What Horror Means to Three Librarians
Horror as a genre is as controversial as it is compelling, as terrifying as it can be laugh-out-loud funny. There are many reasons why one might come across the genre (chances are, it was probably Stephen King) and even more as to why someone might continue to read within the genre and even love the scary stories within. Inspired by the recent essay collection on horror literature, Why I Love Horror, three librarians asked themselves: Why do we love horror?
Christina: Freedom from Civility
Horror has always been my release and rebellion as someone who grew up a “nice girl”. Nice girls keep their hands folded neatly in their laps in church. Nice girls say “please” and “thank you”. They turn the other cheek, and call their grandparents regularly, and return their library books on time, and wait for Prince Charming to come knocking, and never raise their voices.
But in the horror genre, sometimes the nice girl has to carry a sledgehammer. Her survival is more important than her civility. Her hands are for punching through chest cavities and ripping out bloody, pulsing hearts. Perhaps she is predator, not prey, and she devours her lovers. She is feral and sharp as a knife’s edge. For her, there is no taking “the high road” when monsters lurk on the low road — sometimes she is monstrous herself. So when I, a nice girl, am reading horror, I am set free.
Here are a few recommendations if you, too, long for freedom:
Margo: A Rock Tumbler for Fear
I am a very anxious person. I’ve been that way for most of my life. My brain is always churning with thoughts and “what ifs,” a never-ending parade of all the worst scenarios. Instead of being antithetical to my overall wellness, horror is a place I can escape my brain. Horror is a genre that can disgust, terrify, and scandalize you, but it’s also a place where you can process ideas and feelings that are oftentimes too big. I think of horror like a rock tumbler, my fears are unpolished stones, jagged and sharp. The right horror story is a perfect tumbling medium. When you throw the two together, horror can dull the sharp edges of my own fear.
Horror gives the reader an opportunity to experience the worst imaginable fates and walk away. While the characters may not be intact, you always are. I think there are two main reasons why I read horror: to process my own fears and because I can. People climb mountains, sail seas, and put themselves in all different kinds of physically dangerous situations. I read books that would make many people squeamish. While the physical rigor is different, I think the drive to experience the extremes of life is somewhat similar. When you reach the end of a book or scale a mountain (this is me assuming, I’m not the mountain-climbing type), there is a feeling of accomplishment. I did that. I pushed through something not everyone feels comfortable doing. The journey to the peak gives you time to reflect.
I also love that horror can tell multiple stories at once. I remember speaking to a friend about Stephen King’s It, and the place of Pennywise in horror. Pennywise isn’t scary just because he’s a weird space spider-thing. He’s scary because he represents the real and lasting impacts of childhood trauma. I love the additional levels baked into horror. On a story’s topmost level, monsters, killers, and ghosts are real physical threats. Then, below the surface, they represent something more. Not every good horror story needs to be a metaphor. Sometimes the pipe is just a pipe. In the often-joked-about scene in John Green’s The Fault in Our Stars, teenage cancer patient Augustus Waters holds cigarettes in his mouth that he never lights. “It's a metaphor, see: You put the killing thing right between your teeth, but you don't give it the power to do its killing.” Yes, this scene is a little silly and a lot pretentious (just like most teens, and most adults, are.) But I think horror is the same. The genre represents depictions of some of the worst fates that could befall a person, but you don’t give it the power to hurt you.
Here are a few of my favorite “killing things” for you to try out:
Adam: A Portal to the Past
When I think of horror as a genre, I think of the color green. Not the fresh green of slaughtered blades of grass or the sour green of apples you’d slice mercilessly into pies; no, this shade is not organic, nothing you’d find in nature. I’m talking acid green, the green that drenched Goosebumps covers back in the 90’s; the exact color of toxic sludge, of slime, the bubbling green of a witch’s brew. That, to me, is true horror. The kind only found in childhood.
I grew up in Western Kansas, in a town with a recorded population of 710 the year before I was born. It was tiny — minuscule — with only one school, K-12, and at least three churches all within blocks of each other. This town haunts me. The crumbling Victorian I called home still plagues my dreams (nightmares) to this day, even though the only thing that remains of that place is a paper trail leading towards bankruptcy and a vacant lot, the house long since demolished.
My upbringing was not exactly “ideal,” but there are moments that stand out in my wavery memory, flooded with time: one in particular was my encounter with a witch. Not a real one (if only), but a cartoonish cardboard cutout, complete with a wart on her nose. Sometimes in my dreams (nightmares), I walk down the main street of my childhood, just like that day (night?) where I walked alone, passing storefronts, only to make direct eye contact with a hag.
She was in the window display, attached and hanging from a string, which allowed her to swayyyyy and swinggggg, almost as if she was slowly turning to look at me, eyeing me, noticing me. Seeing me. Something about her gaze struck something deep inside: a terror that crawled in my stomach, burying itself deep in my intestines. To this day, I have never been more afraid. There’s something nostalgic about that fear — about its simplicity, its absurdity, how it was so all-encompassing. I haven’t forgotten it nearly three decades later and how, even in my dreams (nightmares?), I never find myself walking on that same side of the street in case she’s there.
Why do I love horror? Horror is a time machine, a portal that transports me back to that dark, seemingly abandoned street where it was just me, my terror, and a cardboard cutout of a witch.
Here are a few books that make me irrationally afraid:
—Adam Lopez and Christina James are Readers' Services Assistants at Lawrence Public Library, and Margo Moore is a Teen Librarian.
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