A World Without Horror

By: L. Bachman

Sit back, inhale with your nose, and exhale through your mouth. Now that you’re in a better more comfortable position I want you to do something for me. Imagine for a moment, if you will, a world without horror.

Now that you’re picturing it in your mind’s eye you’ve probably imagined a world without wars, starving children, or intolerance. You may have pictured an ideal location–a utopia if you will, of bliss and happiness. With skies above the shades of the palest of blues and the most romantic of pinks and purples. Clouds dotting along ignorant of anything other than peace and calm, even ignoring the blazing brilliance of a sun rising or perhaps setting depending on the mood upon which you’re imaging. Now that you have pictured this beautiful moment in time, you’re also picturing a world of unadulterated fantasy.

Horror is born of the darkness that rises after the sun sets. Life everlasting breathed into it from the chattering of teeth from your bedroom closet. Even that little repetitious tapping of the glass that wakes you from your slumber. It is the crossroads of our fears and the unknown. At that point we have unfiltered life experience and for the writer of horror, this prime location is the feeding ground for our darkest muse. The creature inhaling our primal gut reactions, perhaps from a long-forgotten ancestral reaction of warning or doom, and exhaling them into page upon page of thrills, chills, and tormented woe, but I ask you: why do we need to have horror in the world? Why can we not have peace?

The world is harsh and unrelenting, and we, the horror creators, reflect that. No matter if we write of its ghost stories or its murderers or create the fear in another arena, we are a reflection upon the world in which we live–the world you live. Horror is a necessary evil so that one may face their fears in the comfort and privacy of their home, in the safety of numbers at a cinema, or so we learn and grow from the things that scare us most in the world.

In several cultures and throughout history, it’s a rite of passage for a child to become an adult by facing their fears. If you can face the thing you fear most nothing can stop you, right? It could help put things in proportion, at least it’d make one think. Horror is a necessary evil. It helps us cope and helps us overcome. I speak from experience, let me share with you a story you may not know or may have heard since I have shared it before.

My younger life was abusive. I woke most days wondering what was going to happen to me, a reaction from years of abuse at the hands of a family member that overtime became a constant state of being, my ‘normal’. I won’t go into the details of my abuse here, just setting the stage for my point to be made. My youth was abusive and as I grew my abuse came and went whenever that family member was around. I shared my teen years with lots of memories, experience, and with moments of times that I genuinely thought I was going to die. With all that I have overcome surviving such an existence when I wrote in my younger years, I was coping with surroundings I felt utterly out of control of. I created worlds that I could control so writing for me became therapeutic, even if I didn’t have the wisdom and vocabulary at the time to explain this properly.

My writing style grew as anyone practicing a skill will grow. I began writing horror truly not realizing I was writing in horror. My logic was: This doesn’t scare me so it’s probably not scary, fantasy at most. It wasn’t until a published author and friend I had made looked over my work and said that it was horror that I even realized.

Now, for most, my life experiences could be considered horror. For me, I had dealt with it, overcoming it like so many that face horrors in their life. Now, do I credit my life for getting me into horror? No, but it has helped me face fears that I didn’t understand were fears. A life without horror, to a degree for me, would be a dreary one. I wouldn’t know how to react in many situations that may come and go in my life. I learned not to panic when the fires get bigger. I have learned that to breathe in the method I asked you to do at the beginning, it’s a meditative method I picked up to calm my heart rate and to realign myself when need be, and to calm.

So, in the month, that we in the literature recognize so many that contribute to horror in all the branches from the tree, I enjoy it because I recognize that a world, for me, without horror would’ve made me less of a person. It has taken me to some scary places, but it has also given me the candlelight in the dark so it’s not so bad after all.

Plant Horror – Or That Impressive Hogweed Is NOT Harmless!

By E. A. Black

Most people don’t think of plants as particularly harmful. It’s not like they’re going to uproot themselves, chase you, and attack you. Oh, wait, I’ve seen that movie… J

In fact, nature is brutal. It’s not always nice and pretty. You may twirl around in your New Age clothing in the woods to be closer to nature, but nature is also watching you. And waiting to pounce.

Plant horror is an interesting and frightening horror genre. I’m an amateur gardener and I’ve seen my fair share of wicked plants. There are the commonly known ones like poison ivy, poison oak, poison sumac, and Venus flytraps, but some of the more obscure ones can scare the hell out of you. I live in Massachusetts where the giant hogweed reigns. It resembles a large Queen Anne’s lace and wild parsnip, but it is not harmless. This plant’s sap is highly toxic and causes blisters and scars. It’s so vicious it can blind you. Websites have advised if you see this plant to avoid it at all costs. Do NOT touch it!

Poison hemlock affects the respiratory muscles. This is the plant that Socrates chose to ingest when accused of impiety and corrupting young men of Athens.

Ingrid murdered her lover, Barry, in the book “White Oleander” when she discovered he was cheating on her. The poison she used included oleander sap. Symptoms of ingesting this sap include nausea, vomiting, excess salivation, abdominal pain, and diarrhea (may contain blood). There is also irregular heartbeat or racing heart that slows to a dangerous rate.

According to a Smithsonian article, scholar T. S. Miller wrote, “First, the traditional Western understanding of how the world works places plants at the bottom of a pyramid that contains all living things. In plant horror, they disrupt this seeming “natural order” by rising to the top as apex predators. Second, plants are at the bottom of the pyramid precisely because they are so very unlike humans. We can see ourselves in animals, even animals unlike us. But it’s much harder to see yourself in a rose bush, or even a Venus flytrap. They’re creatures from another world, a cellulose world, which is right next to us and which we depend on—but there’s no way to know what they might be thinking, or what, given the right circumstance, they might do.”

Books and movies that delve into plant horror include the following:

The Ruins – Travelers to Mexico discover nature run amok such as murderous vines that creep all over you (and inside you). Caustic sap burns their hands. The locals won’t let them leave the area because they’d carry the contagion into villages with them.

The Day of the Triffids – Triffids are large, venomous, carnivorous plants that can uproot themselves and chase you. Triffids pass on poison through stingers.  The protagonist suspects these plants were bioengineered by the Russians, and now triffids are a worldwide threat.

Little Shop Of Horrors – Audrey II is a man-eating plant that not only talks but also breaks out in blooms with its victim’s faces inside. Influences may have been John Collier’s “Green Thoughts” and Arthur C. Clarke’s “The Reluctant Orchid”.

The Invasion of the Body Snatchers – Spores from outer space mimic humans in the form of gigantic seed pods that impersonate individual victims. The story starts with a doctor’s patients who suffer from Capgras delusion – the belief that their loved ones have been replaced by exact replicas. Determining who is human and who is a pod person provides much fear for this story. You’ll never look at sleep quite the same way again after watching or reading it.

The Happening – M. Night Shyamalan’s movie about mass suicides caused by toxic plants.

Rappaccini’s Daughter – Nathaniel Hawthorne’s classic short story about a man who watches his neighbor’s beautiful daughter Beatrice milling about in her father’s rare flowers garden. He is entranced, but the woman is not quite what she appears to be.

Other movies that include plant horror are “Creepshow”, “Attack of the Killer Tomatoes”, and “Doctor Terror’s House of Horrors”.

I’ve written a plant horror short story recently, and I’m looking for a home for it. This story includes vines I describe as “flapping their blooms open and shut making squicky sounds like pulling your foot out of mud. It was a nauseating, mushy kiss.” I based the vines on pumpkin blossoms, which are large, pulpy, orange, and very alien-looking. I strongly suspect that the author of “The Invasion of the Body Snatchers” has seen pumpkin blossoms. Those blooms in the movie look suspiciously like them.

Next spring, when you see the greenery sprout from the ground and the blossoms bloom and the sweet smell of the flowers greets you, remember that Lily of the Valley can cause heart palpitations and a small animal that drinks water a foxglove has been sitting in can die from it. The heart drug digitalis was originally derived from foxglove. Even your Christmas poinsettia is poisonous. Pleasant dreams!

Channeling Character Development Through Acting

By: Robyn Alezanders 

“Write what you know” is a funny, tricky one for horror writers – nevermind the fantastical or supernatural elements we may create for our stories, but what about mundane yet no less sinister characteristics? How do we believably convey terrifying, unsettling thoughts, actions, and behaviors  if we’re (hopefully!) not enacting it ourselves? It’ can stifle our passion for the genre….

As one of those writers who’s more of an introverted, quiet type, yet always fancied being in front of people, I recently accomplished the bucket list goal, and personal challenge, of acting. A dream role debut, I played a vampire Vixen/Bride in a community theatre production of Dracula, one of four women who were nameless, but each portraying a distinct persona: a classic looking pale “ballerina” (she did a creepy dance around a sleeping Jonathan Harker); a royal beauty (voluminous curls and a hint of glitzy makeup); an assertive femme fatale with white eyes and blotchy decomposing skin; and me – a “bloodhound,” with yellow wolf eyes, and flaming red hair to match the blood all over my dress, neck, hands, and mouth. Simply by appearance, I was the most feral, vicious of the group, the one that exudes the monstrous side of vampires, alongside the vixens’ simmering sensuality.

I had had a notion about theatre that people were simply assigned roles, and just went right into rehearsal. But, pleasantly, surprisingly, we spent quite a bit of time analyzing characters, together and individually, our own and who others were portraying. And even as rehearsals progressed and it seemed as if we all understood our characters, we still continued to discuss and theorize motivations, histories, and intentions. It became a fascinating psycho-analytical foray that inspired and excited me to hear what everyone thought regarding their roles and how they interacted with and affected others. Adding to the intrigue was that we had to stay in context to the time period, and apply insight (social conformities, expectations, mannerisms, etc.) as it pertained to late 1800s’ Europe- that alone was a terrific exercise in character development!

The big scene for my Vixen occurred near the end of and closed out Act 1. The four Brides seductively descend upon Harker, until Dracula interrupts our frenzy before we can indulge our bloodlust. Two Vixens scurry off, while I and another have our hunger pacified with a baby that the good Count has nabbed. It’s a jolting sequence that encompasses pack mentality, hunting prey, anger, impatience, and the one-two sucker punch combination of sexual desire and the need to kill and eat. I had to get into the mindset of a creature driven by hunger – licking, touching, cooing at, and trying to hold down our coveted snack, then defiantly hissing at Dracula and imploring him to give us something, then ravenously tearing apart and eating a “live” infant (cut up doll, crying sound effects, and edible “bloody guts”) sleeping in a picnic basket.

How did I thus do it? At first I had considered method acting, but cast mates suggested not to, so that I didn’t miss out on the fun camaraderie that everyone indulged in between scenes. So while I joked and gossiped and took photos while awaiting direction or discussion, I also created a specific trigger – a playlist akin to what I typically do when writing, compiling songs that evoked deadly yet alluring vampiresses. I avoided softer music the days of performances and added my own distinctive details to my portrayal – sniffing the air like a predator would, and giggling “all mine!”as I skipped away with the basket of baby. I exerted more purpose into the way I possessively caressed Harker, and how I held onto Dr. Van Helsing (during a fight scene between Vixens and the male heroes), and tried intimidating him into submission (until he broke the spell and “stabbed” me into scuttling off.) As rehearsals got closer to performances, I found myself settling into character much more, and with each stage presence, became stronger, more confident, more real in portrayal.

You can break from writing, edit, and redo sentences. With theatre, you have to be and stay in the moment, and go with however the flow of the scene dictates. Delving deeper into my psych, as I had never before, eliciting a newer energy vibration, and awakening another jigsaw piece to who I am is how I channeled introspection into a different art medium. Literally stepping into a physical role, rather than just through words, has elevated my comprehension. Actively working on being a scary woman for the last four months, a character who’s meant to terrify, to attract while simultaneously repulse, has taught me how to better craft one in a story. I learned how to truly transform myself into someone who represents an iconic staple in horror, and to find the magick to effectively bring her out to an audience. Based upon the reactions and post-show comments, I did it quite well – made people uneasy, fearful, uncertain; in some instances, to get up and leave once intermission allowed so. It’s an amalgamation of sentiments that form the highest compliments for someone in horror, and reinforces the notion that I have achieved yet another step in making a formidable mark.

If you’re struggling with character development, or want another perspective on breathing life into fictional personas, consider theatre. It will sharpen your writing, make an unforgettable impression, and may even turn you on to another wonderful outlet for your artistic spirit.

Female Horror Authors Who’ve Inspired Me: Influences and Favorites

By: April A. Taylor

As a female horror author, I’m often asked when my love of the genre began. My earliest memories involve watching the Creature Feature movies and the Thriller Double Feature on local Detroit channels in the early 1980s. Everything from the original Universal Monsters to early Hammer Films filled the tiny black and white television set in my bedroom.

At the age of six, I was also blown away by Michael Jackson’s Thriller video. Soon, horror posters adorned my walls, and I voraciously consumed any children’s horror books I could find. My first favorite book, which I’d go on to read countless times and still own multiple copies of, was My Friend, the Vampire (better known as The Little Vampire) by Angela Sommer-Bodenburg.

Movies had caught my attention, but the world built by Sommer-Bodenburg completely captivated me. Unlike the two later films based on her internationally best-selling series of books, the characters in My Friend, the Vampire were gnarly, wild beasts who had trouble controlling their urge to drink human blood. This made the budding friendship between the two main characters, Tony (a human) and Rudolph (a vampire), even more endearing, and it satisfied a part of me that very much wanted to have a monster as my best friend (aside from my beloved My Pet Monster, of course).

Some of my earliest artistic endeavors were based on Sommer-Bodenburg’s work, including paintings and fan fiction. By the time I turned 10, my reading level had accelerated to a point where I gained special library privileges. Once the adult side of the library was at my disposal, I ran headlong into the world of horror literature.

I vividly remember sitting in my family’s garage devouring the first three books in Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles. I also remember laughing years later when I reread them and picked up on all the sexual content that had flown right over my young head. I also read a lot of fiction by male horror authors – Clive Barker became my favorite – but the experience of reading fiction by women inspired me to believe from a very young age that I, too, could become a horror author one day.

Classic literature by notable names such as Mary Shelley and Shirley Jackson were among my earliest, and quite possibly strongest, influences. To this day, Frankenstein is still my all-time favorite horror novel, and many reviewers have pointed out the similarities between my tone/writing style and Shirley Jackson’s seminal work, The Haunting of Hill House.

It’s no coincidence that my first published horror novel (The Haunting of Cabin Green) centered around a haunted building and a tortured protagonist who may or may not be insane. It’s also no surprise that I grew up writing horror stories that took a more literary approach to the genre. This doesn’t mean that I don’t enjoy a quick, easy splatterfest – those can be really fun, and I’ve written several of them.  From an intellectual level, though, nothing satisfies me more than reading (and writing) literary horror.

As a result of my literary preference, I’ve fallen in love with the writing style of modern female horror authors such as Alma Katsu and Damien Angelica Walters. If you haven’t read The Hunger and Paper Tigers by these authors yet, I highly encourage you to check them out. They kept me fully engrossed and, in both instances, made me strive to take my own writing to a higher level.

When it’s time to let my hair down with a good, old-fashioned gorefest, no other author fits the bill quite as well as Ania Ahlborn. She inspires me to feel free to always push the limits of what horror is and how it can be used to elicit a reaction from readers. Ahlborn is also an inspiration for how she self-marketed her indie debut, Seed, all the way to the top of Amazon’s Horror category, which was followed by a publishing contract.

Speaking of indie female horror authors who know how to market their work to a wide audience, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention Darcy Coates. Her particular brand of easily digestible ghost stories has conquered Amazon’s algorithms, thereby catapulting the Australian author into the Top 10 Best-Selling Horror Authors list on an almost daily basis. Whether her books are your forte or not, there’s no denying her meteoric rise and how much she can teach every female horror author about marketing.

This month, I encourage all of you to give at least one new female horror author a try. Everyone from indies to those who have a lucrative publishing contract has something unique to offer the world of horror, and some of them may end up changing the genre forever, just like Mary Shelley and Shirley Jackson. Happy reading!