I Contain Multitudes

By Rivka Crowbourne

There’s an old(ish) saying: “Everyone makes fun of the Catholics until they need an exorcism.” The complex and mysterious ritualism of the Catholic Church has always fascinated horror writers, regardless of their personal convictions: the Irish Protestant Bram Stoker (Dracula) fell back on Latin orthodoxy to inter the undead, and the non-denominational demi-Buddhist James Wan (The Conjuring) idealized a Roman Catholic couple to expel the unclean. What is it about the Church that seems to keep her cheek by jowl with the various things that go bump?

As a horror-writing cradle Catholic, I’ve always insisted that one of the great scary story benefits, along with catharsis, is inoculation: a mind that’s been exposed to evil in trace amounts, thus building up a certain tolerance, is arguably better equipped to withstand a real-life encounter. I’ve also always feared that the depicting of evil, though inevitable and necessary, is a somber undertaking for the storyteller. Evil is, by its very nature, tempting; you can’t portray it in any meaningful way without becoming a vessel for its allure. Catholics are notorious for not knowing their Bibles, but I often reflect on Jesus’ remark: “Woe to those by whom temptations come! It were better for them to be cast into the sea with a millstone hung about their neck” (Luke 17:1-2).

To a nonbeliever, the point may seem moot, but consider: even if the serpent on the knowledge tree is a metaphor, there’s still a reptile coiled around your brainstem. H.P. Lovecraft was an atheist, but he clearly managed to net a few of the massive shadows gliding through the icy murk of our collective unconscious, or his work wouldn’t resonate with such wide, still-spreading ripples. And, like his good friend Robert E. Howard (suicide by gunshot), he neither lived nor died in happiness. Their fate is not, of course, unavoidable—but it’s a stern admonition to those who strike matches in the basement of the intellect. We all know Nietzsche’s maxim about the hazards of the gaze; an exorcist or vampire-hunter might well add that when you enter the Abyss, the Abyss enters also into you.

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