Horror fiction
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Horror fiction is fiction in any medium intended to scare, unsettle, or horrify the audience. Historically, the cause of the "horror" experience has often been the intrusion of a supernatural element into everyday human experience. Since the 1960s, any work of fiction with a morbid, gruesome, surreal, or exceptionally suspenseful or frightening theme has come to be called "horror". Horror fiction often overlaps science fiction or fantasy, all three of which categories are sometimes placed under the umbrella classification speculative fiction.
Haunting is used as a plot device in horror fiction and paranormal-based fiction. Legends about haunted houses have long appeared in literature. For example, the Arabian Nights tale of "Ali the Cairene and the Haunted House in Baghdad" revolves around a house haunted by jinns.[1] The influence of the Arabian Nights on modern horror fiction is certainly discernible in the work of H. P. Lovecraft.[2] In his early years as a child, he would imagine himself living the adventures of the heroes in the book, and it inspired him to create his famed Necronomicon.
Today horror is one of the most popular categories of film.[3]
- ^ Yuriko Yamanaka, Tetsuo Nishio (2006), The Arabian Nights and Orientalism: Perspectives from East & West, I.B. Tauris, p. 83, ISBN 1850437688
- ^ Irwin, Robert (2003), The Arabian Nights: A Companion, Tauris Parke Paperbacks, p. 290, ISBN 1860649831
- ^ Chad Austin. "Horror Films Still Scaring – and Delighting – Audiences". North Carolina State University News. Retrieved on 2006-01-16.
