With Halloween just a few weeks away, people everywhere are looking for ways to scare themselves and their friends through movies, television shows, books, and even through old-fashioned storytelling around a campfire. What exactly makes these stories scary? How do they leave the audience so unsettled, with eerie tales that may stay with them for years?
All scary stories, whether they are horror, suspense, or some other genre, have similar elements that are found again and again. Every story begins with a hook. The setting is normal, and the main character is facing simple, seemingly every day struggles. However, there is a subtle sense that something is wrong, not normal. This could be something small, a difference that would not be noticed under normal circumstances. Whatever it is, it does not make much sense, such as an unusual sound in an otherwise empty house. This can make the character or the audience nervous, and subconsciously they will be listening for more sounds, wondering whether to fight or run. The little things will “snowball," as storyteller senior Keira Baird describes, and cause the audience or character to be on edge, sometimes resulting in a nervous wreck.
A disappearance is a common theme, where a mysterious clue is left behind. The audience or the character may not have been introduced to the object or person, but the clue that remains suggests that the disappearance was not typical. There could be blood on the carpet or a missing family heirloom that has not been touched in years.
Sometimes the inciting event is not the loss of something, but rather the odd gain. “Messages come up a lot,” Baird points out. However, there is always uncertainty involving the message. It could be cryptic and not make much sense, or the sender is an unknown person or someone that is not trusted.
When the story begins to move along, the main character often looks for help that cannot be reached. They try to leave the situation. However, there is always something in the way; “the power goes out, there’s no cell tower, the car won’t start” Mrs. Sousa from the library lists a few examples. When help does arrive, it is not very effective. It could be a person that has just stumbled on the scene. No matter what happens in a scary story, everything begins to go wrong in the very worst way. Scary stories often end abruptly. Often they go about unsolved, leaving the audience hanging and wondering if it could occur again.
Mrs. Sousa has found many sources where interested readers could find terrifying books, such as through Goodreads, Barnes and Noble, and even Tabb High School’s own library. Some favorites are Scary Stories to Read in the Dark, by Alvin Schwartz and the Stephen King novels.