 Horror/Scary: August 24, 2016 Issue [#7821] |
  Horror/Scary
This week: The monster within Edited by: Arakun the twisted raccoon  
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Quotes for the week:
"Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you." ~Friedrich Nietszche
"To make Michael Myers frightening, I had him walk like a man, not a monster." ~John Carpenter
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I love the old "Twilight Zone" series. On the surface, the episodes were just entertaining stories with great plot twists, but they often contained some deeper messages. I recently watched a classic episode entitled, "The Monsters are Due on Maple Street." In this episode, a group of neighbors turned on each other when they believed they were under attack by aliens. Although they had known each other for years, seeds of mistrust were sown as strange things started happening. Eventually, a nice group of ordinary people became a vengeful mob, convinced that their friends and neighbors were actually aliens in disguise. Their fear of monsters turned them into monsters. Since the story took place in the twilight zone, there was, of course, one more twist at the end that I won't give away! 
This story was written during the Cold War, a time when people feared that a Communist might be lurking behind every tree. Over time, the Communist threat lessened, but today it has been replaced by the fear of terrorism and a general distrust of those who are different. A small amount of caution when dealing with the unfamiliar can be a good thing, but too often, caution becomes fear, which leads to paranoia and hatred. Hatred twists the person from the inside, often making them worse than the thing they fear.
How does an ordinary person become a monster? Was the monster always there, just waiting for the right set of conditions to bring it out? Does each of us have the potential of becoming a monster in the right circumstances? What leads one person to become a bully, another to become a victim, and a third to become a hero who defends the victim from the bully?
Human monsters are more frightening in some ways than the supernatural kind usually found in horror stories. It is not likely that anyone will ever meet a real vampire, werewolf, or zombie, but monstrous people are real. Every one of us is likely to meet at least one at some point in our lives.
Imagine what might happen if a story contains both a supernatural monster and a real human monster. I'm not sure which would be worse!
Something to try: Write a horror story that has both human monsters and supernatural monsters. |
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Gemma loves to read horror stories, and one Halloween she finds out where they come from.
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