WHorror is a genre of speculative fiction which is intended to frighten, scare, or disgust. Literary historian J. A. Cuddon defined the horror story as "a piece of fiction in prose of variable length... which shocks, or even frightens the reader, or perhaps induces a feeling of repulsion or loathing". Horror intends to create an eerie and frightening atmosphere for the reader. Horror is often divided into the psychological horror and supernatural horror sub-genres. Often the central menace of a work of horror fiction can be interpreted as a metaphor for the larger fears of a society. Prevalent elements include ghosts, demons, vampires, werewolves, ghouls, the Devil, witches, monsters, dystopian and apocalyptic worlds, serial killers, cannibalism, psychopaths, cults, dark magic, Satanism, the macabre, gore, and torture.
WDark fantasy is a subgenre of fantasy literary, artistic, and cinematic works that incorporate disturbing and frightening themes of fantasy. It often combines fantasy with elements of horror or has a gloomy dark tone or a sense of horror and dread.
WA horror film is one that seeks to elicit fear or disgust in its audience for entertainment purposes. Horror films additionally aim to evoke viewers' nightmares, revulsions and terror of the unknown or the macabre. Initially inspired by literature from authors such as Edgar Allan Poe, Bram Stoker, and Mary Shelley, horror has existed as a film genre for more than a century. Horror may also overlap with the fantasy, supernatural fiction, and thriller genres.
WForrest James Ackerman was an American magazine editor; science fiction writer and literary agent; a founder of science fiction fandom; a leading expert on science fiction, horror, and fantasy films; a prominent advocate of the Esperanto language; and one of the world's most avid collectors of genre books and film memorabilia. He was based in Los Angeles, California.
WAnveshitha is an Indian Telugu-language supernatural drama television series written by Iliyas Jyotsna and directed by Iliyas Ahmed under the pseudonym Pradyumna. The Telugu-language serial premiered on ETV Telugu on August 27, 1997. The show ran for 100 episodes, and by the time of the telecast of its last episode in 1999, it became hugely popular among Telugu audience, winning eight Nandi Awards in different categories.
WEdwin Baird was the first editor of Weird Tales, the pioneering pulp magazine that specialized in horror fiction, as well as Detective Tales, later re-titled Real Detective Tales.
WThe Black Mass was a horror-fantasy radio drama produced by Erik Bauersfeld, a leading American radio dramatist of the post-television era. The series aired on KPFA (Berkeley) and KPFK from 1963 to 1967, on an irregular schedule. Bauersfeld was the Director of Drama and Literature at KPFA from 1966 to 1991.
WBlossoms 666 is a 5-issue comic book miniseries published by Archie Horror, an imprint of Archie Comics, in 2019. The story, which takes place in an alternate reality from the main Archie Comics continuity, focuses on siblings Cheryl and Jason Blossom as they compete for the title of Anti-christ. The series was created by writer Cullen Bunn and artist Laura Braga.
WThe Danse Macabre, also called the Dance of Death, is an artistic genre of allegory of the Late Middle Ages on the universality of death: no matter one's station in life, the Danse Macabre unites all.
WDark Romanticism is a literary subgenre of Romanticism, reflecting popular fascination with the irrational, the demonic and the grotesque. Often conflated with Gothic fiction, it has shadowed the euphoric Romantic movement ever since its 18th-century beginnings. Edgar Allan Poe is often celebrated as one of the supreme exponents of the tradition.
WDead Blondes and Bad Mothers: Monstrosity, Patriarchy and the Fear of Female Power is a 2019 book by Jude Ellison Doyle. It explores the presentation of female bodies in literature, film and other media, particularly horror fiction and true crime, and proposes that these are reflective of patriarchal views: that a woman's body is a defect from a male body; that women should be controlled, and that their puberty or sexual autonomy are to be feared; and that men's criminality can be attributed to poor maternal influence. Case studies include The Exorcist's portrayal of female puberty, the murderer Ed Gein who inspired Psycho and the Frankenstein author Mary Shelley's real-life experiences relating to childbirth. The conclusion discusses witchcraft.
WThe evil clown is a subversion of the traditional comic clown character, in which the playful trope is instead depicted in a more disturbing nature through the use of horror elements and dark humor. The modern archetype of the evil clown was popularized by DC Comics character the Joker starting in 1940 and again by Pennywise in Stephen King's 1986 novel It. The character can be seen as playing on the sense of unease felt by sufferers of coulrophobia, the fear of clowns.
WLe Théâtre du Grand-Guignol – known as the Grand Guignol – was a theatre in the Pigalle district of Paris. From its opening in 1897 until its closing in 1962, it specialised in naturalistic horror shows. Its name is often used as a general term for graphic, amoral horror entertainment, a genre popular from Elizabethan and Jacobean theatre, to today's splatter films.
WHorror conventions are gatherings of the community of fans of various forms of horror including horror cinema, goth lifestyle, and occasionally science fiction and fantasy. Historically the focus has been on the cinematic form rather than literature and art, but this has broadened to include all forms in recent years. People in attendance at a horror convention are traditionally known as members of the convention; invited celebrities including film directors and stars are commonly known as guests of the convention, though many professionals including directors will simply attend as members.
WJapanese horror is horror fiction arising from popular culture in Japan, generally noted for its unique thematic and conventional treatment of the horror genre differing from the traditional Western representation of horror. Mediums in which Japanese horror fiction is showcased include literature, film, anime, video games, and artwork. Japanese horror tends to focus on psychological horror, tension building (suspense), and supernatural horror, particularly involving ghosts (yūrei) and poltergeists. Other Japanese horror fiction contains themes of folk religion such as possession, exorcism, shamanism, precognition, and yōkai.
WJughead: The Hunger vs. Vampironica was a 5-issue comic book miniseries published by Archie Horror, an imprint of Archie Comics, in 2019. It was a crossover between the Archie Horror comic book series Jughead: The Hunger and Vampironica. The story, which took place in an alternate reality from the main Archie Comics continuity, follows the werewolf Jughead Jones and vampiress Veronica Lodge, the protagonists of their respective series, as they faced off against one another. The series was created by writer Frank Tieri and artists Pat & Tim Kennedy, who previously worked together on Jughead: The Hunger.
WA monster is a type of fictional creature found in horror, fantasy, science fiction, folklore, mythology and religion. Monsters are very often depicted as dangerous and aggressive with a strange, grotesque appearance that causes terror and fear. Monsters usually resemble bizarre, deformed, otherworldly and/or mutated animals or entirely unique creatures of varying sizes, but may also take a human form, such as mutants, ghosts and spirits, zombies or cannibals, among other things. They may or may not have supernatural powers, but are usually capable of killing or causing some form of destruction, threatening the social or moral order of the human world in the process.
WSoulz at Zero (SAZ) was a lit group formed in 1994 by Jack Flack and The Stranger. SAZ released 25 monthly packs over a period of two years, beginning in September 1994 and ending in September 1996. The group took its name from a Souls at Zero poster Flack had in his bedroom at the time, with the trailing "s" in "Souls" changed to a "z". Soulz at Zero was so well known that their name was added to the "Elite Acronym List," which was used to separate "lamers" from "elite users."
WSupernatural fiction or supernaturalist fiction is a genre of speculative fiction that exploits or is centered on supernatural themes, often contradicting naturalist assumptions of the real world.
WSurvivors' Club is a comic book series created by writers Lauren Beukes and Dale Halvorsen, and artist Ryan Kelly, published by the Vertigo imprint of DC Comics, beginning in 2015. The series is set in a world where the archetypal characters from 1980s horror movies are real. The titular "Survivors' Club" is made up of those would-be victims who managed to escape. The series ran monthly for nine issues until 2016.
WThe Diving Pool: Three Novellas is a novella collection by Japanese author Yōko Ogawa, first published in English in 2008. It was Ogawa's first book-length work to be translated.
WVampire Hunter D is a series of Japanese novels written by Hideyuki Kikuchi and illustrated by Yoshitaka Amano since 1983.
WVampire literature covers the spectrum of literary work concerned principally with the subject of vampires. The literary vampire first appeared in 18th-century poetry, before becoming one of the stock figures of gothic fiction with the publication of Polidori's The Vampyre (1819), which was inspired by the life and legend of Lord Byron. Later influential works include the penny dreadful Varney the Vampire (1847); Sheridan Le Fanu's tale of a lesbian vampire, Carmilla (1872), and the most well known: Bram Stoker's Dracula (1897). Some authors created a more "sympathetic vampire", with Varney being the first, and Anne Rice's 1976 novel Interview with the Vampire as a more recent example.
WWarhammer is a tabletop miniature wargame with a medieval fantasy theme that simulates battles between armies from different factions. The game was created by Bryan Ansell, Richard Halliwell, and Rick Priestley; it was published by the Games Workshop company.
WWarhammer Age of Sigmar is a miniature wargame produced by Games Workshop that simulates battles between armies by using miniature figurines. Games are typically played on a relatively flat surface such as a dining table, bespoke gaming table, or an area of floor. The playing area is often decorated with models and materials representing buildings and terrain. Players take turns taking a range of actions with their models: moving, charging, shooting ranged weapons, fighting, and casting magical spells; the outcomes of which are generally determined by dice rolls. Besides the game itself, a large part of Age of Sigmar is dedicated to the hobby of collecting, assembling and painting the miniature figurines from the game.
WWeird fiction is a subgenre of speculative fiction originating in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Weird fiction either eschews or radically reinterprets ghosts, vampires, werewolves, and other traditional antagonists of supernatural horror fiction. Writers on the subject of weird fiction, such as China Miéville, sometimes use "the tentacle" to represent this type of writing. The tentacle is a limb-type absent from most of the monsters of European folklore and gothic fiction, but often attached to the monstrous creatures created by weird fiction writers, such as William Hope Hodgson, M. R. James, and H. P. Lovecraft. Weird fiction often attempts to inspire awe as well as fear in response to its fictional creations, causing commentators like Miéville to paraphrase Goethe in saying that weird fiction evokes a sense of the numinous. Although "weird fiction" has been chiefly used as a historical description for works through the 1930s, it experienced a resurgence in the 1980s and 1990s, under the labels of New Weird and Slipstream, which continues into the 21st century.
WA zombie animal is an animal that becomes a zombie as depicted in the zombie fiction genre. Numerous types of animals have been portrayed as zombies - a zombie dog appeared in The Last Man on Earth in 1964, and an infected dog is the source of the zombie virus in REC (2007). Night of the Zombies (1984) features a scare from a zombie cat, as does Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse. A jump scare scene featuring zombie dogs in the first Resident Evil is considered to be a seminal horror scene in video game history.
WA zombie is a mythological undead corporeal revenant created through the reanimation of a corpse. Zombies are most commonly found in horror and fantasy genre works. The term comes from Haitian folklore, in which a zombie is a dead body reanimated through various methods, most commonly magic like voodoo. Modern media depictions of the reanimation of the dead often do not involve magic but rather science fictional methods such as carriers, radiation, mental diseases, vectors, pathogens, parasites, scientific accidents, etc.
WZombie apocalypse is a genre of fiction in which civilization collapses due to overwhelming swarms of zombies. Typically only a few individuals or small bands of survivors are left living.