Tag: horror

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True Horror Subgenres

In the last entry in this series, we defined True Horror genetically. Here we look at its children. Basic genre hybrids like Scifi Horror are out of scope.

Something needs to be set down in writing here: Not being True Horror does not make a work bad. Social media is for rage-bait; this is a blog. Sax Rhomer’s Occult Detective book The Dream Detective is a fun and fascinating work. It’s not True Horror, but so what? No one needs another tutting inner critic.

The Aickmanesque (1960s-1970s) Robert Aickman and Elizabeth Jane Howard resurrected the traditional English Ghost Story along Symbolist lines, creating a distinct form unaccountably disturbing from an inner perspective.

Body Horror (1980s-) Generally credited in its modern horror form to Cronenberg, the subgenre dealing most directly with alteration to the human body, often against one’s will.

Cosmic Horror (1920s-1930s) The most direct attempts to continue in Lovecraft’s style. Blood and violence are largely offscreen, implied or irrelevant, while the insignificance of humanity in a larger order is centered. A narrator lives to tell the tale, carrying an awful burden. Prose are often purple (in imitation of Lovecraft’s imitation of Poe).

Cozy Horror (1970s-) Horror in which the key elements are at an extreme remove, often shrouded in ambiguity, and human slice-of-life storytelling takes center stage. A controversial classification supported by works like Gene Wolfe’s Peace and the art of rt0no.

Folk Horror (1970s-) An expression of the simultaneous fascination and alienation outsiders hold with the perceived generational continuity, insularity and memetic survival of isolated rural regions. (Outsiders include those from different rural regions.) Generally descends from Margaret Murray’s once-popular witch-cult hypothesis.

Possession (1970s-1980s) An often quite conscious attempt to literally scare people back to religion. The universe is immoral and unknowable if one does not follow.

Psychological Horror (1960s-) Often confused with Psycho-thrillers. To fall within True Horror, the loss of touch with reality at the core of the work must rise to the level of the (implied) supernatural.

Slasher-Horror (1970s-1980s) In its hyphenated form, a Slasher in which the killer is (or killers are) implied to possess invulnerability, omniscience, precognition or other impossible attributes.

Vampire (1910s-2010s) The depredations of the ruling class, often mixed with nativism, at a remove. Coalesced initially from a variety of loosely-related Eastern European folklore traditions, and contemporary anxieties around tuberculosis.

Zombie (1960s-2000s) The only way modern pop culture can deal with the specter of societal collapse. Other desperate human beings are transmuted into mindless, soulless Others, to forgive–even make sport of–their slaughter.

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Have You Read “The Dream Detective?”

Hard to believe it’s been almost 10 years since I put Sax Rohmer’s Moris Klaw stories online. The Occult Detective subgenre was already getting crowded when Rohmer put his spin on it 100 years ago (but then, blogging was already getting crowded out by social media when I finished this project in 2016).

I’ve given the stories a tidy-up, fixing errors, adding proper tags, and ensuring the posts federate properly. If you never gave them a spin, now’s a great time.

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The Strict Definition of Horror

Horror’s long story is about mixing bloodlines, fuzzy edges, mistaken identities and schismatic reformers. This is the short one.

We’re here to define it. Genetically.

Why bother, if everyone’s having fun? When anything can be Ø, Ø means nothing. Mixing genres is fun, but if the writer doesn’t understand, respect, even know what they’re mixing, the middle falls out.

The Ancestors

Genres never die, they just turn retro. The (-dates) here aren’t when the genre stopped being executed, they’re when it stopped being innovated.

Fairytale (-1800s) bizarre, usually chainable supernatural oral tales told for pure entertainment, sometimes with a moral element. The end of this tradition comes with late-18th-19th Century attempts to catalogue them, as by the Brothers Grimm, Giambattista Basile, Charles Perrault, etc.

Romance (1300s-1700s) a literary immitation of Fairytale, often told as a first-person narrative–though not meant to be believed by the hip reader.

The Gothic (1600s-1800s) a highly moralized narrative of a virginal character thrust into a dark world. The tension is between the twin human desires to see the innocent preserved and ravaged.

The Grotesque (1840s-1880s) Poe’s groundbreaking step beyond the Gothic form, focusing on a sensation of revulsion, often as much spiritual (and psychological) as physical. Frequently the terminal experience documented.

Symbolist Fiction (1880s-1910s) the uncanny suspension of the world’s logic in pursuit of a felt–rather than enumerated–psychological understanding. Robert Aickman would later take up this thread and merge it with the traditional English Ghost Story.

The Decadent (1870s-1890s) a self-consciously giddy extrapolation of Poe’s Grotesque into an unburdened world of excess, decay and dissolution for their own sake.

Sensation Fiction (1860s-1930s) melodramatic Victorial pulp meant to unsettle the middle-class Victorian reader with taboo topics. The mantle was taken up onstage by the Grand Guignol’s (generally social realist) plays leading to tragic and violent endings; extravagently crafted, their climactic bursts of mayhem were a draw in and of themselves, in the manner of a Grotesque.

The English Ghost Story (1600s-1800s) focused heavily on the experience of the unknown, with a moralizing core. Wounded by the concretizing of formal Occult Fiction in the later 1800s, but revitalized near the emergence of the Weird by M.R. James.

Occult Fiction (1860s-1910s) a proto-science-fiction dressed up as Ghost Story, from a milieu in which literal communion with the dead was believed to be both possible and imminent. Often mixed with the (out-of-scope) Detective genre, also innovated by Poe.

The Weird (1910s-1930s) Lovecraft’s attempt to unify certain strains of contemporary supernatural fiction into a cohesive genre, from which his fixation on human insignificance birthed True Horror. (Science Fiction and Modern Fantasy, both out of scope here, also emerged from The Weird.)

Often Confused

Thriller (1910s-) modern Sensation Fiction, dealing with extraordinary but non-supernatural occurrences such as murder, pursuit, threat and disappearance.

Torture Porn (1970s-2010s) a melding of Thriller and Poe’s Grotesque.

Slasher (1970s-1980s) a blood-soaked form of Thriller, in which the focus is on the violent deaths of the characters by human hands.

Ero Guro (1960s-) Japan’s answer to Slasher, focusing more on sexuality and warped morality than pursuit and murder.

True Horror

True Horror (1920s-) the genre of fiction birthed by Lovecraft, featuring a focal supernatural element (real or perceived), and an indifferent universe in place of a moral one. The emotional effect moves between fear and horror. The True Horror story crystalizes in the moment of realizing one has been wrong.

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Excerpts from “Sorworth Place” by Russell Kirk

The firm signature put Bain in mind of Mrs. Lurlin’s elegant, pale look; and he spent most of the intervening evening and night and morning in a reverie of nearly forgotten faces, men he had alienated by his negligence or his improvidence, women he had found hollow or who had found him exasperating. None of these ever thought of him now, even when dreaming before the fire. And why should they?

*****

She looked at him steadily. “I believe you’re decent. I have no friends, and I hate to be solitary here, day on day. I’m afraid to be alone.”

“I wouldn’t take you to be timid, Mrs. Lurlin.”

“Don’t you understand? I thought you’d guessed.” She came a trifle closer to Bain; and she said, in her low sweet voice, “I’m afraid of my husband.”

Bain stared at her. “Your husband? I understood–I thought that he’s dead.”

“Quite,” said Ann Lurlin.

Somewhere in that Minoan maze of a house, a board or table creaked; the wind rattled a sash; and this little room at the stairfoot was musty. “You know, don’t you?” Mrs. Lurlin whispered. “You know something’s near.”

*****

“It will be a year next Friday. Now I’m going to confess something.” She turned her little body so that her eyes looked directly into Bain’s. “When I saw you in the square, I wondered if I could use you. I had some notion that I might stick a life between myself and… You looked no better than a dare-devil. Do you mind my saying that? Something in me whispered, ‘He was made to take chances; that’s what he’s good for.’ I meant you to come to see me. I don’t suppose it flatters you, Ralph, to have been snared by a madwoman.”

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The Woods in Winter

The third Christmas ghost story by Matt Rasmussen

“I tell these things as accurately as I can, and with no theories to blur the history. Theories are poor things at the best, and the bulk of mine have perished long ago.” -W. B. Yeats

Where the houses ended, the woods began. Neither had a name. The houses didn’t merit one, and the woods could not be encompassed by one. The woods were not merely deep–one might think, endless–but defied one’s sense of scale and order. Wonders were meant to cease. Down the very first path lay a cathedral of pines, tall, solemn and breathless, forever dissolving into the faintest haze. Not far along, three chattering falls met like a fleur-de-lis to run laughing away down a narrow, secretive gorge. Above, a hillside rose, so vast and even that the trees seemed to grow sideways. At the top, a great ledge of quartz split apart to form a silent, mossy inner sanctum. Wander deeper and discover more. The wood’s imagination was never exhausted. The only limits were endurance, and how much one’s heart could hold. Spring, summer and fall, all walked the woods as if in a shared dream. But in winter, no one entered the woods.

In winter, when the shadows of the trees stretched toward them even at midday, the houses became lighted bastions. Visits were begun by early dusk, and lasted until the late light of morning. Candles burned in windows all night long. Snug and warm, these were the hilights of the children’s year, the winter sleepovers with cousins and friends. Good things were exchanged: Principally sweets for the kids, knitwear for babies, and alcohol for adults. Parents stayed up late to sing and toast. If snow fell overnight, it was a good sign for the turning of the year.

Martin and his family didn’t live in one of the old houses, whose small-paned windows scraped the very edges of the forest. Their sashes were of wood, not iron. Their walls were plastered brick, not lichened stone. A boy his age needn’t duck under heavy timbers to move from room to room. The path up their garden bore only a single loop, long overgrown. A hawthorn could be found above the hedge gate, but it was only a carving.

Several houses (which his father called new) faced the roundabout, inside of which had grown up a small stand of beech trees, sparse enough that the lights of the facing houses showed clearly through their paper-white trunks. Whether it was a wood or not, it was here that Martin had first seen her.

She was white, pale as the frost on the grass. “I’m your sister,” she’d said. Her breath didn’t show in the cold.

“I don’t have a sister.”

That’s what he would have said, but Martin knew she’d have shot back, “Are you calling me a liar?”

“Why is your face painted like a fox?”

This, too, he hadn’t asked, but it was just as well. “It’s NOT painted,” she’d have replied.

So little had passed between them. Had he said anything at all? He could remember almost nothing. Questions had been answered without being asked.

A boy other than Martin might have wondered how this could be. A boy other than Martin would have been afraid, or cautious, or at least intrigued. A boy other than Martin would have hesitated to tell his mother.

“You shouldn’t have been out past dark,” she said.

Continue reading “The Woods in Winter”
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From “Negotium Perambulans” by E. F. Benson

But they are linked together, so it has always seemed to me, by some mysterious comprehension: it is as if they had all been initiated into some ancient rite, inspired and framed by forces visible and invisible. The winter storms that batter the coast, the vernal spell of the spring, the hot, still summers, the season of rains and autumnal decay, have made a spell which, line by line, has been communicated to them, concerning the powers, evil and good, that rule the world, and manifest themselves in ways benignant or terrible . . .

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The Meeting House: A Christmas Ghost Story

More in this series

A frosty Christmas eve
     When the stars were shining
Fared I forth alone,
     Where westward falls the hill
And from many a village
     In the water'd valley,
Distant music reached me
     Peals of bells a'ringing
The constellated sounds,
     Ran sprinkling on earth's floor
As the dark vault above,
     With stars was spangled o'er.

-Robert Seymour Bridges
"Noël: Christmas Eve 1913"

Only once, in all that I’ve spent away from home, have I heard church bells ringing over a town on the night of Christmas Eve. It was in Denmark, and I had been deposited at a stop on the main road. A small village snaked through the dark fields below me, from which rose those clear bells. I was to be the guest of strangers, as often before. It couldn’t have been late. Night comes early there, even in the low north.

Ironically, the acquaintance I was to meet had been made at the height of summer. I recall sitting with three men, pleasantly drunk, not at all following a hushed conversation in Danish, or perhaps dialect. The one English speaker remembered my name well enough: “Geoff with a Gee!” I don’t remember his, having scratched it down only as “J.” It was near 11, but the orange sun hung sluggishly above the horizon, shining through the trunks of a distant copse of trees to inflame the cigarette-stained window of the ancient pub. At some point, I’d mentioned the possibility (then remote) of finding myself that way again at Christmas. My acquaintance had invited me along, in more and fewer words, should the case arise. The men before me were all shadows.

The Meeting House was the second I’d passed, meandering down into the village. As befitting the local agriculture, the new heir to the title had been, effectively, a human pig shed: a low, metal-roofed concrete slab, full of white plastic chairs. The old Meeting House was in every way a contrast. It wasn’t large, but rose to two storeys, with masonry arches above the well-framed windows, and a steep tiled roof. Though also built of greying brick, its age versus the surrounding houses and their large flat expanses was evident at a glance.

A mailbox and wet path up the front yard suggested that the sturdy little building had been subdivided into at least one pensioner’s apartment, but I confess I saw no evidence of this later, and the path may well have led somewhere around behind. Within the privacy glass and drawn blind shone a handful of christmas lights, red and yellow. Someone moved within, momentarily interrupting the pleasant glow. I’ve always been struck by these momentary winter night glimpses into the private lives of others.

But no. The yellow lights were the trick of an approaching car’s headlights. The red were from another that had just passed. The whole effect, including the glow inside, was a confusion of the frosted glass and vinyl blind. The pensioner’s apartment was quite empty, Herr Something-or-other having no doubt gone to his child’s house for the holiday. The other, larger section, showed no signs of life whatsoever.

I continued past the old Meeting House into the village proper: A cluster of houses, garages, a grocery kiosk, and a stone church in the distance. Nothing more. Before the shut-up kiosk, I found my acquaintance with two other men. We were to return up the hill to the Meeting House. He recognized me (“Geoff with a G!”) but I confess I didn’t recognize him. Perhaps he’d shaved his beard, or I was confusing him with another of the drinkers.

Imagine my pleasure when, long before reaching the pig shed, we turned up the damp walkway to the old Meeting House. A rap at the door revealed a clamorous party inside, athough it couldn’t have been 20 minutes since I’d previously passed.

Continue reading “The Meeting House: A Christmas Ghost Story”
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It Was His Time to Go

A fragment of a dream. This was the new normal. Everyone seemed so resigned to it. Maybe it was indeed the time appointed to the man, somehow, as someone said afterward, but he was panicking as they lifted him out the window. Arms came out of the ocean–long, brightly colored arms, with sticky, webbed hands–amphibian hands–pulling the terrified man right off the subway car. His friends tried desperately to hold him, but there was no resisting. He was already suffocating, head wrapped in those rubbery fins, as he disappeared beneath the leaden waves.

I wonder what the arms were connected to. Why did we stay near the ocean? Was it futile to leave? How long had we been living like this? How many of us were left?