31 Days of Horror: Day 24 -- Why I Love Horror, Pitt Horror Studies Collection Week Edition Featuring Paige Branagan

Today I am featuring Paige Branagan who conducts research at the intersection of gender studies and the horror genre in visual media. They work on academic projects to support this research, namely their "Women in Horror Games" project that was conceptualized and designed as a university level course, supported by the Horror Studies Working Group at the University of Pittsburgh. Additionally, they work at Carnegie Mellon University's Entertainment Technology Center as a Narrative Designer. 

 Here is Branagan on why they love horror.

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Why I Love Horror

by Paige Branagan

In our backyard at my childhood home, we had a small creek that ran through the neighborhood. The old owners of the house, two farmers, built a bridge across the creek so that they could transport their machinery from each side. My brothers told me that both of those farmers had met their unfortunate demise on that bridge, and to never cross it at night. Growing up, we only ever referred to that bridge as “Dead Man's Bridge”. I was terrified, but equally just as enthralled with how this story carried such a heavy weight within my family. Any genre within media is concerned with creating a story that will last with people, but horror contains the unique trait of a simple story inflating into one that lingers for generations. With horror stories, including superstitions, a kernel of an idea passed from person to person continually exacerbates itself, instilling fear and solidifying the validity of that spooky story. My father spent his own childhood in the same house that my siblings and I grew up in--his family had passed on the story of the farmers to him, too. Truthfully, I don’t know how long that bridge was called Dead Man’s Bridge, or if those farmers really existed. In my eyes, it doesn’t matter. The story was enough to carry on through generations of my family, without any knowledge of where it originated from. As a kid, I absolutely hated horror. Growing up with two older brothers, I constantly would walk into the living room to find them watching the new Final Destination movie, convincing myself that death itself was going to chase me next. When I was ten, I watched The Ring for the first time, and swore off ever watching movies with my brothers again. To a ten-year-old girl, these movies were the scariest things in the world, and I was frightened. However, I couldn’t ignore the curiosity I was feeling at the same time. What if death was chasing me? What if I was that little girl in the well? Growing up in wooded southwestern Pennsylvania gave leeway for horror to seep into all aspects of my life. Just as the rumored Dead Man’s Bridge was a superstitious story passed on, brothers would conjure up stories of their own to scare me away from going into the woods on my own. One day, they told me a story of an axe murderer who lived in our woods, who they allegedly saw with their own eyes. As a result, I was never allowed to go out there on my own, much less so after the sun went down. As any ten-year-old would, I believed them. I had seen enough run-ins with death during my accidental watching of their beloved horror movies. I wouldn’t become the next subject of a Final Destination film. As a teenager, I only interacted with horror if my friends decided to drag me along to the movies. Cheap jump scares and paranormal stories did not intrigue me in the slightest, and at that stage in my life, I did not put in the effort to look any further into the genre I didn’t reconnect with horror again until later in life.

My freshman year of college, I took an introductory film course. As part of our final project, we could pick any movie and write an in-depth analysis on it using readings from the course. I chose the film Perfect Blue, a 1996 animated film directed by Satoshi Kon. It follows a pop star who is haunted by a hallucination of her past self as she switches her career from being a pop star to acting. Throughout the movie, viewers watch her slowly lose her grip on the line between reality and fiction. It wasn’t until then that I realized how much I actually did love horror, and how narrow my view of the genre truly was. Horror isn’t just ghosts and axe murderers, jump scares, teenagers chased by death and girls in wells--horror also resides within the mind, past the physical and into the psychological. I realized that this too affected me as a kid at home with the stories my brothers created. The axe murderer in our backyard wasn’t real, but my fear of that possibility was. The slimy green three-eyed monster hiding in your closet may provide a good scare to see, but it’s the question of what that monster will do that sticks with people. Horror, at its core, creates fear of the possibility. What if you do become chased by death? What if you watch a random video, and suddenly have only 7 days left to live? Sure, the eerie music, dark lighting, and creepy monsters can be enough to cause an uncomfortable physical or emotional response, but it’s the possibility of that horror becoming a reality that lingers in people’s minds. It is deep within our human nature to be scared of the “what ifs” of life; it’s why we plan, why we organize, and why we do everything within our power to limit the amount of “what ifs” we have within our lives. Horror is a lens through which we can watch these scenarios play out, feel the rush of adrenaline, fear, or excitement, and walk away from it thankful that it isn’t our reality. At the end of the day, of course, we love the cheap thrills and bug-eyed monsters lurking in our closets. But what we take away from horror is much more than our adrenaline-fueled responses; it’s a way to experience our deepest, darkest fears and explore our biggest worries at an arm’s length.

In my opinion, horror utilizes our ability to walk away, so that it can be used as a platform for commentary about countless different aspects of life, death, and our society between. Horror itself isn’t always supposed to be enjoyable--there are many times when we watch a horror movie and walk away feeling uncomfortable, awkward, even disgusted. This is, of course, by design. I find this to be one of the most intriguing aspects of the horror genre. At its core, media exists to tell us stories; utilizing this to create commentary and criticism for our society is extremely important, especially in today’s political climate. This added level also creates a versatility to horror past serving the purpose of providing spooky stories--these stories now mean something much more to us in tangible ways. In my research about horror thus far, I’ve consistently come back to the ways that horror rejects the male gaze and creates inclusive characters that have purpose and depth beyond serving as a spectacle for men. As most of mainstream film has been dominated by the male gaze, with those tides shifting slightly throughout the past decade, horror is aiding the transition from positioning women as objects for sexualization to equitable representations of whole, developed feminine characters. As someone who has consumed a fair amount of horror media in recent years, this shift is incredibly exciting, as it feels like a turning point. Even in horror video games, which have been less successful at moving away from the male gaze, have taken a turn for the better to create real, inclusive, well-rounded stories. This isn’t to say that we only should be focusing on horror movies that have hidden messages, but what horror movie doesn’t have a hidden message? Even if it’s simple? It’s exciting that we can both have fun and walk away with a lesson learned.

Doing research within horror has greatly influenced my own feelings; I used to hate jump scares, paranormal stories and everything in between. Now, I consider horror to be my favorite genre, as it has shown me a side of media that does not always follow conventional rules. It’s eccentric, spunky, entertaining, exhilarating. In essence, the horror genre is exciting to me. It’s versatility in both storytelling and mediums ensure the numerous possibilities of stories to produce, with each unique story providing something different. Horror stories have followed me all my life; from the axe murderer to my backyard, to creating full research projects around horror, it continues to draw me in for a good scare, the simple intrigue of it all, and if we look hard enough, a lesson learned.

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Click here for more
Why I Love Horror,
in book form 

31 Days of Horror: Day 23 -- Why I Love Horror, Pitt Horror Studies Collection Week Edition Featuring Gray O'Reilly and a nonfiction giveaway

It's Thursday and that is traditionally the day that I host the #HorrorForLibraries Giveaway. Today I am pairing this feature of the humans behind the Pitt Horror Studies Collection with 2 excellent nonfiction ARCs of books about Horror. Both are must adds to your libraries.

The first is Scared By the Bible by Brandon Grafius. Because this one is from a small press and you need to do a little work to add it to your collection, I want to share a little bit more about this book. So many of the authors I interview trace their connection to Horror to the Bible. Grafius takes a deep dive into the straight up horror stories that are in this seminal text. It is broken up into sections-- "Reading Horror (and the Bible), Horror and the Self, Horror and the World, The book connects the stories within the Bible and the stories we humans have created since, things that have become ubiquitous in our culture no matter your religion. Please go out of your way to add this one. It will have many readers. Click here for more praise of this book which came out earlier this month.

The second is When We Spoke to the Dead: How Ghosts Gave American Woman Their Voice by Ilise S. Carter. This one is from Sourcebooks. You may have missed it, but you can fix that easily because you can get it from Ingram. Click here for more praise of this book which came out last month.

Two books for 2 winners. I will draw them in the order above as described in the rules below. Speaking of, here are your details on how to enter:

1. You need to be affiliated with an American Library. My rationale behind that is that I will be encouraging you to read these books and share them with patrons. While many of them are advanced reader copies that you cannot add to your collections, if you get the chance to read them, my hope is that you will consider ordering a copy for your library and give away the ARC away as a prize or pass it on to a fellow staff member.
2. If you are interested in being included in any giveaway at any time, you must email me at zombiegrl75 [at] gmail [dot] com with the subject line "#HorrorForLibraries." In the body of the email all you have to say is that you want to be entered and the name of your library.
3. Each entry will be considered for EVERY giveaway. Meaning you enter once, and you are entered until you win. I will randomly draw a winner on Fridays sometime after 5pm central. But only entries received by 5pm each week will be considered for that week. I use Random.org and have a member of my family witness the "draw"based off your number in the Google Sheet.
4. If you win, you are ineligible to win again for 4 weeks; you will have to re-enter after that time to be considered [I have a list of who has won, when, and what title]. However, if you do not win, you carry over into the next week. There is NO NEED to reenter.

Good luck!

Now back to our regularly scheduled programming.

Today I am featuring Gray O'Reilly, a queer and trans writer and researcher. They graduated with a degree in Film and Media Studies at the University of Pittsburgh, where they now work as a library resource sharing specialist. They have collaborated with the Horror Studies Working Group, an academic organization based at the University dedicated to the study of the horror genre, and the George A. Romero Foundation. They are currently working on a novel.

Here is O'Reilly on why they love horror.

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Why I Love Horror by Gray O’Reilly

My memories are like white fog, opaque and formless, hiding faceless figures with contorted limbs that occasionally come lurching out of the mist to grab me. This is one of them:

I’m twelve years old and it’s the weekend. I’m in my room, sitting cross-legged on my bed with a clear blue PlayStation 2 controller in my hands as my mother packs and organizes boxes in my closet. I’m playing Silent Hill 2, Konami’s once-divisive-now-beloved survival horror masterpiece, and after an entire summer vacation's worth of blood, sweat, and questionable puzzle-solving, I’ve finally reached the end. I watch James Sunderland, the game’s taciturn but likeable protagonist, raise his hunting rifle and take aim at the monster that serves as Silent Hill 2’s final boss: the desiccated body of a woman fused to the frame of a bed, an unholy fusion of decaying flesh and rusty metal that wears the face of James’ deceased wife Mary. Her skin is sallow and caked dark with grime resembling bodily fluids; it could be anything from old blood to dried vomit. Mary, as we have come to learn over hours of playtime, was terminally ill so it makes sense for the creature to take this form for James, who was Mary’s caregiver at the end of her life. He no longer remembers Mary for who she was, only her disease.

Growing up with two chronically ill parents, sickness loomed over my house like a black cloud, impossible to escape and more terrifying than any masked killer or supernatural threat. I would have nightmares about them dying, as I still do now. Sometimes I would return from school or wake up from a nap to find my mom splayed out on the couch, dazed and disoriented from low blood sugar to the point of delirium. My dad, a nurse who worked exclusively at night and always came home exhausted, seemed to be allergic to anything that wasn’t fast food or cigarettes; he had already undergone open heart surgery by the time I was in sixth grade and he was in his early thirties, the age I am now as I write this. With my grandparents, I was even more fixated on death, with the specter of breast cancer that ran rampant on my grandmother’s side and hid in the shadows of their apartment like the seventh member of our family. My grandfather told me stories that made me laugh so hard it hurt, and even then, all I could think about was the day he'd finally leave me: when, when, when, when, when? Over and over again. This unimaginable grief, suffocating me. 

On the screen, the rain batters James as he runs, winded, while I try to help him line up his shots, waiting for the right opening in the monster’s attacks, the right moment to strike back. Fortunately, the next bullet is the last: the monster lets loose a warped, warbling cry as she falls out of the air, her bulky frame toppling over when she hits the ground. Confined to the bed, “Mary” tosses and turns fitfully, murmuring James’ name, her eyes closed. It almost looks like she’s having a nightmare.

It turns out that last attack was enough to put the monster out of commission but not enough to actually kill her. “Mary” will writhe and twist on the ground indefinitely until the player delivers one final fatal attack. The game won’t do it for you—you have to make the choice yourself.

I listen to the monster moan for a few more seconds as my mom continues to fold my old baby clothes behind me: James, James, James, James. Over and over again, like a broken record. Then James pulls the trigger. The world fades to black.

The infamous twist at the end of Silent Hill 2’s third act is the stuff of legend in the horror gaming world. It turns out that Mary’s illness wasn’t what killed her: James, who we haven’t known to be anything but a clumsy yet well-meaning everyman over the hours we've spent bonding with him, euthanized her. Gradually, we learn that both the Sunderlands suffered terribly as they struggled to come to terms with her imminent death.  Mary, in the throes of immense physical pain and suicidal depression, would frequently lash out at James, verbally abusing him. Over the span of a few short years, the once-loving relationship eroded into a husk of its former self, until James smothers Mary in her sleep with her own pillow. Repressing the memory of her murder, he flees to Silent Hill, a resort town the two had once vacationed at in happier times, where he falls victim to the town's latent supernatural energy as it latches onto his subconscious and molds itself into a personal hell tailored around his trauma. Thusly, the monsters he's been fighting all this time aren't monsters at all: they're physical manifestations of his guilty mind, created to simultaneously punish James for his crime and guide him towards accepting the truth of Mary's death. 

Mary's slow, lingering death was not the first time I learned about the painful truth of living with a terminally ill loved one through media, but it was the first time such a depiction made me feel something more than profound despair. I fully credit that to the game's ending; or rather, endings—Silent Hill 2 has six of them but they all follow the same general structure. After delivering the fatal blow, the scene transitions into a sickroom bathed in dusky light, a place sitting on the border between life and death, between reality and dreams. It's here where James can reunite with Mary—or at least his memory of her—and finally process her death. "Please, do something for me," Mary's apparition tells James. She reaches underneath the blankets and passes him a white envelope: a letter, written on her deathbed. "Go on with your life."

The full contents of that letter are shared with the player over the game’s final scene, narrated by Mary herself. Despite being the one dying, Mary apologizes to James for her disease, for the burden of caring for her, for the absolute unfairness of it all. Her voice cracks on each word, her breath trembling as she struggles to keep herself from crying, and it becomes apparent that this letter is for her as much as it is for James. A revelation filled with love and forgiveness, not just for her husband, but for herself as well. “I can’t tell you to remember me, but I can’t bear for you to forget me.” The words of a dying woman, reaching across time and space. “You’ve given me so much and I haven’t been able to return a single thing. That’s why I want you to live for yourself now. Do what’s best for you, James.” The letter trails off—so does Mary’s voice. Like James, our time with her has come to an end, cut short before it could even begin.

The themes of repressed shame, self-hatred, and punishment that make up Silent Hill 2’s story appeal to me because they remind me so much of the way the world treats people who don’t fit the narrative of a perfect victim. I see so much of my relationship with my grandparents as it progressed towards the end of their lives in Mary’s deterioration: the slow transformation of a loved one into a stranger you struggle to recognize is something I’m all too familiar with. When James grapples with the paradox of simultaneously resenting and loving Mary, hoping against hope that her doctors can find a way to save her while privately wishing for an end to the pain, hers and his, I remember the last time I saw my grandfather alive. How frail he looked swaddled in a cocoon of hospital blankets and IV tubes—a cocoon of pain and loneliness, Mary had said in her letter. The way he looked at me only a few months before the fatal fall that put him in the ER, uncomprehending and distant yet faintly sad and horribly aware of it all. How I hated that there was nothing I could do to bring back the fire that once filled his eyes, how it frustrated me beyond words, as if the reason why the synapses in his decaying mind were misfiring was because of something I had personally done, how I began to hate both him and myself for feeling these things. How it repeated again, with my grandmother, less than five years after he passed away.

Growing up, I had always been attracted to darkness, eagerly consuming all things horror regardless of the medium. In a way, it felt like training. I was learning to live with the fear that kept me up at night, vaccinating myself against the monsters that resided in the depths of the fog, just out of the corner of my eye. Imaginary monsters allowed me to reckon with real ones—loneliness, guilt, sickness, the inevitability of death—and, eventually, learn to live with them. Through fiction, I found a way to make sense of it all.

Eventually, I could even learn to live for myself.

The last line of dialogue in Silent Hill 2 is both a confession and a declaration of love. Right before the credits roll, the dam finally breaks in Mary’s voice. “James,” she whispers, full of quiet longing and sorrow. “You made me happy.” Once twelve-year-old-me heard it, I began to cry. Much to my mother’s confusion (I distinctly remember her turning around mid-folding to look at the television screen and ask, bewildered, “What the hell did I let you play?”) I couldn’t stop. It was like I had looked into the future. For a brief moment I saw myself marking the passage of a new year with a memory of a past I could never return to, giving myself permission to feel that loss by reaching through the fog and allowing it to embrace me. You made me happy. 

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Click here for more
Why I Love Horror,
in book form 

31 Days of Horror: Day 22 -- Why I Love Horror, Pitt Horror Studies Collection Week Edition Featuring Dave V Riser

Today I am featuring, Dave V. Riser (he/they), a PhD student at University of Pittsburgh, studying Transgender Horror Literature. He has published some short fiction in publications such as The Arkansas International, Dark Matter Presents: The Off-Season, and Brave Boy World: A Transman Anthology. He has also written a few essays: "Enough Rope: Transmasculine Erasure, Violence, and Reading Trans Horror" at Bloodletter Magazine, and "Private Traps: Transphobia, Psychosis, and Grief in ‘Psycho’" at What Sleeps Beneath magazine. You can find him @davevriser on BlueSky. 

Here is Riser on why they love horror.

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Why I Love Horror

by Dave V. Riser

I love horror because there is something out there, in the dark. Horror and terror are real.

Jack Ketchum’s Girl Next Door is nauseating for the descriptions of abuse, but moreover, because it shows us that child abuse is normal. Every adult that the protagonist tries to ask for help tells him that Meg is essentially owned by her guardian. Even his own father equivocates on whether the abuse is wrong, causing the protagonist to realize that at some point, his father must have hit his mother. Everyone’s complicit. Girl Next Door demonstrates how American culture normalizes child abuse. The complicity of the protagonist is a tragedy, and still understandable, because he’s been taught to respect authority, and authority has told him that abuse is okay if someone in authority is doing it.

Both of my parents were in the military, so I grew up moving around a lot. I was a bookish kid, and I read everything, but I was always drawn to the darker side of whatever genre I picked up. I read Goosebumps, American Chillers (and Michigan Chillers, although we never lived in Michigan) and whatever murder mystery books my mother had on the shelves. Even in the fantasy series my father got me into, my favorite part was the torture of the main character by his brother in a struggle for the throne. Nature versus nurture, right? Billy Martin (writing as Poppy Z. Brite) was writing Dahmer-esque stories about mice before he hit double digits. 

My tastes leaned darker as I grew older. I came out as transgender. I dealt with a lot of shit. My friends dealt with a lot of shit. We weren’t always good to each other as we tried to figure things out. I read creepypastas at home and Poe and Stoker and Shelley at school. I read Carmilla. I read the origin of Slenderman and managed to start watching the Marble Hornets videos early on in the series.

In the original Slenderman mythos, you’re only at risk if you think about Slenderman too much. The more you dwell, the more you’re in danger—much like anxiety that way. But it does suggest a level of agency. As did the many, many (and often, poorly written) Slenderman creepypastas I read: someone had to survive to write these down. Someone had an encounter with a dark, violent force, and lived to tell about it. As much as horror is a story about someone being hunted and potentially killed, horror is also about watching someone survive the impossible.

What I remember most about Girl Next Door is the exploration of agency. Meg could run, could escape, but she refuses to abandon her younger sister. David, the protagonist, gets his revenge on the adult who ruined him and killed his friend. The beginning of the novel, the flash of David as an adult, demonstrates that while he is never fully “healed” or made into the version of himself that did not suffer (and sometimes, perpetuate) abuse, he has a life beyond it. 

Abuse and terror are real, and horror shows us we can be changed by it, but not succumb to it. Even the most grimdark stories have characters making hard choice to live, to try to live, to bring these fuckers down with us.

Sometimes, of course, these characters are also the monster.

Intellectually, I’ve always been interested in how art shapes and transforms us. I think horror is a landscape of complex, difficult emotions. It’s a place where real questions about ethics, survival, and our collective, inevitable death are explored. It’s deadly serious, and it’s also fun. Pleasurable, even.

The most compelling element of mythology has, for me, been the trickster figure, the boundary crosser. The boundary crosser makes the norms and expectations of their world visible through violation. Through this visibility, the reader (or listener, in the days of the oral tradition) a community can decide what norms to keep around. 

Horror’s innate conceit is boundary violation. This violation can make our own world visible to us, transforming the mundane into something new, something we can pick up and discuss. 

As a queer person, violation of norms is quite important to me. Especially as gender norms grow more coercive, more enforceable. According to the current administration, I don’t exist, and if I did exist, I’m crazy, dangerous, and should be removed from public life. Shoved back into a closet. 

I’ve been watching a lot of werewolf movies, and reading werewolf books. I’ve been thinking about monster logics: there is a fantasy of power, of rage expressed, of biting back, at the heart of the monster movie. There’s a fantasy of alternate connection, a queer world oriented away from normative pressures. I will be everything you call me, and now I have a word to find others like me.

This exists alongside the way that horror has been used, that these logics have been used, to justify real-world oppression: trans healthcare has grown out of and continues to revolve around the fear that trans people will regret transition and come seeking revenge. Not, you know, around our desire to have health care. Our desire to survive.

I love horror because it’s complicated. I love horror because it’s frightening. I love horror because it’s real. 

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Click here for more
Why I Love Horror,
in book form 

31 Days of Horror: Day 21 -- Why I Love Horror, Pitt Horror Studies Collection Week Edition Featuring Julia Hodges

Today I am featuring Julia Hodges, a University of Pittsburgh alumna with BA degrees in both Communication and Rhetoric, and Film and Media Studies, and a Certificate in Children's Literature. During her time at Pitt, she was a student employee in Archives & Special Collections, working with the horror studies collections. She is currently a graduate student at the University of Virginia pursuing a Master's in Media, Culture, and Technology while working at a locally-owned secondhand bookstore. She now lives in Charlottesville, VA with her ten plants, and what is probably just a raccoon outside... right?"

Here is Hodges on why she loves horror.

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Why I Love Horror 

by Julia Hodges

As much as I wish I could pinpoint an exact moment that my love for horror began, I cannot. But there has always been something about the genre, from literature to films, internet culture and video games, that has drawn my interest. Something about the way horror affects us, under the skin and in the furthest cracks and crannies of our minds and memories, has always – for lack of a better word – haunted me. Ultimately, there is no one horror property that captivated me from the start, nor a childhood experience with the supernatural that forever geared me towards the macabre. While my academic and professional work has granted me a grander appreciation for the genre, through hours of papers and even more hours of the most rewarding work I’ve ever done alongside Pitt’s Horror Studies Collection, my love for horror did not begin, nor does it end, with just the films and books I consume, or the research I pursue. In the simplest of terms, I can confidently say that regardless of the franchise or the form, above all, I love horror because I love a challenge.

Consider this: when opening a new book, or walking into a movie theater, for any other genre, what is the most you risk? For many of us, the most we risk by consuming some new media is our time. If all goes well, the media may provide decent entertainment and even leave an impression. If all does not go well, then we risk experiencing maybe the most boring two hours of your life—long enough to finish a dull movie, or just the right amount of time to give up entirely on trying to progress through a book or game. On an off chance, a person may be unexpectedly brought to tears by a sudden on-screen death, or an involuntarily moving soundtrack. All in all, the decision to consume most entertainment media is very inconsequential, coming just down to the time and attention one is willing to offer.

Now, on the contrary: what does the average person risk when going to see a horror film, or when picking up a horror title?

When you venture into horror, you’re risking more than just a waste of the time locked into the media being consumed. Lightly, you might risk getting startled by a jumpscare in front of your friends (or heavens forbid, a date you’re trying to impress), forever condemned to the embarrassment of getting caught off-guard by a loud noise. Or, you risk the disappointment of a film promising to be the next thing to scare your socks off, only to be schlocky at best or boring at worst.

But if the horror goes above and beyond, what more could be at risk? Haunting prose, disturbing plotlines, and devastating descriptions or practical effects can lead to nightmares, distress, or niggling thoughts of ‘what if…’ lurking in your mind when navigating a dark room. Horror can change how you look at a simple object for the rest of your life, or how you hear a song or a name, depending on their placement in a particularly haunting story. Horror, when done well, can be as awe-inspiring as a renaissance painting, and as horrific as watching a vicious car crash unfold. Horror is striking, and fascinating—it draws our attention, and for better or for worse, it does not let go easily. Horror can open the eyes to new forms of art, of new and masterful imaginations put to prose, new filming techniques and even newer thrills. But with the risk of horror’s lingering effects, it effectually creates a natural barrier between itself and the pedestals of mainstream media. The uniqueness of the horror genre in this specific fashion is both its greatest selling point, and the highest hurdle for those who could come to appreciate its complexity.

When I first moved to Charlottesville, Virginia, a few months before beginning graduate school at UVA, I landed a job at a locally owned second-hand bookstore in Charlottesville’s historic downtown district. Upon my first tour of the shop, amidst hundreds of shelves, I saw something pertinent missing. I asked the owner, a sweet elderly woman who always wears flower-printed overalls, where their horror section was located, and she told me with this bittersweet look on her face that they didn’t have one. She had asked me extensively about my experience working with Pitt’s Horror Studies Collection during my interview, so there was no way she could have thought I wouldn’t ask about the genre’s oversight in the shop.

“The thing is,” she told me, “no one on the staff really reads horror. It’s too scary for me to know much about it. And when all the Stephen King books sell out, I don’t know what to put in their place.”

Within the first week, I had used the store’s inventory to pull every title from the other shelves—sci-fi, fantasy, mystery, thriller, classics, even general fiction—to build a horror section. And even with my daily additions to the newly labelled shelves, I can barely keep the section full. Horror is popular, regardless of the risks that deter so many from trying it. But I can always find new or different titles to refill the empty spaces—because horror is also dynamic, thought-provoking, challenging, and exciting. Horror can be found in so many subjects, in so many forms and from so many authors and creators.

Horror will always exist on the outskirts of pop-culture for the very purpose I recognized while writing this entry. Horror, unlike most other media, has risks as a barrier of entry. To become a fan of horror, especially as an adult, one must face more than the challenge of knowing where to start. It requires the introspection and wisdom of a person to know their own boundaries, and yet the courage to try something unexpected, unfamiliar, and possibly frightening. Whether because of stigma or personal skittishness, so many are reluctant to try getting into any media that has been labelled as ‘horror.’ But, with the same skills I use as a salesperson in a small bookstore, I do what I can to think outside the box—what is a recommendation someone wouldn’t expect? Where would someone be willing to compromise in order to try something new? Maybe they can try horror cloaked in prose and poetry, like Poe; maybe they prefer the monstrous actions of a criminal in a thriller book, rather than the paranormal. Perhaps they want something that they can critique socially from a modern perspective, like a Lovecraft work, to understand the creations of horror without fully investing themselves into the story. Or maybe, the reader is brave and willing to try a new book for its own sake but just don’t know where to start.

Horror invades, permeates, and latches onto every concept, every uncanny, and every known fear that humans can come up with; it just depends on who the story came from, and who the story speaks to. Because it is unexpected, unknown, and unruly, so many audiences are reluctant to give it a chance. But once horror can be recognized for its diversity, its innovation, its creativity and its openness to adapt for audiences within and without the genre, I think it can be a remarkable tool for building communities, fostering empathy and open-mindedness for all of us. And with a lighthearted understanding for the absurd possibility within the genre itself, I think that overall, the fun that surrounds horror amidst the fear is like the thrill of riding a roller coaster. Just strap in, buckle up, have fun, laugh, shriek if you need to. At the end of the day, no one will blame you for vomiting up your funnel cake, if the loops and turns wound up being too much. We’re all just here to have a good time.

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Click here for more
Why I Love Horror,
in book form 

 

31 Days of Horror: Day 20 -- Why I Love Horror, Pitt Horror Studies Collection Week Edition Featuring Dana Och

Today I am featuring Dana Och a Teaching Professor in the English Department and Director of Undergraduate Studies for Film and Media Studies at the University of Pittsburgh. Her research looks at genre, Irish cinema, cult, and horror, including Irish horror films, the post-colonial zombie comedy, the neopostmodern horror film, and gendered reception of Twin Peaks, Pretty Little Liars, Fifty Shades of Grey, and Breaking Bad. She co-edited the anthology Transnational Horror Across Visual Media.

Here is Och on why she loves horror.

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Why I Love Horror

Dana Och

Ever since I was a kid, I loved horror. I came up on watching horror themed sitcom reruns and classic monster films late at night on broadcast tv before then watching a lot of horror films on VHS that my older siblings rented at the local corner shop owned by a man who had no concerns about the rating system or what age people should be to rent R or unrated films. 

I have a terrible memory, to be honest, which is pretty related to having total aphantasia, which simply is the name for the fact that I can’t form any images in my mind. Horror films, notably, make up the majority of memories for me, though, whether from my childhood or adulthood. You may be sitting there thinking, “ah, the fear is what she must remember” but, in fact, I don’t feel any fear from horror films at all. Scary scenes don’t replay or traumatize me since a lack of visualizing also means that I am not haunted by memories of fear, thoughts of monsters, or projecting what may be lurking around a corner. Nothing goes bump in the night for me. Nothing has ever hid under my bed waiting to grab my ankles, unless it is my cat. 

For my memories of horror, then, what I remember in my body is physically where I was and how I was watching when something pleased or amused me. I remember laying on the couch and pretending to sleep while watching The Exorcist reflected in the large mirror behind the couch. I remember singing “one, two, Freddy’s coming for you” while taking a bath in my nana’s upstairs bathroom; I remember deciding to never marry after being disgusted at the deep betrayals by cinema’s worst partners in Rosemary’s Baby and The Sentinel (seriously, these two men planted the seeds for my lifelong anger at the patriarchy even when I didn’t know the word for it), I remember being obsessed with how funny Friday the 13^th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan was in the movie theater in high school or cracking up with my siblings at “death by shish-ka-bob” in Happy Birthday to Me or while singing the Silver Shamrock song from Halloween 3: Season of the Witch. I shake my head at the visit I got from the concerned pilot on a plane while watching Society (note: do not watch Society on a plane) or when I screamed in surprise on a train car at an unexpected loud noise in Drag Me To Hell. I also remember the deep guilt that I felt as a young teen watching and enjoying I Spit on Your Grave, an experience and shame so acute that in many ways it determined my journey toward film theory, masculinity, feminism, genre, politics, and cult as a way to understand why I found pleasure in not only “bad” objects but objects that many found repulsive and irredeemable.

Having so few memories, I find it really striking that the majority of things that I do remember are all related to—or filtered through—horror. Even more specific is the way that these moments also align to full-body memory of where I was, what I was doing, how I was feeling, why I was sulking or laughing. Thinking about these connections for this short essay has helped to click into place the key connection between physicality, affect, and the intellect that I have been arguing for over twenty years in my academic thought/writing/teaching. In particular, my constant chorus of how the lack of fearful looking relates to the importance of “attractions” and intellectualism is rooted in my subjective experience of horror in childhood and beyond. 

The lack of fearful looking and, indeed, the embrace of the monster is often key for the works that speak to me and that I find politically significant. While all media is political, horror wears this on its sleeve much more prominently exactly because it can depart from realism and the real. Nobody needs to offer achievable solutions to problems in the way that realist dramas expect institutionally. Basically, in most other genres, we may see one bad actor, one bad billionaire, one bad corporation, and the film invests in removing and punishing them in a way that reaffirms our belief that the system itself is healthy and resilient. We are rarely invited to rethink capitalism or the desirability of the nuclear family structure. Fear is such a tool of the status quo, often being used to target, Other, and demonize minoritized identities as a threat that harms and contaminates. The conservative impulse of fear—or, rather, how fear is weaponized—is why common-sense approaches to horror often assume that all horror is misogynist, homophobic, transphobic, and racist. Yet, when the departures from realism are so great and/or the characters are stripped of provoking fear and disgust in others, we can then see the failures of the society as it exists. 

Of course, none of this is groundbreaking in terms of horror theory, but it lays the foundations for then moving to also connect that affect and intellectualism are not opposed. This essential step of integrating affect and intellect counters the idea that spectacle is a tool of distraction and manipulation of the masses. For horror, spectacle is most obviously in images that primarily offer pleasure to the eye like the big set pieces of Final Destination, the baroque murders in Argento, the camera that pulls back to a bird’s eye view for a murder in Devil’s Rejects. For me, these moments work more like Geoff King’s contemplative spectacle from Spectacular Narratives. In the spectacular violence of horror films, there is usually no character watching in these scenes, yet the audience is invited to enjoy the elaborate design, the innovation, and the sheer audaciousness or whimsy of the violence and killing. Like King’s work with blockbusters and science fiction, these moments are not “unthinking” for the spectator but rather asking the audience to pause to actually look and admire the technical prowess, the practical effects, the beauty of design and editing. It is not truly an immersive moment, but rather a way to engage with the film as constructed beyond narrative purposes. For me, horror is a great example of this type of contemplative spectacle exactly because often the narrative is not the main focus of horror!

A second level of intellectualism and interaction can trigger, too, when there is someone looking, like the “woman who married the Travelling man” in Company of Wolves. Her repeated reverse shots of tenderness, curiosity, and compassion as she watches her first husband shift so painfully into a werewolf refuses to allow fear and rejection to dominate our spectatorial position. Through her, we accept. Later in the film, the scorned, pregnant Celtic witch turns her angry gaze to a mirror and exacts revenge on the abusive Big House inhabitants. Her spectatorship is not passive. She turns looking into a powerful action, applying quite literally James Joyce’s lines about “the cracked lookingglass of the servant” of Stephen Hero into a way of exposing and overturning the power structure.

Indeed, rather than serving as a tool of oppression and power, horror can shift the way that we see the world and make us realize the integration of the mind and body, of feelings and intellect. We know that the facade of normality is often covering the festering of a society. Horror, for me and my love of it, breaks free from an investment in narrative and having an answer and a solution. I never remember plots of so many of these films, yet individual moments break free and move me emotionally and intellectually. This movement beyond narrative and into just acknowledging and manifesting feelings of anger and sadness is why I return to horror over and over again, especially now in moments where so many people feel helpless, abused, attacked, and powerless. Horror captures that wide variety of emotions, especially as we slide across multiple points of view in the film.

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Click here for more
Why I Love Horror,
in book form 

 

31 Days of Horror: Day 19 -- Why I Love Horror, Pitt Horror Studies Collection Week Edition Featuring An Introduction by Ben Rubin

This week, I am interrupting your normal Sunday links round up to begin a second full week of features and I need the entire week because so many people wanted to join us.

And I am not doing the introduction to this feature because I invited Ben Rubin to introduce himself, the The University of Pittsburgh Horror Studies Collection, and the staff, faculty, and even students who will be sharing their love of horror with you this coming week.

Take it away Ben.

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The University of Pittsburgh Horror Studies Collection-- An Introduction 

by Ben Rubin

When I talked with Becky about again contributing to her wonderful 31 Days of Halloween and Why I Love Horror series, I couldn't believe that four years had passed since my essays had previously been featured.  Although I could probably provide a new answer to what draws me to the genre every year, I will encourage you to revisit my original response, while I instead use this opportunity to promote and introduce contributions from fellow members of the University of Pittsburgh community that will feature over this coming week.  

Before I get to those introductions, I'd first like to reintroduce myself and what we are building at Pitt to contextualize why it is so exciting to see contributions from our Pitt faculty, staff, and students. I oversee the Horror Studies Collection as part of Archives & Special Collections at the University of Pittsburgh Library System, a collection of rare book and archival resources that preserves this history of the genre and illuminates its creative process.  I previously wrote about the amazing discoveries to be made and the immense potential this collection provides and I am happy to report that in the past four years, the collection has grown as has its engagement.  Some of these additions include the literary papers Clay McLeod Chapman, Elizabeth Massie, Tim Waggoner, and L. Marie Wood; the archives for The Blair Witch Project; first editions of Dracula and The Lair of the White Worm; annotated draft screenplays for films such as Psycho and The Devil Rides Out; screenplays for unproduced films including a version of The Mist by Dennis Etchison and projects by Wes Craven; paperback originals of the Bachman books Rage and The Running Man; and so much more.  We've seen visiting researchers explore our collections and produce academic presentations and articles; students produce final papers and projects; the publication of Pay the Piper by Daniel Kraus completing an unfinished manuscript found in the Romero archive; and numerous students present and take part in StokerCon's Ann Radcliffe Academic Conference.  Further, I had noted in 2021, that the library collection was only part of a larger goal at Pitt to eventually establish a Horror Studies Center, which would serve as the epicenter to further grow horror studies.  Just in time for spooky season, we are proud to announce that such a Center is now a reality, which solidifies the administrative support and belief that horror matters and deserves serious academic engagement at a top tier research university such as Pitt.  As the scope and capacities of the Center emerge and evolve, the library collection will continue to grow and serve as a scholarly resource in support of its efforts and all researchers.  All of this is to say that there is a thriving community at Pitt to take horror seriously as the essays you'll see this week deftly demonstrate. 

Over the next six days, 31 Days of Halloween will feature essays from Pitt faculty, staff, students, and alum all answering Becky’s familiar prompt, "Why I Love Horror".  While each contributor provided their own brief bio to appear with their essay, I'd like to include some further comment on how they contribute to horror studies at Pitt and specifically how they've engaged with the horror studies collections.

• Dana Och is a professor of English and Film and Media studies and a fierce advocate for helping connect students to research opportunities (with a knack for finding those that pay!).  She is a frequent collaborator in our instruction efforts in Archives & Special Collections, bringing her classes to our A&SC classroom so students can engage first-hand with rare books and archival resources.  These visits not only help build crucial research skills, but also serve as a vital first point of contact for students to this part of the library.  Her deep enthusiasm for the genre is infectious and reflected by her students and she always focuses on exposing them to the wonderful diversity of the genre in both its creators and forms.
• Julia Hodges is a recent Pitt alum.  Julia first encountered our department though a series of class visits and eventually spent extra time in our Reading Room to incorporate research with our materials into her final projects for Honors College credit.  She joined A&SC as a student employee helping to process and inventory several horror collections.  In a fun coincidence, she helped inventory The Blair Witch Project archive as it arrived – a film that happened to be the subject of that first paper she wrote in our Reading Room.  
• Dave V. Riser is a PhD student in English Literature.  David knew about our collections when he applied for his PhD program and first saw some of the materials during a grad student orientation session. It only took about a month before he started showing up in our Reading Room to begin researching with our materials.  He spent a year serving as a graduate assistant with us in A&SC, processing collections and supporting class instruction efforts.  He has written papers and presented on what he has learned delving into our resources and I expect we'll see his name continue to surface as he makes his mark on the genre in both creative and academic works. 
• Gray O’Reilly is a Pitt alum and fellow library worker in the University of Pittsburgh Library System.  As a student, they were a frequent visitor to our Reading Room focused on examining our draft film scripts.  They participated in an installment of our Horror Studies Webinar Series focused on YA horror, expertly presenting on the unproduced Romero script for a Goosebumps film.  They also participated in a panel on conducting primary source research at StokerCon 2023. 
• Paige Branagan is a senior at Pitt.  They have served as an undergraduate representative to Pitt’s Horror Studies Working Group, supporting various initiatives and events.  They were also the recipient of research funding via the Honors College and Working Group to support a project examining intersections of gender and horror gaming that developed out of course work.  They have also served as a teaching assistant coming with classes to visit A&SC in our instruction room.
• Eli Cooper is a senior at Pitt.  Eli is another student that first encountered our department through a class assignment.  After completing the assigned work with our resources, he continued to book appointments to our Reading Room to just explore materials as a way to decompress during the stressful end of semester rush.  He is now working in A&SC as a student employee processing horror collections. 

I hope you enjoy these contributions as they roll out over the next week.  I am especially proud to see work authored by our students and thank Becky for featuring their work along the voices of the famous and award winning authors whose entries define this yearly tradition at RA for All.  These essays illustrate the continued impact of the horror genre and also underline the vibrancy of horror studies at Pitt!

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