Horror has been a part of human storytelling for centuries. From ancient folklore to modern internet stories, horror shows society’s new fears and anxieties as culture and technology evolve. The genre has continued to adapt to the context of where and when it is written while still maintaining its ability to frighten and disturb audiences.
Some of the earliest examples of horror can be found in ancient ghost stories and folklore. The oldest surviving piece of horror could be considered an ancient tablet meant to be a guide to exorcism from the ancient Sumerian civilization. Tales of spirits, monsters and otherworldly beings were often passed down orally, serving as cautionary tales. Nearly every culture has their own myths: Eastern Europe’s vampires, Mexico’s La Llorona, Russia’s Baba Yaga and many others.
The transition from horror mainly in oral storytelling to written literature in the West occurred primarily in the 18th and 19th centuries with the birth of the Gothic horror genre. Horace Walpole’s “The Castle of Otranto,” written in 1764, Mary Shelly’s “Frankenstein,” written in 1818 and Bram Stoker’s Dracula, written in 1897, were all works that set the standards for later horror media as they combined supernatural elements with philosophical concerns of society. “Early novels in the gothic horror subgenre heavily feature…evil villains[,] most often acting as metaphors for some sort of human temptation,” librarian Amanda Pagan said. These novels represented the anxieties of the times they were written—advancement of science in “Frankenstein,” the lack of reason of society in “The Castle of Otranto” and foreign influences in “Dracula.”
In the early 20th century, horror again transitioned mediums into cinema. Silent films like “Nosferatu” used lighting and an expressionistic style to create an eerie atmosphere. Universal Studios’ monster movies of the 1930s such as “The Invisible Man,” “Frankenstein” and “Dracula” also heavily influenced later horror. These films drew heavily from the general tensions of war following World War I and preceding World War II as well as the instability of the Great Depression. The genre continued to shift during the 1950s through to the early-1990s, with films like “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” in 1978 representing the “Cold War paranoia about spies and secrecy” and, again, the fear of the uncertainty present during that era.
The 1970s and 1980s also brought the rise of slasher films such as “Friday the 13th” and “Halloween,” which were released in the context of rapidly changing societal values and increasing cynicism in people. Compared to older films, these were much more willing to show gore and a less sanitized version of characters. However, the characters typically associated with ideas that general society did not approve of such as premarital relations were typically the ones that ended up dying.
With the rise of the internet, horror evolved again. The found-footage style of “The Blair Witch Project,” released in 1999, increased in popularity and created a horror that was more grounded in reality. Online stories such as that of “The Slender Man” came from an internet forum known as Something Awful. “As the Internet developed as a communications facilitator, folklore emerged as recognizably on it as it did in ‘the real world.’” Folklorist Trevor Banks stated. He observed that these internet-borne scary stories, sometimes called creepypasta, represent a modern form of folklore that functioned similarly to the traditional folklore that people have been using for thousands of years: they used the fear of the unknown to create a shared experience across many people. This time, however, this “folklore” could be shared across the world and across different cultures.
From folklore to cinema to the internet, horror continues to adapt to each generation’s unique fears and anxieties, showing a bit of our own selves in the horror we watch.
Starting in 1996, the Scream franchise continues to be popular, with new movies still coming out. This franchise helped to revive some of the elements of the slasher films that had become overused over the previous two decades. (Photo/Nik via Unsplash)
