 Horror/Scary: August 19, 2015 Issue [#7163] |
  Horror/Scary
This week: There's someone in the house! Edited by: Arakun the twisted raccoon  
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Quote for the week:
How strange that nature does not knock, and yet does not intrude!
~ Emily Dickinson |
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Imagine the following scenario:
A young wife is in her bedroom getting ready for a weekend trip while waiting for her husband to come home. "Where is he?" she wonders as she packs her bag. She picks up the phone to call him when she hears the front door open and the footsteps of someone coming into the house. As she is about to put down the phone it rings in her hand. When she answers, she hears her husband's voice, "Sorry, I know I'm late, but the traffic is insane. I'm still thirty minutes away." She drops the phone as the knob of the bedroom door begins to turn...
Maybe her husband is just playing a trick, and he will open the door and say, "Gotcha!" If this is the case, this scene could be a good "false scare" to ratchet up the suspense before the real bad guy appears. Or someone or something really terrible might be behind the door.
Any villain, demon, or monster becomes far more frightening when it enters your own home. Our homes are one place that is supposed to feel safe, our one place to hide. Although it has been done many times, it is still frightening when a character rushes into his or her home and locks the door, only to find out that the villain is already inside.
Sometimes just seeing evidence that someone has been in your home is more frightening than actually seeing the intruder. One of the scariest parts of the movie "Sleeping with the Enemy" was when the character played by Julia Roberts noticed that the bathroom towels she had tossed carelessly over the towel rack had been hung up neatly. Her abusive husband toyed with her by leaving other small signs that he had been in her home before he actually appeared.
In some stories, the home itself is evil. In "Burnt Offerings" (one of the few horror stories to ever give me nightmares) parts of a dilapidated house are repaired or become newer each time a member of the family is injured.
If the horrors have taken up permanent residence in their home, your characters may decide to move, but that does not mean they will be safe. Near the town where I live is a row of small cabins, built a long time ago and now abandoned. Legends say that when the first house seemed to have poltergeist activity, the family built another house, only to have the ghosts follow them. They built another house only to be followed again and again and again.
You might want to give the villain an unusual way of entering your character's home. If it is a supernatural creature, maybe it can become really small and enter through the crack under the door. If the bad guy is an ordinary human, and your characters can't figure out how he got inside the house, you have a locked room mystery as well as a horror story. Be sure you come up with a method of entrance that is both logical and unusual.
Something to try: Write a horror story in which the villain or evil entity is inside a character's home.
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| |  | Intruder (18+)
Well, it's called "Intruder" so....it couldn't possibly end well.
#1831121 by elizjohn  |
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#2047920 by Not Available. |
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| Question for next time: What do you think is the hardest part of writing horror stories? |
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