#eeriness

Not going to lie, I’m not one hundred percent sure what you want from me here? The fact that you’re linking those three says you’ve probably already had a browse around those tags on my blog, so I’ll have to try not to repeat myself, and I’m not fully sure what new thing you want.

But, I guess, a linking theme between the three of them, daytime, liminal and neat horror, would be …

They’re not necessarily monster horror, jump-scare horror. They can include them, but the moments we’re talking about, sunshine and incongruous neatness and between places, they’re not about action, being attacked, they’re about dread. Eeriness, unreality, wrongness. They’re about looking around something that looks relatively normal and your brain just going ‘something is wrong’.

We don’t expect horror in the daytime. Horror is a thing of darkness, that’s its natural environment, where we can’t see, where unknown things lurk to leap out at us. To have horror happen in daytime adds a layer of unreality, affront, this doesn’t belong here. This isn’t supposed to be happening. Not now. Why is this happening when it’s bright out? When I’m supposed to be safe?

Neatness evokes the same feeling. There’s a layer of wrongness, of something out of place, of something happening that doesn’t fit with the rest of what’s around it. Neatness, played right, is a step away from reality, from the natural, a layer of artifice and someone’s doing something layered over the world around us.

And liminal spaces, those perpetual in-betweens, the bus stops and hotel corridors and doorways or gates that lead nowhere, they’re always unreal, always in-between, places where no one belongs, places where no one knows you and no one cares. Anything could happen at one of those places, and nobody would care in the morning. You look around them, and your brain knows that they aren’t places to stay, they aren’t places to belong, they aren’t safe.

The feeling, every time, is a sort of subconscious dread, a wariness, an eeriness, the feeling of looking around and feeling that something’s in the wrong place, that you are in the wrong place. It’s not about fear, as such, but about uneasiness, uncertainty, affront.

As humans, we like things to be where they’re supposed to be, doing what they’re supposed to do. We like order, and safety, and things being as we expect. These things, incongruity, transience, emptiness, trespass, they’re not about visceral horror, they’re about the itchy, unsafe feeling in your brain when something isn’t where it’s supposed to be, isn’t doing what it’s supposed to do. You feel unsafe, not because there’s necessarily a visible threat, but because some part of you can’t help but instinctually feel that something is wrong and that means there’s a potential threat. And the thing with potential threats, as opposed to visible threats, is that you can’t deal with them. Not until they materialise. There’s a dread, there’s a paranoia, because the layer of safety and normality around you is stripped away by the feeling that something invisible is wrong, and there’s no undoing that. Daylight doesn’t protect you. Something’s out there, something’s tidying. No one belongs here, no one will notice what they do to you.

This type of horror is about stripping away safety, stripping away expectation, leaving only unease and paranoia and dread underneath. It’s not (at least necessarily) about a single violent threat, it’s about … taking away the safeties. There’s no one around who’ll care. It doesn’t need the dark. Even your own mind isn’t necessarily safe, with the world being arranged this way around it.

There’s an affront to all of these types of horror, and a slow, pervasive dread. It’s wrong, it’s all wrong, but it’s happening anyway, and none of the normal safeties can stop it.

It’s about dread, not fear. Uneasiness, wariness, unreality. The basic feeling that something is wrong, and no one can stop it. Maybe no one but you even sees it. They see the expected thing, and you don’t, and what can you do with that? Who, what, can you trust? Even yourself?

Break down expectations, normality, safety, and see what slow, insidious horrors lurk underneath, behind, through.

I do adore this sort of horror so much. It takes more time, you have to set the tone and the expectations more carefully, before you slowly strip them away, but the effect once accomplished is spectacular. I love the eeriness and the pervasiveness of it.

My dad and I were playing softball in the park when a family wearing long black robes showed up. They stood on the first baseline. “Hey, can we play ball?” they said. Their voice sounded like an old organ. “Sorry,” I said. “It’s just me and my dad.” “It’s ok,” they said. “We get it.” My dad lobbed the ball to me from the mound. I could tell he wanted to just keep things moving. The family in long black robes felt heavy, even at that distance, like a thousand tons of sorrow. Their sorrow dimmed the sun. My dad’s pitch was perfect, right down the middle, but I just didn’t have the hear to swing at it. “Why didn’t you swing?” said the family. “It was right down the middle.” They were right. I had no excuses. I lost a light, all feeling, maybe forever. How else to say this? Dad? I had no blood. I had no blood. My blood bled, but I did not bleed blood.