Horror That Inspires

Here's a roundtable for the horror writers. Let's talk about inspirations and influences as we jump into spooky month.

Which writers influenced and inspired you to write (or how to write) horror stories? How did they influence you?

Danielle Procter Piper: While I've read many horror stories and have been favorably compared to Peter Straub, I can't pinpoint a specific influence. I just write what I'd like to read. 

Susan H. Roddey: My reading material of choice as a kid was usually Christopher Pike or RL Stine, which morphed into Poe, King, Rice, and Jackson as I got older. The Dark Half was the book that truly cemented my love of the creepy AND made me realize that writing was something I wanted to do with my life because if that guy was crazy enough to give life to a pen name, then surely I could do something equally as nuts, right? But the truly transcendent moment for me was reading Frankenstein for the first time. Not only is it both beautiful and grotesque, but it was written by a woman at a time when women were little more than property. It also taught me that there is beauty in classic literature (sometimes), which led to a years-long sprint to read as many of those books as I could get my hands on.

Brian K Morris: As an occasional dabbler in the genre... Mary Shelley, Stephen King, Robert Bloch, Bram Stoker, Dean R. Kootnz.

John L. Taylor: Weirdly, it was nonfiction paranormal writers like Daniel Cohen and Ivan T. Sanderson that first got me writing horror. I go for a more docu-fiction approach. Other Influences were Dudley Bromley, Frank Peretti, Christopher Pike, R.L. Stine, H.P. Lovecraft, and Clark Ashton-Smith. 

Sean Taylor: My horror writer influences are more classic than most, probably. I find that I'm far more inspired and affected by the work of folks like Shirley Jackson, Algernon Blackwood, M.R. James, and F. Marion Crawford. These writers really had a knack for mood and setting, and sadly, that's missing from a lot of modern horror in exchange for a more "go for the throat" sort of story. That said, I also love the work of Ray Bradbury when he turned to horror, such as his novel Something Wicked This Way Comes and the story "The Veldt." And while King is obviously an influence, I think I identify more with his son Joe Hill in terms of tone and mood for his horror stories. Now, after saying that, I'll concede that King is a master of the horror short story. 

Bobby Sisemore: H. P. Lovecraft because what he did was unlike almost anything that came before him, Village of the Damned because it was so eerie, Lovecraftian obviously.

Ef Deal: Not so much an author as an anthologist: Alfred Hitchcock books in our library had such wonderfully wry tales, and I like wry. I don't care for madness or body horror, but I like a cozy ghost story and philosophical vampire and werewolf tales.

Lucy Blue: So much of my style and habits of story construction can be traced directly back to Stephen King and Anne Rice. Which feels like a contradiction. King is so much about the intrusion of supernatural evil into the mundane--his brand of scary works so well on so many different readers because he establishes such a real, recognizable, ordinary world full of such ordinary, relatable characters for the scary to happen in and to. Even his monsters are petty and ordinary in their motivations and methods--they aren't romantic; they're hungry. Meanwhile, in Rice's worlds, even the cashier at the corner market has a supernatural glow and a magical backstory; she delighted in making her monsters as romantic as possible. Growing up goth, I adored both of them, and I think ultimately my own horror writing splits the difference.

Anthony Taylor: Roald Dahl, Rod Serling, Lovecraft, Charlie Grant. 

Stuart Hopen: I came to horror at an early age, reading Dracula for the first time in 2nd grade and Frankenstein a year later. The two books were powerful influences, leading in opposite directions. Dracula, at its unstaked heart is a heroic romance, a conflict of unambiguous good against absolute evil. Frankenstein is a tragedy, where the lines between good and evil blur. Frankenstein has deep roots in poetry and philosophy. Dracula has deep roots in theater, and the very model for title character was the greatest stage actor of his time. Dracula is fantasy. Frankenstein the beginning of science fiction.

Horror in comic books were a major influence on me as well. I was reading Marvel before they did superheroes. When Marvel comics set out to create a pantheon rival D.C.’s gods and legends, they mantled the universe in horrors, not absurdities. The Fantastic Four, the first Marvel demigods, had The Thing, a monster in their midst, and they fought other monsters—The Mole Man with his legions of underground behemoths, the Skulls, grotesque shapeshifters from outer space, the Submariner, the brutal psychopath from beneath the sea, who used to chuckle to himself when Nazis drowned or burned alive on their ships after being attacked. I bought Fantastic Four #1 off the stands, and it scared the crap out of me. The next Marvel entry was Ant-Man, who literally began in a horror comic patterned after the Incredible Shrinking Man, only to later don a costume and cybernetic helmet. And then came the Hulk, the cross between Mr. Hyde and Frankenstein. And the theology there was obvious—that beneath the horror and social dysfunctions of this universe, there is divinity, truth, and moral order.

John Morgan Neal: Richard Matheson. Nigel Kneale. Edgar Alan Poe. Shirley Jackson. Stephen King.

Jen Hart: I've always been drawn to the darker side of things so for authors: Stephen King, Anne Rice, Clive Barker, and way too many more since I always had a book in my hand as a teenager.

Chris Jowers: King. Shelley. Stevenson. Stoker.

Because we also learn storytelling from the visual delivery of movies, which movies influenced and inspired you to write (or how to write) horror stories? How did they influence you?

Brian K Morris: Psycho, the Universal Studios classics, the Hammer films, Kolchak: the Night Stalker, selected episodes of Doctor Who (LIke "Blink"), plus all those awful 50s movies I used to watch on late night TV.

Lucy Blue: With movies, I am very much more about ghost stories and gothic stories than I am monster flicks or slasher flicks or body horror. The first horror thing I ever remember seeing was a TV movie called Something Evil about a demonically possessed kid -- the kid was played by Johnny Whitaker, Jody from one of my favorite shows, Family Affair. I was deeply, deeply traumatized. And while I loved reading scary stuff, I was the wimpy kid who hid her eyes during scary previews until I was about 12 -- I had to be talked into going to see Star Wars the first time because the preview had "monsters" in it. Then I hit puberty right around the same time the Frank Langella version of Dracula hit pay cable, and I was lost to gothic horror forever. 😉

Ef Deal: Don't care for horror movies that are meant to gross you out. Give me Ash or Buffy. The most terrifying moment in The Exorcist was when Father Damien is listening to the demon voice recording and the phone rings. 

EVERYONE in the theatre screamed at that, then laughed at themselves. The same for the opening of Cabin in the Woods, two guys chatting when BAM! the movie title shocks you. Favorite horror movie? Tucker and Dale vs Evil. Or maybe Arsenic and Old Lace or You'll Find Out. Does anyone else remember Henry Aldrich Haunts a House? I'm a big fan of Black Mirror.

Jen Hart: Growing up I'd watch whatever horror movie I could. The earliest movie I saw was Poltergeist when I was 4 and that has always stuck with me, especially the ghost/demon in the hallway when the mom is trying to get to the kids. 

Danielle Procter Piper: My horror novel, Spiritual Concerns, is influenced by 1980s pop culture horror films, except I wanted to add a twist. It seems like they all had a gratuitous sex and/or nudity scene, and that's where I chose to put my most controversial scene. 

John Morgan Neal: The Univeral Horror films. The Hammer Films. The AIP films. Dan Curtis films. John Carpenter films.

Susan H. Roddey: I was never a particularly normal child (goes without saying since HELLO, WRITER!), and I was terrified of everything. My earliest memory of experiencing "horror" was my brother and his friend watching Poltergeist 3. The scene where they're walking down the hall and Kane is at each of the doors -- that visual and the associated terror stayed with me well into adulthood. I still don't particularly like mirrors because of it. It also started a lifelong obsession with horror. There's a place in my heart for the 80s slasher flicks, but my favorites are the more psychological movies -- the ones that don't rely so heavily on jumpscares and gore, but on the exploration of personal fear. That's why I loved Insidious so much (the final scene aside because it was dumb and didn't need to start a franchise, but that's another discussion). Blood and guts don't scare me, but watching true terror manifest before my eyes is fascinating. It's probably the same reason I love true crime and weird documentaries so much.

Sean Taylor: If I could ever capture in words the amazing set and tone that is the original movie version of The Haunting, I'd consider my life purpose achieved. I also learn a lot from when movies take left turns with their genres, like the sexual coming-of-age tale that is Dead Girl or Make Out With Violence, or the weird twists of many of Joe Landsdale's script work, my favorite being Incident On and Off a Mountain Road.

Anthony Taylor: The Sting, The Haunting, Rosemary's Baby, The Outer Limits, The Changeling, The Shining. 

John L. Taylor: Films that developed my style are Alien, Jurassic Park, Seven, Cloverfield, Raiders of the Lost Ark, The Fly (1986), In the Mouth of Madness, and the Alien Autopsy video from 1995. I should add that the X-Files helped me learn pacing while the others taught me a love of surreal and body horror. The opening to Jurassic Park was still the most scared by a movie I'd ever been (I was 9 when I saw that, and it still stays with me). 

Stuart Hopen: I tend to prefer horror works that cross the boundaries of other literature, that is comic in both senses of the word as well as terrifying, like the Bob Hope classic film The Ghost Breakers, or The Wizard of Oz, which is as terrifying as it is brilliant social satire.

Is there a particular subgenre of horror you prefer to write, i.e. ghost stories, slashers, Lovecraftian, vampire, werewolf, etc.? Why?

Ef Deal: I write ghost stories, human monsters, and of course my paranormal steampunk that features a lycanthrope, but she's not the horror. My influences aren't really tangible, but I preferred The Twilight Zone to The Outer Limits. That probably tells you everything.

Stuart Hopen: My own writing includes illustrated novels: an epic World War I aviation adventure styled in the form of a depression pulp magazine, more Robert E. Howard style horror/adventure than the Lovecraft model that it draws upon; and then an imagined lost silent horror film, interspersed with comic book pages and recreated silent film stills, drawing upon horror classics of the silent film era, like Phantom of the Opera, West of Zanzibar, and Where East is East.

Anthony Taylor: Metaphysical, ironic, internal.

John Morgan Neal: Monsters. Ghosts/Haunts. Psychological. Metaphysical. Sci-Fi horror.

Sean Taylor: I really like it all except for when fiction tries to substitute gore for excitement. Hear me out. I don't mind gore, and I think gore can be used to help build excitement and tension in a story, but it can never be a substitute for it. I think, like with all stories, true horror always comes back to character. That's where I like to think my horror stories camp out, whether they are zombie stories serial killer stories, monster stories, or ghost stories. 

Brian K Morris: I find I prefer ghost stories and occasional vampire stuff. I'm more into mood than gore.

Danielle Procter Piper: I love writing stories in the most realistic way I can, so I typically tone down the supernatural elements. My background in biology helps me create very believable cryptids, and my interest in medicine allows me to create plausible explanations for human-type monsters. I do like incorporating parapsychology into stories, though... so ghosts are frequent antagonists.

Chris Jowers: I honestly miss monsters. Zombies, vampires, and zombies have become so commonplace that monsters are not getting their due.

Lucy Blue: I try to make my worlds as real as possible and my human characters as recognizable as possible, but my monsters are pretty darned romantic--not in a sparkly vampires way but in a supernatural evil/dark magic way. In The Devil Makes Three, that dichotomy between the evil of plain old horrible humans versus the evil of a supernatural entity is at the very center of the book.

Jen Hart: I'm a big fan of writing supernatural, ghosts, hauntings, vampires, grim reapers, demons.

Susan H. Roddey: I do lean more toward psychological and cerebral. I like the anticipation leading up to the "Big Reveal." I like exploring the edges of sanity and questioning the parts that don't always seem to fit together. I also like blending those elements with speculative styles to create something different. Sometimes a little bit of gore is necessary, but, for me, it doesn't have to be a driving force.

John L. Taylor: Lovecraftian and body horror. I find that Lovecraftian horror, told through a first-person docu-fiction lens is a very effective lens to convey horror through. Body horror connects with me on a deep, personal level. My Mom and Grandmother both had multiple bouts with cancer in their lives, and I nearly died of an asthma attack in 1991. I spent a lot of my childhood around hospitals, so the horror of the human body being grotesquely warped was instilled in me early on. Drawing on that deep fear. I find, lends to the verisimilitude of the horror. One of my personal favorite horror works of my own was a post I did on Reddit's Two Sentence Horror: I was relieved when the Doctor said the mass in my brain wasn't cancer. Until he let me hear its heartbeat." That gut reaction to something relatable is the real key to effective horror in my book.