What I Like in Horror
I made a personal discovery last night: I finally know what it is I like about H.P. Lovecraft’s stories, and by extension what I like in the horror genre. For a long time I have been trying to figure out what I like in these stories and what it is that draws me to Lovecraft that does not draw me to other horror writers. At first I thought it was just that Lovecraft wrote “weird fiction” but that is too vague a category to be of any help at all. While some may argue that what I’m about to say would be an inaccurate summation of all of Lovecraft’s work I would like to point out that this is the element I like about his stories (and thus his stories that lack this element are not among my favourites).
Lovecraft’s stories are detective mystery stories. The stories I gravitate to are the ones where something unexplained has happened and now the protagonist will go about figuring out what is going on. It is the same reason I like Sherlock Holmes, Hercule Poirot, Miss Marple, and a host of other detectives. What I like more about horror mystery-detective stories is that the story is not about a murder and a who-dun-it.
So now I know. I like stories where something inexplicable has happened. An impossible thing has occurred and our protagonist will seek to uncover the truth. She may be an unwilling protagonist, caught up in an event far beyond her ken or control. He may be an intrepid investigator on the trail of a great mystery, soon to engulf him in a world of madness. They are tales of the bizarre and the unreal, but made real, and told to reveal the mystery (but not quite!) in a detective sort of way.