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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/q/4080
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

What good examples of fear/terror inducing techniques do you know?

Off the top of my head I am thinking of:

- the Apache Indians scalping of dead enemies and hanging them in their horses/spears/belts
- displaying of enemy heads/skulls in various entrance places

These are mostly associated with war time and done to inspire fear of death on adversaries, but I can also think of obvious others:

- creepy people in dark secluded places
- the illusion of a character's complete and non-obvious control of a situation (sort of like Hannibal Lecter when locked away in Hannibal, that captured guy in the beginning of James Bond Quantum of Solace — "we have people everywhere", among many others)
- the general (very very reprovable) tactics used by Anders Breivik (murdered lots of people in a youth camp and in a bomb attack in Oslo and had a very extensive right wing plan for Europe that got a lot of attention because of his infamous exposure on TV) and his general passiveness over it all
- the way the earth vanishes in the beginning of "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy", leaving the main character (and the reader) in shock

I really hate the neo-Nazi example, but it's in line with what I am searching for. I don't have many restrictions on theme/approach (I think the examples speak for themselves).

Original score: 5