Horror and Location

When I was at that annoying, insecure phase of life, also known as teenage, I asked my mum if I could go on a hike with my friends. She told me no because that place is keras, which directly translates as ‘hard’. It doesn’t quite mean haunted, more like… concentrated. It’s a place that attracts ‘bad things’ (feel free to think of ghosts and monsters or any other supernatural forces) or is full them. I didn’t buy into my mother’s superstitions, but I was still creeped out. In the end, I was glad I didn’t go – why risk it?

            Setting plays a big role in Horror. Cemeteries, haunted houses and abandoned hospitals are a few stereotypical ones that come to mind. But why are they so scary? What makes these settings effective is the uncanny¹ – what is normally safe and familiar, such as a house (home) or a hospital (where we go when we are hurt) becomes unfamiliar. The sense that there is something wrong with those places that should be safe disturbs us on a deep level. Cemeteries are eerie because what would normally be an innocent park, filled with nature, has a bunch of dead people six feet under.

            Jan Kozlowski agrees with the idea of the uncanny: she states that Stephen King got her into Horror, as opposed to writers such as Lovecraft or Poe, because his Horror doesn’t happen “in creepy Transylvanian castles or in far-off alien worlds. [They] happened to people just like [her].”² More importantly, they happen in places she recognises, or is familiar with. According to Lisa Morton, good Horror fiction that “disturbs or frightens the reader” must have a good “overall atmosphere” and “choosing a setting is one of the best ways to provide a mood underlying the whole piece.”³

            A modern example of using the uncanny in terms of setting is the 2001 Korean Horror film Sorum.⁴ Nicki J. Y. Lee states that the apartment building in Sorum – the main setting of the film – is correlated to the “social connotations of apartments in the Korean context.”⁵ Urban development brought a ton of apartment buildings to Seoul, and became a symbol for the wealthy middle class. But the apartment in the film is an old, decrepit building, occupied by poorer working class citizens – instead of a symbol of wealth, comfort and luxury, it became “a space where the greediness and angst of people and their desire for survival and recognition come to a terrifying end.”⁶

The setting doesn’t have to be limited to the places that are familiar to us, however. Mark Sebanc states that “a special, oftentimes sinister, significance is attributed to the in-between places.”⁷ For example, “Roundabout”⁸ by Muriel Gray is set in – surprise, surprise – a roundabout. This is an in-between place: we go there only to go somewhere else. Setting is also a good way to force the isolation of characters. Abandonment or being alone is one of Christine Conradt’s eleven tenets of fear: “Finding yourself having to face something awful alone is even more horrifying than facing it with someone else.”⁹ In “Shepherds' Business”, the setting is an island where everyone lives far away from each other.¹⁰

To this day, I am still respectful in uncivilised places, where nature roams free and powerful. Especially anywhere that has banana trees, which are scary because that is where pontianaks reside (yes I am still scared). No littering, or pissing on the ground, or being loud and rude. I don’t believe in these superstitions but honestly – why risk it?

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1 Sigmund Freud, “The Uncanny”, in Art and Literature, Vol. 4, Sigmund Freud (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1990).^↩
2 Jan Kozlowski, “Bringing Horror Home”, in Now Write! Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror: Speculative Genre Exercises from Today’s Best Writers and Teachers, ed. Laurie Lamson (New York: Jeremy P. Tarcher/Penguin, 2014), 141.^↩
3 Lisa Morton, “The Setting in Horror”, in Now Write! Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror: Speculative Genre Exercises from Today’s Best Writers and Teachers, ed. Laurie Lamson (New York: Jeremy P. Tarcher/Penguin, 2014), 137.^↩
4 Sorum, directed by Yoon Jong-chan, Buena Vista International, 2001, Feature film.^↩
5 Nicki J. Y. Lee, “Apartment Horror: Sorum and Possessed”, in Korean Horror Cinema (Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press, 2013), 106, accessed 1 March 2019, available at https://www-jstor-org.winchester.idm.oclc.org/stable/10.3366/j.ctt1g0b1sf.13 ^↩
6 Lee, “Apartment Horror”, 106.^↩
7 Mark Sebanc, “In Xanadu… Grounding the Fantastic”, in Now Write! Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror: Speculative Genre Exercises from Today’s Best Writers and Teachers, ed. Laurie Lamson (New York: Jeremy P. Tarcher/Penguin, 2014), 151.^↩
8 Muriel Gray, “Roundabout”, in New Fears, ed. Mark Morris (London: Titan Books, 2017), Kindle edition.^↩
9 Christine Conradt, “The Eleven Tenets of Fear”, in Now Write! Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror: Speculative Genre Exercises from Today’s Best Writers and Teachers, ed. Laurie Lamson (New York: Jeremy P. Tarcher/Penguin, 2014), 113.^↩
10 Stephen Gallagher, “Shepherds’ Business”, in New Fears, ed. Mark Morris (London: Titan Books, 2017), Kindle edition.^↩