The Origin of Horror

“It is a mistake to fancy that horror is associated inextricably with darkness, silence, and solitude.” H.P. Lovecraft

Whoa, whoa, slow down! 

You know what happens to those who run off ahead and try to be the hero, don’t you? It never ends well and we need you. We have a gargantuan horde of horror games ahead of us that are dying to be dissected. Their inhumanly wizened limbs are reaching out, beckoning you, their pained cries are telling tales of their gory creation but we must wait.

Before we inevitably tackle this legion of horror headon, we first need to understand our enemy. Don’t be embarrassed, we have all done it - rushed in without assessing the enemies weakness with only a lead pipe and blind optimism - but together, we are going to understand what we are up against.

Horror is so much deeper than jump scares and scattering of body parts. It’s history is rich with literature and elements of genres that came before it. The psychology that goes into horor games is researched, documented and implemented. These psychoofes, how they are applied and how they are balanced and made affective - is an art in itself.

We are going to discuss all of this first before we begin to better understand the successes of the gams which define the genre.

Let’s jump in!

The Evolution of Horror

If this were a computer game, defeating Horror would be easy. It’s many guises, attack patterns and weaknesses would be documented in audio logs, scrawled along the walls in blood, or recited in riddles on discarded scraps of paper. Regardless of your own personal fears (who could forget those grey aliens...), the answer will always be the same - AIM FOR THE HEAD! Hack off their limbs! Or, psst, use this passcode to get your hands on a rocket launcher (We may even throw in unlimited ammo if you’re lucky)!

The truth is, taking down Horror isn’t that easy. It’s been around a lot longer than all of us and kind of like a twisted Father Christmas, it knows what scares each and every one of us the most - regardless of whether you have been naughty or nice. 

As every Horror aficionado knows, a great start to taking down any of Horror’s many faces, is to pull it apart and find out what makes it bite! And what better way to do this, than with an origin story? 

One of my favourite horror game origin stories is from F.E.A.R, First Encounter Assault Recon. If you haven’t played F.E.A.R, in this survival horror you are part of a covert special ops team, highly weaponized and highly skilled. Your foe? Alma, a telepathic young girl who makes a habit of popping up when you least expect her and making you jump out of your skin. Alma manifests almost as an hallucination, often flickering into your peripheral vision making you wonder if she was ever there at all. Most often though, she is at the top of ladders, riding with you in the lift and directly in front of you when the faulty lighting miraculously fixes itself. She is terrifying in every sense of the word and she knows it. Alma’s terrifying presence becomes less so, when you begin to learn of her origin story. What you’ll discover is that you are right in the middle of your relentless pursuers mission of vengeance. In short, Alma and her psychic powers have been locked away for years, with her being a subject of ill-treatment and experimentation for financial profit. 

Ok, so Alma’s backstory doesn’t make her distant laughter of foreboding or lurking in the shadows any less scary but it gives the Horror that is Alma a vulnerability, a reason for her being and a chance to understand (and defeat) her.

So what about Horror itself? What about the beating heart, from which Alma’s origins, and memorable origin stories of your own, were torn from? Horror, the immortal tapestry of the macabre which has taken many forms before manifesting itself in computer games as foggy towns, mansions with secret labs and hell-infested spaceships. Yes, this putrid core has an origin story all of its own.

With its many faces, horror had been wreaking havoc and causing many a sleepless night, long before we decided to give it a name. It’s incredible to think that an entity so ancient, so prolific and so capable of conjuring fear and dread in so many, can be imprisoned in a single word (I mean, no wonder it’s angry). 

Horror, not to be confused with its equally troublesome sibling Terror, was said to have reached the spoken English language in the 13th and 14th centuries. With Latin roots, Horror was taken from the verb horrēre, meaning ‘to bristle’ or 'to shudder’. Staying true to it’s etymology even all these centuries later, many who fall victim to Horrors wrath tremble in fear, hair raised on the back of their necks. We aren’t the only ones to have fallen victim to Horror or be enticed by it. Charles Darwin also sought to understand the terrible twosome, Horror and Terror. Darwin described Horrors intent in this diabolical kinship as “A depressing and powerfully stimulating emotion derived from sudden and dangerous circumstances Horror is one’s awareness of an impending fear event.” Terror however,  “Is extreme fear, a state that endows one with ‘wonderful strength’ rendering the individual “notoriously dangerous in the highest degree”. 

I can recollect my first encounter with this nightmarish duo all too clearly. Here we are - back again - in the Summer of 1996. It’s all sunshine and ice pops out there but it’s all drawn curtains and Resident Evil 1 in here. 

Even if you have never played the original Resident Evil for PlayStation,  you may still have heard of it’s iconic FMV opening sequence. Better still, you may actually have seen it. Filmed in black and white, with yes, real actors, we see our heroes (and villains) being pursued by a pack of ravenous zombie dogs. Fast forward through the 80s action-hero style character introductions and our S.T.A.R.S find themselves in the ‘safety’ of a mansion entrance hall. 

Your first objective is to ignore the fact that Albert Wesker wears sunglasses in the dark and whilst inside (the first red flag of any villain) and explore the ground floor of the mansion. And this my friends, is where I first met Horror.

Here I was, holding the fate of our protagonists in my hands, literally. I navigated our heroine, Jill “The Master of Unlocking” Valentine' out of the main hall and into a small storage room. Here we picked up a map of the mansion’s first floor.  The sprawling blueprint of locked doors and labyrinthine corridors did very little to appease my apprehension. Jill had no idea what she is in for - my sense of direction is terrible at the best of times.

We head towards the door - leading out of the storage room - and into what the map shows as a long L shaped corridor. 

(Resident Evil fans know exactly where this is going).

The ambience was perfectly set - the atmospherics a shrill uneasiness of strings against a dull undulating beat. As the door opened, a painstakingly slow creak of a loading screen,  the impending sense of doom laying heavy in my stomach was Horror at it’s finest.

Jill and I found ourselves in the long corridor that the map had promised. It stretched out before us, innocently lined with large glass windows.  We run towards the L shaped bend - and SMASH! As one of our canine pursuers crashes through the window and lands behind us, the atmospherics switch to high tempo beats mimicking the pounding of my heart.

Let’s welcome Terror. You know, that  “...state that endows one with ‘wonderful strength’... “.  Or... Causes you to panic, forget what the aim button is and just perform a weird twitchy ‘can’t aim a gun’ dance whilst being mauled to death. Even if Terror gives you the instinct to run - SMASH! Here comes another rotting pooch to block your escape.

Out of ammo and out of luck - You got me good Horror and Terror. You win.

Let’s leave Jill and I ammo-less and twitching in a hallway and jump back to Darwin and his dalliance with Horror. Darwin also suggested that we can experience feelings of horror when we see or hear of terrible events happening to others. These retellings of horrific events, through spoken folklore - or oral tradition - could therefore be where Horror was born.

So, what is your interpretation of folklore? And with that, what was the first spoken folktale you ever heard? 

For me, folklore was inherent in my upbringing. My family is from a small town called Pietrelcina in Benevento, Southern Italy. You may have heard Benevento referred to as the ‘City of Witches’. (Seems fitting that I am writing a book on horror, doesn’t it..?) When I was younger, I would hear stories of witchcraft and goulish mischief often. These bedtime stories, these oral traditions, they intrigued me as equally as they terrified me. One tale that stays with me was my grandmother leaving a broom at the backdoor of our home. This, she tells me, is to prevent witches from entering. A witch would have to count every bristle on the broom before setting foot inside and this would slow them down. If you haven’t heard this story before, it is very reminiscent of vampires having to be invited in or throwing salt over our shoulders to ward off evil spirits. 

Even if witchcraft doesn’t run in your family (it is a gift and a curse), folklore may still have been a part of your upbringing. Have you ever read any of the, aptly named, Brothers Grimm Fairy Tales? How about Hans Christian Anderson’s The Little Mermaid? Yes. Although the term, ‘Fairy Tale’ wasn’t used until the 17th century, many of these are very much rooted in older folklore.

These folk tales, often carrying stark warnings or moral reminders at the expense of others, could have first been communicated through songs, myths or rituals. Think of the bards serenading passers by with songs of woe and foreboding. Think of explorers travelling across oceans and continents telling tales of their misfortunes. Think of the merchant in Resident Evil 4, always wanting to know what you were selling… Each of these encounters, had their tales re-told, being interpreted and re-interpreted by the storyteller. These re-interpretations may have been based on the experiences of those regaling them, to maintain moral values of a community or even to establish stereotypes and social principles of the time. In my grandmother's case, to scare children enough to keep them in their beds after dark...

It is in folklore that Horror discerned its ability to thrive, manifesting itself as wicked beings or veiled as personifications of grave warnings. The great unknowns such as the afterlife, fears such as growing old and wicked acts such as murder are all characterised in fables of Vampires, demons and ghouls. Each time these tales of misfortune or the demise of others were re-told, Horror’s strength grew and as the oral word became written literature, Horror’s power was immortalised.

Yes. That means that all of those treacherous tropes such as vampires, witches and werewolves were enshrined in the texts of our ancient ancestors. The written word can be traced back to 3000 BC when the Ancient Egyptians ruled. What better place for Horror and its many manifestations to thrive than in the funerary texts of ‘The Book of the Dead’, in curses inscribed on Mummy's tombs and in fables told of their powerful deities. The written words gave Horror strength and longevity that it never had before. It stretched out its talons, ripping through the realm of folklore and into territories of religious practice and rituals and into scholarly texts depicting our understanding of the world.

Horror was but a small parasite clutching firmly onto the gargantuan growth of the written word. However, it’s evolution at this time formed the very foundations of the Horror staples we know and love  (love is a strange thing...) so well today. Each ancient civilization used the written language to craft their own theories and mythos to understand and explain the world around them. The theme of deities ruling over humans remained strong.  While the Ancient Egyptians have their jackal-headed God of the Underworld Anubis, the Ancient Greeks had Cerberus. Whilst the Aztec’s wrongdoings were punished through the violent Thunderstorms of Xolotl, the ancient Japanese had Rajin. We see this even now, as every country has written fables of their Bogeyman, every person playing Minecraft has Wiki Pages to tell of their Enderman.

As we continued our attempts to understand the world around us, one of Horror’s most prolific masquerades was born - The Vampire. Many would argue that we have the Ancient Greeks to thank for our coffin-dwelling friends, with their fable of Hippolytus who returned from the dead. With time being something a vampire has in abundance, the years continued to be very kind to these fanged fables.

We are now jumping forward to the 18th century (1732 to be exact) where we are attending the dissection of a young woman, named Stana, in Medveđa, Serbia. (Not what you signed up for? Well you are reading a book about Horror…) Johannes Flückinger is the doctor undertaking this dissection and he has been called to this small village in the midst of - what would later be called - a Vampire epidemic. In his medical report, Flückinger writes of how, despite Stana having passed away two months prior, her body is largely undecomposed and fresh blood seeps from her lips. His medical examination, coupled with accounts of vicious attacks on the villagers the night Stana died, led Flückinger to only one reasonable conclusion. That on the night of Stana’s burial, she had risen from the dead with the intent of feeding on the blood of the villagers. Case closed.

Flückinger signed his medical report and left Medveđa. Little did he know that Horror had lent its hand and as Flückinger circulated his report, Horror circulated a little hysteria. Before this report, it was said that vampires were almost entirely unheard of throughout Europe. However, thanks to Horror, Flückinger's work would become the most prolific vampire tale circulated in the Western world.

Of course, we now know that the interpretations in Flückinger's report were largely the misunderstandings of death and decay in the 18th century. The lack of decomposition being the storage of bodies in porous wooden coffins and the fresh blood seeping from Stana’s lips down to internal decomposition. That Hollywood smile - the Vampire fangs? That’s just the receding of the gums postmortem.

Don’t be disappointed however! If it wasn’t for such tales, we would never have one of the greatest vampire stories ever told - Dracula! And this leads us nicely to Horror’s next dalliance with the mainstream. 

Ah yes, horror literature. Horror really did find its place at the table with Lovecraftian beasts, pseudo-scientific brushes with death and manifestations of dark romanticism (What a dinner party, eh?). As time marched on - as it inevitably does - the pre-Romantic era of the 18th century bore the infamous genre of Gothic literature. 

The pre-Romantic era turned humanity’s quest to understand death and the afterlife  into morbid curiosity.  It glamourised ghost stories and tales of the afterlife and sensationalised all of those scientific theories which told of monstrous creatures and nightmarish manifestations.

At the helm of Horror’s new venture was Horace Walpole, who was said to have created the first ever Gothic novel with this 1765 works, Castle of Otranto. Reading through the plot of Castle of Otranto - translated from its Italian origins Onuphrio Muralto - I sense apparitions of Guillermo Del Toro’s Crimson Peak. We have romance, we have the supernatural and inevitably, we have death. Castle of Otranto set the scene for a myriad of Horror greats including the macabre works of Edgar Alan Poe and Mary Shelley.

Through their tales of conspicuous descents into madness, stories unifying their readers in fear and through their captivating wordsmithery - authors of Gothic literature gave credibility and enjoyability to everything that went bump in the night. Stories such as Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein in 1818, Bram Stoker’s Dracula in 1897 and the works of H.P Lovecraft dating from 1917 all set a ghastly tone for the Horror stories we know and lose sleep over today.

It is in the era of Horror literature that Horror sought to ensure its immortality. Disseminating itself only to be born again. Horror would tear itself limb from limb to reinvent itself over and over in the form of sub genres.This was Horror’s oath to never be forgotten, to remain hidden in the mainstream, to creep across cultures, to reinvent itself and never die. 

The Power of the Sub-Genre

What is your favourite subgenre of horror?

Bernard Perron, Professor of Cinema and Video Games at the University of Montreal, Canada and author of Silent Hill: The Terror Engine (2012), categorises horror games into two sub-genres. The first is ‘quick-thrill’ with frequent enemy encounters and jump scares and the second is ‘psychological’ with subtle scares through atmospheric effects. Whilst Perron suggests that psychological games rely more heavily on anticipation whilst ‘quick-thrill’ games rely on material perception,  both of these categories have the capacity to elicit fear in the player.

The DNA of Resident Evil (1996), caused a viral rise to the sub-genre of Survival Horror, in which protagonists find themselves in harrowing situations with limited resources and little knowledge of their current situation or surroundings. Whilst Survival Horror is still a sub-genre referenced today, quite often, such horror installments can be likened to action adventure (or ‘quick-thrill’) with a dose of horror on the side for good measure. Resident Evil 4 (2005) was a flagship title in this transition. Whilst resource management and a fight for survival were prevalent, gameplay experience enhancing improvements such as weapon upgrades, melee attacks and more open environments injected new life into the franchise of fixed camera angles and beretta pistols.

There we see the resilience of Horror and its ability to evolve in full force once again.  While computer games themselves progressed - with more responsive controls and more varied gameplay mechanics, improved graphical fidelity and reduced hardware limitations - Horror matured also.

Silent Hill (1999) is to Psychological Horror what Resident Evil (1996) is to Survival Horror. In 1999 - whilst in a foggy town clutched by cultism - gnarled creatures and scarce ammunition just weren’t enough anymore. Whilst Resident Evil expertly savaged your senses - Silent Hill sought to eviscerate your psyche instead.

No, that definitely doesn’t make them any less gruesome but thanks for asking.

Silent Hill - and indeed other Psychological Horrors - still enjoy a dalliance with visceral depictions of savagery. And whilst Survival Horrors are also great at creating tension and feelings of foreboding, Psychological Horrors are experts at maintaining it.

Psychological Horror tends to thematically deal with difficult subject matter relating to mental and emotional states whilst systematically as Perron suggests, this sub-genre leans towards more explorative and less combative gameplay. Survival Horror loves a big beastie reveal or adrenaline inciting showdown. Whereas, Psychological Horror prefers to spend its time with environmental storytelling and simply alluding to the monstrosities that may lie ahead. This allows the victims of Psychological Horror to effectively scare themselves - Allowing their minds to conjure the creatures and harrowing situations rather than seeing them in their entirety. This approach lends itself to thematically dealing with abstract scenarios, moral dilemmas or difficult emotional circumstances. For me, this type of Horror is the most dangerous - As it is the one that lingers long after you’ve escaped its grasps. 

Whilst I’d argue that these two fiends are the pure-bloods of the Horror game sub-genre, Horror continues to manifest itself in many forms throughout other established gaming genres. Multiplayer, Role Playing Games (RPG) and First Person Shooters are just to name a few. 

Horror creates quite a hybrid when it gets its teeth into the Stealth genre however and the early 2000s saw the rise of the Stealth Horror game. Here our hapless protagonists - Instead of fighting back against evil with firearms and brute force - Would find ways to pacify or elude such wickedness. Clock Tower 3 (2002) and Haunting Ground (2005) are both perfect specimens of such Horror hybrids.

Project Zero (2001), or Fatal Frame as it was known in Europe, is part of the Stealth Horror family and this franchise is infamous for introducing the hand-held camera mechanic into the Horror genre. In Fatal Frame, exploration is key and the only way to take down stalking spectres is by using the Camera Obscura. This, the key mechanic of the game, allows you to capture ghastly ghouls on film, thus weakening them. These Hand-Held Horror mechanics were later seen in other Horror titles such as Outlast (2013),  Michigan: Report from Hell (2004) and more recently Blair Witch (2019), potentially making them a sub-genre of their own.

However - Due to the subjective nature of Horror, the label of ‘Horror game’ can be open to interpretation if the game is not marketed as such.

More on this later. Let’s return to that which is deemed responsible for defining the beast of Horror sub-genre. It was Literature which once cleaved off Horror’s ghastly head, only for it  to burgeon thrice more in its place. It is unsurprising that the repute of some sub-genres live on in popular media, such as video games, to this day. Some are so powerful that those who fall victim to them, can be returned to associated feelings and fears by the uttering of a single word.

Lovecraftian.

H.P. Lovecraft is renowned for his notable brand of cosmic horror - One which incites dread and fear through stories of creatures and experiences beyond the veil of human comprehension. His tales, imbued with philosophical existentialism, seek to remind us of how insignificant we - as humans - and our actions are in relation to a larger reality (Wow. As if his legends of Cthulhu, an enigmatic octopus-dragon monstrosity aren’t anxiety inducing enough, eh? Nope, there is more...). A common Lovecraftian theme is a descent into madness. Quite often, the creatures and scenarios which confront his stories' protagonists are too horrific to comprehend and too perplexing to conceive which ultimately results in their loss of sanity and rationality.

Another trope of Lovecraftian horror comes in the form of Eldritch Abominations - Which can be defined as other-wordly, supernatural or celestial beings beyond human perception. Other tropes - although not strictly Lovecraftian - relate to rituals and cults, secret knowledge or unanswered questions and dubious perceptions of good versus evil.

For years, video games have been created which are based directly on Lovecraftian literature or which have taken inspiration from his cosmic commonalities. 

Arguably, the most notable are those based in the Cthulhu universe. As their names proudly proclaim, Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth (2005) and Call of Cthulhu - The Video Game (2018) are two such exemplars. Whilst both games exhibit very different play and art styles, the tight clutches of those Lovecraftian tentacles are unmistakable - mental disturbances, mysterious disappearances and cultist rituals. Oh my.

Other games - their cosmically charged cousins - have taken smatterings of Lovecraftian horror to a fresh canvas, gruesomely enriching their own horror happenings. The critically acclaimed Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem (2002) and Amnesia: The Dark Descent (2010) both impose sanity management on the player as a core mechanic.  

Eternal Darkness uses a system called, ‘Sanity Effects’. As the sanity of the player (in-game but possibly your own) starts to deplete, the world begins to change, making gameplay more challenging and more unsettling. These environmental changes vary in severity, including distorted camera angles, visual disturbances and unnerving sound effects. Dark Descent sees sanity as a compliment to player health. Eerie goings-on such as staying in the dark too long or seeing monstrous apparitions all affect sanity. Much like Eternal Darkness, the effects of loss of sanity inhibit gameplay, attracting more horrific creatures and in severe circumstances, restricting player movement.

It isn’t just gameplay that can be imbued with Lovecraftian ‘charm’ though. The name Bloodborne (2015) brings shudders of fear to so many - mainly because of how high the game's difficulty level is - but also for its hauntingly beautiful aesthetics and remorselessly grotesque creature design. Bloodborne is arguably the epitome of Eldritch Abomination in video games, with each meticulously designed visual atrocity having equally nightmare-inducing sound design to match. 

Fans of Lovecraft may also give nods to his work in their own, some cryptic (Lovecraft loved a mystery) and others more apparent. Quake (1996) is rumoured to have a plot and enemies thematically inspired by the work of Lovecraft but more discernible are the names of levels and bosses. Quake possesses a level called ‘The Nameless City’, a Lovecraft short and a boss called ‘Shub-Niggurath’, a deity in the Cthulhu mythos. 

However, sub-genres aren’t merely defined by namesakes. The poems of Edgar Allan Poe and Bram Stoker’s Dracula gave rise to dark romanticism whilst Mary Shelley inspired an entire sub-genre of science fiction with Frankenstein. 

It could be surmised then, that many game developers and designers have Horror literature and it’s brood of insidious sub-genres to thank for inspiring their grotesque creations that terrify many the world over. Well ok,  thanks literature and thank you folklore and thanks… Oh wait, are we forgetting someone or something..? Who or what do we have to thank (or not?) for introducing Horror to video games in the first place? 

It seems that all those gothic ghost stories and multiple descents into madness weren’t enough for Horror. Oh no, it wanted much much more. Horror yearned for the total carnage of a creature-feature, the blood, guts and gore of a slasher and the television static of found footage. Yeah, you guessed what Horror sunk its teeth into next - Film.

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