The Elements Of A Scary Story

There are so many stories and movies and activities in the world specifically dedicated to the purpose of scaring us. There is a distinct difference between a movie that is scary and a movie that is not. We automatically pick out the things we think are scary compared to the things we don’t think are scary without even thinking too much about it; we just know. But have you ever stopped to wonder, what exactly are the elements that make a story or a movie so scary? What are the elements put into a story to make them go from a pretty regular story to something that causes fear and discomfort? For example, I had a really scary dream once on friday the thirteenth where I was walking around my neighborhood in the dark. I wasn’t scared at first,

I started to run back but of course, I couldn’t run very fast, like my feet were glued to the ground, and of course the man in black was able to run just fine. He had a machete in his hand and was gaining on me quickly. I woke up before he was able to get to me. Obviously that was a scary dream, but if you dissect the dream you come to realize that there are three very obvious elements of transformation that play a role in why this dream was so scary. Combining the supernatural, the perverse, and having things spiral out of control into a story create the a feeling of horror within a story, and the transformation of those things within the three stories: “The Feather Pillow”, “The fall of the house of Usher”, and “Frankenstein” will prove

She starts getting much worse, hallucinating and only getting worse during the night, which makes you start to imagine other possibilities for why she is so sick, things that aren’t quite natural, but you can’t quite put your finger on it, which leaves you feeling suspense. As the story progresses she gets worse and worse until the very end and the story is transformed from being a moderately natural occurrence to something completely unnatural. Thats where the perverse comes in. All three of the stories I’m using as examples have a perverse element in the story, and in this case, it's the “monstrous animal, a living viscous ball” (Quiroga par. 28) that is revealed at the end to be the murderer of poor Alicia. The reason this creature is so terrifying is because it is “defying the general laws of nature in some way” (Ringo 93). It is this creepy, almost spider like monster that is way too big to be actually real but still horifying to imagine. The next element of transformation that causes fear is that lack of control displayed especially towards the end. She’s dying and there’s absolutely nothing anyone can do about it and there’s also no reason for her to be dying. The doctor can’t