What is horror? Where did it originate? In what form did it first come to us? Who do we consider to be the “mother” or “father” of horror, so saying, who do we consider to be the creator of horror? What does it evoke in us and why are some addicted to things that horrify whilst others shy away from it and refuse to go anywhere near it? I find myself asking these questions as I, myself, have a rather unhealthy fascination or (should I say obsession?) with the horror genre and my friends…well, they do not. Could it be that intense fear or shock that radiates adrenalin through my system that draws me in? Or is it perhaps that I am weird or mentally “screwed up”, so to say? In Danse Macabre, Stephen King described “terror as the finest emotion, and so I will try to terrorise the reader.” And I have to agree. I think what makes me appreciate the horror genre so much is the pleasure that comes from the relief that follows …show more content…
Is it the fact that we feel as though nothing scares us more than real life, so we are just trying to find something that does? Or is it that we are so scared of real life that we go and watch things like horror movies in order to show ourselves that our lives aren’t really that scary after all? I have to say, I can’t really decide on which one I agree with more but what I can say is that, for me, real life is pretty scary. Probably the worst horror story of them all. So where did the horror genre comes from? Well it came from real life, of course. For hundreds and thousands of years humans have been scaring themselves and each other through all kinds of methods; such as telling ghost stories around the campfire (this happened long before we had summer camps), jumping off cliffs, and even popping out to startle each other from behind dark corners. And we’ve done this for lots of different reasons but it’s only really in the last few centuries that scaring ourselves for fun (and profit) has become a highly sought-after