What I learned about writing – Horror stories

From Gothic Gloom to Psychological Dread: The Evolving Art of Horror

The chill that creeps up your spine when you read a truly terrifying tale. It’s a sensation as old as storytelling itself, yet it continues to evolve, morphing and adapting to the anxieties and imaginations of each new era. When we look back at the foundational figures of literary horror, like Edgar Allan Poe and Mary Shelley, we marvel at the sheer ingenuity of their creations. But understanding how they conjured such potent nightmares is key to appreciating the genre’s enduring power, and how authors like William Peter Blatty and Stephen King have, in turn, reshaped its landscape.

The Seeds of Terror: Poe and Shelley’s Gothic Visions

When Edgar Allan Poe penned tales of premature burial, haunted houses, and descent into madness, he tapped into a deep well of human fears. His horror wasn’t always about external monsters; it often lurked within the human psyche. Poe, a master of atmosphere and psychological introspection, drew inspiration from:

The Grim Realities of His Time: Poe lived through periods of significant social upheaval and personal tragedy. His own experiences with loss, poverty, and mental illness undoubtedly fueled his explorations of the darker aspects of the human condition.
Gothic Literary Traditions: He inherited a rich tradition of Gothic literature, with its crumbling castles, spectral apparitions, and brooding protagonists. Poe took these tropes and infused them with a more visceral, psychological intensity.
Scientific and Philosophical Debates: The burgeoning interest in science, death, and the nature of consciousness during his era likely played a role. He explored the fragility of the mind and the terrifying unknown that lay beyond the veil of sanity.

Similarly, Mary Shelley’s creation of Frankenstein wasn’t born in a vacuum. Her “modern Prometheus” was a product of:

Intellectual Circles and Revolutionary Ideas: Shelley was surrounded by Romantic poets and thinkers who debated the ethics of scientific advancement and the very essence of life. The scientific experiments of the time, aiming to understand and even replicate life, provided a fertile ground for her imagination.
Personal Loss and the Fear of the Unnatural: Shelley experienced profound grief with the loss of her mother and later her own children. This personal experience of death and the potential for “unnatural” creation likely fueled her exploration of a being brought to life through artificial means and the subsequent tragedy that ensued.
The Power of Myth and the Sublime: The idea of creating life, of playing God, is an ancient human fascination. Shelley tapped into this, blending it with the Romantic fascination for the sublime – the awe-inspiring, yet terrifying, power of nature and human endeavour.

Both Poe and Shelley, in their distinct ways, explored the anxieties of their times, the fragility of the human mind and body, and the intoxicating, often dangerous, allure of the unknown. Their horror was deeply rooted in the human experience, albeit amplified and distorted for terrifying effect.

The Evolution of Fear: Blatty and King’s Transformative Impact

Fast forward to the latter half of the 20th century, and the landscape of horror had broadened considerably. Authors like William Peter Blatty and Stephen King didn’t just build upon the foundations of their predecessors; they fundamentally altered the architecture of terror.

William Peter Blatty and the Resurgence of Supernatural Dread:

Blatty’s The Exorcist was a seismic event in horror. While supernatural threats existed before, Blatty’s novel brought a visceral, intensely religious horror to the forefront. His genius lay in:

Grounding the Supernatural in the Real: He took a seemingly ordinary family and an everyday setting and plunged them into extraordinary, terrifying events. This made the horror feel all the more potent because it could, theoretically, happen to anyone.
Exploring Faith and Doubt: The Exorcist delved into the battle between good and evil, faith and disbelief, and the terrifying possibility that malevolent forces could possess and corrupt even the innocent. This psychological and spiritual dimension resonated deeply with audiences.
Unflinching Realism in the Face of the Unexplained: Despite the supernatural elements, Blatty presented the demonic possession with a horrifyingly realistic depiction of physical and psychological torment, blurring the lines between the tangible and the infernal.

Stephen King: The Master of Modern Anxiety:

Stephen King, arguably the most prolific and influential horror writer of our time, has transformed the genre by making the mundane terrifying and by tapping into the collective anxieties of modern life. His impact is multifaceted:

Relatable Characters and Settings: King excels at creating ordinary people in extraordinary, often horrifying, circumstances. His characters are flawed, relatable, and deeply human, making their struggles against the forces of evil all the more compelling. His settings often feel familiar – small towns, suburban houses – making the intrusion of horror feel all the more shocking.
The Breadth of Horror: King’s monsters aren’t confined to ghosts or demons. He explores cosmic horrors (like in It), technological terrors, the monstrousness of human nature, and the psychological horrors of addiction, grief, and trauma. He’s a chameleon, masterfully adapting to and defining various subgenres of horror.
The Power of Childhood Fears: Many of King’s most iconic stories tap into the primal fears of childhood – the monster under the bed, the lurking stranger, the loss of innocence. He understands that these early anxieties can linger and become even more potent in adulthood.
Social Commentary Woven into Terror: King often uses his horror narratives to explore social issues and contemporary anxieties, from racism and prejudice in The Outsider to the emptiness of consumer culture in The Long Walk. His stories are often a reflection of the world around us, amplified to terrifying proportions.

The Throughline of Fear:

What connects Poe and Shelley to Blatty and King? It’s the fundamental human capacity for fear, coupled with the author’s ability to tap into our deepest anxieties, whether they are existential dread, the fear of the unknown, the fragility of sanity, or the encroaching darkness in the seemingly ordinary.

Poe gave us the internal descent into madness. Shelley showed us the terrifying consequences of unchecked ambition and the “unnatural.” Blatty brought the battle between good and evil into our homes and churches. And King, in his vast and varied career, has made us question the safety of our neighborhoods, the demons within ourselves, and the terrifying possibilities that lurk just a page away.

The art of horror is a constantly evolving beast. It adapts, it transforms, and it continues to enthral us by reminding us, in the most exhilarating and terrifying ways, of our own vulnerabilities and the vast, mysterious darkness that surrounds us. And for that, we owe a deep debt.

365 Days of writing, 2026 – 146

Day 146 – Writing exercise

After what happened, he knew that his first day at the post office was also going to be his last.

…

Of course, it depended on what your version of a post office was.

To most, it was a place where one went to buy stamps and put mail into collection boxes, and where letters and parcels arriving there were sorted and delivered.

To a select group of people, charged with protecting the country and its people from foreign intervention, a post office was something completely different.

It was a post where a selective group of experts worked, a team of operatives, their handler, the researchers, the briefer, the supply chain.

Those posts were called post offices and their employees were postal workers.

We had post offices all over the world, though it would be true to say that when overseas, they were part of the embassy or consulate.

We coexisted with other services, those more well-known and had a much higher profile.

It was the perfect cover, because anyone clever enough to hack into the post office computer servers would find we were all simply ordinary people.

Who did extraordinary things.

Sometimes.

….

As the officer at the training establishment said when we were given a departing lecture before getting our first assignments, we put the secret into a secret agent.

Most of us thought that was amusing, being only ten out of the two hundred that applied. I had only applied as a joke, after spending two years roaming Europe after graduating from University.

I didn’t want to become a lawyer, and had fought the family tradition as long as I’d could until succumbing to pressure. Like father, like son, like his father before him.

It was more about power and wealth, two things I was not interested in. Call it rebellion, but unlike my brothers and sisters, I did not like the life that it afforded us. Perhaps once, but once you mingle with the less fortunate, you get to see the world as it really is.

It was something my gather couldn’t understand.

So, according to my parents, I went off the rails. I became the black sheep, the one everyone has; the others turned out just fine, thank you.

I saw them once before I finally disappeared, when they were in Paris at the apartment that my paternal grandmother had bequeathed to my father.

She had died the week before, and I made the effort to go to her funeral. She had understood my disdain, though she did not understand why I stayed away.

I meant to stay out of sight, but my sister, Eileen, had seen me standing back from the others and came over, at first not recognising me.

She was not as bad as my brothers, had her moments of both acquiescence and rebellion, but had settled down to follow tradition.

I had expressed disappointment and our last words were harsh.

I watched her come over, trying to figure out who would turn up at a funeral and not want to be seen.

It was cold, but it was not why a shiver went down my spine. Fear? Maybe, but I just saw my father, and that brought back a far worse memory.

“Do I know you?” She asked.

“Does it matter?”

Then her expression changed. Recognition. We could change our appearance, sometimes radically, but not our eyes or voices. Especially in a moment where we forget we’re playing a role.

“Gerry?”

I sighed. “Don’t tell the rest of them I was here. They wouldn’t understand.”

“And i would?” There was a touch of anger in her tone, not surprising. “Where have you been?”

“Bumming around Europe. You know, I sent postcards.”

To her, no one else. Whether she kept them or tossed them in the bin was of no consequence.

“Yes. When you felt like it. Are you coming home?”

“No.”

“You going to see the others?”

The thought had crossed my mind until I remembered the last argument with both my parents. I had expected some support from my mother, but she just agreed with my father. It was the deciding factor in leaving.

“No. I got sick of the same old arguments. Dad cut me off, so I learned to fly on my own. It’s a whole different world out there.”

“You’d cut your nose off to spite your face, Gerry. You finished your law degree, then wasted it.”

That was my father speaking. She had a mind of her own. Once. Now she had folded perfectly into the family mould.

“Law is boring. Working for my father would be even more so. We both know his attentions are firmly focused on the prodigal son, James. The rest are just pawns to be manipulated.”

“It doesn’t have to be that way.”

I shook my head. She would, like the others, never understand.

“So what are you going to do?”

“Diplomacy with the state department.” It was the go-to explanation of our lives to anyone we used to know. “I get my first posting in a few days. It’ll probably be somewhere in Africa, knowing my luck.”

She looked me up and down, and I suspect she didn’t believe a word I was telling her. She was the only one who could tell when I was lying, though I was a lot better at it now than back then.

“So, this is it, and you’re off again.”

“I’m the black sheep, Sis. The stain on the family name. I think I have reached Uncle Harry’s level of infamy.”

“So that’s what Dad was going on about. The one in every generation. Wow. Despite the fact you’re nothing like him.” Then she rounded on me. “Unless you are. What’s really going on with you?”

I could imagine my father filling her head with nonsense.

“I simply chose a different vocation. See the world, help solve crises before they become crises, not help criminals get away with murder. I’m sorry if I have a conscience, and it doesn’t suit family values. I think I’ve seen and heard enough, Eileen. Tell them you saw me or not, I don’t care.”

It was foolish of me to think they might have changed. They had not. If anything, my father had succeeded in turning my siblings against me, and if that was the case, so be it.

It made it easy for me to just walk away and never see them again.

…

I was sent to Rome for my first posting. In the briefing with the assignments officer, I was told that the handler, Jacob Weissman, was old school, a man who had a particular way of doing things, and he expected obedience. He was also in the last year before retirement.

It was also the office with the highest turnover of agents. The incentive to go there was that if I lasted the distance, I would be considered for a leadership role.

It wasn’t particularly high on my list of priorities; I was more interested in getting experience in the field first, and that generally took five years at least. If you survived.

I flew to Rome on a Wednesday and was due in the office on Thursday. I’d been to Italy and Rome before, post graduation and didn’t like it, instead staying in Florence, and getting lost in the ancient history.

The Rome post office was in a back street, cobbled roadway and ancient bricks, making the inside very cool compared to the heat outside.

There was a man in a suit sitting at a desk with a computer and, no doubt, a gun ready to shoot anyone who looked like trouble.

I gave him my letter of introduction, which was specially coded and verified by fingerprint.

He gave me a temporary pass that got me into the main office, where I was met by the administrative officer and taken to the situation room. There, the panel was waiting.

Jacob Weissman, handler and Head of Station.

Rebecca Abernathy, Administrative Officer.

Julie Grassmier, Operations Manager.

Bethany Myers and Jack Blumenthal, the research team.

Five on one side of the table and me on the other, just like my university admissions interview. Not a welcoming smile among them. I had expected one or more agents to be in attendance.

Jacob opened the file he had in front of him. It was thin, with plenty of room for additions. It held the documents from the training camp.

“Gerald Walker. Any relation to the Pittsburgh Walkers?”

There would be nothing about any relation to anyone in the file. The interview at the training camp made the same association, which I denied. Different branch, distant relatives, we didn’t associate with them for obvious reasons

“We have the same surname.”

“Not the answer to the question I asked.”

I could see that Jacob and I were not going to get along.

“No. No relation.”

I looked at the five faces in front of me, and not one was friendly. I could see why there was such a large turnaround of agents, and how easy it could be that the first day could be the last.

Jacob looked especially unwelcoming.

“We do things differently. We do not usually take new recruits out of the Academy, but we’re a man down and apparently you’re it. We do not like mavericks or loners. You will proceed to the brief.”

“As you wish. What about liaising with the local authorities?’

“If you come in contact with them, which you should assiduously avoid at all costs, then you will come to me, and I will handle it.”

“Do they know about us?”

“They do nothing unless it is necessary. You are expected not to put yourself in their way. They take a very dim view of us working on their patch, so discretion is necessary.”

“Is there an assignment?”

“One is in development. Get acquainted with Rome while you can.”

The folder closed, the interview, introduction, whatever it was, was over. My only impression from it, Jacob was a micro-manager, and it was going to be impossible to work with.

…

From what I remember of my last visit to Rome, it had a lot of ancient sites, and we had made a point of visiting most of them.

It was a period when my sister had decided she was going to study archaeology and that her father would be happy to sponsor a dig somewhere in Egypt or Italy, preferably near the Mediterranean, so she could stay on a yacht.

Her father wasn’t particularly pleased, humoured her and like everything she did, it lasted a month or two; then he declared it boring and moved on.

She still stayed on the yacht for a few weeks with her suitably impressed friends.

I wasn’t that interested then, but this time I bought a guidebook and decided to go full on tourist.

That first day I visited the Colosseum and tried to imagine what it was like back in the days of ancient Rome and the people who had graced the seats looking down on the carnage that was supposed to be ‘games’.

Like throwing Christians to the lions.

Like Gladiators fighting to the death.

Like accidentally noticing a particular woman who was following me, or perhaps it was my overactive imagination.

It felt like the home team were putting me through a few exercises to see if they hadn’t made a mistake putting me in the field.

So the watcher became the watched.

I considered the odds of anyone even knowing that I was in Rime, and if they did, why I was there. Unless it was mandatory for all staff passing through the embassy. An exercise to keep us on our toes.

I saw her five times, one actually looking in my direction. She did not appear to be with anyone else, but good surveillance required more than one person and preferably a four-man rotating squad.

I moved to the city ruins not far from the Colosseum, and it appeared she had not followed me.

The next day, I visited the Trevi Fountain, and while sitting back having a cup of coffee, I found her, trying a different disguise but nonetheless easily identified to the trained eye.

She was definitely following me around.

Having planned to visit and got a ticket for the Parthenon, I took my time before heading to it in an annoyingly slow stroll that made it difficult for surveillance.

Once outside, I waited for my moment, dodged her and went inside. As soon as she couldn’t see me, I knew she’d follow me in.

Inside, there was nowhere to hide, so I took up a posting by some columns not far from the entrance. Of course, my interest was not entirely taken up with the surveillance team; right now, it was in the large concrete dome that had been standing for a very long time.

Certainly a lot longer than our man-made structures.

I watched her do a circuit of the main hall and end up standing next to me. Was it a deliberate move to unsettle me, or something else?

She knew that I knew she was following me.

That meant, as far as I could tell, she was one of the Italian police forces, the plain clothes suggesting a branch of the Carabinieri.

She looked sideways at me and had a half smile. “You are a very interesting man, Gerard Walker.”

I shrugged. It was a bit late to play the confused or apprehensive tourist card. “You have me at a disadvantage.”

“As it should be. Your handler, for want of a better description, knows the rules and yet he continually breaks them. That would indicate he has not told you the ground rules for operating in this country.”

“Probably not, but I have specific instructions from the people back home, which I’m sure you are aware of, of which I promised to observe “

The smile widened. “Words, Gerald Walker, words you believe I, and my superiors want to hear. Your predecessors went down the same path, and they did not fare well.” She handed me a card. “Before you launch World War Three, give me a call, and time, day or night. You will find that cooperation with the appropriate authorities will make life for you much simpler and safer. My compatriots sometimes shoot first, then ask questions. Have a nice tour.”

“You should be my guide “

“I have criminals to catch and watch over errant spies. Never a free moment.” She sighed, then left.

To be honest, for a moment, I believed she was trouble, whether working for Italian law enforcement or not.

How could she possibly know I was in the city and what I would be doing there, unless…

Someone in the embassy told her.

Or she had more on the inside, reporting everything. If it was, my money was on Jacob, trying to boost his retirement fund before leaving.

Working with local authorities was always part of the transparency catchphrase people like you think was a manageable option, but it wasn’t. There were things that no one needed to know beyond the objective being achieved. The how was almost always by any and all means available.

Using the phrase kill or be killed always seemed unpalatable, and no one, if they were not personally faced with a life or death situation, would ever understand. I hadn’t yet, but the point was, until you are, taking a life was never a good idea.

It was described to us as the worst-case scenario.

Another was having your cover blown

Effectively, the moment she approached me, my usefulness was over. Clandestine operations only worked if you remained clandestine. That she and her whole department knew meant I should report it and ask for reassignment.

I had to consider that it was Jacob’s intent all along, not only for me but also for others in his group. The question to ask was why?

…

I doubt officers back in the training establishment ever expected to hear from their graduates again, unless sent back to hone their skills or learn new skills and techniques.

I was determined to break that mould. The problem I had was being caught out before I started. I was not sure that had happened before, or if it had, whether it was significant, or a stain on my record.

I called a number for emergencies only.

And left a message. Typically, there was no one on the other end. After an hour had passed, I believed that no one really cared, that this was a test, and I was failing miserably.

Two hours later, my cell phone rang. I was sitting in a park watching the rest of the work
I’d been getting on with their lives, and I was beginning to believe this was not what I expected or wanted.

What had happened to the other candidates before me who had found themselves in a sticky situation?

I answered with a noncommittal, “Yes?” As per protocol.

“Your mission, in case you haven’t worked it out by this time, is to find who it is that is betraying our agents to the local authorities.”

“That wasn’t explicitly expressed.”

“You have to read between the lines. If you hadn’t come to a similar conclusion, you would not have called. We have lost three agents in the last 12 months. Find them.”

“The leak is not at your end?”

“No. Handle it any way you see fit, but it stops now. Understood?”

“Understood.”

I felt rather than saw a person sit on the other end of the bench, odd, because there were several free nearby.

A glance took in the woman who had accosted me earlier.

“No criminals to be chasing down?”

“Only errant spies. I believe you made a call.”

I tried not to look shocked, but I was not that clever yet.

“How…”

“I’m paid to know everything, yet surprisingly often still left in the dark. My superiors must thing is need to know, and I need to know. You and I, I’m told, are about to become good friends. We are seeking the same person.”

“Who are you?”

She smiled. “I believe I am what you might call the Cheshire Cat. She looked over at another bench where a man was sitting.

He wore a trenchcoat, smoking a pipe and reading, or pretending to read, a newspaper.

“Go over to the conspicuous man on that bench, and he will verify who I am, and give the code word your masters gave you back home. I’ll wait.”

This was like a bad 1960s spy movie.

I shrugged. It was either going to be an interesting assignment, or my life was over before it started. Either way, at least I got to see the Ancient Roman Ruins.

…

First Dig Two Graves

A sequel to “The Devil You Don’t”

…

Revenge is a dish best served cold – or preferably so when everything goes right

Of course, it rarely does, as Alistair, Zoe’s handler, discovers to his peril. Enter a wildcard, John, and whatever Alistair’s plan for dealing with Zoe was dies with him.

It leaves Zoe in completely unfamiliar territory.

…

John’s idyllic romance with a woman who is utterly out of his comfort zone is on borrowed time. She is still trying to reconcile her ambivalence after being so indifferent for so long.

They agree to take a break, during which she disappears. John, thinking she has left without saying goodbye, refuses to accept the inevitable and calls on an old friend for help in finding her.

After the mayhem and being briefly reunited, she recognises an inevitable truth: there is a price to pay for taking out Alistair; she must leave and find them first, and he would be wise to keep a low profile.

But keeping a low profile just isn’t possible, and enlisting another friend, a private detective and his sister, a deft computer hacker, they track her to the border between Austria and Hungary.

What John doesn’t realise is that another enemy is tracking him to find her too. It could have been a grand tour of Europe. Instead, it becomes a race against time before enemies old and new converge for what will be an inevitable showdown.