Horror in the USA - What makes the people enjoy it?

INTRODUCTION

"The Sixth Sense", "Sleepy Hollow", "Blair Witch Project", "The Mummy", "Scream I + II", "I Know What You Did Last Summer", "Deep Blue Sea", "Buffy The Vampire Slayer" or "The X-Files" the list seems endless. At the moment, American film directors seem to bend over backwards to produce horror movies and series, one more cruel, more scary and more bloody than the other, and people seem to be wilder about these movies than ever. They rush into the cinemas, go through hell while watching the movies, creep shivering and quivering out of the cinemas again, and they love the whole thing. They come out with the desire to see more of this frightening stuff. Horror and terror have become a media and cultural event. This is a phenomenon which is still very controversial, but more actual than ever, and it does not only occupy scholars but also the fans of the popular genre and people who wonder at it. The most obvious question seems to be, why do these people pay so much money just to be made feel uncomfortable ? - What makes them like that? A question which cannot be answered right away, because it deals with several aspects of the genre horror. It does not only concern the nature of horror itself but also people - the fans -, their psyches, and, of course, society and culture, which have an immense influence on the people and on the development of horror.

"It's fun to be frightened", says Marc Segal, who teaches a Horror/Fantasy class at an

American high school. He meets, talks to and works with many of `passionate' fans every day, and he certainly asks them quite often - at least at the beginning of every new school year - why they have joined the class. The key for where this `fun' may come from and other reasons why people are fascinated with horror will be explained in this paper. In addition, this work will touch another subject, which is also considerable in this respect: horror's impact and effects on the psyche and on social behavior.

To tackle this problem and to throw light on its most important sides, it may be necessary to find a kind of definition of horror first, an explanation, as a basis of this paper's work. It is not as easy as it seems to define a genre which deals with just one thing: fictitious terror, as Stephen King describes it in Danse Macabre, and scholars have their difficulty in defining it. In any case is horror a subpart of the bigger genre fantasy, which must not be confounded with the genre science fiction. Scholars disagree on the dividing line between these two, and much has already been written about this topic. However, to find an acceptable solution concerning this subject is not the task of my paper. Thus, it may be useful to concentrate on fantasy and leave science fiction aside. And it is also not task of this paper to name an immense number of books or movies as examples for this or that topic - to know them all would be quite difficult, and to demand this would be overbearing. The principal concern of this should be the horror itself and not examples for it. I will try to work with general facts, and if necessary use examples.

I. FIRST OF ALL, WHAT IS HORROR?

H.P. Lovecraft, one of the most famous horror fiction authors of the last century, has written an essay about horror in literature, and he starts it with, "The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown." (Supernatural, 1), which is a suitable statement to begin this paper.

The "Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary" describes horror as "a feeling of intense fear, shock or disgust", and concerning the movies it is "designed to entertain people by causing enjoyable feelings of horror". This may be a good basis for the understanding of what horror actually is. Fear plays an important role; to be concrete, it can be seen as the genre's foundation: everything that deals with horror, also deals with fear. Important is also that horror in this context does not mean physical fears like fear of heights or certain phobias, but, as Lovecraft expresses it, cosmic fear, i.e. the fear of the unknown, and this must not be forgotten.

The word `horror' itself is from Latin origin and means nothing else than fear, dread or dismay. However, its idea has been used since a much longer time: Horror has been `invented' when our forefathers have found out about their emotions as reactions on their environment. While they experienced pleasure and pain caused by the things they knew and understood, phenomena they did not understand caused fear and awe, feelings which appeared when the unknown was tried to be interpreted. These interpretations often left no other possibility than extra-terrestrial, supernatural powers in spiritual surroundings. Since there were a lot of things our forefathers could not explain, their lives became full of superstition and beliefs. How horror descended from this foundation, is clear for Lovecraft: "When to this sense of fear and evil the inevitable fascination of wonder and curiosity is superadded, there is born a composite body of keen emotion and imaginative provocation whose vitality must of necessity endure as long as the human race itself." (Supernatural, 1) The validity of this statement's second aspect, namely the lastingness of horror, can be proved when you watch the occurrence of horror and people's behavior today: we are still afraid of the unknown and the unbelievable, no matter if it is the darkness of the cellar or creatures from outer space or just some strange sounds. Certainly, many of the phenomena which cause these feelings have changed during the evolution of man - some, which once were mysterious, may be explained now, others appeared and raised new dreads, but fear itself is still existing. Over many years of man's existence, fear was a major concern for the people. This can be a reason why some of them thought that it might be nice to put it into words and to phrase what people had been frightening for such a long time, in order to entertain or to get rid of it. The horror-tale was made up. It is as old as human thought and speech themselves and appears in the folklore of all races. By all means has it a very long tradition and has certainly experienced a great development all along. The Egyptians, the Teutonic or the Celt were peoples with many spectacular horror tales, but also in the Middle Ages, horror tales occurred numerously. In these times, witch, werewolf and vampires, the archetypes of horror stories, appeared in the songs and ballads of bards. On the continent, the development continued in a remarkable way, but this should not be the concern of this paper, since it concentrates on horror in the USA.

America itself inherited the dark folklore of the European nations when the settlers came. They brought their fears to the `New World', and in addition, they experienced other strange associations when they, all with keen spiritual and theological interests, explored their new environment. The Indians and their customs were only one discovery to make and to understand. And what is more, the first colonists lived under a relatively high emotional pressure, because they lived isolated and had to survive somehow in their new surroundings. This made them susceptible for believing myths, weird stories and in the supernatural. Since then, horror has experienced a great development, and especially in the 19th and 20th century, it has become very popular, because these centuries were full of new media, starting with telling stories at a campfire, going on with books and having reached the high status of internet files now, which offers a high level of accessibility to many people. In between, horror had been published in the caliber of magazines - in the 30s so-called "shudder pulps" appeared - or comic strips, which were called "ECs" - Entertainment Comics -, or radio plays, and it is still existing as movies and series.

Horror has always been very popular, however it seems to reach a cycle of increased popularity every twenty or thirty years. These periods very often coincide with economic or political encumbrances: While after depression, people wanted to work off their fears of future problems, horror was not so successful in the 40s or 50s. Another reason for this is that it had been forbidden for a while, because the general opinion - of horror opponents - was that it ruined the youth's moral. Not before the 60s, it `recovered' from this slack. Until the 70s, horror was at its height again, and now, after about thirty years of relative silence, the boom is obvious again. The entertainment industry has found what it was waiting for to lure masses and to amass money: horror. It is visible that in different countries, some movies are less or more successful than others. This depends on the different societies and points at the fact that they have different fears and feel addressed to by certain topics - or not. The better a movie runs, the more people can identify themselves with the presented issues. The horror story has almost always the same major structure: it describes how the evil is trying to triumph over the good by letting disorder creep gradually into the order of people's life, by `sending' the abnormal as its ambassador. In many cases it looks for while as if the evil gets the upper hand, however, in the end, mostly after a more or less big battle between the evil and the good, the latter wins, and the order of the beginning is restored, of course with some casualties.

Reality itself is seldom completely excluded in horror stories, although horror belongs to fantasy. Reality's existence is even necessary for the story because this way, it helps eliminate the disbelief. Henry James for example, an American author, who has also written some horror stories, was convinced that a good ghost story has to be connected with ordinary life at about 100 passages. At that time, he already knew how to create an atmosphere which the readers believed only because it seemed so very usual to them. How unusual the rest of the story is, does not really matter, because the foundation of belief has been created. This leads to another question: How does horror work and how does the audience grasp it? The next chapter will take a closer look into the functions of the genre.

II. AND PEOPLE ARE CAPTIVATED...

The genre horror has become more accepted and respected than ever in the past century. The reasons for this development came about due to the change of many people's opinions of horror. Not only the number of horror fans has increased but also the number of horror fiction makers, no matter if movie directors or authors. They have realized that a lucrative opportunity has emerged from a genre which had been much more controversial once. To approach the main issue of this paper now, namely what makes horror so fascinating, it is necessary to know how horror works. It may seem as if it has only been made up to shock, frighten or disgust people, and this as entertainment and business. However, it has some characteristics and effects which refute this claim. It is obvious that there are many people in this genre who only want to make money with it, but there are also a lot of horror fiction makers who really think about what they are doing, through which their work becomes useful and well reasoned. Stephen King drew up the thesis that horror works on three more or less separate levels, one more superficial than the other: (a) the level of fright, (b) the level of terror and (c) the level of disgust. All together, they let the audience scream out loudly, flee from the cinema or close the book, because at this point, horror works perfectly. They develop dependant on each other: fright is the highest aim that horror fiction makers can achieve. It grows from unpleasant speculations from and associations with what you read about or see. So it is possible that if you are confronted with a hatchet or a knife, for example, you will be frightened because you maybe associate a butcher or blood with them and fear that they could be used for cruelty. If the reader or the film audience do not associate something with what they see, they might be just horrified or shocked about what they see or read, because it does not belong to their `normal' view of the world - the second level works here. And if this is not effective, the author still has the possibility to create horror merely by disgusting them. In this respect, horror authors seem to be merciless, since they want their stories to be effective. Supernatural horror has religious aspects, which do not seem to strike everybody. First of all, there is the absolute evil against the absolute good, which is basically in so far a religious point of view as the devil and God represent the same. In the majority of horror stories, the good wins in the end, and this is a positive result for the faithful after a scenario of violence, cruelty and the rising of the evil. Furthermore, horror creatures like vampires or the living dead show that death is not the end, and this is the same as the Bible says: there is an afterlife. However, there are several possibilities how this afterlife may look like, how people may `come back' - evil, insane, revengeful, as zombies or as ghosts, but they represent immortality. Horror refers to the Bible in another aspect, too: to the Ten Commandments. Although it does not seem at all as if horror stories contain any kind of moral values, it is nevertheless quite full of moral standards: As already said, the good mostly wins and the villains, who offend against the commandments, are punished - the way of punishment is another story. It is the corroboration of moral values and supports what people understand by the effectiveness of justice.

Nowadays, we live in a society - and this is marked especially in the USA - in which beauty, health and youth are very important. These criteria have become more and more the norm, and people like to be part of the norm, because if they are not, it will certainly end with rejection or even becoming an outsider. Horror does not show the norm, on the contrary, it definitely shows the things that do not belong to the norm and to what seems ordinary. However, compared to the monsters, creatures and monstrosities which are presented in horror movies or literature, skeptics, mostly teenagers, who dislike themselves - even if it is a pimple on their forehead that annoys them -, who are confused because of what they should represent, become assured that they at least belong to a group of people who look normal. Thus their self-esteem is improved, and the horror story or film have a confirming value. The people can see themselves there in a rewarding way, as a part of the mainstream. They get a better impression and opinion of themselves, and for that reason, the experience is probably a positive one.

In this world of perfectionism, terms like death, decay or deformity belong to the taboos, and people do not like talking about them, either because they do not dare do it or because it is just too embarrassing for them - they always have the question in mind: `What will the other people think of me?'. Still, exactly these terms are key terms in horror stories. While people have scruples and inhibitions, horror expresses all the things that are taboos. Thus, it leads over the taboo boundary and makes it easier for the people to talk or just dare think about things that deviate from the norm without feeling uneasy. The result is already obvious: Even in the news, nobody shrinks from moving beyond this boundary any more. Reporters do not stop at telling that people are dead - they try to give every single detail how the people came to death and so `the dead are dismembered', `dogs tear their (human) prey to pieces' or `people get crushed by a collapsing building', and they show authentic pictures to underline their stories. Their reason for doing this may be dubious: either they think that their audience is thirsting for blood or they just want to impress by being able to talk about these things. Yet, finally, people are glad that it is not them whom this happened to - and this may also be an explanation why horror stories are so popular. People have power over the horrors of the stories because they do not happen to them. So, they can close the book or switch the channel or just leave the cinema if they cannot bear it anymore. Disgust, terror and helplessness are controllable on the screen. This is not possible at all in reality, so, it is understandable that many people prefer reading a book or watching a movie instead of being involved in the real horror's of life. It also explains why the general opinion, which states that horror fans are crazy, starry-eyed and irresponsible because they seem to forget fact that there are enough horrors in reality, and which questions why they nevertheless need such stuff, is not objective. Of course, it is a good and understandable argument because this is a serious world with serious problems, however, just because the real world is too cruel for many people they withdraw into the world of fantasy. So to speak, horror can be seen as a kind of mechanism for escaping from the real horrors of life.

Taboos have always been fascinating, because we are interested in forbidden things. We want to find out why something is forbidden and what will happen if we nevertheless do not obey to these unspoken rules. Since death, mutilation and torture belong to the taboos in our society, the fascination with them is nothing else than curiosity towards strange things, towards taboos; it is childlike. So, it is not necessarily morbid to enjoy horror, as critics claim. Another taboo is the evil. Especially in the USA, many people grow up in religious backgrounds. They learn about the good and the evil, about how dangerous the influence of the latter is. As children, they are supposed to be `good' boys and girls and avoid the evil. Here, the childlike curiosity appears again, and the children ask themselves, why they should not have a try of the evil. Horror stories offer a good opportunity to do this, and do it without any - really bad - consequences, because it is only stories. They see, that they can experience the evil, and maybe horror is even a kind of rebellion against the dogmas of their parent generation. Therefore parents do not like seeing their children watching or reading horror. Horror's effects also work in another direction: it serves advantageously as a kind of catharsis for people's fears and aggressions: first of all, it points at the inside and at the deep-rooted personal fears which everybody has to cope with. And if you have a lot of fears, horror contributes to make them more concrete and to shrink them by showing you what you are afraid of, so that you can grasp your fears in a certain way. And if people have their fears in their grip, if they know, what frightens them, they, the fears, can easily be blown away. Many people are also attracted by the fact that horror stories often contain romantic motives, and this without seeming kitschy. It is possible because the story itself with all its unusual elements distracts a bit from the abundance of romantic motives, which still appeal to a lot people. In other cases, i.e. in other genres, motives like true love, dignity or total devotion would appear too idealistic, whereas in horror stories, they are a good contrast to the horror fright, terror or disgust.

Another reason to read horror, and maybe also one of the last, is that horror can be seen as a try-out for death. A method to prepare yourself for it. Everybody knows that we will finally die - and in this respect, we are the only creatures on earth who really KNOW this. We have to do something about this knowledge, to get along with life without going crazy. Horror is an opportunity to get in contact with death. Teenagers, whose part is the biggest in horror's target group, get along better with death, because it is not as near to them as to older people.

Therefore, it is not surprising that seldom older people can be seen in cinemas when horror movies are shown or met in book stores buying horror literature. These people do not need the experience of death, since they already know enough about it through their everyday life. In the USA, the number of people watching horror is much higher than the number of those who read it. This is a result of the contrary effects of films and books. The differences between movies and literature are firstly, films are more emotional than books, because they work on the visual as well as on the audible level, while books just have their sober type and only work on the visual level, and this not even in the same way as films: people have to use some imaginative processes to understand the story, namely their imagination - on the contrary, in films you get what you see, and the involvement of imagination is not so high. And secondly, films are common experiences, in so far as, at least in the cinema, you are in a crowd when you are watching the film, and the feelings that grow can be experienced in company, whereas books can have the disadvantage that you are left all alone with your emotions, which is much more difficult to cope with. In situations like the ones you find in horror stories, the majority of people prefer not to be alone, which is a phenomenon of group consciousness.

III. THE CONSEQUENCES

The responses on horror are different - as different as people's psyches are. Yet, there are reactions that can be called `common', because they occur frequently, and many people respond this way. Some of the common reactions and effects are the following: Immediate responses, especially on horror movies are screaming or laughing, in order to let the strange feelings out, which develop, if the brain cannot cope with certain new experiences. In the majority of cases, screaming follows moments of shock. Laughing is a reaction for which a direct cause is not so clear. It is supposed to appear when the audience is sure that what it sees or reads cannot happen to themselves, when it happens to someone else. Against the assumption, laughing and screaming are feelings which are very close to each other. In both cases, the uneasiness is released, and therefore people feel better afterwards. There is another connection between humor and horror, namely the countless jokes about mutilation. People who laugh at them are not seldom horror fans or do not have at least any aversion to it, and they are also glad that these are only jokes. People who do not like these jokes often do not like horror either. (H.P. Lovecraft has restricted the number of horror fans to a special, small group of people, namely to these who have a "certain degree of imagination and a capacity for detachment from everyday life."(Supernatural, 1), and also Roger Schlobin says that "a particular state of mind must exist"(In the Looking Glasses, 1).)

Furthermore, chemical reactions are an effect: the "levels of adrenalin, endorphen and corticotropin (causes goosebumps)" (Children, 9) rise. Apart from this intensified production of hormones, several other processes, which coincide with feelings like shock, excitement or disgust, take place in the brain and influence the organism: Consequently, there are changes in the breathing rhythm (either we breath quickly and intermittently or we stop breathing at all for a moment), in the heart activity (the heartbeat stops or the palpitation gets faster), in the blood circulation (blushing or turning pale), or there are malfunctions in the glands that are responsible for the production of certain secretions (the mouths gets dry or we sweat).

A frequent response on horror are nightmares, in which all the emotions the brain could not cope with or could not put to their proper places are exorcised. Nightmares, as all dreams, arise due to the fact that not all imaginative feelings are converted into actions; so the brain `works' with the impressions in dreams. Since after reading or watching horror, these impressions are frightening, the themes the dreams contain are terrible, too. Nightmares cause fear. They are often so awful that the dreamer awakes sweating profusely and needs a very long time to fall asleep again. Mostly, the people go through the scenes of the horror film they have seen again in the following nightmares, and they also feel the same fright, terror or disgust they have felt when the saw the film again.

The human psyche has to digest all the oddities it has discovered while watching or reading horror stories. It is quite difficult for some people to get along with unfamiliar things, which may be connected with the brain's ability to absorb these things, with its ability to learn. Therefore, it can be risky to get in contact with horror if you are not sure if you can stand horror and its aftermath. Most horror fiction makers know what they bring about with their ideas, but they do not see any reason why they should warn their audience because they are sure that everybody should know oneself if one can bear their stories.

IV.THE MAKERS AND THEIR RESPONSIBILITY

A certainly interesting question is how horror fiction authors themselves cope with the genre. Their motives for producing these stories are not much different from the reader's motives to read them: As well as the reader, the author has his personal fears, and with writing the stories he does nothing else than `digesting' his fears to get along better with them. Some people may think that these authors are somehow mad, because they write such `insane' stuff, however most of these authors are as `normal' as the rest of America's inhabitants. Authors mostly write about things they are interested in, things which entertain them, the authors, and which also can distract them. And so horror fiction authors do. It is obvious that they have a special interest in the unknown, the unbelievable, in morbid things, also in death, and this may appear crazy, because it does not belong to the norm and breaks the rules of taboos, however, also these authors just do what all the other authors do: writing about a certain topic. They work with their worries about politics, society and culture, and they use their knowledge about the fact that these `zones of uneasiness' as well as the mythic and fantastic elements of horror stories reach the readers and fascinate them.

Oscar Wilde said once that nothing is as successful as the excess, and his statement was right. Excess is something that is seldom lived up in public, therefore people are extremely interested in what is happening in other people's lives and behind their closed doors. Horror also means excess, and it points at closed doors, too. Briefly, it shows what happens when people do not care about closed doors, but dare themselves behind them. This curiosity is what authors benefit from. As brutal as it seems, horror is nothing else than public execution as a business. It appeals to many people, makes them be terrified for some moments, allows them to take a deeper look into the taboo zones, and in addition, it makes money. Horror fiction authors take up what a whole society does not dare talk about, and their major concern is to reach people, no matter what age, produce a catharsis and let them get rid of some of their bad emotions. They want to achieve an audience with a completely emotional interest, which is not affected by any thinking process. Therefore they create their stories in a rather simple way: as already described, the structure of horror stories is very often the same. And for that reason, horror stories work so well on the psychological level. It sounds plain, but it is not sure if the whole group of horror fiction authors thinks this way. Unfortunately, many authors in this genre write because of the money and not because of the art, however, `serious' authors try to `help' their audience somehow, namely by helping themselves: they talk about their fears, get rid of them and make the audience do the same with their fears. And what about the responsibility of the horror fiction maker? There are many critics who claim that authors and directors have a special responsibility concerning what they publish, and especially horror fiction authors and movie directors should take care about the effects of their stories. However, Stephen King, who argues for the authors, is not convinced that they are to blame for any kind of cruelty that is diverted from one of their stories. He believes that everybody is responsible for himself and that the intention to do something cruel comes from within and is not stimulated by the story. He even is of the opinion that the horror story's ideas are not any instructions for being cruel - King is sure that these opportunities are only made use of if the own imagination is not sufficient. If horror stories did not exist, ideas would be taken from elsewhere. A good source are the media and the abundance of information. "We get so much violence thrown at us that we don't have time to think about its inhumanity"

(Horror Fatigue, 2), says Yamamoto, and he is convinced that we cannot help being affected by it. Returning to responsibility, King compares blaming the authors with `Killing the messenger because of the message', because he thinks that the ideas which are mediated with horror stories are nothing new for the readers - authors just dare express these things, which other people do not dare do. He says that the evil is basically stupid and without any fantasy, and it does not need any inspiration.

Horror does not want to palliate or glorify anything - neither violence nor real life-, on the contrary: it shows the things the way they are, because horror fiction makers know that it could be dangerous if it did not. People tend to believe in stories, therefore they would believe in palliation and dissociate themselves from reality. Horror often appears so brutal, because real life is so brutal, and the way things are is nothing else than that. But do we experience too much horror in everyday life? Does horror want its audience to realize that? So it develops that way that it shows us our own reflection.

Horror fiction authors are made responsible for bringing violence, crime and immoral ideas to their audiences, and they are often made be scapegoats for the increasing crime rate. However, they have not made up the horror tale itself, and they are not the only ones who make use of it. Even in fairytales or in the Bible, horror is an element which can be found quite often, and these have been existing for a much longer time than the horror fiction authors who have made horror popular. What about the fairy tale `Hänsel and Gretel' by the Grimm Brothers, for example? In this respect, it is one of the most horrid fairy tales: it starts with the abandonment of children, which is actually nothing else than a murder attempt. Then, you can find kidnapping, cannibalism and finally murder through cremation. And parents read these things to their little children, always with the anxiety in mind, not to get them in touch with any `bad' things.

The Bible also offers a lot of terrible material, but nobody really seems to think about the fact that matters like punishment, through whatever - and in the Bible, this `whatever' is often cruel, since it is supposed to be a warning example, - or vengeance show the horrors that so many people disapprove of. Since religion is wide spread among the American population, people come into contact with horror without really knowing it. It becomes a part of their everyday life, and with the `help' of the entertainment industry, which seems to laze in cruel programs, it somehow also hardens them. While people once "felt numbed"(Horror Fatigue,

1) by what they had watched, nowadays, the violence does not really affect them any more. Isamu Yamamoto calls this phenomenon "devaluation of human life"(Horror Fatigue, 1), and he is convinced that the entertainment industry as well as the American culture, "which demands to be tantalized by increasingly gory depictions of people being blown away"

(Horror Fatigue, 1), are to blame for it. He makes an appeal to parents to take care of what their children are watching, refers to God and the Bible, and advises to study the latter. His opinion about the effect of this is: it renews people's minds. However, Yamamoto seems to forget that also the Bible is not free from cruelties and horrors. So, the question is, what to do about it? Do we have to condemn horror fiction makers by strictly avoiding their works? Do we have to shut ourselves off from anything that is connected with horror to protect ourselves? (Which is not as easy as it seems, because in America you must be blind and deaf, if you have not got in contact with any nightmare by the age of twelve, as Stephen King phrases the fact that the USA is flooded with information, because everybody tries to be the first and the best and the one who is preferred.) Certainly not, because this is again what Stephen King calls `killing the messenger because of the message'. What we can do is to be open to horror because it is a way for us to cope with our fears, and it is also entertainment. That this entertainment has effects, which are not as positive as they should be to be approved of, is obvious. Still, other kinds of entertainment have their negative effects, too. Pro Wrestling, for example, is a similar case: it is also made responsible for an increasing crime rate. However, it is not just one matter alone; there are many factors which have influenced this rate, and this is to what a lot of people close their eyes. As already said, horror is made be a scapegoat, and people like having someone to blame for.

CONCLUSION

To summarize now, there is to say that after horror has experienced a long development with a lot of "negative connotations"(In The Looking Glasses,1), it begins to establish now as a respected genre because some horror fiction makers could not watch any longer what has been made out of it. They have found out that horror has positive effects on the psyche, that it helps people to get along better with their lives. There are still some who have not understood the effectiveness of horror yet, and they still produce horror because it is a lucrative business. Therefore, a lot of really poor movies are made, and these movies often stand as examples for the whole genre, which leaves a wrong impression of it. H.P. Lovecraft was not convinced in those days, "that the general position of the spectral in literature will be altered"(Supernatural, 25), but if he was still alive he would see that some of his successors have realized this very hope.

Horror still appeals "to a limited audience with keen special sensibilities"(Supernatural, 25), and this audience does not care about the prejudices - the fans believe that they can benefit from what reading and watching horror gives them. It is anti-social since it presents things which do not belong to a `normal' social life. It allows people to experience socially unacceptable solutions to life's everyday problems, which is an interesting way of coping with life - it supports our imaginative abilities, and it deviates from the real-life horrors. The fans certainly do not know how horror works in particular, they only see and feel the consequences, and it makes them feel good. This is why they want to feel uncomfortable.