Why is there a market for horror? Why does a segment of the population gleefully submit themselves voluntarily to books and movies which are designed to frighten and unnerve them?

Why do educated people fall for this stuff?

I recently read a scholarly article by Mathias Clasen entitled “Monsters Evolve: A Biocultural Approach to Horror Stories” which was published in the Review of General Psychology in 2012. (Full disclosure: I became aware of this article from the web site “This is Horror” which was citing a blog by the Huffington Post-UK which in turn was citing the Clasen article. Got that?) In this article, Professor Clasen attempts to answer these very questions, and I must say he does so in a most fascinating manner. I was rather skeptical before reading the piece; only because I expected some regurgitated psychobabble we’ve seen many times in the past on this topic. I was pleasantly surprised.

Professor Clasen posits a biocultural model whereby our reaction to and fascination with horror stories is the result of an evolutionary process combined with cultural adaptation. Let me try and summarize some of the main points:

According to Professor Clasen, we have a cognitive “architecture” designed for the management of danger. Our own evolution involved developing various adaptive survival strategies to cope with and survive threatening situations. Those strategies that weren’t helpful died out with our unlucky ancestors who died trying to use them.

As result of human evolution and evolutionary psychology, all of us are born with a wide range of adaptive strategies designed to help us survive and surmount a wide range of dangers. In simplest terms, we are all aware of the nearly instantaneous a flight or fight response at the slightest hint of danger.

The flight or fight response served our ancestors well when a rustling sound in the nearby bushes could be a saber-toothed tiger or an angry mammoth. Of course, these same reactions are less helpful today – we often don’t face life or death fears like our ancestors did at a moment’s notice. Nonetheless, we still have these intense reactions, and typically in the face of considerably milder dangers or no danger at all (for instance, in anticipation of giving a speech, taking a test, being alone, unhappy with our physical appearance). Unfortunately, these very reactions are the physiological basis of anxiety disorders – when we perceive threat and danger in harmless situations and react with fear and avoidance.

So, what has all of this to do with horror stories? Well the best is yet to come. Sadly, I’ve gone on much too long. I will resume this discussion in the next blog.

I grew up in Port Chester, New York which is a village right on the coast overlooking Long Island Sound.  Many summer weekends were spent on Oakland Beach in Rye, New York and swimming in the sound. Across the sound we could easily see Long Island, an almost mythical land to my young eyes – never considering until my elementary school years that The Island, as it was often called, was really nothing more than a suburban landscape much like I was living in. Every now and again, we’d trek to Jones beach in order to swim in the Atlantic, and even more occasionally rent a beach house in Seaside Heights, New Jersey for a week at the Jersey Shore.

As a result of living very close to water, I think I’ve always been drawn to a coastal setting. As luck would have it, I’ve spent most of my adult life in the Midwest – Indiana, Kansas, and now Wisconsin.  Currently, my family and I live within a few blocks of Lake Michigan in a north shore suburb of Milwaukee, which gives us a “feel” of home. I should mention that my wife grew up in Virginia, so she is oriented towards the beach life as well. Her family spent many summer vacations at Virginia Beach, Virginia and Myrtle Beach, South Carolina.

As a family, we have decided to spend our vacations on the East Coast, enjoying the shoreline geography of the Outer Banks of North Carolina, and every now and again, the beaches of South Carolina. Based on my experiences, I knew that my first attempt at a novel would take place on the coast, and I quickly settled on South Carolina for Birth Offering.

We've been to many of the beaches around Charleston (Edisto Island, Isle of Palms), visited Charleston multiple times, and toured smaller cities up and down the coast (Beaufort, Georgetown). The setting is truly unique, at least to my visiting eyes. The landscape is breath taking (I never tire of the low country), and I have come to find that it is the perfect setting for a horror novel. The region is steep in history, ghost tours in various communities are abundant, and let’s face it, Spanish moss instills a very haunting presence.

Birth Offering had its inception on Edisto Island. During a visit in 1995, we found ourselves on a quiet road (I honestly don’t remember if it was paved or not). The road was lined with live oaks which were festooned with Spanish moss. The picture above could be the same location. I remember the vegetation as being very thick so that you couldn't see very far off the side of the roads. For all I knew, there were homes back in there somewhere (my mind’s eye recalls a mailbox or two), but it could have been deserted. And, here was the exciting part, an ideal location to be stalked by something evil. I remember thinking that this was the coolest location. I might have even said something to my wife about the perfect setting for a novel if I was to ever write one. Imagine being chased by something here?

And there it was. The first idea that stuck with me as a potential passage for a novel. Fifteen or so years later, this was written into Birth Offering. You should have no trouble finding it within the story…

I've been absent for a while, thanks to a combination of the July 4th holiday, a round of edits for Birth Offering and grading of final projects for my summer classes. I am teaching two classes this summer session, both master's level counseling courses (Clinical Studies and Counseling Children and Adolescents). I make use of a number of online activities in the summer, and these involve extensive group interaction and video recording. The results this summer have been astounding. Yesterday was the last day of the semester, and all final products were due. The students all did unbelievably fantastic work - although, since they are graduate students they tend to be very motivated. College and Graduate instruction can be extremely rewarding, and I love every minute of it. For those of you whoever wondered about your college professors - yes we do get a real kick out of reading and commenting on well written work...

Since Mr. Deininger’s novella, Fevered Hills, was such an incredible read, I was really anticipating his first full length novel, The New Flesh. Overall, I found the novel to be a very strong work despite some structural flaws that hindered the flow of the story to some degree. More on these later.  

The story involves 10 year old Jake who is experiencing a wide range of strange happenings involving a creepy Melting Man who is somehow connected to a place of fire and torture. While his experiences begin as dreams, they become increasingly real and Jake is thrown into a macabre world that is unsettling to both Jake and the reader. The story was gripping, and I finished it at a rapid pace. Mr. Deininger’s storytelling has an indirect slant to it, which I found very refreshing (and very similar to his earlier novella Fevered Hills). He allows readers to make connections between events, and he does not provide explanations for every odd circumstance. The result is a haunting sense of mystery which keeps the reader invested in the story. 

So what were the flaws?

Unlike his previous novella, I found his characters to be internally inconsistent. Their emotions and behavior often switched abruptly from one extreme to another to satisfy the shifting demands of the plot. For instance, Jakes parents alternated between being all-American parents and complete losers (dad produces pornographic movies, for Pete’s sake) at the bat of an eye. At times they care deeply for the child and at other times they couldn’t care less about his well-being. (Jake, too, was a little too sophisticated for a 4th grader – although an endearing character). Minor characters conveniently come and go to fit the scene – but I must say many of these minor characters were incredibly fascinating. One character is brutally killed (and witnessed by Jake, to boot) and the result should have been police investigations and traumatized reactions on the part of the family, but no…the event is a minor inconvenience.

While I found these flaws bothersome, I remain enthusiastic about Mr. Deininger’s fiction. His imagination is fresh and exciting – and after reading these two stunning works I can only expect him to push the boundaries of the horror genre even further. I look forward to his upcoming books with great anticipation. 

The central character in Birth Offering is fourteen year old Ryan Perry and the narrative takes place the summer before he enters high school. I think this is a good age to capture the best (and worst) of kids for any kind of fiction, not just horror. Young adolescents are striving for independence, yet can be childlike in many of their interactions. Their cognitive skills are advancing by leaps and bounds, so they have the startling capacity – both to themselves and the adults around them – for understanding the complexity of social interactions, empathy, and cause-effect relationships between any number of different events over time. The maturation of these skills can prove difficult, as they often become trapped into worrying about what others are saying or thinking about them. Emotions can be seen and understood as more subtle and complicated, and some kids (mostly boys) have a hard time communicating their feelings.

When authors write about kids of this age, one of the problems they encounter is trying to write about their characters in an age-appropriate manner. This is extremely hard, and quite frequently even the best of them make their kids sound too mature or too sophisticated for their ages.

I tried to address this with Ryan. I wanted Ryan to sound believable. I wanted his point of view to be sullen and whiney at times. I wanted him to be hurt or angry with his mother over the simplest things. I also wanted him to be an active protagonist. That required him to make good use of his newly developed cognitive and intellectual skills. Regarding social skills, Ryan was meant to be socially astute but uncomfortable with his abilities to engage with others, especially girls. He also needed to be brave and strong – and this may be where he is portrayed too advanced beyond his years.

How successful was I in this endeavor? I’ll have to wait and see. I’m hoping readers will tell me.

Birth Offering will be released September 1 from Damnation Books.