Please welcome today’s guest writer, Henry Rittler. Henry graduated from Calvin University in 2022 with a double major in creative writing and Asian studies. He currently lives in Grand Rapids with his roommates and their two cats Taki and Maki. So far Henry has been trying his hand at a night shift job, doing his best to not turn into a ghoul, and seeing wherever he can get his writing published. He also has aspirations to be a freelance translator in Japanese and Chinese. He enjoys all things horror/sci-fi/fantasy, learning languages and insect photography. 

Horror is always linked to what came before it—the gothic lair of Dracula had to have Tepes before Brahm thought him up. Ghosts are the more literal interpretation of that: those who are gone that we cannot bring into the future, a past that leaves them chained to a place or person. Even the more modern slasher comes from reports, conversations, survivors, and just like the numerous franchises, they never die. The past is never forgotten, therefore it never dies.

Horror has always been a space that I crawl back to, something that not only provides thrills of dread and cool monsters but has nestled its way into my life one way or another. Growing up it was the fascination with Goosebumps (the books and the series that I wasn’t allowed to watch), the way I got jumpscared with Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, and Courage the Cowardly Dog.

There’s always been something magnetic to it, the way that it calls back to the audience for one more scare. The genre relies upon both the familiar and unexpected, how the danger lurks in the small towns we grew up in. A large part of this I believe stems from the comfort that horror brings—it’s easy to go back to the past, to reach back even if that thing might be frightening.

It’s easy to latch on to horror when you’re young: those mysterious feelings when you walked down the hallway at night; the stories that were outlandish but still you checked twice to make sure they weren’t true; the faces you saw in the mirror or the voices that came from the radiator’s ghost. Even now, given a good enough movie or talk about such things, a sickening vibe pounds in my head when I have to go in the dark.

Fear, horror, terror, whatever you call it, lives on through this twisted nostalgia. The roots dig deep from our own lives, and from this live on from year to year.

2 Comments

  1. B

    “Brahm”?
    It’s “Bram”.

    Reply
    • henry

      oh shoot! thank you for catching that, my mistake

      Reply

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