'Cause, like, we all got costumes already, and- oh, we can! Cool. Okay.

["Penguin Cap" by CarboHydroM]

We desire a rational world.

A world where things make sense,

where even the most horrible events jive with our understanding of reality.

If we have that, we can maintain some sense of control,

some rational framework for what's going on around us, some hope.

But in the world of horror, that very desire is turned against us.

Horror turns against us our most powerful tool,

the tool with which we have tamed the world,

with which we've made a dark and scary place very comfortable to live in in the last 200 years,

our reason.

Horror presents us with the extraordinary, with things beyond reason,

things that a thousand years ago we might have called demons or spirits.

But today, our great strength, our reason,

our belief in a rational world, causes a very different reaction,

one which the best horror writers and designers play on to

the fullest. Because today, instead, the

extraordinary fills us with self-doubt.

How many times have you seen or played a

character who witnesses the horrific, who

witnesses a monster, or an apparition, or

a shade, and shakes their head, doesn't

believe what they've just seen? They'll

say, "Oh, it must have been the Sun, or

maybe a distorted reflection off of the

water, or just some kids dressing up

pulling a prank." Dismissing the horror

when they could be preparing for it. Go

back and watch your favorite horror

movies, or play your favorite horror

games, and think how differently the

whole story would have gone if, instead

of throwing out their first encounter

with horror as a mere illusion, the

protagonist took it at face value and

began to figure out how to thwart it. So

many of these stories would have turned

out much better for the protagonists, but

that's not the root of why this is so

important for horror.

Yes, playing on our dismissal, on our

sense of a rational world is essential

to holding many of these plots together,

and it's an excellent plot device, but

horror is about feel as much as it is

about plot, and the best horror creators

use this conflict with our understanding

of the world, this conflict with the

rational, to build the feeling of horror

as much as they do to shore up their

stories, for the most fundamental belief

we have is the belief in our

perceptions.

A hundred million years of evolution

cause us to trust them. We may know

they're flawed, we may know that they

have weaknesses and offer us the

occasional error, but they're the system

by which we judge reality. They are the

system by which we differentiate the

sane from the insane. When confronted

with things so wholly beyond our

comprehension, so grotesque or impossible,

so antithetical to how we believe the

world is supposed to work that we can't

rationalize them, we start to question

our own senses.

"Was I dreaming?" "It must have been a

hallucination." "Just a trick of the mind

created by fatigue."

These are the sorts of things that

you'll hear our horror protagonists say

to rationalize what they're experiencing.

Then comes the breakdown, where what

they're facing is too insane and they

can't trust their senses, where they're

faced with the panic of not knowing

what's real and what's some mad delusion,

and they can't escape this feeling

because, like us, like the very audience

they're playing to, they've been trained

to believe in a rational world, and so, to

these characters, "I am insane" is an

easier answer than, "The world is insane",

or to put it another way, they are more

ready to believe that they themselves

are going mad than to believe that the

world is radically different than what

we understand it to be, and the panic

this causes is real, because they're

perfectly rational, but think they're

going insane.

They're trapped in this rational box,

having all of the faculties, all of the

ability of analysis and reason that

they've always had, but they're watching

themselves, as they think it, going insane

and they can't do anything about it.

Unlike the madman who, in most stories,

believes his fantasies are realities and,

thus, doesn't see his own insanity, the

characters in horror are acutely aware.

They know they're going mad. They are

forced to feel that descent, to feel the

rest of the world judging them, making

assumptions about them, because they

aren't actually going mad, but even they

don't believe it.

That is the greatest horror trick with

our belief in a rational world, to use it

to have us doubt ourselves, to isolate

our character from the rest of the world,

to disempower them by making them doubt

their sanity, and to disassociate them

from their friends, because the moment

where the character finally faces the

possibility that what they're seeing and

experiencing is real, the moment where

they have to ask themselves, "Do I hope

I'm going mad?"

because the alternative is worse. That is

the quintessence of horror.

So next time you're playing a horror

game, or watching a horror movie, check.

See if you see the characters ever

doubting their perceptions, see if, rather

than immediately springing to action

against whatever horrible things entered

their world, they instead withdraw into

disbelief, unable to square what they've

seen with the reality they know, see if

this slowly build into the fear of the

descent into madness, or, instead, forces

us to face the true dread of confronting

a world that isn't as known as we would

like to think of it,

see if this makes others doubt the

character, pulls them away from the

people that could help them be it friends

or authorities like the police, and see

if, in the end, this rational world that

is our greatest strength, that we truly

believe, and that we think we know comes

to be one of the character's greatest

weaknesses. I hope you all enjoyed your

All Hallows, and, don't worry, that

probably wasn't really a monster you saw.

See you next week! Probably...

["Spooktune (Chiptune Remix)" by LemonDrop]