>>7317087
Seeing something approach

ambiguous evil, uncanny normality, fake idyll, mindfuck twists, like a crime novel without actual crime, organic foreshadowing

if something paranormal is introduced too early it can easily destroy the first two elements because it creates a visible us/them barrier and there is no more paranoia.

Usually the author knows what makes a good horror story really well. Idk, though, I have never been unhinged by a horror story.

>>7317128
So you have never found yourself sleepless at night? Like, you go through the whole day normally, but right when you're about to fall asleep it suddenly leaves you wide eyed?

>>7317122

Any examples of uncanny normality?

>>7317147
>examples
suspicions about friends or coworkers, although objectively they are 100% innocent
or a cozy village with some secret underground cult

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>>7317087
>A sense of mystery?
IMO horror is not about what you show, but about what you leave to the reader's imagination. Horror lies in ambiguity, Once it is explained it ceases to be horror and joins the endless catalogue of things that exist

>>7317087

The Book of Disquiet unsettled and horrified me more than any horror story ever has or will.

proper pacing and structure are probably the most important aspects of horror. after that, whatever threat exists must primarily appeal to the visceral, not intellectual

>>7317087
A certain degree of plausibility, of psychological, social and scientific realism, is what separates a merely scary story from true horror that sticks with you. It's what does it for me in http://squid314.livejournal.com/332946.html. If you don't mind a bunch of made-up names from a fantasy universe you've probably never heard of you should absolutely read it.

>>7317087
See Edgar Allen Poe. Any of it. Anything that invokes that perverseness in us. Something we know is so deeply wrong, but we can't turn our heads away. Charles Brockden Brown preceded Poe on this with Wieland.

By extension this also means H.P Lovecraft is a good example because Lovecraft heavily iterated on Poe.

Examples:
City in the Sea
The Raven
Alone
Wieland
Anything Poe
Shadow Over Innsmouth

Mandatory:
Imp of the Perverse

Nathaniel Hawthorne is another good place.

When the lights dim, our minds begin to perceive things in strange ways.

>>7317213
>Shadow Over Innsmouth
Quite possibly the best Lovecraft story.

>>7317087
The Veldt, by Ray Bradbury freaked me out as a kid to the point that I couldn't sleep with the book in my room.

A great deal of his stories, actually.

There's something to describing how creepy or scary something is: the experience of being scared, that creates it within me. However graphic descriptions generally do not.

One thing that creeped me the fuck out as an adult was "Tatoo" in Kraken.