  Horror/Scary
This week: Demons masquerading as angels Edited by: Arakun the twisted raccoon  
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Quote for the week:
"We make up horrors to help us deal with the real ones"
~Stephen King |
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Hello, I am Arakun the twisted raccoon and I am your guest editor for this issue of the horror newsletter.
If you saw a picture of Freddy Krueger or Michael Myers without knowing anything about these characters or the movies they starred in, you would probably know they were not nice guys. However, if you saw a picture of sweet, blonde pigtailed Rhoda Penmark from the play and movie "The Bad Seed", you would probably never guess that she was a sociopath and serial killer.
When we first saw the Bates mansion in "Psycho", we knew something bad was going to happen there. But what about the families in "Harvest Home" and "Burnt Offerings" who decided to escape the rat race of city life by moving to the country. One family moved to a picturesque farming village and the other became caretakers of a beautiful, although slightly run-down, country estate. Nothing bad could happen in either of these places, right? In case you haven't read these stories, I won't tell you what did happen, but they both gave me nightmares!
Horror authors and screenwriters have always taken advantage of our instinctive fear of people and places that look dangerous. But what if the setting looks like your home town, or the killer looks like your first grade teacher? Unless your hometown is Collinsport, Maine or your first grade teacher was the Bride of Frankenstein, you will probably be caught off guard! Being caught off guard unnerves and frightens us in stories as well as in real life. If bad places and people don't set off our spider sense, how will we know who to trust?
From childhood, we are taught that people in certain professions are our friends and we should trust them. But what if one of these people is not what he or she seems to be?
Consider the following scenario for a hypothetical story. A violent patient escapes from a mental hospital and several murders are committed in the area. Which ending would frighten you the most?
 The escaped patient committed the murders. He is caught and returned to the asylum with added security and everything is right with the world.
The patient didn't commit the murders at all. They were actually committed by a well respected doctor, nurse, teacher, or police officer who used the escape as a cover for his/her own homicidal urges. This murderer is also caught, but for this community, will everything be all right with the world again?
Probably the most unnerving "angelic" villain is the child villain. Most people instinctively love and protect children and cannot imagine a small child being truly evil. Our preconcieved notions about children make "bad seeds" like Rhoda Penmark, Samara Morgan, and Damien Thorne more frightening than any adult monster.
Something to try: Write a horror story set in a safe, familiar place with a villain based on someone you like. This may not be a story you will want to publish (especially if the villain's resemblance to the person you know is obvious), but it will be great exercise in creating horror in disguise.
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Horror/Scary: July 11, 2012 Issue [#5140]
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