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Horror (genre) |
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Horror fiction is fiction in any medium intended to scare, unsettle, or horrify the audience. Historically, the cause of the "horror" experience has often been the intrusion of a supernatural element into everyday human experience. Since the 1960s, any work of fiction with a morbid, gruesome, surreal, or exceptionally suspenseful or frightening theme has come to be called "horror". Horror fiction often overlaps science fiction or fantasy, all three of which categories are sometimes placed under the umbrella classification speculative fiction.
Haunting is used as a plot device in horror fiction and paranormal-based fiction. Legends about haunted houses have long appeared in literature. For example, the Arabian Nights tale of "Ali the Cairene and the Haunted House in Baghdad" revolves around a house haunted by jinns.1 Arabian Nights is almost certainly the earliest surviving literature that mentions ghouls, and many of the stories in that collection involve or reference ghouls. A prime example is the story The History of Gherib and His Brother Agib (from Nights vol. 6), in which Gherib, an outcast prince, fights off a family of ravenous Ghouls and then enslaves them and converts them to Islam.2 The influence of the Arabian Nights on modern horror fiction is certainly discernable in the work of H. P. Lovecraft.3 In his early years as a child, he would imagine himself living the adventures of the heroes in the book, and it inspired him to create his famed Necronomicon.
Vampires date back to antiquity, as can be seen in Vikram and the Vampire in ancient Sanskrit literature. Zombies also date back to ancient Indian, Chinese, Japanese, Persian and Arabic literature.
Today horror is one of the most popular categories of film.4
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