# Was Romantic/Victorian/pre WWII horror really scary at the time? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [October 14, 2013, 6:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-romantic-victorian-pre-wwii-horror-really-scary-at-the-time/671242 "2013-10-14T18:58:40Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Inigo\_Montoya](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/inigo_montoya/32/124_2.png) [@Inigo\_Montoya](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Inigo_Montoya)\ **Post date:** [October 14, 2013, 6:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-romantic-victorian-pre-wwii-horror-really-scary-at-the-time/671242/1 "2013-10-14T18:58:40Z")
As the OP title asks–authors from Shelley to Poe to Lovecraft. How much of their success was founded on, “OMG! You gotta read this book! Scared me so bad I soiled myself!” as opposed to, “Mmmmm, yes, well _there’s_ an interesting thought.” ? Sure, we can appreciate a good vampire or rogue critter or reanimator story even today. But the writer needs to be really careful lest the story be taken for a joke, and even those creatures tend to be more sympathetic than horrific. Do we, as a society, just have a significantly blurrier line dividing right & wrong, and so what may have been unspeakable 150 years ago is yawn-city? ---
**Author:** ![Miller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/miller/32/481_2.png) [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)\ **Post date:** [October 14, 2013, 7:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-romantic-victorian-pre-wwii-horror-really-scary-at-the-time/671242/2 "2013-10-14T19:05:31Z")
What do you mean, “at the time?” Plenty of it is still scary right now. ---
**Author:** ![Claverhouse](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/13edae/32.png) [@Claverhouse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Claverhouse)\ **Post date:** [October 14, 2013, 7:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-romantic-victorian-pre-wwii-horror-really-scary-at-the-time/671242/3 "2013-10-14T19:42:50Z")
Well, it was first time around for then readers, notwithstanding the obvious roots in 18th century gothic and the folklore of their european ancestors — who like them, had no film genres or television to accustom them, or in some cases corrupt them, to familiarity with strange morbidities. Not that mob violence and lynchings etc. did not supply a reality in the physical domain… However… as a child I was somewhat sensitive, and one particular Edwardian ghost story regarding a nun whose bones reconstituted at the foot of a bed to collect part of her finger gave me severely to think on many dark nights. I think in the end one stops being scared when the object of terror is seen too many times. ---
**Author:** ![bup](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/6bbea6/32.png) [@bup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bup)\ **Post date:** [October 14, 2013, 7:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-romantic-victorian-pre-wwii-horror-really-scary-at-the-time/671242/4 "2013-10-14T19:47:08Z")
It’s a good question. Edith Wharton said that electric lights killed ghost stories. I guess she wasn’t right; there are plenty of ghost stories still being made. But she had a point. Reading Poe, or _Dracula_, or other stuff by lantern light, or candlelight, where corners were in darkness and the next room was in darkness and outside was \*really \*dark probably made them a lot scarier. ---
**Author:** ![Inigo\_Montoya](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/inigo_montoya/32/124_2.png) [@Inigo\_Montoya](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Inigo_Montoya)\ **Post date:** [October 14, 2013, 8:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-romantic-victorian-pre-wwii-horror-really-scary-at-the-time/671242/5 "2013-10-14T20:16:38Z")
> [@bup](#): > > It’s a good question. > > Edith Wharton said that electric lights killed ghost stories. I guess she wasn’t right; there are plenty of ghost stories still being made. Interestingly, such stories involve the antagonist mucking about with the lights–as if monsters know they’ll evaporate if it gets too bright–or otherwise overcoming our tech. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [October 14, 2013, 8:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-romantic-victorian-pre-wwii-horror-really-scary-at-the-time/671242/6 "2013-10-14T20:25:30Z")
I think the original Bram Stoker novel _Dracula_ is still pretty fucken scary. Sure, some of the style seems rather melodramatic and/or corny to us nowadays, but the bit about Harker not seeing the Count in his shaving mirror, to take just one instance, is still something I won’t read alone in the house at night. ---
**Author:** ![Kent\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kent_clark/32/105_2.png) [@Kent\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kent_Clark)\ **Post date:** [October 14, 2013, 9:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-romantic-victorian-pre-wwii-horror-really-scary-at-the-time/671242/7 "2013-10-14T21:15:25Z")
As late as 1938, a Halloween story about [Martians landing in New Jersey](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_War_of_the_Worlds_(radio_drama)#Public_reaction)could scare the shit out of hundreds of thousands of people. ---
**Author:** ![Inigo\_Montoya](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/inigo_montoya/32/124_2.png) [@Inigo\_Montoya](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Inigo_Montoya)\ **Post date:** [October 14, 2013, 9:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-romantic-victorian-pre-wwii-horror-really-scary-at-the-time/671242/8 "2013-10-14T21:42:39Z")
Well yeah, but I was talking about _fiction_, **kunilou**. ---
**Author:** ![Suil\_Dubh](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/85f322/32.png) [@Suil\_Dubh](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Suil_Dubh)\ **Post date:** [October 14, 2013, 10:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-romantic-victorian-pre-wwii-horror-really-scary-at-the-time/671242/9 "2013-10-14T22:51:11Z")
The ghost stories of [M. R. James](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M._R._James), written around 1900-1920, were and still are quite scary. In one of his stories, a character describes seeing a wight. Instead of eyes, it seemed to have the legs of two great, hairy spiders protruding from its darkened eye-sockets. Creepy stuff! You can check out several of his short story collections here: [http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/j/james/mr/](http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/j/james/mr/) [Algernon Blackwood](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algernon_Blackwood)’s short stories can also be spooky when he’s on form (“The Willows”). When he isn’t, his stories tend to drag on for too long (“The Man Whom the Trees Loved”) which ruins the effect. I’ve read one collection of stories from [Arthur Machen](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Machen), and while I didn’t find any of them scary, they were quite dark and atmospheric. The only Gothic literature I’ve ever read appeared in the Penguin collection “Three Gothic Novels”, and none of them were scary. I found the first of the three, “The Castle of Otranto”, to be far too dated and long-winded to be effective. “Frankenstein” is a work of genius, and I loved every page, but it wasn’t scary either. The last of the three, “Valtek” was a fantastic, hedonistic, comedic, Satanic romp, but again, not scary. Some of the parts of “Dracula” set in Transylvania were quite creepy, but once the action moves to England, things become more exciting than scary (almost like a detective or thriller novel). ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [October 15, 2013, 12:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-romantic-victorian-pre-wwii-horror-really-scary-at-the-time/671242/10 "2013-10-15T00:14:55Z")
[Lisa concludes recitation of “The Raven”] BART: That’s it?! That’s supposed to be scary?! LISA: Well, it was written in 1845. I guess people were easier to scare back then. BART: Yeah . . . Like _Nightmare on Elm Street I._ Seems pretty tame by today’s standards! [cut to eavesdropping Homer shivering in terror] ---
**Author:** ![Steken](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e274bd/32.png) [@Steken](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Steken)\ **Post date:** [October 15, 2013, 6:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-romantic-victorian-pre-wwii-horror-really-scary-at-the-time/671242/11 "2013-10-15T06:30:22Z")
> [@Suil\_Dubh](#): > > The last of the three, “Valtek” was a fantastic, hedonistic, comedic, Satanic romp, but again, not scary. Uncalled-for nitpick: It’s “Vathek,” not “Valtek.” Off-topic, but related: There’s a lovely moment in Brian de Palma’s (otherwise worthless) _The Black Dahlia_, where the Scarlett Johansson character is at the movies, watching a silent movie version of _Phantom Of The Opera_ featuring Lon Chaney - and is absolutely terrified! A nice reminder that even back then, horror movies were _horror movies_ - they were supposed to scare their audience shitless, and so they did! Slighty more on-topic (but not quite there): As a child, I myself was scared shitless by a Russian fairy tale, written down in Czarist Russia but presumably way older than that. A sudden plot twist at the very end: The innocent maid stalks a tall dark stranger she’s met at the village dance, sees him enter a church at night, climbs a ladder, peeks in, and lo and behold - she sees him kneeling by a coffin… eating from a corpse! So there’s an oldie-but-goodie which delivered the goods. On-topic (finally!): Poe did indeed scare me as a child. _The Cask of Amontillado_? Scary! Dickens, too, has some supremely scary moments which absolutely had the intended effect on me - I remember being horrified by Nancy’s death, as well as Fagin’s. I never found Lovecraft scary, and I never managed to finish _Frankenstein_ - the beginning was too damn slow, I just couldn’t get past it. However, I was horrified (and cried) at the end of _Treasure Island_, of all things, when Long John Silver describes the different possible outcomes of a hanging (although, ahem, the end result is always one and the same). So, at least for **Steken** -as-a-child, some Romantic/Victorian/pre WWII horror really did horrify, as late as the early 1990’s. ---
**Author:** ![Suil\_Dubh](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/85f322/32.png) [@Suil\_Dubh](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Suil_Dubh)\ **Post date:** [October 15, 2013, 10:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-romantic-victorian-pre-wwii-horror-really-scary-at-the-time/671242/12 "2013-10-15T10:41:41Z")
> [@Steken](#): > > Uncalled-for nitpick: It’s “Vathek,” not “Valtek.”. :smack: That’s a pretty important nitpick. I only refer to the book once every three or four years or so, but each time I do, I always get the name wrong. Anyway, thanks for the correction. ---
**Author:** ![Jim\_s\_Son](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/e19adc/32.png) [@Jim\_s\_Son](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jim_s_Son)\ **Post date:** [October 15, 2013, 11:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-romantic-victorian-pre-wwii-horror-really-scary-at-the-time/671242/13 "2013-10-15T11:00:06Z")
I remember hearing stories that when “Dracula” was on Broadway in the 1920s, an ambulance was at the theatre to handle people fainting. Sounds like a publicity gimmick or urban legend to me. ---
**Author:** ![Les\_Espaces\_Du\_Sommeil](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/les_espaces_du_sommeil/32/308_2.png) [@Les\_Espaces\_Du\_Sommeil](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Les_Espaces_Du_Sommeil)\ **Post date:** [October 15, 2013, 11:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-romantic-victorian-pre-wwii-horror-really-scary-at-the-time/671242/14 "2013-10-15T11:32:55Z")
Some are dated and some are still very effective and unsettling. I’d recommend the following: _Strange Event in the Life of Schalken the Painter_ by\*\* Le Fanu\*\* _The Upper Berth_ by **F. Marion Crawford** _The Yellow Wallpaper_ by **Charlotte Perkins Gilman** They definitely contain some creepy moments and the last two have a rather original premise. I reread so many **Lovecraft** stories so many times that they don’t scare me anymore but _The Dreams in the Witch House_ and _Out of the Aeons_ still make me feel uneasy. If you can get past the weird, annoying style, there’s **William Hope Hodgson** ’s _The Night Land_. A strange, powerful and visionary story with quite a few creepy elements (the Watchers, the Thing that Nods and especially the House of Silence). On the other hand, you can avoid _The Castle of Otranto_ except if you’re really curious. It’s very dated and frankly the “scary” bits are dull or even ridiculous (a character crushed by a gigantic helmet falling from the sky? Really?). ---
**Author:** ![bup](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/6bbea6/32.png) [@bup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bup)\ **Post date:** [October 15, 2013, 1:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-romantic-victorian-pre-wwii-horror-really-scary-at-the-time/671242/15 "2013-10-15T13:12:03Z")
> [@Jim\_s\_Son](#): > > I remember hearing stories that when “Dracula” was on Broadway in the 1920s, an ambulance was at the theatre to handle people fainting. Sounds like a publicity gimmick or urban legend to me. I’ve heard a similar story about [_ **The Phantom of the Opera** _ (1924)](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0016220/?ref_=sr_4) - that a nurse was stationed by the door of the theater in case people fainted from fright when Lon Chaney’s face was revealed. The source was a host at the Kennedy Center, when I saw _The Phantom of the Opera_ with a live orchestra. If it’s true, it was undoubtedly a marketing gimmick. Not a scary movie for a modern audience. ---
**Author:** ![glaeken](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e8c25b/32.png) [@glaeken](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/glaeken)\ **Post date:** [October 15, 2013, 1:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-romantic-victorian-pre-wwii-horror-really-scary-at-the-time/671242/16 "2013-10-15T13:44:50Z")
> [@Kimstu](#): > > I think the original Bram Stoker novel _Dracula_ is still pretty fucken scary. Sure, some of the style seems rather melodramatic and/or corny to us nowadays, but the bit about Harker not seeing the Count in his shaving mirror, to take just one instance, is still something I won’t read alone in the house at night. I actually only recently read Dracula for the first time recently I have to say it did not seem scary to me at all. My overwhelming impression I took away from the book was it must have been very different to read it back in the day. Reading it now it’s difficult to see why every character is so stupidly slow in figuring out the extremely obvious signs of a vampire. You have characters who are supposedly very intelligent who can’t seem to figure out what on the face of it is the most obvious mystery I have ever read. Of course when it was written it would not have read like that as the audience of the day had not been saturated with vampire myth/folklore for 100 years or so. Now it’s a mystery story where you are ahead of the protagonists for the vast majority of the book. ---
**Author:** ![Dendarii\_Dame](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/bbce88/32.png) [@Dendarii\_Dame](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dendarii_Dame)\ **Post date:** [October 15, 2013, 6:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-romantic-victorian-pre-wwii-horror-really-scary-at-the-time/671242/17 "2013-10-15T18:26:51Z")
The Tell-Tale Heart (by Poe) sure scared me. ---
**Author:** ![mlees](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ba8739/32.png) [@mlees](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mlees)\ **Post date:** [October 15, 2013, 7:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-romantic-victorian-pre-wwii-horror-really-scary-at-the-time/671242/18 "2013-10-15T19:38:26Z")
> [@glaeken](#): > > I actually only recently read Dracula for the first time recently I have to say it did not seem scary to me at all. I read the book for the first time, recently. I wasn’t scared, but I thought Stoker did a decent job of creating “atmosphere”. Edit: Read, as opposed to seeing some movie. ---
**Author:** ![BrotherCadfael](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/977dab/32.png) [@BrotherCadfael](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrotherCadfael)\ **Post date:** [October 15, 2013, 7:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-romantic-victorian-pre-wwii-horror-really-scary-at-the-time/671242/19 "2013-10-15T19:46:18Z")
_The Black Cat_ certainly horrifies, which is pretty much the intention of a horror story. ---
**Author:** ![Airk](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/9de053/32.png) [@Airk](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Airk)\ **Post date:** [October 15, 2013, 7:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-romantic-victorian-pre-wwii-horror-really-scary-at-the-time/671242/20 "2013-10-15T19:47:22Z")
> [@Steken](#): > > I never found Lovecraft scary Mostly, neither did I, though some of it was a bit unsettling. That said, The Rats in the Walls creeped me the hell out. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-romantic-victorian-pre-wwii-horror-really-scary-at-the-time/671242.md?page=2)