Books are frightening in a whole different way that movies, because your imagination has no boundaries. With movies, once you see the “horror” manifested on screen, the mind tends to deflect the horror by trying to figure out how the special effects actually worked and wondering if they really used colored corn syrup for the blood. In addition, you can always look away from the horror on the screen.
But books…books make your imagination work overtime, taking the author’s words and twisting it into your personalized nightmare, images so horrifying that they may stay with you long after you’ve closed the book and [amazon-product align=”left;”]B004TPFNVI[/amazon-product]moved on with your real life.
And when/if you see the movie, that same scene is nothing like you imagined. In fact, seeing the director’s interpretation of the scene may take all the “scare” out of it.
One of the scariest stories that I’ve ever read, and for some reason, they allowed us to read this horror in high school was “The Cask of Amontillado” by Edgar Allen Poe. Even thinking about it gives me the shivers. I won’t go into details, but it is a tale of revenge.
It is free on Amazon.
D
Hey Dahlia. Yeah. Very few movies scare me, but a good horror novel, Misery and Thinner linger and I read those back in high school.
Great post.