Bright-eyed and Bushy tailed

My name is Jack.

I wasn't always interested in Horror, in fact for a good majority of my life I hated it.  My older brother had often tormented me when I was younger.  It was his undertaking, and he was ordained by some higher being as the harbinger of terror. How? Usually by jumping out of the shadows when I had least surmised, occasionally wearing a mask.  I know, pitiful, but I was just a kid.  The worst things in life sneak up on you.

However, over the last few years, I have ascertained a new-found fascination with the prospect of what terrifies us humans, specifically in literature.  Why literature?  I feel it's easy to make cheap scares using video or audio.  Not to say that all audio-visual horror is cheap jumpscares, they're not.  But one can understand that using video or audio puts the spectator in the world that is created for them, it facilitates the illusion of a threat far more easily.  Whereas through solely the use of words, the author must depend upon the reader to follow the words, and have the imagination and underlying alacrity to conjure up their own worst nightmare.  The reader is the sole architect of their own fear; the author is merely providing a suggested design.  As opposed to my brother, I find the jumpscare tactic to be Neanderthalic and shortsighted, providing the antagonist only a brief euphoria and fleeting satisfaction.  Increasingly diminishing return upon each reenactment.  Furthermore, the victim is merely scared for a second and left with feelings of embarrassment or shame.  That is not valuable fear.

As I see it, anyway.

However, I do not wish to argue what the best kind of Horror is, I simply want to clarify that what I am specifically attempting to study here is psychological Horror via literature, the means of writing a sentence and letting the reader fill in the blanks.  I am simply an amateur Horror enthusiast, so I will take my time studying different works of literature and will gladly take recommendations that any readers may make.

I have decided to start off with a book I have been anticipating reading for ages, Mark Z. Danielewski's House of Leaves.  It has been recommended to me by many friends, coworkers, and even just by hearsay from fellow listeners of Poe, Mr Danielewski's sister.

During the ensuing weeks, I will catalog the components and devices used throughout House of Leaves that very efficiently instill a feeling of dread (in me), and those that do not.

To my dearest readers, please do feel free to comment and offer opinions, as I am fond of conversing with individuals with ideas that contradict my own.

Welcome, my dear readers, to my Dark Society.