Erin's Reviews > American Scary: A History of Horror, from Salem to Stephen King and Beyond

ARC for review. To be published October 1, 2024 (just in time to be your Halloween read!)

Exhaustive, occasionally exhausting, but, ultimately, a winner this book looks at the history of horror (in media/entertainment, not in, like a psychological sense, exactly, but, well, I don’t know, a little?) in the United States from colonial times to the present. So that is a lot to cover. A LOT.

I learned some small bits of history that I didn’t know, including a story about the execution of a slave that is never, ever going to leave my mind. And the state of Florida (and other states) think we need LESS of that history. No, my friends, the only way to be sure that these things don’t happen again is to make sure we TEACH things like this. A digression, but I grew up in the South, attended public schools, went to a good college, have a law degree from a top twenty school. Know when I learned about the Tulsa Massacre? WHEN I WENT TO TULSA. In my forties. But I would have read about it here, so there’s that.

I won’t lie, early on this was a bit of a slog for me; I felt like I was reading a textbook and it felt like more history than discussion of horror. I kept rewarding myself every time I would get through another ten pages. Ten pages. But things really picked up once we reached the 20th century.

The book seems incredibly thorough to me, covering literature, film, TV, radio and computer games (although gamers might disagree.) Some might quibble and say, “Well, what about H. Lutegrass Hobble and his seminal 1914 tale “They Came in Through the Outhouse Slats?”” but I’m not a scholar like that. I couldn’t think of one thing I thought would be included that wasn’t.

The author notes that, overall, Americans, like people all over the world, are afraid of the unknown, but that Americans are also fearful of people who are different from them, the “other,” and they are particularly afraid when they see that class of “others” undergoing a change. So, men were always afraid of women, but when women started to gain more autonomy that fear became heightened. The public was always fearful of Black people but when the slaves were emancipated and when civil rights legislation took hold those fears were enhanced, and in and on, forever and ever, world without end.

If you love horror, really really love it, and this sounds interesting to you, you probably won’t be sorry you read it. It’s not for everyone, but it’s really well done.