CEFR Level B2-C1
At the moment, my life feels like constant triage. Do I memorize Hebrew verb paradigms or read for my other class? Can I push off prep for that paper a day or two more? Do I do boring paid work or the work that I enjoy and hope will one day pay? Have I practiced for my piano lesson? I suppose I need to eat more than cheese and crackers, but that means cooking. Exercise would make me feel better, but the tub needs cleaning or I’ll regret it next time I clean.
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 CEFR Level B2-C1 Words, especially in fiction, were how I learned about myself and the world outside my context. Fiction is where I learned that other people felt what I felt and those feelings were called "anger" and "I don't fit in." Fiction is where I learned that life is usually better when you say what's true for you, even if saying it causes tension and conflict. Fiction is where I learned that just because a friendship doesn't last your whole life long, that doesn't mean the friendship wasn't real and the natural end of a friendship doesn't take away from how meaningful the relationship was. Fiction is where I stopped breathing in horror and when I started breathing again could only say, "God, we need you." Fiction taught me the human impact of history far more than any history class or biography ever has.*
 CEFR Level B1-B2 When I left public library work in 2022, I wasn’t sure what my next profession would be. All I knew is that I had given my heart and soul to doing my best in a role that required me to practice all the skills that are outside my innate talents and limited my opportunities to use the skills that help me to thrive. After ten years, leaving was 100% the right decision for me.
I didn’t know what my next profession would be, but I wasn’t limping into the void with no destination.  CEFR Level A2-B1 While getting in my car for a hair appointment, I saw an ambulance parked in front of a neighbor’s house. Naturally, an ambulance is concerning, even though I don’t know this neighbor beyond chatting a few times when she is out working in their yard. Despite my curiosity, I continued to my appointment, which was in the opposite direction.
Half an hour later, I returned to see the ambulance still there. Would it be too nosy to drive past to see what was happening? 
CEFR Level B2-C1
I walk through the rainforest, well not a true rainforest, but with an abundance of wet leaves brushing my bare arms and humidity so strong my skin is wet, it feels like it should be. I walk and try to avoid poison ivy hiding among foliage with names I have yet to learn.
At a piano lesson recently, my teacher followed the typical pattern by asking me to start with a scale. I groaned out loud and stopped just shy of banging my head on the keys. She looked at me incredulously and asked, “Did you seriously just say ‘ugh!’?”
I went into the new ice cream shop to get a milkshake.
 Over 40 and finally in a life situation to dress to reflect my self-perception A quick browse through fashion content gives this message: Wear what you want. Fashion influencers for women over 40 seem to especially declare this, except for when they’re explaining how to dress to meet conventional expectations.
I agree with the “wear what you want” message. I do, however, think there’s a missing perspective. Or at least, a perspective that I haven’t discovered yet or that gets overshadowed. What is the history of horror movies?
As you would expect, any genre that sold novels was fair game for the film industry, right from the beginning. To keep this a short, focused post, this article looks at the history of Western, primarily U.S., horror movies. 1890s - 1930s The early-mid 1900s are considered the Golden Age of Horror films. In the early days, black and white silent films were perfect for horror because
Even once films started having spoken dialogue, overacting, extreme makeup, and the limited color palette made it easy to create images to fear. 1940s - 1950s The 1940s and 1950s continued developing the horror movie genre. Alfred Hitchcock is most well known from this time period, even among those who dislike horror films. This is partly because many of his “horror” movies were psychological dramas and appealed to audiences who liked suspense, but not supernatural or fantastical elements. Because of Hithcock’s innovations and willingness to take risks, the following decades saw more slasher films and psychological dramas pushing the limits of what was considered acceptable to see on a movie screen. 1960s - 1970s Acceptance of violence and gore in movies coincided with changes in culture. Through the 1960s and 1970s, people more openly questioned their grandparents’ values and ways of life. The ability to live as one chose without concern for societal expectations was openly promoted and celebrated. 1980s-1990s In the 1980s, special effects ruled, but the monsters and other elements of horror films remained. The occult, or evil supernatural elements, were popular themes during this decade. Horror films in the 1990s began to move away from the slasher gore of the previous decade, focusing instead on psychological manipulation to create fear. Or at least, the villains of these films were more complex than in previous decades. 2000s - 2020s The early 2000s returned to gore and more gore, plus zombies, vampires, werewolves, demons, and all the other horror tropes from previous decades. The COVID-19 pandemic brought a new era for horror movies. Movies, or more likely, a streaming series, may still have gore, monsters, the occult, or other horror staples, but they also might focus on things that people in society right now fear. These horror films are more closely connected to the almost-real-life style of horror than to the fantastical, sci-fi styles. Horror stories, in the sense of stories designed to frighten the listener or reader, have been around for a long time. The free internet isn’t clear on when a horror story was first written down, but it seems like it was in ancient times.
Looking at horror novels specifically, it is still unclear. Narrowing down to European literature starts to give us more specific answers. It could be said that Dante’s Divine Comedy, Inferno is a work of horror literature. But is it a novel? The ghost story The Apparition of Mrs. Veal is thought to have been written by Daniel Defoe in the early 1700s. Again, this work isn’t what readers in the 21st century think of as a novel. In the late 1700s, Horace Walpole published The Castle of Otranto, which some consider to be the first published European horror novel. Others don’t classify this story as horror. A few years after the success of The Castle of Otranto, Matthew Lewis wrote The Monk. The free internet seems united in considering this a novel that contains horror, at least by the standards of the time in which it was published. The genre of horror literature continued to grow throughout the 1800s. If you can name a horror novel that was written before the late 1900s, one of the titles you think of probably was published in the nineteenth century. These titles include:
Once horror novels became socially acceptable, there was no turning back. The 1900s saw many horror stories produced, including in novels. As readers became accustomed to the various ways writers sought to cause fear, they were less terrified. This led to writers having to become more inventive to create feelings of horror. Today, horror novels have many subgenres. What scares you? There’s probably a horror novel in that category. Some people think it is fun to feel afraid. I couldn’t find precise numbers on the free internet, but it’s estimated that 10% of feature films are horror movies. When we add in TV or streaming shows and independent films, I suspect that number may be higher.
A lot of what I could find on the free internet uses data that is heading towards 10 years old. Still, the general consensus seems to be that even in the 2020s, horror films are both profitable and popular. Anecdotally, in my experience as a public librarian, books with elements of horror remain popular. They are not as often directly asked for as other genres, but they definitely have a devoted readership. Also, when I browse streaming services for TV shows and movies, it feels like there are more horror options than all the others combined. I’ve not taken the time to count because:
Regardless of my personal preferences, many people seem to enjoy horror. There are many subgenres of horror. It seems to me that supernatural films are the most frequently promoted, but browsing through results for an internet search asking “most popular types of horror films,” suggests that psychological horror is the most popular. I wonder if this is because psychological horror requires more skilled writing and acting, so these movies get made less often, but when they do, they tend to be higher quality and more frequently watched and talked about. In contrast, supernatural horror has the advantage of relying on the unknown. I wonder if these films are cheaper to produce and easier to write because the horror comes from the uncertainty every human has more than from carefully manipulating human emotions. With psychological horror, it seems that you would mostly need to stick with reality, but masterfully present it to produce the desired emotions. With supernatural horror, it seems that you could simply suggest an idea that no one can prove or disprove because it relies on what no human can know. Putting aside my musings, horror is a popular form of entertainment. All I ask is that you not make me encounter it. What is horror?
Horror is a type of fear. This type of fear includes feelings of repugnance. How is “horrified” related to “horror”? When someone is horrified, they may feel repugnance or loathing. A core component of horror is feeling disgust. Horror often is used to describe literature and films. In this sense, things that cause feelings of disgust and revulsion are often used to create fear. In this context, horror is used as a means of creating fear or terror, which is extreme fear. In other contexts, horror is less about fear and more about abhorrence. To abhor something is to loathe it. How is “horrified” different from “horror”? When someone has no positive feelings towards anything and only wants to avoid or eliminate the thing, they can be described as horrified. “Horrified” in American English is generally used to express a positive response to something near-universally accepted as very wrong. When someone expresses shock and disgust at seeing an adult stomp on a baby, we can describe the viewer as being horrified. We do not primarily mean that the viewer is afraid, although they might be. We mean that they are repulsed by the adult's actions. In contrast, someone who sees something frightening, like a monster slasher film, would not typically be described as horrified. They are watching events that cause feelings of horror, but we describe them as frightened, not horrified. This means that context is important when talking about horror. Do we mean the emotion, which may be a socially-desired response to something socially condemned, or do we mean a genre of literature, film, or other artistic expression? Context tells us whether what we are seeing is in the horror genre of art or is a reason to be horrified. Why do we feel afraid?
Safety, if only just. Of what are we afraid? Falling, noise, loss of trust. Why do we feel afraid? Thrills, hope to feel the rush. Of what are we afraid? Spiders, gore, knives, and pus. What good does it do us? Our minds become unmade. Is fear expressed in the same ways across cultures? Do all cultures consider the same things frightening? These questions can’t be answered in a short post, but here are a few thoughts pulled from the free internet. How is Fear Expressed?
What is Frightening?
I found it surprising that I found so little about the cultural differences or similarities in fear.
I thought these were the type of questions the internet would love to answer. I was wrong. My search results primarily talked about cultures of fear. I also didn’t want to spend hours trying different search parameters, so it could be that I stopped looking before discovering the winning search phrases. I’m sure something that addresses these questions exists somewhere, but for these short posts, I try to stick with things anyone could access on the open web. Selected Sources “A Look at Culture-Specific Phobias” by Lisa Fritscher on Very Well Mind; Accessed 2023, September 15. “Towards an Anthropology of Fear: are some things universally terrifying?” on Human Relations Area Files; Accessed 2023, September 15. “We’re All Scared of the Same Things…or Are We? Emotional Differences Across Cultures” by David Livermore, PhD on Cultural Intelligence Center; Accessed 2023, September 15.
Fear serves a protective function.
A human feels fear when they consciously or subconsciously perceive a threat. The emotion of fear prepares the body and mind for actions intended to protect the human. The way fear prepares the body to respond to a threat is by releasing hormones that affect bodily functions. The effects of fear include things getting faster or starting, like:
The effects of fear also include things slowing or stopping, like:
But how do these effects of fear work to protect a human? In cases of perceived, but unreal, danger, such as giving a speech at work, the physiological results of fear aren't much help. In cases of real danger, the way fear affects the mind and body may or may not be helpful. For example: If someone sees a group of people brandishing weapons coming their way, and then feels an increase in heart rate and respiration, their muscles are primed for them to run away quickly. On the other hand, if someone is in a competition that requires precise muscle control and their muscles are tensed to run away, that physical effect of fear may be a negative influence on their performance. Or taking freezing in fear as an example. If someone is hiding from a person who wants to harm them, the body instinctively reducing movement may help them to stay hidden. In a negative example, freezing at the podium when giving a speech is not a helpful response from the body. There are many more examples of fear protecting, or attempting to protect, the human. Even if it doesn’t always achieve its intended result, fear, at its most elemental, is a protective response. Fear is an emotion that humans experience when they perceive that they are, or will be, in danger.
Fear is caused by things that are, or appear to be, physically dangerous. Examples of physical danger include:
Fear is also caused by things that are psychologically dangerous, or at least feel dangerous. Examples of psychological danger include:
When something is both physically and psychologically dangerous, there is a greater risk of fear. Examples of these mixed causes include:
There are many things that cause people to feel afraid. Fear is common to all humans, although not all humans experience it in the same way or from the same things. At its core, this unpleasant emotion is useful for keeping us safe. Because of that, fear can be considered a helpful emotion and not something to avoid at all costs. 1. Fear is an emotion caused by the presence of or the perception of danger.
Fear is an emotion. That means a human can experience it without their consent. It also means that people place different value judgments on experiencing that emotion. Like other emotions, people experience fear at different levels and their bodies’ natural expressions of fear may vary. Also like other emotions, people will have different vocabulary to describe what they are feeling. 2. Fear, broadly speaking, includes a range of emotions like nervousness and terror. Because fear includes such a wide range of emotions, people may not always identify what they are feeling as fear in the broad sense. They also may identify their emotion as something different than an outside observer would call it. For example, someone may say, “I feel stressed” and an observer would say, “You seem nervous.” This could be because of the differences in words accessible to a person, because humans don’t always understand themselves well, or another reason. 3. We don’t know why people feel fear for reasons that don’t make sense to others. Psychology Today says that at least 60% of adults have an unreasonable fear. That’s a lot of people having their lives limited by something that doesn’t limit others! That’s a lot of people getting laughed at by the people around them for something they didn’t choose! 4. People can be afraid of being afraid. If you know someone with this condition (phobophobia), be kind to them. Because fear is an emotion, people don’t choose to feel it. 5. Some people think fear is fun. This has something to do with the sympathetic nervous system. Basically, you feel good when your body relaxes after being afraid. Some people like the contrast in feelings so much that they seek out fear in order to get the good feelings afterwards. 6. Chronic fear causes a lot of physical and mental problems. Chronic, or long-lasting, fear can result in difficulty learning, changes to how the body functions, inability to feel love, despair, and other life-altering problems. Basically, being afraid for days on end is not good for humans. Considering that fear is a broad term for a range of emotions and knowing how many people are living in danger or uncertainty, this is sobering. |
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Jill Hames is a writer, musician, biblical studies teacher, and ESL tutor who finds life too interesting to pick a niche. She has a B.A. in Music and Spanish, a Masters in Library and Information Science, is TEFL.org 168-hour certified to teach English as a second language, and is working towards a Master of Divinity. Jill is a member of Delta Omicron and the International Women's Writing Guild.
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Copyright 2025
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Copyright 2025