Category Archives: horror

On January

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The first month of the year has always been a series of mixed blessings and curses for me. I love winter sports–skating and skiing, ice fishing, but twenty-seven degrees below zero, less than eight hours of daylight, icy roads, and cranky people make January a real challenge to get through. One has irrational dreams of Florida, the Bahamas, Mexico, while shoveling the latest dusting of snow. The wind nips at your nose and ears, daring you to put a hat on. Yet cold weather people make the best of it. They ignore the cold, don’t zip their jackets, mislay their hats and gloves, all in an attempt to pretend that winter is really not there at all. January is also about getting back to work and school and burrowing into the routine. Perhaps routine is even harder to take than winter because routine will crush your spirit and bury your soul. I know that routine is also good, giving meaning and structure to our lives: we work, study, eat, shower, cook, do dishes, wash clothes, watch television, read books. Yet we are creatures of routine. Given a chance we always sit int he same chair, drive the same routes to work, eat the same lunch, wear the same clothes, drink the same drinks. We have so little imagination at times that it seems incredible that we have a creative bone in our bodies. But if January proves anything, it proves that the human spirit is indomitable. We are capable of almost unimaginable creative energy, writing books, doing research, inventing new machines, composing music, sculpting art, choreographing dances, dreaming poetry, singing songs, exploring unknown countries. So people are a complex mix of energy and creation and lethargy and routine. January, I believe, brings all of these strange and nutty tendencies to a head. Short days and long nights give people too much time to think about the darker side of existence–why am I here, what am I doing with my life, should I stop doing this and become a carpenter? January insists that you ask the hard questions about life, but ironically does not insist on any answers. You see, January is just there–cold, uncaring, desolate, empty, like a long hall connecting disparate subway stations illuminated only by a bitter neon that emphasizes the wrinkles, enhances the creakiness of your limbs, and chills your cheery outlook. The best approach to surviving January is to not look at it directly, but to squint, turn your head, and glance furtively at it without letting on that you might be interested. You have to flirt with January, play hard-to-get, but don’t ask for its phone number or buy it a drink. January can run you over like a steamroller if you let it. I prefer a more non-chalant approach as if January were a rescue animal that you might take home if you think it’s cut enough or that you might be compatible. And of course, January will hurt you, make you cry, make you regret ever having spoken or become Facebook friends. January will forget to call, throw you over for someone else, leave you out in the cold, shamelessly abandon you for someone or something else. A storm will come up, the snow will fall, the temperatures will drop, the sun will set early, and the dark will creep in from all sides to cover your little island of warmth and light. The bright side of this is February, so beware.

On the (not) impending apocalypse

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All jokes aside, the world did not end today, nor will it end anytime soon. Galactic time does work that way. That the Mayans made a calendar is wonderful and a tribute to their skills as mathematicians and astronomers, but nobody predicts the future, and neither did the Mayans. In fact their calendar was just that, a calendar, which reflected every human being’s finite vision of their world. Calendars are by their very nature finite. Anything you can dream of and count, such as days, may only be limitless in the imagination of the dreamer. Anytime you write a thing down, such as a calendar, it will be finite, have a start and stop date, which does not mean, however, that the world ends just because the calendar ends. Many foolish people have made a big deal out of this imagined apocalyptic discourse because this particular calendar cuts off on December 21, 2012, which is nothing but poppycock and foolishness. I’ve hung plenty of calendars in my house and the all end on December 31st, but that does not mean that the world will not be there on January 1st. I just need to hand up a new calendar. For some, however, the end of the world might fulfill some sort of religious obsession about the end of times, but they should be careful, they might get what they wish for. For the rational empiricists in the room, all the apocalyptic talk is just so much nonsense and rubbish. Rational thought reminds us that all calendars are human constructions, reflecting political, social, and religious conventions that are all outstandingly arbitrary and completely subjective, having nothing to the galactic destiny of this little planet called “Earth.” All human calendars are not created equal, some more or less accurate, but they all “do” the same thing–count days into other subjective units of measure–weeks, months, years, decades, centuries–that allow humans to wrap their tiny minds around. Without these units of measure our poor underworked brains would get all dithery and confused about when we need to show up for coffee or when Tom’s birthday is, or even the fact that Tom has a birthday. I have always found birthdays to be a bit of a letdown, so let’s just stop now. So the world has not ended, we have to continue to wash clothing, feed our pets, and get the Christmas presents bought and wrapped. In the end there is no end. The desire that the human business come to an end is a strange one which has been shared by almost everyone since the beginning of time, but the fire and brimstone of the end times is nowhere in sight. It’s not that the world won’t end someday. Eventually, the sun will go out, a sufficiently large asteroid will destroy life on Earth, the continents will drift together, California will slide into the ocean, the polar icecaps will melt, New York will be under ten feet of water, and Ohio will have an ocean front view, but not today or anytime soon. Our lives are too short for us to witness any of these wonders. In the meantime the apocalyptic crowd will have to find another date to obsess over. Perhaps they might scan the writings of Nostradamus or Columbus for some new clues as to the end of times. Maybe the Inca knew something? The Spanish? My favorite barista? Maybe Marilyn Monroe knew something? Anyway, nobody gets off the hook and when January rolls around, it will be back to business as usual.

On Little Red Riding Hood

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The story seems so simple, yet, of course, it is so complex. We read it to children, this horrifying story of violence and death. A wolf is loose, a wolf who can talk, and he is interested in eating Little Red. An odd name, that one, Little Red Riding Hood. Today, it’s just a red hoodie. The young girl does not have a name, not a real name anyway, and she lives in a rural area of farms and trees and isolated country cottages. She is carrying a basket of goodies to her grandmother, but of course her grandmother lives in a cottage in the woods, and by this we understand such things as fear, loneliness, and danger. After all, it is off the beaten path in the woods, and who knows what you might run into out there. Little Red is, of course, just a metaphoric player in this family drama about coming of age, sex, and awakenings. There is no talking wolf, but the wolf does eat grandmother, a tradition that doesn’t seem to alarm listeners, but it does scare me, being at times rather wolf-like myself. The most frightening part of the story is the conversation between Little Red and the wolf who has now put on the grandmother’s nightdress and hopped into bed. I imagine there are still little drops of blood on his whiskers, but let’s skip that ugly detail. “My, grandmother, what big teeth you have.” ” My grandmother what hairy hands you have, and you also need a manicure.” “My, grandmother, what big ears you have and they are pointy and hairy as well!” Why Little Red cannot see the wolf in grandmother’s clothing is a little beyond me unless Little Red is a little simple in her ways. The wolf attacks her, of course, and she runs, seeking the help of another wolf, the axe man/lumberjack who happens to be near grandmother’s cottage. Using his ever present phallic ax he proceeds to disembowel the wolf, saving Little Red and the grandmother from certain death. The goodies probably go to the trusty young handsome woodsman, and everybody is happy–the wolf has been defeated. Life seems to be all about defeating the wolf, who represents all sorts of unmentionable things that we really want to ignore in life–sex, violence, adulthood, coming-of-age. We would all like Little Red to remain a child forever, caught in a strange vortex or stasis where she is forever ten years old, innocent, unknowing, pristine, unmarked, virginal. The father of Little Red is strangely absent from the story, leaving things unsettled and the entire story is disquieting and problematic. The wolf, who is not a wolf, is only a person dressed in wolf’s skins. That is all the wolf has ever been–a person. How else could it talk? There are unanswered questions about the violence that Little Red witnesses, the fear she experiences at the hands of the wolf, and that strange red cloak that defines her very identity. Yet she is condemned to stay ten forever, never arriving at womanhood, forever trudging through the woods to her grandmother’s cottage. I hope there is snow in the version you have read because that will make her red cloak that much redder. She epitomizes womanhood and femaleness as a paradigm of innocence pursued by evil, a relentless evil that takes the form of a wolf, a violent carnivorous animal bent on destroying her. I have never completely understood the story, and perhaps I never will.

On Little Red Riding Hood

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The story seems so simple, yet, of course, it is so complex. We read it to children, this horrifying story of violence and death. A wolf is loose, a wolf who can talk, and he is interested in eating Little Red. An odd name, that one, Little Red Riding Hood. Today, it’s just a red hoodie. The young girl does not have a name, not a real name anyway, and she lives in a rural area of farms and trees and isolated country cottages. She is carrying a basket of goodies to her grandmother, but of course her grandmother lives in a cottage in the woods, and by this we understand such things as fear, loneliness, and danger. After all, it is off the beaten path in the woods, and who knows what you might run into out there. Little Red is, of course, just a metaphoric player in this family drama about coming of age, sex, and awakenings. There is no talking wolf, but the wolf does eat grandmother, a tradition that doesn’t seem to alarm listeners, but it does scare me, being at times rather wolf-like myself. The most frightening part of the story is the conversation between Little Red and the wolf who has now put on the grandmother’s nightdress and hopped into bed. I imagine there are still little drops of blood on his whiskers, but let’s skip that ugly detail. “My, grandmother, what big teeth you have.” ” My grandmother what hairy hands you have, and you also need a manicure.” “My, grandmother, what big ears you have and they are pointy and hairy as well!” Why Little Red cannot see the wolf in grandmother’s clothing is a little beyond me unless Little Red is a little simple in her ways. The wolf attacks her, of course, and she runs, seeking the help of another wolf, the axe man/lumberjack who happens to be near grandmother’s cottage. Using his ever present phallic ax he proceeds to disembowel the wolf, saving Little Red and the grandmother from certain death. The goodies probably go to the trusty young handsome woodsman, and everybody is happy–the wolf has been defeated. Life seems to be all about defeating the wolf, who represents all sorts of unmentionable things that we really want to ignore in life–sex, violence, adulthood, coming-of-age. We would all like Little Red to remain a child forever, caught in a strange vortex or stasis where she is forever ten years old, innocent, unknowing, pristine, unmarked, virginal. The father of Little Red is strangely absent from the story, leaving things unsettled and the entire story is disquieting and problematic. The wolf, who is not a wolf, is only a person dressed in wolf’s skins. That is all the wolf has ever been–a person. How else could it talk? There are unanswered questions about the violence that Little Red witnesses, the fear she experiences at the hands of the wolf, and that strange red cloak that defines her very identity. Yet she is condemned to stay ten forever, never arriving at womanhood, forever trudging through the woods to her grandmother’s cottage. I hope there is snow in the version you have read because that will make her red cloak that much redder. She epitomizes womanhood and femaleness as a paradigm of innocence pursued by evil, a relentless evil that takes the form of a wolf, a violent carnivorous animal bent on destroying her. I have never completely understood the story, and perhaps I never will.

On pumpkins

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Do you think that carving horrifying and creepy faces into large orange gourds and illuminating them from the inside out with a candle is odd? America’s fascination and obsession with this bizarre, if not oddly repressive, tradition is, without a doubt, weird. No one carves faces into other large vegetables, so why mess with pumpkins? Sure, they are about the same size as a human head, they are hollow, and they are this striking orange color, but how does all of that add up to the tradition of carving an ugly face into the front of the thing? I understand that as human beings we need safe avenues of expression for our fears, repressed memories, nightmares, scary visions and the like, but carving pumpkins for Halloween is a bit of a mystery even if you invoke a completely Freudian interpretation of the carving act. The kids tend to love this activity, and as a child I always tried to outdo myself by making the fangs sharper, the eyes more evil, the nose more fiendish. In Spanish we have a word for the distorted pumpkin heads which are created: esperpento, which speaks to the exaggerated monstrosity represented by the disfigured and hideous face of the pumpkin. It’s as if we need to create something truly ugly and display it for the whole world to see. The creation of the monstrous face speaks most clearly to a series of ancient harvest celebrations and the superstitious traditions associated with it that have grown into the practice of Halloween. Many sources will defend the Christian associations with the celebration of Halloween and ceremonies for the remembrance of the dead, but the actual practices of Halloween proceed from a much murkier past that has long since been forgotten that has to do with forest spirits, monsters, ghosts, and fear. The “Jack-O-Lantern” or illuminated carved pumpkin seems to embody this fall festival as people make light of what scares them, admitting that they not only fear death, but that they also fear those things that go “bump” in the night. Halloween is that opportunity to recognize our basest fears: the dark, death, wild animals, nuclear weapons, the economy, and even fear itself. People express their fears and repressions in different ways, not the least of which is carving pumpkins and later dressing up like their favorite superhero. All of this is very irrational, but who ever said that fear is rational? We carve the pumpkin because we want to control that which frightens us, so the pumpkin becomes a mirror for us as we probe the dark side to our souls in search of those things that have no face, that reside in the shadows, the moan and growl, that have sharp teeth, that shape-shift and change. The fact that we do this once a year just before the onset of winter suggests that although most of our community is populated by rational empiricists who reject all superstition and irrational practices, there are still a huge part of the human experience that is at once irrational and inexplicable—logic falls short of its goal, and we end up scooping a bunch of pumpkin innards out on the kitchen table. I think that carving pumpkins into Jack-O-Lanterns serves some psychological purpose of letting the carver “get it out of his/her system” so to speak, that carving pumpkins is a healthy psychological practice that points to mental health and a firm grasp of reality. That said, I haven’t carved a pumpkin in ten years.

On pumpkins

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Do you think that carving horrifying and creepy faces into large orange gourds and illuminating them from the inside out with a candle is odd? America’s fascination and obsession with this bizarre, if not oddly repressive, tradition is, without a doubt, weird. No one carves faces into other large vegetables, so why mess with pumpkins? Sure, they are about the same size as a human head, they are hollow, and they are this striking orange color, but how does all of that add up to the tradition of carving an ugly face into the front of the thing? I understand that as human beings we need safe avenues of expression for our fears, repressed memories, nightmares, scary visions and the like, but carving pumpkins for Halloween is a bit of a mystery even if you invoke a completely Freudian interpretation of the carving act. The kids tend to love this activity, and as a child I always tried to outdo myself by making the fangs sharper, the eyes more evil, the nose more fiendish. In Spanish we have a word for the distorted pumpkin heads which are created: esperpento, which speaks to the exaggerated monstrosity represented by the disfigured and hideous face of the pumpkin. It’s as if we need to create something truly ugly and display it for the whole world to see. The creation of the monstrous face speaks most clearly to a series of ancient harvest celebrations and the superstitious traditions associated with it that have grown into the practice of Halloween. Many sources will defend the Christian associations with the celebration of Halloween and ceremonies for the remembrance of the dead, but the actual practices of Halloween proceed from a much murkier past that has long since been forgotten that has to do with forest spirits, monsters, ghosts, and fear. The “Jack-O-Lantern” or illuminated carved pumpkin seems to embody this fall festival as people make light of what scares them, admitting that they not only fear death, but that they also fear those things that go “bump” in the night. Halloween is that opportunity to recognize our basest fears: the dark, death, wild animals, nuclear weapons, the economy, and even fear itself. People express their fears and repressions in different ways, not the least of which is carving pumpkins and later dressing up like their favorite superhero. All of this is very irrational, but who ever said that fear is rational? We carve the pumpkin because we want to control that which frightens us, so the pumpkin becomes a mirror for us as we probe the dark side to our souls in search of those things that have no face, that reside in the shadows, the moan and growl, that have sharp teeth, that shape-shift and change. The fact that we do this once a year just before the onset of winter suggests that although most of our community is populated by rational empiricists who reject all superstition and irrational practices, there are still a huge part of the human experience that is at once irrational and inexplicable—logic falls short of its goal, and we end up scooping a bunch of pumpkin innards out on the kitchen table. I think that carving pumpkins into Jack-O-Lanterns serves some psychological purpose of letting the carver “get it out of his/her system” so to speak, that carving pumpkins is a healthy psychological practice that points to mental health and a firm grasp of reality. That said, I haven’t carved a pumpkin in ten years.

On vampires

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Seriously? Vampires? The rational empiricist in me says this topic is dead even before it gets started. Some people are totally obsessed with the figure of the vampire, but the vampire only has life because people fear death, the dark, and premature burial. The “life” of a vampire is completely antithetical to the sun-loving, light-loving normal human being who wears a cross and eats garlic bread until it bleeds from their pores. People generally fear that which is completely unlike them. Unless we can see our mirror image, we are afraid of all “others”. The vampire couldn’t be more “other” because they don’t drink…wine. Vampires “live” at night, sleep in their coffin during the day, drink blood, simulate sex by biting their partner (okay, forget that, some people also bite, or so I’ve heard), cannot bear to be out in the daylight, don’t eat food, don’t age, and don’t die. A psychologist might suggest that humans construct the vampire in order to embody all of their own irrational fears about life. The very solitary nature of the vampire’s so-called existence is also antithetical to the gregarious nature of most humans. The thing is, vampires don’t exist, but human fears do. The vampire moves through the dark of night, inhabiting the shadows and corners of the human mind where fear dwells and the unknown makes its nest. With all the pressure of the modern industrial world, and let’s face it, the vampire is a product of modern industrialism, unbridled commerce, and uninhibited capitalism, human beings cannot for a minute pretend to cover all of their responsibilities brought on by work, school, marriage, children, church, and social organizations that pull on their time and energy. The vampire appears on the urban scene when time poverty is everywhere, sleep comes at a premium, and the pressure to succeed at all costs comes from every corner–business, home, society. The vampire is a cold, blood-thirsty primitive animal that arises out of that primordial mass of irrational thought that resides at the bottom of the brain, driven and fed by all of the really negative energy of emotion, fear, and hate. What makes the vampire particularly interesting is that it feeds by sinking its fangs into the throats of its victims and sucking out their life’s blood and recreating itself by killing its victim, engendering a new line of vampires, of the undead. Undead is neither alive nor dead, but something interminable between the two where life neither progresses nor ends. The undead are rejected by both Heaven and Hell, not fitting the criteria for either one. Why humans fear all of this is, of course, highly irrational because no such beast has ever existed, exists now, or will exist at some time in the future, but the strange erotic attraction people feel toward the figure of the vampire is real and creepy. Some goes as far as having actual fang dental work done, so they can more easily simulate the most notable characteristic of the vampire. The necro-erotic, homo-erotic, and hemo-erotic psycho-sexual undertones that run through all vampire literature only add to the global attraction that mortals feel toward this dangerous supernatural creature. It is weirdly ironic that it is usually a man of science a la Van Helsing that occupies itself with eradicating the menace. Vampires are a real physical manifestation of our irrational fears—creating a literal body upon which these fears are inscribed: undead, darkness, fear, violence, self-loathing, hate, ire, violence, death, and blood. The vampire is then, by default, us.

On vampires

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Seriously? Vampires? The rational empiricist in me says this topic is dead even before it gets started. Some people are totally obsessed with the figure of the vampire, but the vampire only has life because people fear death, the dark, and premature burial. The “life” of a vampire is completely antithetical to the sun-loving, light-loving normal human being who wears a cross and eats garlic bread until it bleeds from their pores. People generally fear that which is completely unlike them. Unless we can see our mirror image, we are afraid of all “others”. The vampire couldn’t be more “other” because they don’t drink…wine. Vampires “live” at night, sleep in their coffin during the day, drink blood, simulate sex by biting their partner (okay, forget that, some people also bite, or so I’ve heard), cannot bear to be out in the daylight, don’t eat food, don’t age, and don’t die. A psychologist might suggest that humans construct the vampire in order to embody all of their own irrational fears about life. The very solitary nature of the vampire’s so-called existence is also antithetical to the gregarious nature of most humans. The thing is, vampires don’t exist, but human fears do. The vampire moves through the dark of night, inhabiting the shadows and corners of the human mind where fear dwells and the unknown makes its nest. With all the pressure of the modern industrial world, and let’s face it, the vampire is a product of modern industrialism, unbridled commerce, and uninhibited capitalism, human beings cannot for a minute pretend to cover all of their responsibilities brought on by work, school, marriage, children, church, and social organizations that pull on their time and energy. The vampire appears on the urban scene when time poverty is everywhere, sleep comes at a premium, and the pressure to succeed at all costs comes from every corner–business, home, society. The vampire is a cold, blood-thirsty primitive animal that arises out of that primordial mass of irrational thought that resides at the bottom of the brain, driven and fed by all of the really negative energy of emotion, fear, and hate. What makes the vampire particularly interesting is that it feeds by sinking its fangs into the throats of its victims and sucking out their life’s blood and recreating itself by killing its victim, engendering a new line of vampires, of the undead. Undead is neither alive nor dead, but something interminable between the two where life neither progresses nor ends. The undead are rejected by both Heaven and Hell, not fitting the criteria for either one. Why humans fear all of this is, of course, highly irrational because no such beast has ever existed, exists now, or will exist at some time in the future, but the strange erotic attraction people feel toward the figure of the vampire is real and creepy. Some goes as far as having actual fang dental work done, so they can more easily simulate the most notable characteristic of the vampire. The necro-erotic, homo-erotic, and hemo-erotic psycho-sexual undertones that run through all vampire literature only add to the global attraction that mortals feel toward this dangerous supernatural creature. It is weirdly ironic that it is usually a man of science a la Van Helsing that occupies itself with eradicating the menace. Vampires are a real physical manifestation of our irrational fears—creating a literal body upon which these fears are inscribed: undead, darkness, fear, violence, self-loathing, hate, ire, violence, death, and blood. The vampire is then, by default, us.

On horror stories

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Human beings are fascinated by horror stories–obsessed, one might say. From our earliest times we have created narratives filled with monsters, ghouls, trolls, ghosts, and creatures whose only purpose seems to be threatening or killing people in out of the way places, dark houses, empty castles, lonely highways, cold mountain passes, haunted spaceships, lonely planets, and creepy little towns. The very space created within the horror narrative is menacing, ghastly, deserted, dusty, filled with cobwebs, forgotten spaces. Both attics and basements are particularly hazardous spaces, but empty jungles, strange swamps, and wind-swept mountains can also be problematic, especially if you are a scientist in an out of the way place such as Antarctica, a space ship on its way to Mars, an old freighter navigating a long way from its home port, at the bottom of the sea. All of these spaces are a long distance from a safe port and speak to the inherent danger of far away places, places that are unknown and unsafe. Strange beings–half man, half reptile–inhabit these places waiting for their next meal to come along. Most of these narratives begin innocently enough with calm seas and smooth sailing, blue skies and light winds, before things start to go wrong. A crisis ensues, a problem arises, a computer goes haywire, a storm blows up, somebody ignores a warning, and the bottom falls out–a ship sinks, a monster gets loose, communications break down, an earthquake occurs, a volcano erupts, a typhoon strikes, and the characters start to die in horrible and miserable ways. In the middle of these narratives, a hero arises who must fight to overcome the obstacles, monsters, and spaces that lie between him/her and safety. We consume these stories as if there were no tomorrow. They seem to reflect some of our darkest fears of abandonment, of the unknown, of the dark, of technology, of power, of the future, of change. We fear that we are poisoning our world, that technology is moving ahead too fast, that space is a dangerous place, that there are unexplainable supernatural things that are not dreamt of in our philosophy. The archetypal ghost stories seems to be a paradigm inherent in any serious discussion of the genre–a strange place, a vengeful ghost, isolation, mayhem. Perhaps horror stories haunt our collective psyche because the raise existential questions of the highest order: who are we, what is our purpose in life, what does all of this (life) mean? So we let the vampires, werewolves, and mummies run through our nightmares, hoping against hope that they will stay there.

On horror stories

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Human beings are fascinated by horror stories–obsessed, one might say. From our earliest times we have created narratives filled with monsters, ghouls, trolls, ghosts, and creatures whose only purpose seems to be threatening or killing people in out of the way places, dark houses, empty castles, lonely highways, cold mountain passes, haunted spaceships, lonely planets, and creepy little towns. The very space created within the horror narrative is menacing, ghastly, deserted, dusty, filled with cobwebs, forgotten spaces. Both attics and basements are particularly hazardous spaces, but empty jungles, strange swamps, and wind-swept mountains can also be problematic, especially if you are a scientist in an out of the way place such as Antarctica, a space ship on its way to Mars, an old freighter navigating a long way from its home port, at the bottom of the sea. All of these spaces are a long distance from a safe port and speak to the inherent danger of far away places, places that are unknown and unsafe. Strange beings–half man, half reptile–inhabit these places waiting for their next meal to come along. Most of these narratives begin innocently enough with calm seas and smooth sailing, blue skies and light winds, before things start to go wrong. A crisis ensues, a problem arises, a computer goes haywire, a storm blows up, somebody ignores a warning, and the bottom falls out–a ship sinks, a monster gets loose, communications break down, an earthquake occurs, a volcano erupts, a typhoon strikes, and the characters start to die in horrible and miserable ways. In the middle of these narratives, a hero arises who must fight to overcome the obstacles, monsters, and spaces that lie between him/her and safety. We consume these stories as if there were no tomorrow. They seem to reflect some of our darkest fears of abandonment, of the unknown, of the dark, of technology, of power, of the future, of change. We fear that we are poisoning our world, that technology is moving ahead too fast, that space is a dangerous place, that there are unexplainable supernatural things that are not dreamt of in our philosophy. The archetypal ghost stories seems to be a paradigm inherent in any serious discussion of the genre–a strange place, a vengeful ghost, isolation, mayhem. Perhaps horror stories haunt our collective psyche because the raise existential questions of the highest order: who are we, what is our purpose in life, what does all of this (life) mean? So we let the vampires, werewolves, and mummies run through our nightmares, hoping against hope that they will stay there.