Creative Writing: The Alluring Attraction Of Fear

The Alluring Attraction of Fear

Sometimes being scared is fun, but not when you feel like you’re in danger. Proof of this is a personal experience of mine; When I was young, I had gotten into trouble and my parents told me to put my nose in a specific corner while they went to the store. I stayed there for what felt like eternity and all of a sudden, my sister starts running down the hall screaming bloody murder saying, “Run Sheridyn! Run!” Immediately I start screaming, shaking, running, and crying all at the same time. Then my other sister came out of the hall wearing a Scream costume and started chasing me. I become even more terrified and this causes me to fall. Before I had time to process what had happened, they both stopped what they were doing to laugh while I felt like my life flashed before my eyes. In that moment, I knew that something about myself was different.

What I learned from that experience was that something so dramatic can change someone in a major way.

One example of human transformation is in Frankenstein when Victor Frankenstein becomes sick after investing everything of himself into making his monster. Before getting the idea of bringing an inanimate object to life, Victor was a healthy and athletic 20-something year old and then he started to become very weak and sick, the longer and harder he worked. A second example is in “Sleep Paralysis”, where a person goes from a sleeping state to completely conscious and unable to move or speak. A third example is the picture of the girl with the gnome mask; she has a child’s body, but she has an old man’s face ( this could possibly be symbolic

).

Just as human beings, objects can transform too. An example of this is the house in “The Fall of the House of Usher”; just as the narrator is riding away on his horse, the house becomes shrouded in light that comes from a crack in the wall and is then swallowed up by a lake, never to be seen again. Another example is the house in “House Taken Over”; the house is being taken over by an unknown and unseen force that the tenants just refer to as ‘they’ or ‘them’. A third example is the house in “Where Is Here”; as the former resident left his childhood home, the house transformed back to how it was when the man had lived there as a young boy.
Not just objects and humans can change; settings can change too. One example of this is in the novel Frankenstein; Victor’s monster was sitting on an iceberg in the North Pole region, screaming that he would kill himself after Victor died. A second example is the picture of the hockey player in the city; the player should be in an ice rink, but he’s not. A third example is the picture of the burnt out furniture store; it looks realistic outside, while other parts of the store look fake or ‘animated’.
After reading all of this, you might think, “Why do scary stories contain transformation?” It’s because the author wants to make you afraid. Most of the time, reading something can scare you, especially if it says that it’s based off of a true story. As a recap, there’s all kinds of transformation, you just have to look. It might even be in your everyday life.