Horror …

… so much more than fear & gore

Hello, I wish you a great day of fantastic experiences.

This time, I‘m focusing on the horror genre: what it is about, its definition its significance and impact, so you‘ll see that Horror encompasses so much more than mere terror and violence. I will explore this last point in greater depth in a separate post, but for now, I‘ll cover the basics as a first step towards the genre. Today’s Substack largely corresponds to the essay “Die Offenbarung des Grauens” (”The Revelation of Dread”), with which I opened the third volume of Michael Kleu’s magnificent trilogy on “The Reception of Antiquity in the Fantastic” in 2023.

The Fragile Reality

Hans Baumann wrote the “Horror. Die Lust am Grauen” in 1989. It is still the most influential work on the genre in German. In it the author states that Horror stories are “fictions in which the impossible becomes possible and real in a world that largely resembles our own, where people who also resemble men react with dread to these signs of their world’s fragility”¹ (Baumann 1989, p. 109). The specific terror of Horror, on which the most important definitions by Roger Caillois, Louis Vax and Hans Baumann agree, lies in the fact that works in this genre deal with a supernatural event intruding into a realistically staged world (cf. Weinreich, 2008). Stephen King calls this a “cold touch in the midst of the familiar” (2004, p. 326), revolving around “disestablishment and disintegration” (p. 25).

I would like to add, though, that Horror does not feed solely on supernatural events. It is not always undead beings, ghosts, demons, and monsters from other worlds or dimensions that trigger horror and dread. Alongside supernatural Horror, incursions of a more mundane and realistic nature can also instil terror in both protagonists and audiences. Therefore, the intrusion of the horrific should not be limited to the impossible, i.e. the supernatural, but should be expanded to include the exceedingly unpredictable. In fact, Horror is a genre that cuts across all other genres. Whether Crime Fiction, Science Fiction, Fantasy or Fairy Tales, they may all contain the characteristic of the “cold touch in the midst of the familiar” that Horror provides and, as long as this is a central component of the story, be counted as part of the genre. This even applies to romantic love stories; see, for example some works of Dark Romance.

In Horror the protagonists’ world comes under attack — and thus, in a sense, the audience’s world does too, as authors, particularly in Horror make it their mission to attempt to draw the audience into the dreadful action depicted. The threat emanates from an indefinable otherworldliness, both metaphysical and figurative, and the manner in which the danger crosses the boundary even does not need to be explained. This intrusion is experienced as a “break-in” to our world (cf. Vax 1974, p. 17; Bauman 1989, p. 20 et al.). Since Roger Caillois’s definition of the genre, this has usually been referred to as a “rift” in the fabric of reality. Louis Vax describes the feeling this evokes in the protagonists as follows: “The monster breaks through the walls and reaches us wherever we are”² (Vax 1974, p. 18). It is this uncertainty – caused by the rift in reality and personal lives – that triggers the specific fear. This feeling, as depicted in a film or story, is intended to be transferred to the audience for them to experience as authentically as possible.

Definition

Inducing dread and terror is thus an indispensable element of the definition of horror. Authors achieve this criterion by depicting why their characters must feel terrorized and cornered. However, this will only work if the events that trigger their terror and fear are convincing in themselves. This is why the depiction of horror in a plot is no trivial matter: consequently there aren’t that many true artists and masters of horror. Typically, these authors also excel in literary craftsmanship, as demonstrated by writers such as Stephen Graham Jones, Catriona Ward, Richard Chizmar, and Owen King.

“A horror story makes its readers feel horror,” states the “Encyclopedia of Fantasy” (Clute and Grant, 1997, p. 478), and genre veteran H.P. Lovecraft always sought to evoke “true” horror. At the beginning of the 20th century, he wrote: “The only touchstone for the truly uncanny and supernatural is quite simply the question of whether a deep sense of fear is evoked in the reader”³ (Lovecraft 1995, p. 13). However, incorporating this statement of intent into a definition of the genre would lead to a problem. A definition dependent on the assumption of a specific effect is weak because it is entirely up to the audience whether they feel horror or not.

Whether books, films or games succeed in generating horror depends on the audience’s reaction, and that is unpredictable. Age, background, and preferences make sure that the same genre product will have different effects on different people. Even well-made horror films such as “Rosemary’s Baby” from 1968 will encounter viewers in whom the intended unease and fear do not arise. What the media has confronted its audiences with has changed drastically over the last few decades, so that more subtle horror often has a lesser effect today than it did sixty years ago. I therefore propose a definition of horror that acknowledges the audience’s reaction as intended but not guaranteed:

Horror stories are works of fiction in which the impossible or unpredictable becomes possible and real within a reality that is fundamentally comparable to our own and totally familiar to the protagonists. In these stories, the characters react with horror to the fragility of their world. This intrusion into the characters’ worlds is also designed to evoke a sense of horror in the audience of these fictions.

Literature of Arrest

James Gunn once called Science Fiction “literature of change” (Gunn 2005, p. 10). If we compare this to the horror genre, we could describe it as “literature of arrest” or “literature of stagnation”. Science Fiction and Fantasy always ask speculatively: “What if?” Horror, on the other hand, need not speculate because it understands the fears of its audience. It knows how the people it throws into its narrative will react because its aim is to evoke this reaction in its readers and viewers. At its core, Horror represents arrested development — a development that does not take place — because we do not overcome the horror. Only the circumstances and modes of reception have evolved. Using this, horror highlights the fragility of the world, showing that the otherworldly can invade the earthly realm at any moment, capable of destroying all certainties until only true cosmic terror remains.

Of course, this is not true, like all of Fantastic is not true. Yet, sometimes, when it is dark, and the story’s thread is woven just right … one begins to doubt whether it might be totally fictitious.

… But There‘s So Much More To It.

However, evoking horror is not the most important thing, because triggering horror and fear is not an end in itself ... or at least it should not be. Depicting the fragility of existence in an exaggerated manner helps to shine a spotlight on current conditions and reality, as does any shift in perspective in the Fantastic. In particular, Horror illuminates the injustices and flawed nature of humanity, such as ruthlessness, hunger for power, sexual exploitation and violence – all this often symbolically embodied by monsters, mutants and ghouls. However, the monster ultimately arrives to show what we humans do to one another. The psychologist and horror author Tom C. Winter cites the “value-oriented reflection of the current world situation”⁴ as one of the tasks of fantastic literature (Winter, 2025). This is precisely what the genre is all about in its finest moments. In “The Stand”, Stephen King shows us that humans can be both angels and devils. Yet, as readers, we realize that the devil’s side is deeply repugnant to our nature, both emotionally and intellectually. This is, first and foremost, a plea for humanism. Similarly, when Stephen Graham Jones depicts the current lives of Native Americans in the US in “The Only Good Indians” in form of an unsparing and unsentimental metaphysical paraphrase, he gives us a glimpse of what extreme inequality looks like. In “I Was a Teenage Slasher”, Jones lets the slasher speak as the first-person narrator in a way that translates the moral core of Dostoevsky’s “Crime and Punishment” into today’s language and context. Horror is a scalpel and an X-ray machine, capable of making social distortions visible and dissecting morality and amorality.

Buchheim Verlag publishes sophisticated horror literature in its Cemetery Dance Germany series. Every single work — mostly translations of notable English-language horror novels, including the aforementioned books by Jones — is carefully selected by Olaf Buchheim. Buchheim curates the series based on the premise that “humanity and equality are non-negotiable”⁵ (Buchheim 2025). I have been editing the publisher’s translations for several years now and am always impressed by Buchheim’s discerning selection of books offering well-founded critical observations from psychological, political, and social perspectives, which he illuminates pointedly using the genre’s tools (Callois’s “rift” and other breakdowns!). There is so much more to Horror than just fear & gore! The genre provides food for thought and, as Buchheim puts it, “if that gives rise to sociopolitical relevance, all the better.”⁶

The topic of social relevance and politics will soon be the subject of a separate Substack that will explore it in greater depth. But first, I’m writing an article that – like those on Le Guin in Science Fiction and Tolkien in Fantasy – will focus on one of the most important authors in the genre. Like the two mentioned above, he might also be the most outstanding theorist in his field. I’m talking, of course, about Stephen King.

Until then: All the best, and stay tuned.

Simon Weinreich contributed to this Substack.

Literature:
Baumann, Hans D.: Horror. Die Lust am Grauen, Weinheim, Basel: Beltz 1989.

Buchheim, Olaf: “Horror mit Haltung, auch ohne Megafon. Die stille Macht der Literaturauswahl”. In: M. Leichter et al. Über den Einfluss der Fantastik auf Politik und Gesellschaft – Chancen, Risiken, Desiderata. Zeitschrift für Fantastikforschung 13.1 (2025): 1–51. DOI: https://doi.org/10.16995/zff.26819.

Caillois, Roger: Das Bild des Phantastischen. Vom Märchen bis zur Science Fiction, in: R. A. Zondergeld (Hrsg.): Phaicon 1, 1974 44-83. (urspr. ersch. Paris 1966)

Clute, John/Grant, John: The Encyclopedia of Fantasy, New York: St. Martin’s Press 1997.

Gunn, James: “Toward a Definition of Science Fiction”. In: J. Gunn, M. Candelaria (Hrsg.): Speculations on Speculation. Theories of Science Fiction. Lanham u.a.: Scarecrow Press.

King, Stephen: Danse Macabre. Die Welt des Horrors, Berlin: Ullstein 2003.

Lovecraft Howard Phillips: Die Literatur der Angst. Zur Geschichte der Phantastik, Frankfurt/M.: Suhrkamp 1995.

Vax, Louis: Die Phantastik, in: R. A. Zondergeld (Hrsg.): Phaicon 1 1974. 11–43. (urspr. ersch. Paris 1963)

Weinreich, Frank: Das furchtbare Unbekannte. Bochum 2008. https://polyoinos.de/das-furchtbare-unbekannte

ders.: Die Offenbarung des Grauens – zur Antikenrezeption im Horrorgenre. In: Kleu, M. (Hrsg.): Antikenrezeption im Horror. Essen: Oldib. 2023. 27-44.

Winter, Tom C.: “Probehandeln in der Fantasy: Final Girl Europa”. In: M. Leichter et al. Über den Einfluss der Fantastik auf Politik und Gesellschaft – Chancen, Risiken, Desiderata. Zeitschrift für Fantastikforschung 13.1 (2025): 1–51. DOI: https://doi.org/10.16995/zff.26819.

1. “Horrorgeschichten sind Fiktionen (innerhalb derer) das Unmögliche in einer Welt möglich und real wird, die der unseren weitgehend gleicht, und wo Menschen, die uns ebenfalls gleichen, auf diese Anzeichen der Brüchigkeit ihrer Welt mit Grauen reagieren.“

2. „Das Ungeheuer durchschreitet die Mauern und erreicht uns, wo immer wir sind.“

3. Der einzige Prüfstein für das wahrhaft Unheimlich-Übernatürliche ist ganz einfach die Frage, ob im Leser ein tiefes Gefühl der Furcht hervorgerufen wird.“

4. “werteorientierte Reflektion der aktuellen Weltlage”

5. “Menschlichkeit und Gleichberechtigung sind nicht verhandelbar.”

6. “Wenn daraus gesellschaftspolitische Relevanz entsteht: umso besser.”