Structural Elements of Horror

 Copyright 2021 by Gary L. Pullman

An analysis of horror films discloses the use of a number of specific types of scenic elements that tend to recur frequently in such movies. Except for the prologue and the epilogue, the order in which these scenic elements occur may differ, and not all may be present in a film, although, typically, many, if not all, appear. In addition, each scenic element can be shown by itself or in combination with another (for example, an abduction can stand alone or be followed by a rescue or a murder). (Those common to more than one of the films analyzed in this post are in bold font.)

In Halloween (1978), these scenic elements occur in this order:

• Prologue (introduction)

• Escape (flight from antagonist or captivity)

• Stalking (hunting)

• Investigation (search for information by either amateur or professional sleuth[s])

• Murder(s) (unjustified killing[s])

• Encounter of protagonist and antagonist (first meeting of hero or heroine and villain, usually without violence)

• Initial attack on protagonist (first attack upon the hero or heroine)

• Escape

• Sustained attack on protagonist (sustained attack on hero or heroine, often by antagonist)

• Rescue (deliverance from danger)

• Epilogue (conclusion following main action of plot)

  

In Annabelle (2014), these scenic elements occur in this order:

• Prologue

• Murder(s)

• Investigation

• Attack

• Rescue

• Intelligence (provision or acquisition of information, often about the villain [e. g., origin, past, relationships], through secondary sources, such as television or radio news broadcasts, Internet browsing, books, police reports)

• Paranormal or supernatural incidents: (events inexplicable by science or reason)

• Relocation (displacement from one location to another)

• Pursuit

• Escape

• Discovery (finding of intelligence through own or others' actions)

• Attack

• Discovery

• Attack

• Warning (advisory of imminent danger)

• Attempted abduction (carrying away by force)

• Epilogue

  

In The Exorcist, (1973), these scenic elements occur in this order:

Prologue

Paranormal or supernatural incidents

Investigation (medical)

Investigation (constabulary)

Encounter of protagonist and antagonist

Intelligence

Paranormal or supernatural incidents

Attack

Death (loss of life due to natural causes)

Attack

Death

Rescue

Epilogue

In Psycho (1960), these scenic elements occur in this order:

• Tryst (private meeting between lovers)

• Crime other than murder (theft)

• Escape

• Investigation

• Relocation

• Concealment of stolen property

• Encounter of protagonist and antagonist

• Argument (heated discussion between two or more characters)

• Repeated encounter of protagonist and antagonist

• Decision to make restitution (deciding to restore to the rightful owner something that has been taken away, lost, or surrendered)

• Murder

• Disposal of incriminating evidence

• Intelligence

• Investigation

• Murder

• Investigation

• Discovery

• Intelligence

• Investigation

• Distraction (deliberate diversion of someone's attention from one incident or action to another)

• Attack

• Concealment of oneself or another

• Discovery

• Attack

• Rescue

• Intelligence

As this partial analysis of the recurring types of scenic elements common to horror films shows, such movies frequently use the same ones, despite the dramatic details of their plots. A writer who is interested in writing a horror novel or screenplay can use these same scenic elements to construct a plot based on a structure that has stood the test of time.

Just What I Needed: Another Exercise!

 Copyright 2021 by Gary Pullman

 

We not only learn new skills but hone old ones by pausing in plotting, writing, and revision to practice our skill at plotting, writing, and revision. (In my opinion, a writer can always improve by practicing, until he or she reaches perfection like William Shakespeare.)

The exercises should be challenging; they should also be something we can crosscheck with the results established writers might have produced had they performed the same exercises. Oh, yes! They should also relate to horror stories or to horror movies. Here are three.

 

I. You Are What You Do

1. List several personality traits for your protagonist. Then, explain what your protagonist does, based on one or more of these traits, in a specific situation. For example, perhaps your protagonist wants to start life anew with her boyfriend, who refuses to marry her until he's paid off his debts.

2. Instead of explaining that a protagonist is in love with another particular character, show the protagonist being in love with this other character.

 

II. Do What You Will

Briefly identify a motive for each of these actions: (1) following a monster's trail; (2) exploring an allegedly haunted castle; and (3) spying on neighbors.

 

III. Defiance Punished

Identify three interdictions that, defied, result in a character’s suffering or death:

1.

2.

3.

 

Here's How They Did It

  

I. You Are What You Do

 

1. Asked to deposit a real estate client's cash down payment for a house he is buying his daughter, Marion Crane instead steals the money from her boss and runs away to meet her boyfriend (Joseph Stefano, Psycho screenwriter).

 

 

2. Scottie stared at Madeliene, as she sat across the room, unaware of him. An image of a painting flashed in his mind. The lady's portrait's contours fit those of the woman before him; it was a perfect likeness of her, he thought. Later, when he entered a florist's shop with her at his side, she seemed ethereal, more fantasy than reality, and the light was as luminous as the flowers were bright and beautiful, their fragrance an embodiment of the very scent of the woman herself. It was as if they alone existed and as if the shop were a sunlit garden, a paradise created for them alone (Alec Coppel and Samuel Taylor, Vertigo).

 

II. Do What You Will

 

 

1. following a monster's trail: to rescue a woman captured by the monster (James Creelman and Ruth Rose, King Kong)

 

 

2.    exploring an allegedly haunted castle: to prove that the castle is not haunted (“The Red Room” by H. G. Wells)

 

 

3. spying on neighbors: to pass the time while recuperating from a broken leg (John Michael Hayes, Rear Window).

 

III. Defiance Punished

 

1. Glen Lantz  is told not to go to sleep; when he does, he is killed (Wes Craven, A Nightmare on Elm Street)

 

 

2. Caroline Ellis is told not to enter a locked room; after she does, she is paralyzed and her body is possessed by a hoodoo practitioner (Ehren Kruger, Skeleton Key)

 

3. A character is told not to enter a closed area of a national park; when he does so, he is killed by a bear, and the animal then pursues his girlfriend (Adam MacDonald, Backcountry)

 

Knowing Your Endgame

Copyright 2020 by Gary L. Pullman

Flash fiction works well for horror. We have the word from both Edgar Allan Poe, who said that a reader should be able to read a horror story in “a single sitting”—and he was talking short stories, not flash fiction as such. Although he was vague (what constitutes “a single sitting”?), we can, perhaps, get some direction from famed director Alfred Hitchcock, who brought both Psycho (1960) and The Birds (1963) to the big screen. He declared, “The length of a film should be directly related to the endurance of the human bladder.”

Of course, his definition is also somewhat obscure: the “endurance of the human bladder” is apt to differ, sometimes considerably, among individuals. However, adults average 120 to 240 minutes between visits to the restroom to urinate. Assuming that Hitchcock applied his own criterion to the films he directed, a horror film, at least, should be between 109 minutes (Psycho) and 119 minutes (The Birds), which are well within the guidelines that he himself established.

Definitions of the permissible word length of “flash fiction” stories differ, with some suggesting that such stories should be no more than 600 to 1,000 words, while others argue that flash fiction stories could be as long as 2,000 words. Flash fiction author Michael Williams, author of Tales with a Twist, tries to stay at or below 1,000 words, but, occasionally, he admits, one of his stories reaches 1,200 words:

“I think setting my goal as 1,000 words, maximum, helps me focus. It gives me something to shoot for, but I wouldn't sacrifice a good story just to stay within an artificially imposed limit; if I have to go beyond, 1,000 words, I have to go beyond 1,000 words. For me, though, that's the exception. Most stories I write can be done well—probably better—in 1,000 words or fewer.”

Research finds that most people read at a rate of between 200 and 250 words per minute, so a flash fiction story, for most readers, would certainly meet both Poe's and Hitchcock's definitions:

A flash fiction story isn't characterized only by its brevity, however. “Flash fiction stories—I usually refer to them as flashes—usually end with a twist,” Williams says. “That's part of the their appeal, part of their fun. It's also a large part of their popularity.”

There are various ways to “twist a tale.”

One is to start with an outrageous, or even seemingly impossible, incident or situation. That's part one, the beginning, of the story. It hooks the reader. Then, follow with a logical result of this initial incident or situation. That's the middle of the story. The end of the story, part three, delivers the twist.

One way to generate the twist itself is to play with the six questions related to any form of communication: Who?, What?, When?, Where? How? and Why? Make a list, as complete as possible, of possible answers to each of these questions as they relate to your story's premise.”

Here's an example:

Beginning: A snowman melts, revealing a corpse.

Middle: Police respond.

End (twist): . . . .

To come up with the twist, start the list of answers to the seven questions that apply to any form of communication, including fiction:

1. WHO? WHO is the dead person? If he or she was murdered, WHO is the murder? WHO might be a character in the story? The body, of course and the murderer (if there was a murder). The police officers. A neighbor. The mail carrier. A repair person. A bus or a taxi driver or passenger. A spouse. A child, minor or adult. A delivery person. A maintenance person. A utility worker. A meter reader. A sanitation employee.
2. WHAT? What happened to the dead person? Murder? Suicide? A prank gone wrong? An ill-advised advertisement? An attention-seeking act gone astray?
3. WHEN? A two-day interval, on day one of which the person is encased in snow and, on day two of which, he or she is found as the snowman begins to melt.
4. WHERE? The front yard of a suburban home.
5. HOW? The person encased in snow freezes to death over night.
6. WHY? (This is usually the point at which the twist suggests itself, although any of the six questions could prompt an answer that includes the story's twist): A prop master who remains employed by his uncle, a movie director, despite the prop master's Alzheimer's, forgets that he has packed snow over an actor's body, and repeatedly does so, rather than freeing the actor from the “snowman” after the shot is complete, causing the unintended victim to die of exposure overnight.

 

Notice that the twist, in this example, is the result of the WHY? question, but the identity of the killer does not appear among the answers to the WHO? question. This just goes to show that, in actual practice, the questions themselves may not produce the “answer” that provides the twist, but, without having gone through this process, it's unlikely that the idea would have occur at all. Answering the questions starts the ball rolling, the mind thinking, and the imagination visualizing.

Now, we can complete the framework, or skeleton, of the story's plot:

Beginning: A snowman melts, revealing a corpse.

Middle: Police respond.

End (twist): A prop master, having developed Alzheimer's, forgets that he has packed snow over an actor's body and repeatedly does so, rather than freeing the actor from the “snowman” after the shot is complete, causing the unintended victim to die of exposure overnight.

Note: As in any story, before writing it, you need to research any technical aspects of the plot to make sure they are accurate. For example, would a person freeze to death if encased in snow overnight or would he or she suffocate? How long would such a death, whether of hypothermia or suffocation, take? Maybe overnight isn't long enough. Research and revise, as necessary. If the technical reality doesn't allow the ending you've conceived, think of one that will stand the test of the facts.

Article Word Length: 1,014

Estimated Reading Time: 4.05 to 5.07 minutes

Mental Disorders and Ilnesses Will, Like Murder, Out

Copyright 2020 by Gary L. Pullman

Throughout the 1960s, a trend in horror movies is the human “monster.” Often the victim of a significant mental disorder or a mental illness of some kind, the “monster” frequently preys upon his or her peers: he or she is “one of us” without being one of us. Therefore, the monster seems even more terrifying, since victims have no sense of the monster's monstrosity: he or she seems just like everyone else.

Examples abound, including Psycho (1960), Peeping Tom (1960), Nightmare (1963), The Sadist (1963), and Straight-Jacket (1964).

Survivors include a sister and her boyfriend (Psycho) and a neighbor (Peeping Tom). In this subgenre of the horror film, survivors tend to be few and far between, as do heroes. A woman searching for her sister, who has disappeared under mysterious circumstances, and her boyfriend and a naive, but sincere, young woman who has befriended a psychotic neighbor have the right stuff: courage, loyalty, and love, in the sister's case; friendliness and compassion, in the neighbor's case. Do they survive because of these qualities, or are they simply lucky? By leaving such a question in viewers' minds, these films are unsettling: perhaps our fates do not depend on our behavior, but on pure, dumb luck.

Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho is so familiar it need not be summarized. Anthony Perkins, as the mad transvestite killer Norman Bates, who, half the time believes he's his dead mother, provides a stand-out performance, as does his first victim, Janet Leigh, as Marion Crane. Hitchcock gives his audience some hints about Bates's state of mind: Bates's nervousness and evasiveness, the birds he's stuffed and mounted as an amateur taxidermist, his statement that “sometimes, we all go a little mad,” and his admission that he is under his mother's control. Such clues, however, don't seem to register with Crane, as they do with Detective Milton Arbogast (Martin Balsam). (Nevertheless, both Crane and Abogast are killed.)

Peeping Tom features a camera operator's assistant, Mark Lewis, whose sideline is photographing scantily clad or nude women for a his local porn dealer and whose pastime is filming the young women he kills to capture their expressions as they are faced with their own imminent murders for a documentary work-in-progress.

Between sessions with his camera, he enjoys replaying his victims' screams as he watches their terror in the comfort of his home. The movie's back story suggests that Lewis was himself victimized by his father, a psychiatrist who subjected his son to bizarre experiments during the boy's childhood. In the last moments of the film, he becomes his own final victim.

Nightmare keeps audiences guessing. Janet sees her mother kill her father. Her mother is institutionalized. At the finishing school at which she stays, Janet has nightmares about a woman in white (her mother). A teacher takes her home, but her guardian, Henry Baxter, is not there, so the teacher leaves Janet in the care of Grace, a nurse-companion whom Henry has hired.

Janet's nightmares continue, and she is sedated when Henry returns home. When Henry's wife comes home, Janet mistakes her for the woman in her nightmare and stabs her to death, after which she is institutionalized.

Grace, who has been masquerading as the woman in white in Janet's “nightmares,” marries Henry, with whom she has conspired to deceive Janet into believing she was experiencing nightmares. Suspecting that Henry seeks to drive her mad, Grace stabs him to death, thinking the police will suspect Janet, who, Grace believes, has escaped from the institution. However, Janet has not escaped, so Grace is arrested and charged with Henry's murder.

Besides Janet's mother, who else is mad? Janet? Grace? Both?

 

An everyday incident turns into a nightmare of pain and suffering when a trio's car breaks down near a combination gas station-junkyard and a pair of sadistic serial killers on the run from the police turn up. The Sadist is horrific not only because of the acts of sadism the killers commit against their victims, but also because it shows how an ordinary inconvenience can be transformed, without reason or justification, into an orgy of violence and misery, just like (snap) that.

As in Nightmare, Straight-Jacket pits a daughter against one of her parents. This time, however, it's the youngster, Lucy, who's the villain. Her mother, Carol, hoping to marry a wealthy married man whose parents Lucy has alienated following her return home from the mental institution to which she'd been confined after murdering her husband and his mistress, commits murders, hoping Lucy will be blamed, going so far as to disguise herself as her daughter as she does so. However, despite the dead bodies, things don't go exactly as either Carol or Lucy hoped.

Although a bit far-fetched, each of these films generates suspense and fright by showing what troubles troubled characters can cause, for themselves as well as for others. Except for the murderous couple in The Sadist, the villains are everyday people—mothers, daughters, a camera operator's assistant, a motel proprietor—who happen to suffer from significant mental disorders or illnesses.

Because they are relatives or neighbors or business owners, they catch their victims with their guards down, as any of us might be caught off guard by similar human monsters disguised as fellow citizens. That is their greatest source of terror in a time in which society seemed, for many, turned upside-down and parents and children were caught not only in a generation gap, but also in a cultural war in which, for parents, society might seem to be coming apart at the seams and, for their children, tradition was a thing of the past in more ways than one.

These films frighten as much for their subtexts as they do for their violence. It may be, as Bates observes, that, “sometimes, we all go a little mad.” We just don't want to be the person who does, nor do we want to be the victim of the one who does.

A Literary Critic Offers Some Tips for Writing Powerful Horror Stories

Copyright 2020 by Gary L. Pullman

In Shock Value: How a Few Eccentric Outsiders Gave Us Nightmares, Conquered Hollywood, and Invented Modern Horror, Jason Zinoman offers some interesting, although rather dated, observations: the book was published in 2011. Many of his observations could serve as guidelines to apprentices who are interested in writing a horror novel (or movie).

Jason Zinoman

For instance, Zinoman, in discussing Rosemary's Baby, points out that the film is “about issues that people could relate to—the nervousness of entering the real estate market; struggling in a faltering, sexless marriage; and the yearning, desperate search for fame (11-12). In fact, he says, the movie is “about the perils of domesticity” (14).

In addition, Zinoman declares, Roman Polanski “made the movie strictly from Rosemary's perspective and maintained that it must always be possible for “all the supernatural elements on it to be a series of coincidences” (21), so that “the suspense hinges on finding out whether the bizarre things happening . . . are real or the product of delusion” (21).

Throughout Shock Value, Zinoman insists that the cause of the bizarre incidents is best left unexplained and emphasizes the unseen, offstage incident as preferable to the seen, onstage incident in maintaining suspense. In fact, “in addition to the virtue of the unknown, the setting of an indistinct mood, and . . . rooting the magical or supernatural in a palpable realism” are “powerful ideas” (63).

Initially, horror movies were viewed as providing the audience with a catharsis (76), which 'assumes the audience identifies with the victims,” but Alfred Hitchcock helped to revolutionize this accepted view of the nature of horror films when he put “the audience on side of the killer in Psycho and repeatedly in the position of the voyeur.”

This twist causes the audience to identify “with killers,” rather than with their victims. As a result, it has been argued, this shift in perspective no longer allowed a catharsis for viewers; instead, it allowed “audiences to express their repressed sinful thoughts through the monster” (77). The monster became a surrogate scapegoat upon whom viewers could project their own lusts for violence, blood, murder, and mayhem. The movies, once masochistic, became sadistic (77).

Due to his upbringing in a home in which a strict evangelical faith was practiced, Wes Craven was more sensitive to “the allure of self-sacrifice” than many other filmmakers, Zinoman suggests. Craven understood that churchgoers went to church “not merely” to escape “pain,” but also to heroically “confront it,” which provided them a sense of “triumph” over evil (77). A horror movie could provide the same sort of experience, vicariously, for “a secular audience looking for the pleasure of masochism” (77).

Zinoman cites several films that accomplish just this task. Writing of The Last House on the Left, he states:

In a godless world without redemption [this film] . . . includes no struggle with faith. instead, senseless evil inspires just more senseless evil, adding up to a nihilism that invites no happy endings (79).

Religion and horror are alike, the author suggests: both induce feelings of “awe” as people are “shocked by their own helplessness,” but religion and horror differ by how they handle people's experience of awe: “religion helps you cope with this feeling. Horror exploits it” (92)

From Zinoman's observations, we can derive these story-writing tips:

• Make sure that the readers (or audience) can relate to the “issues” with which the story is concerned.
• Tell the story (or film the movie) from the main character's point of view.
• Maintain the possibility of both a natural and a supernatural explanation for the “bizarre” incidents that occur in the story.
• If a story is intended to evoke readers' or viewers' masochistic interests, focus on the main character's point of view; if the story is meant to arouse readers' or viewers' sadistic impulses, focus on the monster's perspective.
• After challenging the protagonist's faith, a religious story is apt to restore it through self-sacrifice that leads to redemption; a secular story is likely to end in nihilism, represented by anarchy and chaos.
• Whether a story is religious or secular in nature, it should maintain the possibility of either a natural interpretation or a supernatural explanation.

Zinoman also has some intriguing insights concerning John Carpenter's Halloween, but we'll save them for a future post.

Ed Gein Jokes: A Bizarre Example of Gallows Humor

Copyright 2019 by Gary L. Pullman

After his father's death, Ed Gein (1906-1984) was reared by his mother, a religious fanatic with twisted ideas about sex in particular and about life in general. He was unable to function on his own, and after his brother's death (as a result, some claim, of Ed's having murdered him) and his mother's demise, as a result of natural causes, Ed was left alone on the family farm outside Plainfield, Wisconsin. A man without friends, he occasionally babysat for a neighbor, but, otherwise, didn't much interact with the community.

Left alone, he read stories about the Nazis' atrocities and became interested in cross-dressing. Some believe he attempted to bring his mother back by dressing in women's clothes and adopting her personality. To improve on his female mimicry, he added a “torso vest” made from the skinned abdomen, including the breasts, he removed from a female cadaver he'd dug up from a local or nearby cemetery.

Ed also upholstered chairs in human skin, and he made a curtain pull featuring female lips; a lampshade of human skin; a belt decorated with female nipples; masks cut from women's faces; wall hangings of women's skin, breasts, and severed fingers; dresses made of women's skins; an apron made of female breasts and women's faces; and a pair of gloves made from women's skins. He collected women's ears and noses as well.

Charged with first-degree murder in the death of shopkeeper Bernice Worden, Ed pleaded not guilty and was found “mentally incompetent to stand trial” as a result of schizophrenia. He was confined in the Wisconsin Central State Hospital for the Criminally Insane in Waupun, Wisconsin. He was later transferred to the Mendota State Hospital in Madison, Wisconsin, where he died. Although he was tried only for Worden's death, Gein also admitted to having murdered tavern owner Mary Hogan.

Ed Gein inspired Norman Bates, of both Robert Bloch's 1959 novel Psycho and the 1961 movie of the same name, directed by Alfred Hitchcock; Leatherface, of the 1974 movie The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, directed by Tobe Hooper; Buffalo Bill, of the 1988 Thomas Harris novel The Silence of the Lambs and the eponymous1991 film, directed by Jonathan Demme; and Dr. Oliver Thredson of the television series American Horror Story: Asylum.

There's no doubt about it: Ed was a genuinely creepy guy. In fact, he was so disturbing that, to cope with the revelation of his monstrous crimes, the American public invented Ed Gein jokes of the morbid, gallows humor variety. As the Wikipedia article on this type of humor points out, it is used to make “light of subject matter that is generally considered taboo, particularly subjects that are normally considered serious or painful to discuss.” Ed's deeds certainly qualify as such a topic.

A few Ed Gein jokes can be found on the Internet. Here are a few from the Imgur website:

• What did Ed Gein say as the hearse passed by? “Dig you later, baby!”
• What did Ed Gein say to the sheriff who arrested him? “Have a heart.”
• Ed Gein [was] popular with the ladies. There were always women hanging around his place.
• Why do they let Ed Gein out on New Year's Day? So he can dig up a fresh date.
• Customer: “Bartender, give me a Gein beer.” Bartender: “It has lots of body but no head.”
• Have you heard the Defense Department has called on Ed Gein? They want him to ship arms to Vietnam.

Among others, the Tripod website offers these gems:

• Why did Ed Gein's girlfriend stop going out with him? Because he was such a cut-up.

• Why won't anyone play poker with Ed Gein?

• He might come up with a good hand.

Finally, here are a few by yours truly:

• Ed Gein liked to keep abreast of things
• Ed Gein always put his best foot forward.
• Ed Gein had a grave disposition.
• At bake sales, Ed Gein's pastries didn't sell well: people feared there'd be a finger in every pie.
• As a house guest, Ed Gein expected to be waited on hand and foot.
• Ed Gein was barred from the theater after he took Mark Antony's plea to “lend me your ears” literally.

While it must be admitted that Ed Gein jokes tend to be corny (and a bit juvenile), except my own, of course, we can see how they might help people cope with the astonishingly bizarre, heinous deeds of the insane killer from Plainfield.

Developing a Sense of Horror

Copyright 2019 by Gary L. Pullman

Yesterday, as I walked through the house, I imagined the defensive and offensive actions that various inanimate objects might take in response to environmental stimuli if the objects were imbued with personalities, intelligence, and will.

Sound crazy? Perhaps, but personification can be an important source of inspiration and a significant way of developing one's sense of horror.

Here are a few of the ideas I conceived:

Ceiling: offense = inaccessibility (it's a cathedral ceiling); defense = allowing parts of itself to fall upon intruders (or perhaps divesting itself of such "accessory items" as ceiling fans or light fixtures); alternatively, a ceiling (or a floor) can look deceptively solid, only to be insubstantial and, therefore, dangerous

Floor: offense = strength and solidarity of tiles; defense = allowing individual or sections of tiles to break and slide, making an intruder's footing precarious

Cabinet: offense: closed exterior (like that of a turtle's shell)--also, drawers can contain some pretty dangerous items; defense = hiding (the articles of a cabinet are "hidden" when the drawers are closed)

Toilet: offense = closed exterior; defense = elimination of threat by "swallowing" action (and, okay, yes, maybe odor). (By the way, toilets have been known to explode!) (You probably don't even want to consider the possibilities that Porta Potties present!)

Stove = offense = strength, weight (it's not easily moved), and durability; defense = destruction by fire (or gas)
 

Refrigerator/freezer: offense = strength, weight, and durability; defense = cold or freezing temperatures. (In the hands of master storyteller Stanley Kubrick, who directed The Shining, a freezer can help to disorient characters and viewers alike, adding to the sense of confusion and anxiety.)

Curtains: offense: able to sustain considerable damage without total destruction; defense = able to incapacitate by wrapping around an intruder and to kill by strangling him or her. (Curtains of various sorts have also been used in other ways in such movies as Psycho and Hide and Seek.)

Mirror: offense: as Lewis Caroll (and others) have taught us in Through the Looking-glass, mirrors can be gateways to other worlds, some of which are strange and terrifying, indeed; wardrobes can also be portals to other worlds, of course, as C. S. Lewis has demonstrated in The Chronicles of Narnia); defense: shattering into sharp-edged, pointed shards

Wallpaper: offense: it looks harmless (but appearances can be deceiving); defense = it can drive a person insane (Charlotte Perkins-Gilman demonstrates how, in "The Yellow Wallpaper")

By imagining the offensive and defensive capabilities of the everyday objects in a house, a writer can exercise his or her creative abilities; at the same, time, he or she might conceive of a few ideas (by adding a bit of exaggeration, for effect) for a haunted house story. The familiar, everyday world is the source of horror, as often or not, in this genre.

The Effects of Loss as a Paradigm of Literary Criticism for Horror Fiction

Copyright 2018 by Gary L. Pullman

Horror fiction is a literature of loss. The losses, of course, are significant: no one has ever written a novel or produced a film about a character stubbing his toe.

Often, the losses are physical (a loss of ability or a loss of limb) or personal (a loss of freedom or a loss of dignity).

However, losses may also be psychological, or emotional (a loss of identity or a loss of sanity). 

Likewise, losses may be social (a loss of kinship or a loss of family members or friends).

Other losses may be spiritual (a loss of faith or a loss of salvation). The losses depicted in horror fiction result from a variety of causes, but they are established, most often, through particular situations or specific settings.

A loss introduces a type of change, physical, personal, psychological, social, religious, or otherwise. Often, a preliminary loss, significant in itself, is a prelude to another, greater, perhaps vital, loss—for example, death. A loss may also be a test of love, of faith, or of a relationship.

Literary criticism based upon the loss suffered by the main character (and, to a lesser degree, other characters) must begin by identifying the particular loss that the protagonist has suffered. What type of loss occurred? When and where did the loss occur? Why did the loss occur? How does the loss change the character? (Most horror stories largely ignore the last question, although the question of what caused the loss to occur may, on occasion, be more important than any of the other questions.)

In other words, in a critical analysis of a horror story, whether it takes place upon the page or the soundstage, should be applied to all the elements of fiction. (The answer to the question “HOW?” typically represents the story's turning point, or climax. Often, it helps to start the “WHY?” answer with the infinitive “to.” if an element is unimportant in summarizing the story, it can be omitted.) 

Here are a few examples.

Question	Answer
WHO lost?	Carietta (“Carrie”) White
WHAT was lost?	dignity
WHEN did the loss occur?
WHERE did the loss occur?	her high school prom
HOW did the loss occur?	pigs' blood is dumped on her
WHY did the loss occur?	to humiliate her

Carrie (novel) by Stephen King

After identifying each element in relation to the question regarding the loss suffered by the protagonist, write a single sentence that summarizes the plot. In doing so, the order of the answers may be rearranged:

Carrie White loses her dignity when bullies dump pigs' blood on her to humiliate her at her high school prom.

Then, in another single sentence, explain how the protagonist's loss changed him or her:

Carrie dies after she avenges herself against her tormentors.

Question	Answer
WHO lost?	Carietta (“Carrie”) White
WHAT was lost?	dignity
WHEN did the loss occur?
WHERE did the loss occur?	her high school prom
HOW did the loss occur?	pigs' blood is dumped on her
WHY did the loss occur?	to humiliate her

“The Tell-Tale Heart” by Edgar Allan Poe

A narrator is arrested when he hallucinates after murdering an old man in his home to rid himself of his victim's “evil eye.”

Unable to escape his guilty conscience, the narrator suffers psychological torment.

(Note: Although it seems that the narrator loses his sanity in the story, he does not; he has lost his sanity before the story begins; it is his freedom that he loses when the police arrest him.)

Question	Answer
WHO lost?	Nancy Thompson
WHAT was lost?	friends
WHEN did the loss occur?
WHERE did the loss occur?	hometown
HOW did the loss occur?	attacks by Freddy Krueger, a supernatural killer
WHY did the loss occur?	to avenge his death at the hands of his victim's parents

A Nightmare on Elm Street

Nancy Thompson loses her friends to attacks by Freddy Krueger, a supernatural killer, who murders his victims to avenge his own death at their parents' hands.

Nancy survives Krueger's attacks, but she is traumatized by her experience, even as she lives with guilt for her involvement in the attempted murder of her stalker.

Question	Answer
WHO lost?	Norman Bates
WHAT was lost?	identity
WHEN did the loss occur?
WHERE did the loss occur?	Bates Motel and house
HOW did the loss occur?	arrest for murdering Marion Crane and private detective Milton Arbogast
WHY did the loss occur?	to avenge his death at the hands of his victim's parents

Psycho (movie)

Norman Bates loses his identity, becoming his “mother,” after he murders Marion Crane after she checks into the Bates Motel so he cannot have a relationship with her and murders private detective Milton Arbogast to prevent him from discovering the truth about Marion's disappearance.
 

Norman ceases to exist as himself, becoming completely absorbed by his alternate personality.

Question	Answer
WHO lost?	Julie James
WHAT was lost?	friends; security
WHEN did the loss occur?
WHERE did the loss occur?	hometown
HOW did the loss occur?	murders by intended murder victim
WHY did the loss occur?	to avenge himself against the victim's attempt to murder him

I Know What You Did Last Summer (movie)

Julie James loses her friends and her security after their intended murder victim kills them and threatens her to avenge himself.

Julie lives in constant fear of being killed at any moment.

As these examples suggest, the theme of horror fiction is the effects of loss.

A few of the other many types of loss that may occur in horror fiction, their effects, and their contexts include:

Type of Loss	Possible Effects	Context
Perception (i. e., blindness, deafness, tactile insensitivity, inability to smell, inability to taste)	helplessness; loss of self-confidence; timidity	situation or setting
Ability (e. g., mobility) (i. e., being bound, incarcerated, or trapped)	helplessness; loss of self-confidence; timidity	situation or setting
Assistance (i. e. emergency services), as a result of being isolated	helplessness; loss of self-confidence; timidity	situation or setting
Effectiveness (e. g., an amputation or a broken limb)	vulnerability; loss of self-confidence; timidity	situation
Sanity	vulnerability; confusion; poor judgment	situation
Control (e. g., as a result of demonic possession or being a patient)	autonomy; independence; confidence	situation
Family or friends	emotional and social support	situation