*Trigger warning: The horror genre is not for everyone. Its themes are serious, dark, and often graphic. If you struggle with anxiety or the effects of past trauma, I suggest skipping this post and checking out one of my other—scaries-free—posts.*

Under the ‘Other Titles by Allison Pearl’ heading on Goodreads or Amazon is a list of faith-based romantic suspense novels. Nightmares come to life, slasher movie violence, creepy crawlies, and abandoned asylums are, thankfully, nowhere to be found in the ‘Love and Danger in St. Claire’ series. Therefore, you may ask, “With such an all-readers-welcome background, what would an author who focuses on love, faith, and small towns have to say about a genre that is in such stark contrast to her own?” 

Just this.

While I am totally not the colleague whose opinion horror authors would much care to know, these guys still get tons of my props and a lot of my respect–even as I watch what they do between the gaps in my fingers. I love a good Horror novel now and then, even if it’s not a genre I can healthily live in. But love it or hate it, the horror genre has stood the test of time and, like the very genes we’re born with, it’s here to stay. 

In a previous blog post, I talked about some of my favorite female Gothic authors. If you’ve read that, you’ll notice how the origins of Gothic literature intersect with Horror. The often-named ‘First Gothic Novel,’ The Castle of Otranto, is also considered by many to be one of the first Horror novels. Multiple tropes cross the “Gothic-Horror bridge.” Ancient Evils. Abandoned Places. Found Items. Mysterious Neighbors. All these tropes are present in enough Gothic and Horror novels that the claim ‘Gothic and Horror are the same’ could be made, but I see one big difference. 

For me, Horror’s bread and butter, its defining characteristic, its most powerful weapon, and greatest achievement, is the genre’s use of fear. Horror not only taps into fear, Horror manifests it and feeds off it. Horror sics fear on you and the red-eyed hound tracks you by the smell of the blood coursing through your veins at every turn of the page. Thrillers and Suspense stories may keep you up at night, but Horror will haunt your dreams. Thus, I judge a horror novel based on how it uses fear. 

After ‘The Castle of Otranto,’ Horror masterpieces like Mary Shelley’s ‘Frankenstein’ and ‘Dracula’ came along. Two classics that I love to this day. But as I take an overview of both the consistent and yet evolving nature of Horror, it seems that the novels I would call ‘best in the genre’ are the novels I hate as much as I love. And—in my opinion only—the novel that most cunningly uses fear and evokes just as much rage in me as it does respect, is Stephen King’s novel ‘It.’ 

King used fear in It like Vermeer used his brush when painting The Astronomer. Imaginatively and with precision. I’d call him a pioneer, but here’s the thing: I don’t think he tapped into anything new. Instead, I think he took something ancient and present in all of us and spilled all that darkness onto a page. The 19^th century may have given us Frankenstein and Dracula, but fear and horror have been with us since the beginning, and fear is an emotion that hits us hardest when we’re children which is something Stephen King seems to know better than most. That being said, using children in a story of horror is not new.

How many of the scariest of ‘Grimms’ Fairy Tales’ have a main character that is a child? Maybe we can ask Hansel and Gretel if they manage to escape the cannibalistic old witch trying to cook and eat them. Dark basements. Shadows in the dark. The monster living in the sewers or under the stairs. King took the worst of our childhood fears and made them real and tangible in the horrifying face of a clown. To this day, I can’t walk past a storm drain without quickening my steps as I hear Pennywise say, “Hi, Georgie.”

Another genius stroke of fear King pulls off in the lives of ‘The Loser’s Club’ in It lies in the fact that Pennywise—aka It—isn’t actually the scariest monster of the story. No, the most frightening villains in Derry, Maine, are the bullies that bring to life the monsters and abusers created by the sin and evil in humanity. The sadistic Henry Bowers—a grotesque product of his father’s abuse—is a terror worse and more real than Pennywise when he starts to carve his name into poor Ben’s stomach. 

And King doesn’t stop with the bullies and monsters of our youth. Just as we all grow and develop so do our fears, and by bringing ‘The Loser’s Club’ back to Derry as adults, King compounds our childhood nightmares with the very real adult fears lurking behind every corner, thereby completing the total cycle of fear within a human life. After all, Beverly’s domestic abuse experiences read real because, for some, those experiences are real. 

Horror equals fear, and the novel It portrays the full human spectrum of fear wholly and completely. But just because I’m saying ‘It’ is one of the best Horror stories, doesn’t mean I love it—or even like it sometimes. For all the moments in the story that blow me away, there are others—specifically the novel’s use of underage sex—that kind of make me want to kick Stephen King in the balls. In the end though, I can’t help but respect the overall talent and mastery of the Horror genre that It illustrates through its devastatingly personal use of fear. 

What do you think? Do you ever read Horror? What are some of your favorites? And, if you are in the mood for a much lighter read, check out BATTERED & TORN.