doesn’t really apply to what a vast majority of you all are writing right now, and that’s ok. But I urge you to keep reading regardless, as you may find a few good tips here and there that might still help you out with other stuff that you’re writing at the moment or possibly in the future. No matter what genre you choose to indulge in, the rules and disciplines that are put in place for you as a writer still apply. This isn’t just about writing scary stories...but the hidden secret behind writing scary stories. So don’t hit that back button just yet! Hehehe, there might be stuff for you to learn from in the end.

For my fellow horror fans? This one is for you! >:P

While many people think of fictional horror as being gory, creepy, and full of frightening imagery from beginning to end...I look at them very differently. I’ve said it many times in the past...the best horror stories out there are, basically, morality tales. Very GRIM ones, yes...but morality tales, regardless. Even the stories that you grew up with as a kid, despite many of them being made into playful animated versions of their former selves for the Disney crowd...with wide eyed innocence and songs about stars and rainbows...their origins are much much darker than anything that you would be comfortable with telling your young children today. The lessons to be learned were noble enough, but the consequences of not learning these lessons are unforgivably harsh. Whether being devoured by a wolf, locked in an isolated tower for life, or drowned in the depths of the ocean...the idea was to literally ‘scare’ children into acting right and obeying the rules out of fear. You may not know about Dorothy and the “Wizard Of Oz” where a tornado has basically knocked her into a comatose state, where her subconscious has trapped her in a hellish nightmare that she can’t wake up from. Or that, at the end of the original “Jungle Book”, Mowgli comes back to the human village with his vicious animal friends to maul everyone in sight and rip them to pieces under his command. Even a nursery rhyme as playful as ‘Ring Around The Rosie’ was written about the deaths that occurred during the black plague. Corpses being burned in heaps to hopefully prevent the spread. “Ashes to ashes, we all fall down.”

The very nature of horror has been with us for our entire lives...whether we were aware of it or not. The very idea behind “Hansel And Gretel”, where a witch lures helpless children into the woods to shove them into an oven and cook them alive is about as intense as it gets, is it not? Calling horror a ‘genre’ in the sense of fiction is merely exaggerating what was already there all along. It’s simply a matter of pulling the gloves off, and further stressing the point of ‘be a good and smart person...or else!’

When I say that horror is a collection of morality tales, it means that we all have an understanding and the ability to tap into something truly primal when the situation demands it...even if we think we shouldn’t. There’s a very dark shadow inside of all of us, and to flirt with it, or entice it to come out of hiding, feels uneasy. Dangerous. And yet...tempting. That is the foundation that you’re going to begin working with. That’s the spark that makes true horror work, in my opinion.

Think about the things that scare you the most. Think about the things that simply make you feel uncomfortable or uneasy. Now...find a middle ground between the two. That’s where horror lies. Something extreme...but can still be relatable enough to draw your audience in and use those fears to create a certain sense of anxiety among them. This doesn’t just have to be used in a supernatural sense, or in a life or death situation. Fears can be very simple. Fear of conflict or confrontation. Fear of loneliness or isolation. Fear of a loss of control. Fears of the unknown, fear of failure, fear of heartbreak or betrayal. These are all things that we can understand, relate to, and tap into when we’re writing our stories. The nature of horror is merely taking these everyday insecurities and dialing them up to ten. Taking advantage of people’s natural fears and exploiting them to lock them into the stories that you want to tell.

Hehehe! Who said writing wasn’t fun, right?

The real secret is in the ability to tickle and tease that deep seeded wickedness within the hearts and minds of your readers...creating an obligatory need to react with a sense of repulsion...but still stimulating a morbid curiosity that makes them want to keep going. It’s a double edged sword, but one that more people than you would think would welcome when faced with it head on.

I’ve written quite a bit of horror on this site since I first started, and even though I’ve had many readers initially dismiss the idea of even giving those stories a try...the ones who take a peek have become the biggest fans that I have for my writing. And not just for the horror stories, but in general. It’s almost like something gets triggered that they can’t understand, but they really get invested in it. I think stories like “Savage Moon”, “Darkness Waits”, and “The Boys Of Widow Lake” (https://imagine-magazine.org/store/comicality/), tap into something that many of us would like to ignore or avoid when we look at ourselves in the mirror every morning. The further you dive into that ‘something’, the more uncomfortable they feel. And that discomfort makes the horror real. It allows it to last and linger in the minds of your audience. Which, obviously...is a good thing. Specially if it creeps them out.

Now, being a big fan of horror movies my whole life, there are very few that I can say have truly disturbed me on a psychological level. I can’t really tell you why, but despite going into movies like “Blair Witch” and “Paranormal Activity” and even John Carpenter’s original “Halloween” when I was maybe four years old...completely blind and not knowing what to expect, one movie that really ‘disturbed’ me was “The Poughkeepsie Tapes”. That one was a little too real for me to handle. It still gives me the shivers, and it’s not that it’s gory or anything...but there’s just something that’s really fucked up about the whole experience. And once I saw it, it wouldn’t let me go. Not for a while.