What Is Horror Fiction?

What is horror? The answer is more complicated than you’d think. Some horror fans believe that a story must have a supernatural element to be called horror. Is The Silence of the Lambs by Robert Harris a thriller novel or a horror novel? Or psychological horror? Could it be all of the above?

Affiliate Link Note: The links in this article may include affiliate links for books, movies, and TV shows at Amazon. If you purchase something on Amazon after clicking one of these links, I’ll earn a small percentage of the purchase from a qualifying purchase. Other links will include links to blogs, official other pages, reviews, and so forth. For example, in some cases, I’ve enclosed links so that you can read a book for free on Project Gutenberg instead.

Most fans define horror as something that was created to scare or unnerve you. It’s one of those “I know it when I see it” things. It’s not a setting. In other words, the story doesn’t have to be set in an old house with drapes that move when there’s no breeze. Although that works, too. Jane Austen herself even parodied the classic Gothic setting in Northanger Abbey. (You can read the book for free at the enclosed link, courtesty of Project Gutenberg.)

Illustration from Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey, a parody of Gothic fiction. (Source: Wikipedia; public domain.)

Horror can be set in a trailer park. In a modern-day condo. In a brownstone in New York City. In a small town in Maine. In a factory. Or even in space. A story can be a…