4 Types of Literary Horror That Hold Up.
Are books effective in eliciting fear?
In the Fall of 2020, my wife and I walked the remote woods of Northern Michigan away from Headlands International Dark Sky Park and back to our car. Equipped with only red flashlights (as requested by the park), the 1.5-mile trek at night is ominous, and as clouds eclipsed stars and winds howled through haunting trees — our brave adventure quickly became the setting of any good piece of horror literature… A Dark and Stormy Night.
But the scariest part of it all was the faces. That’s right. If you’ve ever found yourself stumbling through this particular set of woods at night then you know exactly what I’m talking about. There between the trees exist life-size cutouts of people, spying on passers-by with chilling and realistic features. A fur trader armed with a rifle tracks you with his gaze. A scientist — or perhaps a dark wizard — holds an orb to the heavens and plots. An Anishnaabek warrior poises himself — hunting. And a girl in 1930’s clothing postures herself cheerfully, looking like something straight out of Stephen King’s, The Shining.
I remember this particular night vividly because it’s the night I finished reading H.P. Lovecraft’s At the Mountains of Madness, and it was this combination of all things spooky — a haunted forest, stalkers in the night…
