The Origin of Horror

Horror stories have been around as long as anyone can remember, even ancient stories and tales have an element of horror and gore in them. Horror stories can be traced back all the way to the ancient Sumerians. The Sumerians, if you didn’t know, are the earliest known civilization in modern day Southern Iraq. They are known to have lived from 4500–1900 bc. Although their version of horror is a little bit different than modern day horror it is still very fascinating. The debut of modern day horror can be found in the first Inquisition. During the first Inquisition in 1235 the Vatican wanted to reestablish the orthodoxy. After this charges of heresy were put with allegations of witchcraft. Thus beginning and obsession with witchcraft that continue until the 17th century. During this time period most of the books that we now consider horror were actually meant to be guides on how to combat witch craft. Also legends of vampires began to pop up in the early 1700’s. Although now we categories those books are fiction, at the time people thought that the mystical creature was real so the stories and books were nonfiction. Also in 1765 The Castle of Otranto was published by Horace Walpole and this book is considered the first gothic novel to be made. This book had a great impact on the upcoming genre. Although there were a lot of authors, Edgar Allen Poe was the first to bring this element to America. His first published story was “MS Found in a Bottle” which was in the Baltimore Saturday Visitor in 1833. From then on the gothic genre caught eyes of many others other which eventually evolved gothic into horror.