I haven’t read all of these by those that I have I never found that scary. Most horror isn’t that scary, especially anything supernatural. There’s enough real evil in the world to send shivers down my spine. A ghost is positively tame in comparison to the things actual people have done.
Yeah, same. As soon as the story involves anything supernatural, I'm not scared anymore, since it can't happen anyway.
Does not mean there cannot be a good story involving supernatural things (far from it, magic can be fantastic--pun not intended--in stories), just that any semblance of "this could happen to me" or "this could be a real story" is gone.
Weird. I'm the opposite. Reality-based horror makes me sad, creates a sense of revulsion or just does nothing. But anything that threatens my sense of reality and I start to get goosebumps.
> since it can't happen anyway
Yes but that's the point. Imagine experiencing something that you know isn't possible. And the more solid your grip on rationality, the harder it would hit you. The harder it would be to accept what your senses were telling you.
I don't know. If "suddenly there are ghosts", then either there's a completely natural explanation for why they aren't actually ghosts but just some sort of smoke-show, at which point it's not supernatural but you're back to "realistic violence"...
... or everything you thought about the world is wrong, including physics. Sure, that would make for a good story, and there are stories like that, but that's not what supernatural stories are usually about. The protagonists in those don't usually break down in an existential crisis consuming the rest of the narrative, they accept the supernatural and "deal with the problem at hand". The story is still about the ghost.
For me, the scariest stories are the ones where you don't actually know if anything supernatural is happening. The Haunting of Hill House, for example.
> Most horror isn’t that scary, especially anything supernatural.
I believe it all depends on whether one was raised with religion.
The original creeypasta is, of course, the New Testament (and I suppose we can be more specific: Mark 16, as the very original). There is nothing creepier than the Resurrection, thus the need for the internal instruction, "do not be alarmed." Any decent production of Godspell or Jesus Christ Superstar will exploit this creepiness in their respective Resurrection scenes.
Go on, tell me you would not totally freak out if you saw a dead body come back to life.
> Go on, tell me you would not totally freak out if you saw a dead body come back to life.
Sure, if I actually saw it. But I don’t think that I ever will, nor is there any evidence anyone else ever has. So not really something I’m scared about.
Not counting all those that were not entirely dead, just in some kind of state with reduced breathing and lowered heart rate, where others thought they were dead, but they ultimately revived... testimony, in fact, is a kind of evidence, and very often in a legal court and elsewhere, it is the only kind of evidence that is considered. Indeed, "gospel" itself derives from an Angelo-Saxon word meaning "good telling" or good testimony. Further, testimony is essential in science and cannot be reduced to other sources of justification. Testimony is a essential element of the scientific method, though we usually call it observation.
But I think we must count those that were in fact medically and clinically dead (not breathing with no heartbeat, no life signs), yet were subsequently revived by warming, CPR, defibrillator[1], or through the spontaneous return of normal cardiac rhythm[2], as truly having died and been brought back to life, because, indeed, that is what has occurred countless times.
Your assertion that there is not any evidence of reincarnation is not only unsupportable, it is clearly false on its face, regardless of whether anyone has ever been reincarnated or not. If it is one's belief that it is the case no one has ever been brought back from the dead, one must ignore a mountain of witness testimony and scientific evidence to the contrary.
The very fact that life itself exists in any form is undeniable evidence that, at least once, life was induced from lifelessness, but I suppose that could not be reincarnation, but instead, incarnation (from the Latin incarnare: to make flesh).
> Go on, tell me you would not totally freak out if you saw a dead body come back to life.
Well I guess this is a case of imprecise language. When you wrote “dead body” I was not imagining someone was believed to only have just died and being actively treated or resuscitated through modern medical treatments.
And of course, there is still debate in the medical world regarding what death actually is and when someone has “died” for the very reasons you stated.
So when I read “dead body” I’m picturing someone who’s beyond the realm of possible resuscitation. Of course, what’s that means exactly has changed as medical techniques advance, and our understanding of what death is will change with it. And I’m sure it will continue to change. It also poses the interesting question of what exactly would a useful definition of “death” be?
That said, I’m sure that window was much smaller 2,000 years ago when death was much more easily defined.
> So when I read “dead body” I’m picturing someone who’s beyond the realm of possible resuscitation.
I think you are possibly attributing a much stronger definition to "dead," that is incorrect. Dead merely means lifeless, no longer alive, or deceased. It does not mean, "beyond the possibility of resuscitation," at least not in any definition I have seen. Many have in fact died and been resuscitated. Whether this is legitimately resurrection, being raised from the dead, is where I have probably been playing fast and loose, because I don't believe a body is required for resurrection, but a body is always required for resuscitation.
But Stephen King is not highly regarded, and in fact he's somewhat bitter about it. I don't have a quote at the ready but he wants to be taken seriously and the elites of literature do not take him seriously. He achieves popularity by writing page turners at an 8th grade reading level because there's a large population who can read them
None of his works have been considered for anything like a Pulitzer Prize, National Book Award, Man Booker Prize, PEN award or Nobel Prize for Literature. He has gotten some "lifetime achievement" recognitions, but that's more to use his celebrity to get attention for the organizations that gave them than vice versa.
I think Orson Scott Card summed it up pretty well.
> Let me assure you that King's work most definitely is literature, because it was written to be published and is read with admiration. What Snyder really means is that it is not the literature preferred by the academic-literary elite.
Your post drips of some odd dislike for Stephen King. I can't speak to that, but just like many of us don't understand paying millions for a white canvas with 3 lines on it, we also don't understand calling someone who is as obviously talented as Stephen King a hack, or spending the time trying to denigrate him (his awards are purely political, but the awards he hasn't gotten somehow aren't?).
Either way I'm out. I think I'll go read The Long Walk again.
I think it's unfortunate that there is all this mutual venom between the literary and genre fiction worlds. It's about as unnecessary as the cultural animosity between the hard sciences and the humanities.
Anti-intellectualism makes some people miss out on what makes literature so compelling, and elitism prevents others from seeing the ideas about life that genre fiction can impart.
That's why I love authors who attempt to blend both, such as Kim Stanley Robinson or Ursula K. Le Guin.
I can see both sides of this argument. One the one hand, I try to separate the artist from the art. A lot of terrible people have made a lot of great art over the centuries.
On the other hand, if someone is actively trying to harm my friends and family, I’m sure as hell not going to support them by giving them money.
>What Snyder really means is that it is not the literature preferred by the academic-literary elite
yes, just like the academic elite in computer science don't have high regard for BASIC or FORTRAN IV and many here don't have high regard for C. We shouldn't listen to them? We should cling to our FORTRAN pride and seethe with resentment at those who know more than we do?
Stephen King's writing is extremely popular, but definitely not "highly regarded." His novels are widely considered to be low quality pop fiction by literary critics.
This isn't meant dis, selling massive amounts of books makes more money then pleasing literary critics.
I've been reading the original 1897 Dracula via Dracula Daily, where each chapter is emailed to you on the day of the year that the events happen in the book. I think the format helps, but it's pretty scary.
Not just people, nature is pretty scary too. For example, Kurzgesagt made videos about the Lyssa virus (rabies) and the brain-eating amoeba, two among many.
Ghosts don’t scare me, people do.