relationship with horror? (+ a coward's thoughts)

[rigel]

lately i've noticed one of my favorite sites to frequent is the ghost in my machine, primarily its "most dangerous games" section where it talks about various rituals - whether it be for summoning an entity, transporting yourself to another world, granting a wish, so on. i love the way the author, lucia, tends to write these blogs - it succeeds in sending these very chilling feelings and shaking me up - the problem is that i'm already someone who barely has any heart for horror and can get very easily scared.

and that's the thing!! i wouldn't really call myself a diehard horror fan, as i more often avoid the genre rather than actively engage with it. but there are some cases (for example: this blog!) where i just keep finding myself coming back to it due to my overly morbid curiosity. i used to come to this site all the time back in 2021, and very recently have i started to get back into it, however after each story i read i remember why i stopped - i scared myself too much. in fact sometime last week i pulled an all-nighter simply because i refused to go to sleep, fearing i would get myself trapped in the 10-day dream ritual after reading about someone else's experience despite the overwhelming response from others that it was fake as it didn't happen to them. i pretty much acted as if i was 10 again after reading a chainmail comment from deviantart

it's very silly. i'm trying to lessen my time on that site because i feel if i keep engaging with it it will only make me completely scared of the dark and by extension overly paranoid. but somehow i find it so hard! maybe it's because even though i get spooked, i still feel that sort of thrill that i believe attracts many horror enthusiasts in the first place. the downside is that i really do not feel good during the aftermath and regret my decision, before falling back again. especially in the case with rituals/ghost stories, as opposed to horror games/movies, i believe it's the fact that these are things you can try yourself in the real world that really gets to me, combined with the fact that lucia leaves a lot to the imagination when it comes to the alleged consequences. they've said it somewhere that captures it perfectly: what we think can scare us more than what we're told. perhaps that's why i get so terrified when i let myself think about these for too long.

i dunno, i'm just yapping! i'm curious if there's anyone else who has a complicated relationship with horror, or even those who are diehard fans as to why it attracts them. again, i'm the kind of person who gets absolutely terrified and acknowledges it has more of a negative effect on me, despite still coming back to it. i guess you could call it a love-hate relationship.

[Ved]

As a fellow ultra-coward, I feel your pain.   My relationship to horror is complicated in a different way, though.

I'm also drawn to horror stuff, but for me it's because I have a big thing for the surreal, strange and experimental, that stuff that feels like it's rummaging around in your subconscious and taking full advantage of its artificiality. And since horror feeds on the fear of the unknown and subversion of expectations, it often employs those sorts of techniques and subjects. Which means that a lot of the stuff that I'm super interested in is also too scary for me. It's especially bad with games. Like the first game to have achieved undisputed "artistic masterpiece" status in the gaming public mind is Silent Hill 2. And a lot of those cool crazy hobbyist gamedevs on itch.io making weird new off the wall stuff make almost exclusively horror games. If you've got "surreal" in your tags, there's about a 60% chance that you've got "horror" in there too. It's not fair!

I do think it might be kind of an unavoidable part of the medium. There's always something scary about moving a foreign body through a constructed world, the rules of which could flip on a dime. There's a reason gaming creepypastas were such a big thing, most recently with those fake mario 64 betas (a lot of which didn't even have any explicit horror) and the whole, essentially gamey concept of the backrooms. Even if horror is not what you're mainly trying for when making a surreal kind of game, it will always be a biproduct, like in Yume Nikki or LSD Dream Emulator. I guess that's just how it is.

PS: I've never seen a ritual-based creepypasta. What a cool concept! I'll definitely keep that page in my bookmarks.   

[rigel]

I'm also drawn to horror stuff, but for me it's because I have a big thing for the surreal, strange and experimental, that stuff that feels like it's rummaging around in your subconscious and taking full advantage of its artificiality. And since horror feeds on the fear of the unknown and subversion of expectations, it often employs those sorts of techniques and subjects. Which means that a lot of the stuff that I'm super interested in is also too scary for me ... I do think it might be kind of an unavoidable part of the medium. There's always something scary about moving a foreign body through a constructed world, the rules of which could flip on a dime. Even if horror is not what you're mainly trying for when making a surreal kind of game, it will always be a biproduct, like in Yume Nikki or LSD Dream Emulator.

oh this is so foul but i definitely feel this T_T i absolutely adore surreal shit, especially in the context of dreams, but i have noticed that dreamscapes can often be utilized in horror/horror-esque settings too.... i definitely agree that surrealism seems to have close ties to horror, even when it's not intended. now that you mention games i'm actually reminded of "the exit 8" - while it is considered psychological horror on steam it doesn't necessarily have most horror-esque elements at all. you're just walking down a bunch of brightly lit hallways, there's barely any threats unless you purposefully try to interact with them, and even then there's very few chasers that you could easily get away from if you notice them fast enough (there aren't any jumpscares either, as far as i'm aware). but the monotony that becomes apparent as you pass by each exit combined with the knowledge that you need to notice anomalies within the area (similar to the observation duty series) in order to escape is what creates that feeling of disturbance. it's interesting to examine the link between the two!

[Cobra!]

Personally, I hate "traditional" horror. Like where it's all dark and has a lot of jump scares. I hate getting frights while watching or playing something, and that's all more horror does, in my eyes.

Psychological Horror, however, is my thing! Particularly psycho horror games from the DOS era. I'm a huge fan of games like Waxworks, Darkseed, Harvester and I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream!
Also love films like Silence of the Lambs and The Sixth Sense.
Media that doesn't go very dark or try to jumpscare you, but instead puts eery ideas in your mind and makes you feel a bit of discomfort throughout.

[Necrosia]

Diehard horror fan here o/

I think curiosity is what lead a lot of people to explore horror heheh

When I was 15 years old I watched The Ring and cried for days until the seven days period was over (tldr: the ring is a movie about a girl who will kill you in seven days if you watch her cursed tape) after that I was sure horror was not for me and kept away from it ever since.

When the first Five Nights at Freddy's came out I was really curious... but it was an horror game, how could I handle that!? So I found myself a very loud and funny youtuber to watch them play it, I even minimized the window to a very small size so if anything scary popped out in the screen I wouldn't be startled by it... and it worked out! I really enjoyed the game and after realizing that it was inside my comfort zone I set myself to watch the other ones, today I really enjoy the franchise. The same thing happened when a movie called The Witch came out, I was curious so I asked my non-scarred friend to watch it and tell me if it was safe for me to watch. It was and turns out its one of my favorite movies today. The same friend later asked to watch The Blair Witch Project and I was uncomfortable the entire time.

Nowadays I call myself a diehard horror fan and I am comfortable with most things horror. I think its important to take not that horror is a specter, its a huge genre with many subgenres and categories and you may be interested in ones but not in others and that's alright! If you are interested or curious in something its okay to explore it on a healthy and safe environment and with time you will see that it will become common place and you will no longer be scarred of it. Or you will find out that you really don't like it and that's okay!

People usually think gore and jumpscares when they think horror but both Edgar Allan Poe and Lovecraft are (one of the many) fathers of horror and their work  has none of these things :D Maybe you don't like to see gutted corpses but you enjoy the uncomfortable and dreamy atmosphere of the surreal and that's okay, that too can be horror!

[MrsMoe]

My relationship with horror is very personal, and a lot of it has to do with experiences with anxiety, existentialism, and disillusionment

In my opinion, horror in the best genre for depicting the human condition or social commentary. You could honestly pick any horror story and find something about it that resonates with our instinctual fears and cultural anxieties. It reveals so much about what we're afraid of and why, while also uncovering flaws in the structure of our world and our own psychology. I think The Thing is one of the best examples of this. It's not just a story about an alien holding some dudes in the Arctic hostages. It's about our paranoia and how quickly we can turn on each other when faced with an unknown terror. And that can apply to a lot of things irl, such as the red scare and the cold war. Likewise, Perfect Blue isn't just about a former pop star going insane. It's about how fragile our sense of self is and the divide between our true selves and public persona, as well as how the entertainment industry and fanbases treat women. A big reason why I engage in horror media is for acknowledgment that the world and people by extension (including myself) can be scary, flawed, and unfair. Horror has to be scary...because life itself is scary.

And that resonates with me a lot as someone who's dealt with anxiety and alienation all my life. When I watch horror movies or play horror games, especially ones that remind me of my own fears, I feel validated. I feel like someone's telling me that my dread isn't unfounded and I'm not wrong for finding the way we live and think to be a bit fucked up. That's why despite no matter how disturbing it can be, horror has always been a major source of comfort for me.