‘Dark things can be quite illuminating’

Self-described “former spooky kid” Katie Kohn teaches the class “Advanced Fiction: Writing Horror” at Harvard Extension School. The Gazette interviewed Kohn, a doctoral candidate in the Art, Film and Visual Studies program, about people’s fascination with scary stories, the difference between bad and good horror, and what the genre can teach us about ourselves.

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What makes horror stories different from other stories?

All stories are rooted in conflict; they promise us that things will go wrong. But horror stories do two things that I truly think are unique. For one, horror tends to destabilize the very binaries out of which other stories source their tension. It’s not just about playing good against evil, the familiar against the strange. Horror complicates. For instance, we use the term “uncanny” to describe a breakdown between something we recognize and something we don’t. It’s neither simply familiar nor strange; it’s somehow both. Horror loves to take us to these places where nothing is certain, where it feels like the rug is always about to come out from under us.  

That’s the other effect horror stories promise: uncertainty to the very end. Horror asks us to accept the prospect that things might not turn out well. If other stories overcome challenges or resolve tensions, this one might be as raw and as confrontational as life can be, without curation or niceties. For instance, there are points at which we no longer feel safe reading a horror story or watching a horror film, that moment when we want to look over our shoulder or check under the bed. All stories ask that we suspend our disbelief. Horror exploits that basic instinct to give ourselves over to stories. Horror is a genre that bites back. 

“There are points at which we no longer feel safe reading a horror story or watching a horror film, that moment when we want to look over our shoulder or check under the bed.”

What draws people to horror stories?

The first theory that often comes up is catharsis. Horror fiction offers a safe way to experience things that we fear in life. I’d add that horror doesn’t just confront what we already fear. It’s a genre that goes digging; it looks for what’s buried, and in doing so, it tends to find that which is repressed, to speak to the otherwise unspeakable, or bring what has been overlooked or marginalized back into focus. Horror gets at truths that we might not be able to access in other ways. It gives us a language to speak to what troubles us. In that way, dark things can be quite illuminating.  

And yet, horror is considered a lowly genre, both in literature and film. Why?

There are theories. American film scholar Linda Williams once proposed certain genres are considered “lowly” because they’re associated with bodily effects. Horror tries to get us to scream, melodrama to cry, and pornography, well … you know. All these genres are trying to assault your body, to provoke a physical reaction. This places them in a hierarchy opposite qualities associated with higher art: stimulating the mind or the intellect rather than the body. That’s a theory that I’m willing to buy. I’d also say it’s possible horror — genre fiction, in general — exists within existing power hierarchies. Popular fiction can be accessible fiction, becoming a home for marginalized voices with little access to institutional power. This is precisely one of the things that makes horror so exciting to me, personally, but it’s also what sets it apart. 

What’s the difference between good and bad horror?

In any form of storytelling or craft there are “bad” versions, but these things are subjective. There is of course horror that just wants to shock or push you to the limits. I tend to find horror more satisfying when it’s tackling difficult or illuminating questions.

Folks use the term “elevated” horror to describe this, perhaps to distinguish certain texts and authors from horror’s reputation as a “lowly” genre, which is itself telling. But if we’re talking personal favorites, I don’t know how much such distinctions really matter. In film, I love “The Descent,” which is something of a cult hit, as well as “The Others,” more of a gothic. “Alien,” of course. As for prose, I always recommend Scott Smith’s “The Ruins.” I thought it was going to be a simple thriller, but it turned out to be a novel I return to year after year. 

In general, I think the fun of horror is that it’s always surprising. Something doesn’t have to have a big budget or big names to strike a chord; sometimes what resonates can be quite personal — even idiosyncratic. For instance, I personally tend to avoid cannibalism plots, but I’ll run to haunted houses and feminine gothics or anything involving deep-sea horror. If there’s an underwater laboratory and things start to go wrong, I’m there. Not surprising, as one of my biggest fears is being stuck underwater.

In terms of works we read in this course, I do have a soft spot for Bram Stoker’s “The Judge’s House.” It’s a relatively simple ghost story, but it made me look over my shoulder when I first read it. And if horror isn’t making us question the world that we live in and our position in it, what’s the point?

How do classic and contemporary horror stories reflect the anxieties of their times?

In many ways we’re still very much living in the shadow of gothic literature. The gothic is a response to the Enlightenment era view of man’s supposed intellectual and moral prowess: that we can be in control or at least understand the world, that the known world is itself a stable — even conquerable — thing. Today, horror continues to do what the gothic has always done, reminding us that the world is far stranger than we presume to know and, ultimately, not ours to control. Horror will often take us to that more radical source of conflict where we realize that there is a limit to what we can control or even comprehend. Certainly, some stories exploit anxieties both past and present rooted in presumed oppositions: us vs. them, pure vs. impure, holy vs. profane, good vs. evil. But again, horror also confronts these binaries.

Our course tries to look to the past to see how much of its legacy remains present in today’s horror. We cover excerpts from Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein” as well as Bram Stoker’s “Dracula.” But the focus is more on contemporary works. Of course, we must consider Stephen King as well as other prolific writers who are not necessarily household names: folks like Paul Tremblay or Tananarive Due or well-known experimentalists like Carmen Maria Machado. We also look beyond the format of prose in works from Emily Carroll and even a children’s picture book. I genuinely think Stan and Jan Berenstain’s “The Spooky Old Tree” is a masterpiece of horror storytelling, it’s just one that happens to be for early readers. 

How do horror writers succeed in raising the hairs on our neck?

There are many ways horror gets under our skin. One strategy is docufiction. In different ways, both “Dracula” and “Frankenstein” are presented as first-hand accounts, making us wonder whether we understand our own world as well as its sometimes-naive protagonists do. 

Related is the motif of infection. I don’t just mean as a plot point, say, the mass infection of a zombie apocalypse. If the characters in a film have just watched a video that will kill them in seven days, what does that mean for those of us in the audience who just watched the same video? What really gets under our skin — and what really makes a film like George Romero’s 1968 “Night of the Living Dead” so affecting — isn’t the idea that the scary thing in the story could happen to any of the characters, but that it could also happen to us. By the end of “Night of the Living Dead,” you know that there is something worse than being bitten by a mindless zombie, and it’s something possibly even more insidious. Zombies, after all, are just reminders that to live with a human body offers no guarantee that one will be seen as human.  

It’s important to not forget that horror isn’t just about being scary. I tell my students that horror, like any fiction, should try to tap into something that resonates. Something that affects people on a deeper level. Not just the element of surprise or a jump scare, but something that lasts.