October is the month of scary fun with Halloween marking the start of the slow decline into the dark and cold of winter. With this in mind, it is worthwhile considering what it is that fear actually is. What do we fear? Why do we fear it? How can this knowledge help a writer produce a better horror story?

Speaking purely as a physiologist, I will start by stating the obvious. Fear is a physiological reaction caused by perfectly understandable responses in our bodies to external stimuli. Certain stimuli present in the environment will trigger the secretion of particular hormones which stimulate or suppress the actions of various organs and systems. Its purpose is to allow us to recognise danger so that we may take an appropriate action – either fight or flight. This response has been more or less unchanged for millions of years. The physical bit of it, anyway. What has changed has been the psychological bit – what we are actually afraid of.

Now, the classics never change. Darkness, spiders, snakes... the common phobias will probably always get some people, darkness especially. Darkness is really a fear of the unknown, of not knowing what might be lurking out there ready to kill us and eat us. It’s an old mammalian fear from the days when we hid in holes lest the big scary monsters came to get us and human imagination takes that fear and paints on it any number of strange and wonderful images – a pile of clothes becomes the head of a monster, a coat hanging on the back of a door becomes a man waiting to attack you, the sound of the wind rustling in the trees outside takes on a sinister note. These are tropes that writers and film-makers have made much use of over the years and they work well because they speak to a deep, instinctive part of the human psyche which still thinks it should hide in holes. As a writer the fear of the unknown can be an effective tool. The best forms of horror are not the ones which go in for explicit description or gory imagery but those which are light on the description and allow the reader’s own imagination to fill in the gaps. This minimalist description is not as easy as it looks, it is not just a case of not describing something but rather of tracing in some hints of what is there and giving just enough detail to stimulate the imagination. Once you have that, the reader will do all the rest of the work themselves.

Other things that lurk in our fears do change, however. They change as we age, for example, and there are also changes in what society considers frightening. With age, there is a move away from childish fears – the ghoulies and ghosties And long-leggedy beasties And things that go bump in the night as the Scottish (or Cornish) prayer goes – to more mature things. Adult fears are more subtle and elaborate and often don’t wear such a blatant face as a warty old witch. Adults also fear more ephemeral things – war, particular nuclear war, financial troubles and the like. Things that carefree children have no fear of. As Terry Pratchett’s Death comments in Hogfather, you have to start out believing the little lies (the Tooth Fairy, Father Christmas) as practise for the big lies (truth, justice and mercy). Therefore, you can also argue that to prepare you for the big fears you have to practise on the little ones.

As for changes with history there is one example I would give for this which, I think, demonstrates how society as a whole can influence how we interpret ‘the darkness’ – what picture we paint on it to attempt to make sense of it. That example is the Succubus.

The Succubus is, as I am sure you are aware, a demon. In particular it is a demon which takes on the form of a highly eroticised female form, seduces men into having sex with them and, mid coitus, sucks out their soul. There are examples of this in literature the world over though my favourite has to be the character of Juliet in Mike Carey’s Felix Castor series of novels (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Devil-You-Know-Felix-Castor/dp/1841494135) mainly because she is such a modern and interesting character for a several millennia old demon. I am also fond of Erica Hayes’s portrayal of Succubi in her novel Shadowfae (http://www.shadowfae.net/). You can even, at a stretch, consider the typical sexy female Vampire to be an example of this – though they drink blood rather than souls there is little difference to the recipient. Of course, if being fair, I cannot neglect to mention something for the ladies in the form of Incubi – the male equivalent of the Succubus which manifests as a sexy looking man. Again, quite a few urban fantasy novels of late have used Incubi, including Shadowfae again.

What is interesting about Succubi and Incubi is one of the theories of their possible origin. Imagine this: a monastery, late at night. It’s dark and you are in a tiny cell. Because of the rule of chastity, you are not allowed any sexual release and you have been told that any sexual release is evil and will have you taken to hell. Being a young man, you of course have a healthy sexual appetite which has not been satisfied for a long time. Naturally, you are going to have erotic dreams and these dreams are going to be coloured by your religious teachings which could, feasibly, cast the images of your desire into a more sinister and evil form. Now, there is a condition called Sleep Paralysis (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleep_paralysis). One version of this condition leads to the sufferer being conscious but unable to move and subject to ‘terrifying hallucinations (hypnopompic or hypnagogic) and an acute sense of danger’. It is not impossible to imagine our poor monk, coming to consciousness in the middle of an erotic dream, unable to move while images of a demonic woman play through his head and what sort of terror this may induce.

In the modern day, however, there are rarely any reports of Sucubbi attacks and they seem to be limited to the bookshelves yet sleep paralysis is still a condition that many suffer from. What has changed is what images the human mind plays in that situation and these days it is more likely that someone who wakes in the middle of the night unable to move will report an alien abduction rather than a demonic attack. The cause of the physiological response – the paralysis – remains the same but the hallucinations have changed to fit with what society as a whole sees as a threat.

So what can the above teach a writer about fear? Well, the fact that fear changes is an important lesson to learn. What was scary to those in the medieval period may no longer be scary today. Indeed, some of the things that past generations found terrifying are now sometimes seen as ludicrous. Bram Stoker’s Dracula caused chills and thrills to his contemporary audience but now teenage girls all want to marry Vampires that sparkle. A writer needs to be aware of the zeitgeist of horror to be able to judge what can trigger those primal responses. While some things never change – our fear of the dark, for example – other things do change a lot with exposure and interpretation. Thinking carefully about what fear is and what causes it is very worthwhile.


Author Bio:

D.A Lascelles is a former clinical scientist turned teacher and part time writer. He is the author of Gods of the Sea, a short story in the Pirates and Swashbucklers Anthology from Pulp Empire (http://pulpempire.com/mag/ ), and Transistions, a paranormal romance novella due out in 2012 from Mundania Press (http://www.mundania.com/) as part of the Shades of Love Anthology.

I think I found out how I developed my character in retrospect, and now that I can see it I think I reverse engineered her. When I first started writing my book, “When Monsters Get Lonely,” the last thing on my mind was character development. I just wanted to tell the story of a little girl who overcame her fear of the dark and of monsters. So my character’s greatest fear was already there. She also had a dream of becoming a movie director, so she started out as a concrete character with a dream and a fear from the very start.

I think that developing a character for a picture book is much easier than developing one for a novel. You have a limited number of words to work with, so you can’t go into detail and you have the illustrations to fill in the description of the character. I did have quite a bit of detail about the character which I had to delete because of word count, but the character immerged nevertheless.

I was afraid of the dark and of monsters as a child so the character was partly me, but when the book became about my granddaughter, the character became partly her. She was almost three at the time, so really the character was what I imagined her to be.

I think my character just developed with my understanding of how to write picture books. When I found out that the main character must resolve the problem herself, my character became strong and intelligent, because she had to understand what Grams meant when she said that we invent our lives, and she had to use her understanding to resolve her problem.

Hannah was strong enough to go back to her room, but not overly so. She asked her mom to leave the lights on, so she came through as both strong and vulnerable.

In the end to sum it all up, I think my character was real because she was

-Borrowed from real life, but I don’t think that a character should be exactly like one particular person. But then that’s the fun of writing fiction, you can make up a whole new personality.

-She had an ambition and a fear.

-She had strong traits that the reader can identify with, she was intelligent, brave, and vulnerable.

-She grew and got over her fear by resolving her own problem.


About the Author:


Maha Huneidi is a wife, mother and now grandmother, who finally found out what she wants to be when she grows up. This book is the first step of her journey. She lives in Portland, Oregon.

I planned on posting a review of the 80s horror comedy House II, but sadly I didn’t get around to watching the movie this week. I haven't seen the movie in years, and I ordered it off of Amazon last week. I remember walking up to grocery store (at the time I lived in a very small town) when I was young with my aunt (who’s only six years older than me). The grocery store had very limited VHS rentals, in which we rented Critters 2 and House II. I had seen the first House a few years before when my parents bought it. And I seen the original Critters on the big screen, as my uncle demanded that the movie was funny, but mom and grandma had a different opinion after taking my aunt and me to see it. Anyway, I have fond memories of House II and I look forward to watching it again this weekend.

My first venture in watching horror was back in the late 80s on an old black and white TV set I had in my bedroom, where I would watch Friday the 13th the series at 9 PM on Friday nights. I barely recall what any of the episodes where about until I bought the DVDs a few years ago. About a year or so later is when I was introduced to Michael Myers by my grandma who was babysitting me at the time. My mom was fairly upset that I watched the movie, even though it was the cut version off of TV.  I watched part of Halloween II when I was at my grandparent’s house a few weeks later and I begged to take the VHS home to finish it. My mom made me keep the volume down as I finished the movie at home. As for Halloween III, lets just say I only watched it once as a kid, but I’ve watched a few more times since I have gotten it on DVD. It's not my favorite in the series.

I wasn’t aware of Halloween 4 & 5 even existed, until Halloween: The Curse of Michael Meyers came out. I was eagerly waiting the rental release and kept asking the video clerk (in another town) when it was coming out, that’s when I was told there six movies. I rented 4 and 5 just before the sixth movie came out. During those five years before Halloween 6 was released, I found other movies - A Nightmare on Elm Street, Friday the 13th, Evil Dead, Night of the Living Dead, and many other horror movies. In the middle 90s I would watch Monster Vision on TNT, and then switch over to the local Fox station to watch Tales from the Crypt at midnight.

After being caught in the Buffy the Vampire Slayer mayhem, I still continued to follower Michael Meyers in his lackluster sequels and remakes. Now at the age of 30, I still love to indulge in the world of horror. I now watch True Blood, The Walking Dead, and the American Horror Story, which all three are better than most modern horror movies and the countless, horrible, remakes.

Does anyone recall the bookshelves of the school book fair being filled with teen horror books? I got caught up in the horror madness in the early 90s, about the time I started watching the 1978’s Halloween at the age of nine, and I stumbled upon the bizarre world of R.L. Stine, a few years before the Goosebumps phenomenon hit the shelves. I read and collected dozens of R.L. Stine novels back in the day, but as I grew up I lost interest. Luckily I kept all of the books and I started collecting R.L. Stine, along with other Point Horror books, again.

Last Christmas, I received Halloween Party by R.L Stine, which is part of the Fear Street series, which I have always wondered why none of the books have every been made into a cheap horror movie or a low-rated CW series. I’ve never read the book before and was memorized by the snappy new cover design from the Simon Pulse release. There’s something about a jack-o-lantern that gives me the creeps. I tossed the book on the coffee table and had forgotten about it until last month when I was planning the 13 Days of Halloween posts. I thought it would be a perfect time to read it.

The Halloween Party is about a teen, Terry Ryan, who, along with his girlfriend, Niki Meyer (Michael Meyers? A Coincidence? Why is there always someone with the last name Meyer or Meyers in a horror novel?) has been invited, along with a selected number of guests, to the Halloween Party of Justine, a new student to Shadyside High with a mysterious past. The party is being held at the old Cameron Mansion on Fear Street, beyond the cemetery. The mansion is said to be haunted!

This is not your typical party as all Justine wants to do is play wicked, cruel games to embarrass her fellow students. Then, out of nowhere, several bikers crash the party, reminding me of the party scene from the movie Weird Science. While the new unwelcome guests causes a little chaos, Niki disappears and one of the partiers is found dead! Terry searches through the spooky mansion in search of his missing girlfriend, while Justine unleashes her revenge plot.

 I have to admit that I normally zoom right through Fear Street novels, but I had trouble getting into this one until I was about the middle of the book. I rolled my eyes as the bikers invaded the party, and my stomach quenched at every cruel joke Justine unleashed. Only when Terry learns of the mansion’s previous owners’ deaths does the plot actually get interesting, and you finally understand why Justine only invited specific guests. Despite that fact that Halloween Party is not the best of the Fear Street, I still enjoyed the few twists and turns that made it a decent read. I can easily see this being made into a TV movie, but I guess those are too rare these days thanks to the boring scripted reality shows. Let me give you some advice: If you get invited to a party at an old mansion next to a cemetery - Don’t Go!

When developing characters; some authors create detailed character sheets, others use a loose outline and follow their ‘muse’. I use a combination of these, but the main method I use for creating my characters is; I talk to them. Like a crazy person, I sit in my office and talk to my characters. Ask them questions about their lives, reactions and feelings. Thankfully only my cat is witness to this lunacy, otherwise I’m sure I would have been locked up a long time ago.

I thought it appropriate, when Billy asked for a guest post in honor of October and Halloween, that I share with you my version of an “Interview With A Vampire”.

The vampire I’m interviewing is Bektamun. She is 3000 years old and narrator of “Vampires Revealed”.

RH: Hi Bektamun, thanks for agreeing to an interview. I hope you’re comfortable and not hungry at all.

B: It’s my pleasure Rebeka. No I’m not hungry, I fed earlier.