As the days draw ever darker, and the time ever nearer to All Hallows Read, we thought we’d offer you some interesting facts about fright itself…and some interesting books inspire it!
1) Many fears tend to be common in people regardless of their culture or nationality. An estimated 4% of the world’s population suffers from arachnophobia; the fear of spiders.
2) There actually is a thing called phobophobia, which is the fear of developing a phobia (which just seems like a cruel meta-joke to me, but anyways…)
3) Trypophobia is the unofficial term for the fear of small irregular holes, clusters, or asymmetrical patterns. This is an inherited fear which is thought to have originated way, way back when we were hunter-gatherers on the proverbial plains. Very often, poisonous plants and animals had such small, irregular patches, patterns, or holes, and there is a part of people’s brain stems that still remember this and warn us to stay away. Allow me to tell you, from personal experience, that trypophobia is real. After looking for pictures of this, I had to hide under the circulation desk for a while.
4) You know when people say “I can smell your fear”, or some such? It’s actually true. When we are frightened, we secrete pheromones that can be noticed by others, even if only on a somewhat sub-conscious, primal level.
5) We also have these neat things called “mirror neurons” that can pick-up the sense of fear in others. This is why, when characters in scary movies are scared, you get scared, too…or why, when you are sitting next to a person reading a scary book, you want to read it, too….
Ok, that last bit was a smidgen of a falsehood, but the intent was good, as it allows me to give you this list of scary stories for your Frightening Five Book Friday!
Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark: Anyone who was in grade school in the early nineties will tell you that these books are, bar none, the most terrifying things ever to exist, ever. My inner nine-year-old just has to think about these stories and wants to crawl under the bed…no, wait! There are spiders under there! And we all know what happened in that story with the girl and the spider! Gah! Basically, take a look at the cover of this book, and you’ll know precisely what you are in for here…sheer, unbridled, bewildering terror.
Evil Librarian: I would like to promise you, here and now, that none of our librarians are demons. The magnetic high-school librarian in Michelle Knudsen’s novel, however, is. And a mighty powerful one, at that. And it is up to teenage patron Cynthia to save her best friend, Annie, from the devious, and devastatingly handsome Mr. Gabriel’s clutches before he destroys Annie–and the rest of the student body, as well. This story is a bit funnier than it is scary, but I just couldn’t resist this title–or the sinisterly comic cover!
The New Annotated H.P. Lovecraft: So, true story: back in the 1970’s, some undergrads at Yale University stuck made up a fake card-catalogue card for H.P. Lovecraft’s infamous Necronomicon (the mysterious book in which all the evil of the world resides). No one caught it, and there are still people who come in every once in a while to request it. While you may not be able to open the real Necronomicon–which is probably for the best, since it tends to drive all those who read it barking mad–you can read this fresh, fascinating, annotated volume of Lovecraft’s work, and learn a whole bunch of new facts and stunning insight regarding Lovecraft and his work.
The Terror: Dan Simmons has penned a number of chilling historic tales in his time (as well as the beloved Drood), but this story is a personal favorite. Simmons takes for his setting the doomed Franklin Expedition, which set off from England in 1845 to try and discover the Northwest Passage. Months later…all 129 souls had vanished. There are theories that the provisions they brought with them were tainted with lead or possibly botulism. Others assume that the crew starved to death being moored in the ice…but Simmons takes up another option entirely. In his book, the crew in also menaced by a mysterious monster who thrives in the dark, and isn’t at all afraid of the cold….
The Scarlet Gospels: Clive Barker is a master of the weird, unsettling, and gruesome, but he is also a master of plotting, providing stories that will keep the pages turning and the imagination sparking. In the latest, chilling release, detective Harry D’Amour makes his living by finding and hunting all things magical, paranormal, and evil. But D’Amour is about to go toe-to-toe with the most powerful foe he has ever encountered–Pinhell, the very Prince of Hell himself. Though not for the feint of heart, this is definitely worth a read for those fans of Lovecraft looking for some more weirdness in their literary repertoire.
