Since I write horror stories, I thought it would be informative to find out what truly horrifies the masses. Hence, I'm asking anyone and everyone: what character are they most afraid of? and why?
Not so much a particular character, I'm more into horrors that explore Human thought/condition. The bogey man isn't half as scary as a mentally deranged nutcase that could be living next door.
If I had to chose a character I'd go with Pinhead, a dark evil fucker who was once Human.
Cheers
Quote from: Conceptulist on 17 January, 2016, 12:27:09 PM
Since I write horror stories, I thought it would be informative to find out what truly horrifies the masses. Hence, I'm asking anyone and everyone: what character are they most afraid of? and why?
Jeremy Corbyn, if the mainstream media are to be believed...
Cheers!
Jim
The fairies*. There's nothing scarier than those malevolent, mischievous bastards lovely wee lords and ladies.
*Steady now.
Anyone who desires power over other people.
Great big pigs that look in your window at night. And grunt.
The unknown frightens people more than anything else. If you can't see/hear or even smell it you're at a great disadvantage. The fear of being eaten alive is another horror people have since predation was a problem for our ancestors in Africa.
Child snatching/murder is another evil. To have one's genetic legacy denied by an act of malice is deeply abhorrent to humans hence the contempt for ghastly peodaphiles. You could say it 's a form of predation too and it instills a sense of failure and hopelessness. If you can't defend the youngest members of the community against a ravening enviroment/monster/malicious human/ghost what hope is there for the future?
That image of bear riding an inflatable shark that he uses as an avatar. Z
Tentacled horrors of cyclopean plasticity. I always liked dopplegangers aka The invasion of the Bodysnatchers or the Thing/Who goes there? though, they're cool and scary. You can't trust anyone these days! :)
The doppelganger thing leans towards something I find scary: the idea of people, particularly loved ones, turning wrong. That's one thing I find scary about zombie films. Zombies themselves aren't all that powerful as monsters go. Especially those slow moving shambling things.
But now imagine your sweet old granny, coming back and staggering towards you making a mewing sound, and trying to take a bite out of you. (Although she might need her dentures for that.)
A good example to my mind, are the [spoiler]monsters in the walls[/spoiler], in Stephen King's short story Jerusalem's Lot. Actually the vampires in the novel Salem's Lot are quite scary for much the same reason. [spoiler]With the exception of the head vampire Barlow (who is less scary to me, although he is the most powerful) these vampires are not the intelligent articulate beings with personality we see in most vampire films and stories. Neither are they quite as stupid as the way zombies are portrayed. They are just something hungry, twisted and wrong, but they have enough memory of their former loved ones and associates to target them first. Over time, they develop more cunning, but they remain inhuman.[/spoiler]
Brrrr.
While I like vampires, i generally don't find them all that scary. But written a certain way, they can be.
Wow, this response is amazing.
I'm particularly happy to hear people dissecting their fears because this makes my next question a bit easier to shoehorn in.
So, pretty much whilst looking for a fear that prevails in everyone, I thought of one thing that is never (or as far as I'm aware of) used in horror movies, loneliness. This thought occurred to me because our entire media is based upon relationships, whether breaking or bonding, and the world's most unified theory amongst society (the theory that alien life exists) attempts to nullify an idea of loneliness. I mean imagine if you were just sat in an empty abyss, that only hosted yourself, what would you be thinking and feeling?
This is just a loose theory, so feel free to disprove or even argue against it.
oh, and to respond to three fears at once (unknown, paranoia/corruption (the thing fear), and the mental status fear) , I'm glad people mentioned some of these fears because I've either written a story based on that fear or I am developing something based on those fears, though their probably extremely rough compared to the professional standard I am trying to achieve.
I also like the political joke :D .
To Madroid:
Do you read many of Stephen King's novels? I only ask because I read 'IT' and I found it to be pallid after 300 pages, which was a shame considering it had a really tense atmosphere before hand, hence I was wondering if Stephen King tends to go into too much detail in a majority of his novels.
Quote from: Conceptulist on 17 January, 2016, 11:30:46 PM
I've either written a story based on that fear or I am developing something based on those fears, though their probably extremely rough compared to the professional standard I am trying to achieve.
Would it be bad to mention you should have used "they're" in that sentence? Wouldn't normally do that on an online forum, but this thread
is about writing and aiming at a professional standard.
I often find people who do nothing but stand and stare at you to be quite terrifying. I think the movie It Follows used that kind of thing very well in its story. The idea of being stalked by someone who says nothing and does nothing but walk towards you is very creepy in my opinion.
Quote from: Greg M. on 17 January, 2016, 02:46:21 PM
Great big pigs that look in your window at night. And grunt.
That was one freaky book! :D
Quote from: sheridan on 18 January, 2016, 12:43:37 AM
Quote from: Conceptulist on 17 January, 2016, 11:30:46 PM
I've either written a story based on that fear or I am developing something based on those fears, though their probably extremely rough compared to the professional standard I am trying to achieve.
Would it be bad to mention you should have used "they're" in that sentence? Wouldn't normally do that on an online forum, but this thread is about writing and aiming at a professional standard.
Actually, I applaud you. Thanks, I didn't notice that typo.
Quote from: Jabberwocky on 18 January, 2016, 06:48:18 AM
I often find people who do nothing but stand and stare at you to be quite terrifying. I think the movie It Follows used that kind of thing very well in its story. The idea of being stalked by someone who says nothing and does nothing but walk towards you is very creepy in my opinion.
So, you're afraid of a creature that isn't fazed by being noticed and enjoys tormenting it's prey? Like Jason Voorhees or Mike Myers.
Quote from: Conceptulist on 17 January, 2016, 11:30:46 PM
To Madroid:
Do you read many of Stephen King's novels? I only ask because I read 'IT' and I found it to be pallid after 300 pages, which was a shame considering it had a really tense atmosphere before hand, hence I was wondering if Stephen King tends to go into too much detail in a majority of his novels.
I think I've read the majority. He is probably one of my favourite authors, actually.
I don't find most of his work all that scary though, ironically. I think it's mainly the characterisation and the fantasy element that gets me.
But....
He has his moments. Particularly as I've said, Salems Lot, Jerusalem's Lot (the short story- sort of but not quite prequel) and One for the Road, a short story, sort of sequel. Now that one IS scary! The little girl standing on the snow. Not IN the snow ON it. That creeps me out to think of, even now.)
The Shining. That's another scary one, but ghosts are another thing that scare me. Partly because I think they might actually exist. (I don't freak out at night in the house or anything like that. I'm quite happy to move around in the dark, etc but I've never taken well to ghost films.)
I liked IT. It's actually quite scary in places, although not so much near the end, for me.
Stephen King can be quite verbose, but I don't find his style boring. I wouldn't say he is overly descriptive, (depending on what he is describing) although he has moments when he will take a lot of effort to describe an environment.
Ah, I might give him another crack then. My main problem with 'IT' is when Stephen King goes into the past life of the kids, for what felt like a thousand pages, but I found the writing in the present day to be intense and profound.
I've never really found horror films or books scary, they were all just fantasy films to me. The only time I ever came close to being so scared I nearly ran out of the cinema was Jaws - but even then, as soon as the guys got out on the boat chasing the shark I changed from fear to absolute enjoyment. Zombies, vampires, werewolves and all those guys are just entertainments to me.
Fear, for me, comes from the real and the mundane. The civil servant you never meet who, with the stroke of a pen or the use of a telephone, can deprive you of your property, your family, your life - while your friends and neighbours just avert their eyes and let it happen.
For me, true fear stems from the mundane malignancy of people who believe they are doing the right thing, not in fantastical creatures but in real things; the hungry shark, the virus, the zealot.
As an example, the police are supposed to be here to help and protect us, but if you're driving along and a police car slots in behind you, what do you feel? Do you feel safe and protected, or do you feel fear and anxiety? Fear, like Hell, is other people.
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 19 January, 2016, 05:23:57 AM
I've never really found horror films or books scary, they were all just fantasy films to me.
This ^^^. I always suspected that people who found horror films such a Frankenstein or Dracula genuinely scary were just putting it on for effect (with the exception of sudden "shock" moments - you can't fake those!)
However, whenever I have that archetypal dream of trying to run away from some evil but unable to make your legs work, or trying to hide knowing with absolute certainty that it's going to find you any second; almost every time, the thing chasing me would be a Dalek. They are scary little beasties, as whatever they are saying or doing, that gun is
always pointed at you, and tyou can't reason with thme or appeal for mercy. Brrrr
Love horror films and have seen loads over the years. The only one that caused me to lose sleep was "The Entity" when I was about 15. The thought of an invisible force which you couldn't fight scared me shitless.
Not so much the obvious incarnations of stuff like werewolves, vampires, banshees, etc., but the idea that these mythologies are perhaps based on something true and older. I'm not explaining this very well already, but I guess the idea that there are leftovers from an older world still wandering around in the shadows of ours gets me going.
Alternatively, there's this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7tbXhu09m5s
Quote from: blackmocco on 19 January, 2016, 09:52:43 PM
Not so much the obvious incarnations of stuff like werewolves, vampires, banshees, etc., but the idea that these mythologies are perhaps based on something true and older. I'm not explaining this very well already, but I guess the idea that there are leftovers from an older world still wandering around in the shadows of ours gets me going.
Yeah, I understand what you're saying. In fact, it's pretty cool how civilisations, that had nearly no contact, had very similar mythologies, the vampire, for example, pops up all over the world's history.
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 19 January, 2016, 05:23:57 AM
Fear, for me, comes from the real and the mundane. The civil servant you never meet who, with the stroke of a pen or the use of a telephone, can deprive you of your property, your family, your life - while your friends and neighbours just avert their eyes and let it happen.
This is actually one of the reasons why horror is such a popular genre; it turns true fears into something almost cherishable, so that the fear seems less intense, and you can say to yourself: I just faced my fear head on, and I'm still alive. Examples for this lay throughout culture, but a specific example that has sprung to mind is 'Alien', which was meant to target male sexual discomfort (as well as female sexual discomfort, but the makers said they specifically wanted to engender male viewer's masculinity to be placed in an alien (no pun intended, I swear) situation).
Didn't think that comic book horror can scare me, changed my mind after first volumes of Wytches and Outcast (both were available in new Image Humble Bundle).
Quote from: LukaszKowalczuk on 31 January, 2016, 06:49:12 PM
Didn't think that comic book horror can scare me, changed my mind after first volumes of Wytches and Outcast (both were available in new Image Humble Bundle).
Ah, yes, Wytches! That's a brilliant horror comic, but the comic actually didn't creepy me out, it was Scott's paragraphs at the end that did. Somehow he was able to paint a perfect picture of a real life Wytch staring at him from behind a tree with very few words.
Having said that, I've always wondered: why did Scott make his title Wytches, instead of Witches? Was it a method to make the creatures seem unpredictable, or perhaps a way to say that the creatures weren't the same witches you've heard of?
Probably to differentiate from all the other films and books using the proper spelling, plus spelling it with a 'y' looks sort of old fashioned, (but isn't).
Like 'magyck'?
Okay, that has an extra letter too...
I picked up Wytches at LSCC on Saturday. Mainly due to good reports on this very board. Yet to read it but looking forward to it.
Wytches is tremendous. And the believabilty of the setup and characters is the main reason for the tension.
Only other 'horror' comic I remember reading - not a genre I bother with really - is those Vampire Vixens. The appeal there obviously being the art and absolute filth.
It's not something from a horror story, but possibly the scariest monster for me is that in the film Forbidden Planet. It's that it's part of us that makes it horrific, our own darkest fantasies brought to life in the form of a murderous, unstoppable monster.
Apart from that, any song by Kylie Minogue!
Quote from: Rogue Earthlet on 26 February, 2016, 11:34:00 PM
Apart from that, any song by Kylie Minogue!
Take that back!
The Pert Goddess was even awarded the Legion d'honneur for those hot pants.
Never been a huge fan of horror.
However, I'll make an exception for the 'Omen' trilogy - which scared me bat-shit crazy as a wee kid. A combination of the score, some great actors (Gregory Peck, David Warner, Sam Neill, Billie Whitelaw, etc.) and the religious back-drop.
The original 'Alien' movie also hit the spot!