It’s almost Halloween again and yet again, people all over the world are gearing up to do all they can to scare each other and they look for ways that any trick or treaters can be greeted by monsters and the like to embrace all things nasty. I love getting dressed up in odd costumes at this time of year to bring terror anywhere I can and exploring nasty characters was the corner stone of my collections of short stories, Tall Tales for Dark Nights, and Answers From The Darkness.
But why?
Why do we seem to be so enamoured with the grotesque?
Freddy Krueger. Michael Myers. Leatherface. Pinhead.
These are amazing characters from modern films and books who brutalize and destroy anyone who is unlucky enough to cross their paths and they’re the undoubted stars of the piece but surely the point of these stories shouldn’t be to lionize the killer. Stories through the ages dealt with the monster / killer / bad guy killing everything in sight but then being overcome by the hero so the evil is defeated but if the monster’s dead, there’s no chance of making any further films or indeed, money. If they can keep coming back, making more and more attempts to slaughter and corrupt, then the interest can be maintained.
But this isn’t a new phenomenon thanks to the power of Hollywood.
Dracula always comes back. Frankenstein’s monster disappears on a raft into the mist so isn’t definitively gone. In religious texts, the devil is never really defeated because without someone or something to overcome, you get left with a huge hole in the narrative.
Do we love the idea of the monster as being an on-going reminder that we have tasks in our lives to overcome? Do we enjoy the idea of seeing the purest evil imaginable being defeated by the white hatted hero? Or do we secretly wish that those monsters of fiction, the all manner of nasty or terrifying ideas brought to life, actually represent a beautifully clear view of wish fulfilment? We see that darkest corner of our own minds brought to life on the page and we can only wish that we too could unleash that kind of horror.
Looking at the darkest aspects of the human mind or exploring brutality will always form a major part of what stories are there to do but having the chance to get dressed up as any creature imaginable to send shivers up the spine of anyone we can find should never be over looked as the exciting trip it can be.
Now get ready to be afraid.