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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/24950
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/24950
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Human life is ultimately terrifying. We are all going to die, and the thought of our own extinction horrifies us. But it is not just the fact of death, but also the fact that death (if it is not premature) is accompanied by a systematic loss of our abilities and of our friends. Man is uniquely cursed as the only animal that knows, from early life, that it is going to die. Much of literature is concerned with coming to terms with this final and unavoidable horror.

What we think of as a healthy mental outlook, however, is one that does not dwell on the horror of what is to come. There are good arguments for this: why let the fear of the horror to come rob you of the pleasure of the present? At the same time, this healthy mental outlook is a kind of delusion. Even is we possess a faith in something beyond death, death itself remains the great unknown and the great horror of our lives when all we have will be stripped away from us. Everyone dies alone.

Horror stories are one way of dealing with the horror of death. They appear to be healthy for some people -- or perhaps at some ages. They help some people process their fears. For others, they are unhealthy, locking them into a cycle of morbidity. What is true for readers must be doubly true for writers, I think, since a writer spends a hundred times longer over a story than the reader does.

If this is even remotely true, the writer of horror has to be willing to go down into the valley of death. Perhaps this is the only way for them to retain their mental health. Perhaps is it an ill-advised indulgence for morbidity. Perhaps is is an irresistible fascination. Or perhaps they should turn at the threshold and take another direction. But I doubt there is anyway to avoid the fear and still walk through the valley of death. If there were, it would be a different valley.

Original score: 2