If you're already a horror fan, this isn't much of a question. You know, you understand. It's an unspoken common ground we all share. But I hear this often from people who don't like horror, who don't understand the compulsion to read, see or experience scary things. "Why would you want to be scared?"
There's more to this question than one might assume at face value. For one thing, there are different levels and variations on fear. There are jump scares, and then there is lingering dread. There is discomfort and anxiety. There is a visceral recoil. They all have their own reason for existing, and different reasons why people might seek them out.
It's easiest to discuss the type of scare that makes us jump, gasp or scream. It's adrenaline. It's roller coasters and sky diving. It's getting on a stage to sing or tell jokes or act. The thrill of being alive in the face of the fear of failure. "I did this and I survived." That isn't difficult to comprehend.
What about the rest? Why do some of us want to be haunted? Often it's a way to process things we're already scared of, already worried about. If we can stare it down, look at it without blinking, examine the details and feelings and come out the other side, we feel we can survive it. I am terrified of spiders, for example. But I will stare at a spider, I will look at spider photos online, I will read about them and learn about them in an effort to master my fear. I am afraid, and so I am obsessed.
Body horror has a similar motivation. We are mortal beings of flesh and blood, and the idea of that being mutilated or morphed into something alien, something unnatural, causes a physical and mental recoil. But many of us will encounter bodily fears over our life: chronic illnesses, injuries, surgeries, failing organs. The feeling of a part of your body rebelling against you, or even trying to harm you, is a unique experience. I myself have a chronic auto-immune disease and it's a challenge to reconcile the idea that my immune system wants to destroy essential parts of my body out of a genetic misunderstanding. It feels like I am at war with it. In my mind, I think about my body as a separate being that hates me and wants me to suffer. It makes sense to see that reflected in horror, and helps to process that feeling.
Lingering dread is perhaps the most uniquely human experience. We know we are mortal creatures who will die someday. Either by age, disease, accident, purpose, or disaster. When I was a child I would think about death, wonder what it was like. I tried to imagine what "nothing" felt like. It was terrifying. But I kept doing it over and over again. What drove me? The unknown. The worse option. If I knew what was in store, I could feel resolution. Not knowing was worse. This is why in horror, not understanding the source of terror is always worse. If you don't know where the monster came from, why the serial killer was killing, what was causing the haunting, it was so much scarier. Because, you wonder, what if there is no reason? Then the world is chaos, then we can't know what's going to happen, and we will be alone and afraid when we die no matter what the cause or reason.
Personally, horror is also a way to process the nightmare of my own mind. Ever since I was very young, I had nightmares. Countless nightmares. Some of them I still remember now, after 30 years. There were particular types that I had so often and were so distinct that I had to name them. Apocalypse dreams and dream loops. In the former, I always saw the world end. In the latter, I kept thinking I woke up only to find myself in a new nightmare, still sleeping. I learned how to lucid dream while very young, because I couldn't handle the recurring nightmares I had and needed a solution. I had to learn techniques for escaping dreams in case they became too scary. Then I started having sleep paralysis, and it felt like my entire body was betraying me and thwarting my efforts to escape fear. Even when I was technically awake, I was still living the nightmare and couldn't escape. I had to wait it out until my brain released my body and I stopped seeing and hearing things that weren't really there.
People-- even family-- say this is because of the scary books I read, the scary movies I watch. But the sad truth is that my nightmares sparked my interest in horror, not the other way around. Horror made me feel understood. It made me feel like I had control of an otherwise uncontrollable situation. It gave me the escape I craved.
I'm not weird because I like horror. And I don't like horror because I like being scared. I like horror because I am weird and scared and I long to find a place where I can belong and control my fear.
Horror is the way to process this. We can face our fears, face the chaos, and yet come out alive and well at the end of the story. Because it was just a story... wasn't it?
