I was not raised by wolves-- or even lycanthropes. I did not grow up in a clammy English castle. But I do appreciate a good horror story.
Granted, I wrote my share in 5th and 6th grade, contemplating copyright infringement suits against “The Night Stalker” TV series. But I grew up amid my father’s extensive science fiction library, an afternoon horror movie series on our local TV affiliate, and a fascination with real-life ghost stories as book report fodder…Thus, my adult predilection for the supernatural scare.
I have my share of fun kids ‘ghost’ stories I perform at schools. But the itch to give (and get) legitimate scares at the adult intensity-level is too strong to ignore.
Why do audiences (and I) crave a good scary yarn? It’s primal. Curiosity is a powerful instinct that makes you journey into the shadows to see what’s there AND your curiosity wants to know if you’re strong enough to survive whatever the dark side launches at you.
I’ve survived 100% of my experiences as a reader & performer. So far. My audiences, on the other hand, haven’t complained. I haven’t scared any individual to death, though it would prove quite the PR conundrum.
Imagination is that other innate motivator to seek the horror story. “I see a dead woman with two puncture wounds in her neck. I see an open empty coffin. I see ______.”
You filled in that blank, didn’t you? Audiences love that sense of creating the journey, daring themselves and the story in the process.
Stay in a rural English cottage with a solitary lit candle, a mourning mother, and a monkey’s paw, and you WANT to know what’s possible.
The period literature bridging the 19th & 20th centuries appeals most to me. Mostly short fiction created by numerous masters of the horror genre (including WW Jacobs): Poe, R.L. Stevenson,
H.P. Lovecraft, Ambrose Bierce, M.R. James, and Algernon Blackwood, to name a few.
H.P. Lovecraft, Ambrose Bierce, M.R. James, and Algernon Blackwood, to name a few.
Not all of them were novelists, and not all wrote exclusively for the horror genre. But they all oozed curiosity and imagination.
In a genre that finally had popular availability, they asked those questions that science, nature, or religion couldn’t answer…and created their own answers. With each story’s firmly established mythos, here comes the reader thinking, “How scary could it be?”
The fact that this genre and many of its individual authors (now long dead…I think) have 21st century fan websites speaks to the staying power of the material. Ray Bradbury, Richard Matheson, and Stephen King wouldn’t be who they are without their horrible forefathers. I’m just trying to frighten the unenlightened.
As a performer, I LOVE the public domain system that includes this vibrant period of literature. No gatekeeper blocks access to the story, no agent asks for their pound of flesh, and dead authors don’t kibbitz over how you tell their tale. That’s WHY I tell them.
HOW I tell those horror stories is a trade secret. You could find out at one of my upcoming shows. They’re popular as a cemetery: folks are just dying to get in.
(Insert evil laugh here)
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We've had this discussion before, I think, but two of the scariest stories I've ever read don't involve the supernatural at all: "A Rose for Emily" by Faulkner and "Man Overboard" by Winston Churchill. You're absolutely right about M. R. James -- his ghost stories are scarier than anyone in the 21st century would expect. Lovecraft, however, has very little impact on me, except intellectually. Film and TV adaptations of his stories work better, it seems to me, because they remove his archaic exposition and leave in all the action. The main point of horror is something that critics and literati just don't want to get: these stories are thrill rides that we get to experience, and at the end, we arrive unscathed, ready for another ride. "I wants to make your flesh creep," as Dickens said.
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