We live in an age walled in by things that mortify us. We sit before the evening news exposed to brutality; social media feeds are fed at times with images worse than what the papers and TV stations could carry. Why then, despite these, could anyone want to be scared by fictional creations? Why, when we are already beset with so much terror in real life? Is there any “good” that can come out of the pursuit of stories that grapple with the dark side of humanity?
I was prompted to ask those questions by my reading of a story by Edgar Allan Poe. I have been a fan of his works since high school and could never forget his “The Fall of the House of Usher” and “The Pit and the Pendulum.”…
Keep on reading: A Poe-ethics of horror