Secrets Of Horror

Secrets of Horror
By – Robert Goldsborough

      Writing horror isn’t about giving away secrets.  It’s not about becoming educated in the way of things we don’t understand.  There are supposed to be horrors in the dark that we can’t see.  We’re not supposed to see them.  We shouldn’t be able to come to grips with that hand on our shoulder before it strangles us.  We shouldn’t be able to stare into the gaping maw of destruction and live to tell about it; but somebody has to.  Without the survivor who is left to tell the tale, to warn us of what is about to come.  Therefore the story is not about the horror, but rather about how someone has dealt with the horror and informs us about it.  We analyze how we would have handled our own selves and what we would have done different.  The story makes us contemplate our own mortality and changes how we stare into the unknown.  We gain fear.  We touch that ancient emotion that has helped our survival since the beginning.  Fear reminds us why some turn to gods, to all-knowing science, or just a blind eye.  Horror reminds us that we all die.  We must all become something we fear.  We must all become that secret in the dark.  There are no secrets to horror.