Horror – It is a genre limited only by the writer's imagination.
An Ancient Tale
Abandoned for many years, the old house stands alone and quiet save for the ghost of an emaciated old man shackled in chains. A philosopher, finding the house to rent for a surprisingly low price, decides to investigate. Undeterred by tales of the haunting, he takes on the task of finding the ghost's secret. Alone in the house, he sits reading through the night and is eventually interrupted by the sound of clanging chains. The sound draws nearer until the old man's apparition appears and beckons the philosopher to follow. The ghost walks slowly, dragging his chains. When they reach an opening in the courtyard the ghost abruptly vanishes. The philosopher marks the spot and in the morning digs up the site. There he discovers a skeleton bound in rusty chains. The corpse is given a proper burial, and the haunting ends.
This story takes place in Athens and was set down by Pliny the Younger over two thousand years ago. It is one of the first recordings of a haunted house. Stories of the unexplainable, the fantastic and the imaginary have been a part of the human experience since the beginning of recorded history and probably much longer.
Writing Horror
Tales of ghosts, ghouls and things that go bump in the night speak to our most primal fears: our fear of death and the unknown. Many of us explore our fears, both rational and irrational, through the cathartic process of writing.
There is something marvelously liberating about writing about what we fear, what we don't understand and what we can't control. When writing, we make the rules, and we control the outcome. It is through this unbounded sense of creativity and empowerment that we are drawn to the horror genre.
Writing Prompts
When writing in the horror genre, the possibilities are nearly endless, but to help you get started, here are some spooky writing prompts:
- As you now know, the haunted house story is an ancient genre. Write your own haunted house story. Include the three following words: candle, floorboards and toaster.
- What is your deepest fear? Is it death? Being buried alive? Stalked by a serial killer? Write a story with a narrator who is confronted by his or her deepest fear – if you dare.
- A cliche is a cliche because it resonates and has become trite with overuse. So why not? Just for fun, write a story beginning with the following: It was a dark and stormy night . . .
- "A rag a bone and a hank of hair, but the fool he called her his lady fair" is a haunting line from Rudyard Kipling's "The Vampire." Use it as the first line in a story.
- Edgar Allan Poe's The Tell-Tale Heart is a story of psychological terror. The story is told from the perspective of a madman. We know this because of his thoughts and his actions, yet throughout the story, the narrator claims it is the old man with the "Evil Eye" who is somehow the deviant. This form of "inferred" horror has been perfected by other writers such at Ruth Rendell. It is also a major aspect of Charlotte Gilman Perkin's masterpiece, The Yellow Wallpaper. Try writing a story from the perspective of a person descending into madness. You may want to do some research on mental illness first. It will help make your story grounded in fact and more believable.
What's Next
If you want to delve further into the genre, be inspired by the masters: M.R. James, Nathaniel Hawthorne and H.P. Lovecraft. Modern masters of the genre include Robert Bloch, Stephen King and Richard Matheson. You will also find more writing prompts on the Internet.
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