My Love of Horror

I love horror, spooks, creepy things and just anything and everything morbid. Over the years as I have gotten older I have embraced my morbid curiosities much more than when I was younger. I’ve always wanted to seek out the things that could give me the rush of adrenaline that I, like many other people, crave.

If you remember my blood phobia post then you’ll already know that I stay far away from love action horror movies because of my intense fear of blood and other squishy bits in the body. My thing with blood physically stops me from enjoying the other elements of horror films so I abandoned that possible interest long ago. Gore and torture movies like the Saw franchise made me feel lightheaded just thinking about what content might be lurking in those films. I have never understood the appeal of gory and torture based films as it just seems unnecessary and there to shock instead of actually contributing to the story. You can have a perfectly good horror story without the use of excessive blood and gore. My main outlets for horror and all things creepy are anime, manga, video games, history and art. More recently I have even gotten into reading about death and watching paranormal investigation and watching true crime documentaries. To sum it up, the darker, creepier and more disturbing, the better.

I’ve come to realise that horror doesn’t really scare me. Sure, jump scares in gameplays make me jump but they don’t scare me. Jump scares are usually just a cheap tactic in order to provoke the person into reacting. I’ve never been the type to have nightmares induced from fictional stories. I think my logical and realist brain have always just put a stop to that because I know it’s simply fiction and fiction cannot get me. Monsters, vampires, zombies, absolutely no fictional monster can really frighten me. I’ve been told many a time that I watch far more disturbing content in anime and manga than my parents do with live action TV and film. I don’t really see it that way though. I usually give the argument of ‘well, its animation so its fine, right? Whats the problem?’.

Over the years I have purposefully seeked out creepy content in order to provoke some reaction from myself. I’ve come to realise that with most of the horror or dark and disturbing content I have laid my eyes upon do absolutely nothing to me. It’s usually ‘ooooooh that’s creepy….cool’ but not a lot gets past that. My parents are always so confused how I can be so unaffected by the anime and manga I consume but I’ll freak out and leave the room at a rated fifteen action movie. I don’t really understand it myself honestly but all I can say is that the typical horror genre doesn’t really strike fear into my heart. Even the haunting work of Junji Ito doesn’t really creepy me out or scare me. If anything I’m fascinated by his intricate work and drool over his artistic skills.

Instead, I think after all these years I have finally figured out what really scares me, ideas or situations which are actually real or at least have the possibility of being real. Besides my blood phobia which I have zero control over I have figured out that the most terrifying thing to me be far are natural disasters. Yep, that’s right natural disasters people. And spiders, those little eight legged creatures send me ducking for cover when I see one in my house. Anyway, back to natural disasters. I think this fear stems from a film I watched at the age of twelve. One day in science class we watched a film titled ‘The Flood’. The film was about this insane flood which takes over the U.K and I’m not really sure what the reason was for watching it in the first place. We watched about half of it in class and I’m not lying when I say that this film traumatised me. I remember going to bed that night wondering if I might drown because of a flood like that happening in real life. I’ve noticed since then that any natural disaster type films actually terrify me far more than anything else. I cannot physically watch a natural disaster movie because the fact that it’s far more realistic than any slasher or paranormal film would be. I think any kind of concept of the world I know coming to an end and I’m plunged into a nightmare of natural disasters just scares me. Ironic though how I was in the middle of a typhoon in Osaka and I didn’t freak out about it. Maybe because I knew it was bad but, not end of the world bad like they show in movies where everyones lives are tipped upside down.

To summarise, I love horror as a genre, especially in anime and manga. I crave being creeped out, freaked out and getting goosebumps. Most made up fiction doesn’t freak me out and barely leaves a dent in my imagination. I consume the content and move on to the next thing without any real impact. The realist in me finds reality far more terrifying than anything else. I supposed I’m contradicting myself when I saw I love horror but refuse to watch content that genuinely scares the crap out of me. My only explanation for that is I want to be creeped out and scared but not in a way that will give me anxiety about it becoming a possibility or make me physically pass out. I have such a weird relationship with this genre. I’m not sure what the point of this post really is. It’s Halloween season so I just really wanted to talk about my odd love of all things creepy. I hope this essay made some sense and wasn’t just one long word vomit. What things scares you guys? I’d love to hear if horror anime and manga really frightens you guys or not in the comments below!

Until next time thanks for reading and I hope you’re having a great day!

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