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Horror fiction is, broadly, 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.
Many myths and legends feature scenarios and archetypes used by later horror
writers. Tales of demons and vampires in ancient and more recent folklore
were often quite horrific.
Early horror works used mood and subtlety to deliver an eerie and
otherworldly flavour, but usually eschewed extensive explicit violence.
Horror fiction does not confine itself to literature, however. Countless horrorthemed movies have been released in the 20th century, notably Dracula,
Halloween, A Nightmare on Elm Street, Friday The 13th, and Night of the
Living Dead.
Webster's Collegiate Dictionary gives the primary definition of horror as "a
painful and intense fear, dread, or dismay." It stands to reason then that
"horror fiction" is fiction that elicits those emotions in the reader.
If we accept this definition, then horror can deal with the mundane or the
supernatural, with the fantastic or the normal. It doesn't have to be full of
ghosts, ghouls, and things to go bump in the night. Its only true requirement is
that it elicit an emotional reaction that includes some aspect of fear or dread.
What makes horror literature so pervasive is that its need to evoke the
necessary atmosphere and sense of emotional dread is utterly dependent on
who we are as readers -- as people.
As children, we might be afraid of the shadows looming from a half-closed
closet door or of the monster we believe lies under the bed. Terrors of the
imagination run wild at that age.
As adults, our fears become more sophisticated, more grounded in worldly
events. They become the death of a loved one, the terminal illness of a small
child, the fear of our lives running out of our control.
Horror, by nature, is a personal touch -- an intrusion into our comfort levels. It
speaks of the human condition and forcibly reminds us of how little we
actually know and understand.
"Horror is that which cannot be made safe -- evolving, ever-changing -because it is about our relentless need to confront the unknown, the
unknowable, and the emotion we experience when in its thrall."
Horror has once again become primarily about emotion. It is once again
writing that delves deep inside and forces us to confront who we are, to
examine what we are afraid of, and to wonder what lies ahead down the road
of life.
So, what is horror? If you’d asked me that question a week ago, I would
have told you that for a piece of fiction to be considered ‘horror’, there had
to be a supernatural element. It didn’t matter what kind of supernatural
element – vampires, werewolves, ghosts, curses, zombies, witchcraft
What is horror really? If you take the old definition and scrape away all the
monsters under the bed and the vampires and the ghosts, horror is about
fear. It’s about abnormal occurrences happening to normal people, which
they are often powerless to prevent.
Lots of novels that aren’t considered horror are based around fear, and the
old me would have said ‘but they’re different, that’s a different kind of fear.’
But is it really? Imagine you are in bed at night, naked and all alone, you’ve
just woken up and hear a noise outside the bedroom door. On the other
side could be a ghost or a monster, or it could be a maniac with a sharp
knife and a grin. One option comes straight from the pages of a traditional
horror story, and the other from crime or suspense. But is there really any
difference? Obviously, one has a supernatural bent, and the other does not,
but both focus on fear. For both types of fiction the fear comes from horrific
and abnormal events happening to ordinary people. The fear comes from
the belief that that person could be you.
I suggest that two types of horror exist - supernatural horror, and a horror
which is not supernatural, but based around the horrors of our real world –
hate, murder, cruelty. Both are equally valid but related forms of fiction.
While these books are not actually scary per se they are
centered around or based on horror elements. In these books
often have vampires, werewolves, and zombies as characters
vs. adversaries.
"Horror" tales written for younger readers (7-13 age group) are usually strange or
unusual rather than truly frightening. Spooky is a good term to use for these stories.
The popular Australian children's writer Paul Jennings believes that up until about the
age of twelve children can’t really cope with horror. He doesn't want them to think
that there is something horrible outside the window when they finish one of his
stories. This benign view of horror seems to hold true for this younger age group.
Teenage fiction is quite a different story. Teenagers, of course, have access through
television to a wide variety of horrors. Not only the likes of "Freddie" from the
Nightmare on Elm Street movies, but also the real life horrors they see on the nightly
news. A lot of teenagers also read adult horror fiction such as Stephen King or
Virginia Andrews. As a consequence much of the horror fiction written for older
readers is quite sophisticated and can often be enjoyed by children and adults alike.
When it comes to classifying horror fiction children's publishers seem to use
considerable poetic licence. A lot of the stories published as children’s horror in
Australian are ghost stories. These range from the downright frightening and creepy
to the humorous. Many other stories are probably more correctly termed weird or
fantastic tales. But it doesn't stop there. In children's books the genre even gets
extended freely into SF, crime, mystery and suspense. This broad-brush approach,
however, includes many tales which will probably be of interest to readers of horror
and the macabre which may well otherwise have been overlooked.
The first horror book published in Australia for children is Shudders and Shakes,
Ghostly Tales from Australia, (William Collins, 1972) edited by Anne Ingram. As a
bookseller, reviewer and editor of children's books, Ingram recognised that although
children love stories about ghosts and eerie happenings, the only books available to
Australian kids at that time were imported. Ingram embarked on a considerable piece
of research to rectify the situation. The result was this collection of bush yarns, folk
tales and anecdotal stories of strange happenings across the length and breadth of
Australia.
The actual fiction content of this book is minimal, confined in the main to excerpts of
unexplained or ghostly happenings from novels which are otherwise unrelated to the
horror genre. Writers such as Patricia Wrightson, Nan Chauncey, Ivan Southall and
Colin Thiele are represented. However these pieces hold little scare value, even for
children, and are probably best categorised as strange or unusual. Surprisingly it is the
non-fiction tales which present the most chills in this volume.
Ingram's book was followed a few years later by A Handful of Ghosts (Hodder and
Stoughton, 1976), edited by Barbara Ker Wilson. This is an all fiction volume which
is subtitled "thirteen eerie tales by thirteen Australian writers". Colin Thiele is again
represented with an excerpt from one of his novels, this time Uncle Gustav's Ghosts
(Rigby, 1974). Ivan Southall's contribution here is based on a real life seance
experience and is uncanny rather than frightening. Hesba Brinsmead has published a
number of ghost stories elsewhere under the name H. Brinsmead-Hungerford and
Sally Odgers has gone on to produce a considerable body of work which includes a
number of pieces of fantasy and science fiction.
The third volume of Australian ghost stories to appear was Spooks and Spirits "eight
eerie tales" (Hodder and Stoughton, 1978) edited by Margaret Hamilton. The stories
in this volume are "softer", intended for a younger audience, I think, than the previous
volumes. Indeed, the piece by Michael Dugan, although it is a good story, contains no
ghosts or supernatural elements at all. Most of the other writers are better known for
general children's fiction than for their work in the genre, though Ruth Park has
produced some notable fantasy work.
The 1970s was a time of change in the western world, so it is interesting that this was
the decade that Australian children saw their first home grown horror fiction, albeit
soft horror in the form of traditional ghost stories. This, however, was a start. Local
publishers had dipped their toe in the water and found it not unpleasant. At least two
of these volumes were reprinted and publishers continued to experiment with the
genre into the 1980s.
The decade opened with The Moving Skull and Other Awesome Australian Verse
(Hodder and Stoughton, 1981) edited by Michael Dugan. As the title indicates it is a
collection of spooky poetry about monsters, witches, ghosts and bunyips, penned by a
variety of contributors most of whom I do not recognise apart from Dugan himself
and a young Sarah Endacott with a piece called "The Onfalong".
Three years later, Australia saw its first children's horror novel, although it was not
marketed as such. This was The Green Piper (Penguin, 1984) by Victor Kelleher.
Ostensibly written and published for adolescents, it is a mysterious, sinister tale
loosely based on a contemporary "Pied Piper" theme. It is interesting to note, even
though this book is a well told, gripping story in the same class as Kelleher's other
books, it was the only Kelleher book of that decade not to win or be nominated for a
major children's literature/writing prize. One can only assume that the
dark/supernatural subject matter was before its time.
The middle Eighties saw the first work published by the now famous Paul Jennings.
The Naked Ghost (Longman Cheshire, 1985), as the title suggests, is a ghost story,
perhaps more serious than a lot of his later work, but still with a touch of Jennings
humour. Penguin also published their first Jennings book, Unreal! - Eight Surprising
Stories (Puffin, 1985), which became an almost immediate bestseller and Jennings
was set to become an Australian publishing phenomenon.
Jennings' stories are quirky, fantastic, spooky, bizarre tales usually with a dollop of
humour and a twist in the tail. He makes free use of science fiction, fantasy and the
supernatural, generally with his tongue firmly planted in his cheek. In this early
period of his work all his books contained at least one or two ghost or spooky stories.
Unreal contains "Skeleton on the Dunny", "Lighthouse Blues" and "Without a Shirt".
Unbelievable! - More Surprising Stories (Puffin, 1986) includes "Inside Out". Quirky
Tales - More Oddball Stories (Puffin, 1987) has "Spooks Incorporated", "Sneeze 'n
Coffin" and "Unhappily Ever After". Uncanny! - Even More Surprising Stories
(Puffin, 1988) has "A Good Tip for Ghosts".
Victor Kelleher ventured into horror again in 1988 after publishing two SF novels.
This was Baily's Bones (Viking Kestrel, 1988), a frightening contemporary story of
possession with links to Australia's aboriginal and convict past, a past full of violence
and death. Baily's Bones was the first work of children's horror to come close to
winning a major literary award, in this case it was the joint runner-up for the South
Australian Festival Award.
The decade of the 1980s closed with a dead heat for the first ever single author
collection of "horror" stories by an Australian children's author. One was The Boy on
the Lake - Stories of the Supernatural for "young adults" (UQP, 1989) by Judith
Clarke. The other was Things in Corners (1989) by Ruth Park.
Clarke's tales are stories of ghosts, possessions and monsters. These tales are more
menacing and mature than those previously published for younger readers. Here we
find supernatural creatures wishing to "possess" the human form of unwitting victims,
not so benign hauntings and sinister beings. But not all the stories are horror. A few of
the stories are poignant and sentimental or just simply weird tales.
Park's collection contains five stores that are described as deliciously horrifying
stories that will make your hair stand on end and keep you turning the pages.
The growing popularity of Australian horror fiction for children and "young adults" in
the 1980s continued into the 1990s. Indeed, it could be said that Australian children's
horror has come of age in the '90s.
Omnibus Books straddled the decades with three horror related anthologies edited by
Penny Matthews: Amazing (1989), Bizarre (1989) and Weird (1990). Again, these are
"soft" stories, more strange or unusual than horrific.
Paul Jennings returned in the early 1990s with three more books of his distinctive
short stories. These were, Round the Twist (Puffin, 1990), Unbearable! More Bizarre
Stories (Puffin, 1990) and Unmentionable! - More Amazing Stories (Puffin, 1991).
These books, however, contain fewer "spooky" stories than his earlier work.
With his horror novel, Strange Objects (William Heinemann, 1990), Gary Crew broke
new ground in teenage fiction. It was the first horror novel of any kind to win major
literary recognition in this country. Prizes including the Premier's Literary Award, a
NSW State Literary Award, and the prestigious Children's Book of the Year for Older
Readers.
The title, Strange Objects, is from a quote taken from H. P. Lovecraft's Dagon and
other Macabre Tales: "For there are strange objects in the great abyss, and the seeker
of dreams must take care not to stir up, or meet, the wrong ones . . ."
The story begins when a present-day teenager, Steven Messenger, finds some
gruesome relics, an iron pot, a leather bound journal and a mummified human hand,
from the wrecked Dutch vessel Batavia which struck uncharted rocks of the coast of
Western Australia on 4 June 1629. The Batavia's tale is drenched in blood, because
before help could arrive, over 120 of the ship-wreck victims were murdered by two
fellow survivors.
Four months after finding the relics Steven Messenger mysteriously disappears
without a trace from outside an isolated roadhouse on the central Western Australian
coast. The mystery deepens when Messenger's personal journal is mailed to the
Institute of Maritime Archaeology in Perth. The tale of the Batavia's shipwreck
victims unfold alongside Messenger's own tale in a gripping story of intrigue, horror
and mystery.
Strange Objects is arguably the best Australian horror novel yet published. While it
was originally published for children, following its enormous critical and popular
success, it has now also been published in an adult imprint (Mandarin, 1994).
Crew followed Strange Objects with a borderline horror novel called No Such
Country (William Heinemann, 1991). It is set in a small town called New Canaan
which is cut off from the world by sea and swamp. The story is described as a "tale of
old guilt, superstition and ghastly secrets" and begins when a series of peculiar events
happen which become known to the town-folk as "signs". As you would expect from
Crew, this is a well told tale that I think will interest many horror readers.
A first glance at Mandragora (Mammoth, 1991) by David McRobbie might also make
one think of Crew. Here is another novel based around a historical ship wreck on the
Australian coast. Not only that, but here, too, an evil from the past is brought into the
present via an artefact from the shipwreck.
But despite this superficial plot likeness to Strange Objects, and the fact they are both
fine novels (Mandragora was short-listed for the Children's Book of the Year Award),
there the similarities end. McRobbie's book is based on the wreck of the "Loch Ard"
off the Victorian coast from which there were only two survivors. A young couple
who left something behind in a cave which is found a hundred years later by another
young couple. Something best left undisturbed.
The same year, Victor Kelleher published his third horror novel, Del-Del (Random
House 1991). Del-Del, also achieved literary recognition. It was short-listed in
Australia for the Children's Book of Year Award for Older Readers and in the UK it
was short-listed for the prestigious Carnegie Medal. Del-Del, is a kind of
mystery/suspense, terror/horror novel. Kelleher describes it as a novel which
"employs psychological terror and also plays with a deep sense of mystery."
Also that year, New Zealand born writer Caroline MacDonald published a book of
short stories, Hostilities (Omnibus, 1991), which will be of marginal interest to horror
readers. They are tales of day to day life, some which verge chillingly on fantasy or
the inexplicably bizarre.
In 1992, following the success of the her earlier volumes, Penny Matthews edited two
more anthologies for teenagers, Spine-Chilling: Ten Horror Stories and Hair-Raising:
Ten Horror Stories (both Omnibus Books, 1992). Again, the definition of horror is
open to interpretation and we find a mixed bag: horror, SF, ghost, crime, and just
plain strange stories. The strongest contributions in Hair-Raising come from Victor
Kelleher, Lucy Sussex and Garry Disher, while Gary Crew and Ursula Dubosarsky
provide the best stories in Spine-Chilling. These are the first children's anthologies to
include writers with a background in genre fiction and it is interesting to note that
theirs are among the best stories.
Isobelle Carmody's novel The Gathering (Puffin, 1993) is another landmark of
Australian children's horror. It won the 1994 Children's Book of the Year for Older
Readers and was joint winner of the 1993 Children's Peace Literature Award. It is one
of the few books to rival the supremacy of Gary Crew's Strange Objects and, like
Crew's book, The Gathering deserves a wider readership than the niche "young adult"
market.
Without a doubt The Gathering is Carmody's best work to date, a novel of dark
fantasy with a contemporary setting. Somewhat of a departure from her previous
futuristic post-apocalypse worlds. With this book she has selected a modern-day
industrial town as a backdrop for her multi-layered themes which include power and
corruption, institutionalised evil, peer pressure and friendship.
The Gathering tells the gripping tale of a teenage boy, Nathanial, who comes to live in
the town of Cheshunt with his mother, only to find, despite an outward appearance of
normalcy, that something about the place is terribly wrong.
Nathanial discovers society is undermined by an ancient, malignant evil which
threatens to grow outward from this seemingly normal town unless Nathanial and his
newfound friends can discover its source and defeat it. It is a battle they must fight
alone because the truth sounds so unbelievable that no adult will believe them.
Indeed, the most sinister thing about this corruption is that it is cloaked by a guise of
respectability.
Carmody herself says of the book: "Evil does exist in our systems and society, and
children observe this. Adults, on the other hand, don't see the evil, or more to the
point, they don't want to know about it. When challenged, adults will justify
corruption in a system by arguing that 'it's just the way it is'." The dangers that prevail
in this sort of attitude are brought home in this compelling book. Its strengths are
those of her previous books, Carmody's worlds and characters are well-drawn and her
tales intriguing.
David McRobbie returned to horror in 1993 with a collection of short stories, This
Book is Haunted (Mammoth, 1993). As the titles suggests, these are primarily ghost
stories but humour is balanced with horror here to provide an entertaining mix.
That same year, science fiction and fantasy writer Dirk Strasser (co-editor of
Aurealis) also published his first children's book, a horror story called Graffiti
(Ashton Scholastic, 1993). Although this is only a slim volume, little more than a
short story, it was nominated alongside adult SF works for the 1993 Ditmar Award.
In 1994 Random House Australia introduced the "Hair-Raisers" horror series by "Lee
Striker" for younger readers. These are the first Australian attempt to tackle the likes
of US based R.L. Stine type horror books. The interesting thing here is that "Lee
Striker" is in fact a pseudonym for well known Australian Children's writer Margaret
Clark. The first two books in the series are Evil at Camp Star and House of the Living
Dead. Planned to follow in July 1995 are Dead Kids Tell No Tales and Revenge of
the Vampire Librarian.
Perth writer Glyn Parry toyed with horror with two very different books in 1994. In
his story collection Radical Take-offs (Little Ark, 1994) Parry mixed science fiction,
fantasy and horror to produce bizarre tales which include a scary parallel universe
where nothing is as it should be, a slumber party curse, a werewolf father, demonic
dream stealers and a suburban ghost train. In Monster Man (Random House, 1994)
Parry explores real life horror. It is a taught, realistic book about child abduction and
molestation.
1995 began with a collection of young adult stories of marginal horror interest,
Nightmares in Paradise (UQP, 1995) edited by Robyn Sheahan. These are stories by
Queensland writers which explore the down-side of "tropical paradise". There is
nothing supernatural here, more disturbing or uncomfortable realism. Predictably,
Gary Crew has one of the strongest offerings.
Garry Disher followed with a collection of short stories called Restless (Angus and
Robertson, 1995). It is a thin volume containing six stories of suspense and the
supernatural, sub-titled "stories of flight and fear". Disher is a writer of considerable
talent and as you might expect these are fine stories. Some might argue they are not
horror stories but it would be semantics. Dark fantasy and ghost stories, if you like,
with an excellent crime story thrown in to boot. My favourites are "Blame the Wind",
a ghost story incorporating some of those urban myth type tales traditionally told
around campfires, and "The Isle of Sighs", a story of ghostly possession. The best
story, however, is the crime/suspense story "Where the Bodies are Buried"
(previously published in Lucy Sussex's Shadow Alley).
The evidence is clear, Australian children's horror fiction is going from strength to
strength, building on a considerable body of work. Thankfully, the trend looks set to
continue. There are rumours of more books in the pipeline and at least one new book
is confirmed for publication later this year. This is new anthology called Dark House
(Mammoth) edited by Gary Crew and I for one will be keen lay my eyes on it.