Halloween Special 2025 - The Importance of Gateway Horror

Horror is the best genre of fiction. Maybe that seems a bold claim, maybe it’s a perspective you share. Either way, it’s something I fully believe. Horror is powerful, emotive, political, inspirational, progressive, transgressive, boundary-pushing and versatile. But as true as all that is, there’s another fact all we horror fans need to wrestle with.

Horror is not an easy genre of fiction to get into.

In fact, this is true for all the same reasons it’s such a fascinating and beloved genre. Horror having the tendencies that it has means for every person who becomes a fan, there are many others who either have not yet, or will never, become fans of horror fiction. Some of these concern prejudices and criticisms either justified or misinformed. Others relate to actual psychological and physiological issues that make horror fiction by its nature unapproachable.

But ‘unapproachable’ is the operative word here.

To explain why, let’s think for a moment about what horror actually is.

This should be a relatively easy question to answer, but if debates both within and without the genre’s core audience are anything to go by, then it actually isn’t.

Horror, whether we attempt to give it an objective genre definition or instead define it based on the assumptions its audience approach it with, can be broken down into three elements:

1. Horror is interested in the emotional response of the reader, especially their fear.

2. Horror adopts a darker, more serious, tone than its contemporaries.

3. Horror must be transgressive in some way.

Now, all of these can and no doubt will be debated. But however you choose to reword these elements, the key factor is, horror tends towards the inclusion of detail, narrative, and expression that is in some way off-putting to the general readership.

Perhaps the most obvious example of what I mean here, is violence and gore. For a significant number of people, the mere suggestion that a story might include such details as blood and injury, let alone explicit and drawn out depictions of said details, is simply too much for them to physically handle, and whether you believe it to be an accurate assessment or not, the fact remains that a lot of people assume horror is defined by a much more heightened presence of violence and gore.

So, if this is the case, what can we do about it?

Before we get to that, don’t mistake me – I don’t want to eviscerate the more intense sides of the horror genre. I don’t want to censor a uniquely un-censor-able genre. I certainly don’t want to dilute my favourite genre of fiction or cushion the impact it can have.

What I want, is for as many people to appreciate how much value that genre brings with it. And the way I see it, we can only convince them of this by taking advantage of the horror genre’s versatility and offering something uniquely for those readers.

In other words, it’s important to create works of horror that do not involve these more off-putting aspects of the genre, or at least do not feature them quite so prominently and/or explicitly, in order to appeal to a wider audience. This might seem a strange notion – why remove key aspects of a genre to appeal to people who aren’t interested in the genre in the first place, right?

Well, first of all, these off-putting aspects don’t necessarily need to be a universal presence within the genre – removing violence from horror is not equivalent to, say, removing relationships from romance novels. It’s more equivalent to removing sex from romance. Basically, the genre does not live and die by its more mature, extreme, explicit content. No, the key factor of horror is the horror, just as the key factor in romance is the romance.

(As an aside, ‘removing’ isn’t really the correct term here, as we are introducing something new to this space, not eliminating or even changing what already exists within it.)

And secondly, comes the other major part of why this is so crucial a subject to explore.

By creating a work of horror that does not include those parts of the genre that are off-putting, we can then focus on and introduce to new readers – without distraction – the more important aspects. The aspects that actually make horror the best genre:

1. The intense, powerful emotional responses, whether that's overt terror, subtle unease and drawn out tension, or even grief, evoking empathy for characters who may be just like you, or may be more unusual, more invisible, more disregarded. Leading to…

2. The transgression, itself leading to deeper and lesser explored themes, darker themes with off kilter philosophising, the disregard for conventional and respectable angles and as a result of that…

3. The versatility, and the ability to surprise – to explore aspects of society and culture typically ignored by other genres, to utilise and blend genres in ways never thought of by other creators, and to tell stories it would be impossible to find in any other space.

And it’s these elements I’m more interested in non-horror fans becoming aware of, y’know?

So how do we do that?

Well, as you no doubt guessed from the title you read several paragraphs ago, we do it via Gateway Horror.

It’s worth noting, I’m not sure how ‘official’ of a term that actually is, but it’s the label I always gravitate towards and it perfectly encapsulates the type of story I’m interested in discussing today.

Gateway Horror, just like a gateway drug, is a stepping stone on your way to becoming more familiar with and more invested in horror.

There are numerous forms this stepping stone can take but what primarily makes a work Gateway Horror rather than regular horror is the author of said work either limiting the amount of, or outright rejecting the use of those aspects of the horror genre that make it unapproachable. Basically, evoking those emotional responses, exploring those themes and telling those stories without utilising explicit violence or intense gore, without flooding the senses with explicit depictions of upsetting subject matter, and without intensifying the level of horror and presence of mature content beyond a certain threshold.

And notice that when I say ‘without’ I don’t necessarily mean these things can’t come into play at all, just that the focus of a Gateway Horror is elsewhere. They may discuss dark themes adjacently, skim over the details of the scene, use abstraction and symbolism, form some kind of veil over the scene, or simply leave the big stuff isolated to a single moment of the story. There are all sorts of forms this can take, as I said.

The best way to get into this subject, naturally, is to discuss some actual examples of Gateway Horror within the horror literature space.

But what I’ve noticed as I’ve been investigating this topic is just how much more varied it is than I could have imagined.

I used the term ‘stepping stone’ earlier, and rather than mixing up my metaphors, I think that is actually a key factor in this exercise.

If you are going to transition a hypothetical non-horror reader, into a hypothetical horror fanatic, then surely that transition is going to take more than one small step, no?

And so, rather than my initial plan of splitting this analysis into separate small deep dives into individual books, let’s instead split this up into individual ‘levels’ on one’s journey into becoming a horror fan.

Starting with, of course…

Level 1: The Stepping Stone

If we’re talking about turning people into horror fans eventually, then it makes sense to begin with people who do not read horror at all.

This can be adults, who I’ll get to. But our priority at this stage is younger readers – children, who might want or even need that darker form of storytelling but who might not even be aware it exists.

Our first level – the stepping stone – is something even the youngest child can engage with. There won’t be anything explicit, obviously, but there also won’t be anything genuinely frightening. This level is arguably a façade, an aesthetic. A better way of putting it is – this level is a book wearing a Halloween costume.

There’s something there, some hint at darker themes, the macabre, the frightening, the thing in the dark corner of the room, but there’s also an understanding there really isn’t anything to be afraid of – that is a child, or at least an innocent or childlike being.

Happily, there’s always been a lot of this kind of literature around, for as long as I can remember, and the numbers have only increased as the years have gone by.

Walk into any bookstore from September to Halloween itself and there will be displays of children’s books, both fiction and non-fiction, as well as activity books, with a Halloween flair to them. Pictures of cartoon ghosts and cutesified vampires, carved pumpkins and non-threatening witches’ cauldrons flood the children’s book section in any bookstore worth its salt as the spooky season approaches.

From my own experience, I remember reading light spooky stories from a very early age, fully illustrated with various undead beings and monsters whose dark origins and thematics barely if ever registered in my young, toddler’s brain.

Because it’s worth bearing in mind that no matter how you dress it up (pun intended), a ghost is necessarily a dead thing. There’s no way to write or illustrate a ghost, or its popular kids’ lit cousin, the skeleton, without acknowledging that fact at least in the abstract.

In the same way, you can’t include a vampire without some vague allusion to its penchant for drinking blood, or give a monster sharp teeth without some inherent childhood understanding that it possesses such sharp teeth so that it can more easily eat you alive.

None of this means these stories are not still perfectly accessible to children, even the most easily frightened of children, who undeniably get some kind of enjoyment from Halloween as a holiday, and the idea of ghosts and monsters regardless of the season.

But some children find especial value in those darker ideas – death, predation, isolation. These are themes frightening to everyone, even children who may or may not understand exactly what they are, why they feel afraid of them, or how it relates to that spooky floating sheet on the front cover of their new sticker book.

It may be that some parents or teachers wish to hide these realities from children, and maybe there’s some value in that much of the time, but I also think there’s immense value in sharing these realities with children so they can learn, and learn how to cope with such things.

And in acknowledging that these issues might be more relevant to learn about as the child ages, I also think there’s immense value in providing these early stepping stones with low-stakes depictions of horror, so that they’re aware later on of the darker, more serious, more higher-stakes horrors that are also, with a little Christmas magic, made available to them.

But that would lead us onto the next level, and I’m not quite ready for that yet.

This is because I don’t think even this first level is exclusively for children. It’s also something there can be value in for older young readers, as well as adults.

I’m not saying adults are likely to go shopping for Halloween sticker books and ghost-themed touch and feel activity books – though if you are, knock yourself out.

But there’s another kind of stepping stone for non-horror readers who are no longer children.

This is the genre fusion – where horror can be combined with other genres of fiction, be it sci fi horror, dark fantasy, or horror comedy, or even books that are not necessarily fused with horror as a whole but include darker, more horror coded scenes, such as a nightmare scene, or the entry of the main characters into a haunted forest, or even just a lone vampire playing a minor role halfway through.

Often times, books that don’t fit into the horror genre are most praised for their darkest, most boundary pushing scenes, and I don’t think that’s a coincidence. But I do think that experience can be a signpost, or a stepping stone, that leads to a greater interest in horror fiction.

Obviously, this essay is about Gateway Horror, and yet whether this first level actually relates to outright horror fiction or not is… somewhat debatable, I admit. I’ll leave it up to you whether books like this really count or not, but for me, that it’s an important piece of this puzzle, I have absolutely no doubt at all.

This is the level for those who have no experience with horror whatsoever, be they a child reading on their own for the first time, or an adult dipping their toe into that dark water.

This is where young kids discover that they like skeletons and ghosts, monsters and things that jump out and scream “Boo!” It’s where adults who only read mostly lighter fiction with happy endings find that they are intrigued by the alternative, the kinds of fantasy with blood and death, the kinds of sci fi with bleak settings, the kinds of romance with tragic endings.

What’s so significant, is that it introduces any of these kinds of readers and more to the value inherent to the horror genre, without actually thrusting that genre in their face.

I do think this level is especially valuable for kids, who might need somewhere to find out about darker themes in a safer, more approachable way, but even outside of more real-life, serious motivations, this is an important first step.

But ultimately, a first step is all it is. And a stepping stone, signposted though it may be, is not a gateway.

So reach out with that other quivering foot, and let’s see where this path takes us.

Level 2: The Cobble Walkway

If, at a certain point, a reader who has already become aware of horror’s promises, but has not yet been acclimated to the fulfilment of those promises, wishes to discover darker and more frightening stories, then they’ll find themselves on this second level.

Here, whether an older child or an adult, we’re reading stories that it is much easier to label actual horror – but we’re still talking beginnings here. There are still limits in our hypothetical reader’s tastes, and they don’t wish to go beyond their current threshold.

The useful thing to remember is, most people don’t actually know what their threshold is with any great specificity. This means a story from this cobble walkway can push those boundaries – one of the key factors of being a horror story.

You’re still not likely to find anything explicit here, nor anything especially frightening, but you’re starting to, you’re finally in the water, you’ve taken that next step.

A good example of the kinds of stories from this level is Kory Merritt’s ‘No Place For Monsters.’

This fully illustrated children’s horror story takes two kid protagonists and has them investigating local cryptids in their strange town, where children just like them are going missing, and none of the adults around seem to remember this has happened.

Something to bear in mind about those yet to be horror readers, is that the reason they’ve avoided horror thus far is to avoid things such as intense violence and explicit depictions of darkly real situations.

That’s why choices of theme are so crucial in a children’s horror story like No Place For Monsters.

What does a young reader consider dark? And what kind of dark subject matter would they want to see explored in fiction written for them?

The conclusion Kory Merritt reaches is twofold.

1. There is a monster who kidnaps children, making them forgotten by their loved ones, and forever trapped in a nightmare.

2. Adults cannot be trusted or relied upon to help.

That second idea is especially interesting to me.

Because if you are a young reader, then you are extremely reliant on the adults around you to protect you from harm, help you when you are in need, find you when you go missing. So naturally, the first step that needs to be taken to make a story frightening for these young readers is to take this expectation away completely.

It also doubles up as an effective narrative choice, because if the adults are not going to help, then there’s no need to explain why we have child protagonists – we have child protagonists because no one else is doing anything to help the missing. Duh.

But on top of this, it also makes the story compelling to older readers like myself – adults are not immune to reliance on others with more power, more influence, more ability. And nobody is immune to the fear of being alone, being without help, needing to protect yourself because there is no one else around with your best interests in mind.

Pair all of this with the understanding that children are generally more vulnerable, and generally less deserving of being in harm’s way, and you have a great source of empathy. If you are a child, you relate to the child protagonists and wish to see them succeed and survive. If you are not a child, you empathise with their struggle in a parental sort of way, and wish to see them succeed and survive. Either way, the emotional response so vital to horror fiction is effortlessly injected into the story.

Of course, all of this necessarily requires an antagonist who puts the child protagonists in a place of needing this assistance in the first place. Thus, we have our main monster – the Boojum.

As stated, the Boojum steals children, and removes their memory from anyone who knew them. Their families, their schools, their neighbours. It’s like the child never existed at all.

In this way, the source of fear in this tale is purely psychological. No overt violence is required. There is at once the threat of being taken away and forgotten. And there is the fear of losing someone and forgetting. Once main character number 1, Levi’s, younger sister is taken, these fears are escalated, the story deepens, and the reader is invested.

Of course, it’s uncommon for a horror story to have only one core fear it wishes to explore. A lot of the time depth will be added by teasing out additional ideas and themes, as well as fears and threats, from that core idea.

In this case, our second main character, Kat, has a special interest in cryptids, ghost stories, local folklore – monsters.

Notice that?

Readers coming from our stepping stone onto this cobble walkway have an extra point of identification – they’re empathising with Levi, while relating to the shared interest they have with Kat, and because these two protagonists are so different from one another, probably see themselves in at least one of them.

Either way, the story can now delve into more than just this central monster. Using other minor monsters, other themes can be explored, like monster as victim, monster as outcast, monster as a relic of a distant age.

That last one allows yet more depth as it directly leads into a point of empathy with two of the older human characters – Levi and Kat’s elderly neighbour couple, the Mushpits. This is done by creating an older monster who is also a victim of the Boojum just like our protagonists, but it also allows this elderly couple to explain things to our protagonists, inform them, teach them. Help them. Exactly what had been missing from their lives and from the story.

In other words, it uses the themes to encourage and justify the reader’s possible thought processes while offering them a way out, a way forward, and it does this via the horror genre and via the telling of a story that is exactly what they were looking for.

This is the value of the horror story.

And this is exactly how the concept of Gateway Horror can gradually transition a reader from a place of horror ignorance to a place of horror appreciation.

It is worth mentioning that, on this early level, a book like No Place For Monsters is still very unlikely to be genuinely scary. Its interest mostly lies in being silly, being funny, from a place of horror-adjacency and dark themes that are cushioned and alluded to rather than brought directly into the spotlight.

There is literally no place for monsters – no place to frighten the readers with the experience of this tale.

But that’s not necessarily a flaw, though. We’re definitely still talking about first steps here. And at the first few steps into the horror genre, what we definitely don’t want is to traumatise prospective fans so they feel vindicated in the prejudice they held a few books prior. We’re starting to pull them into the fold, we’re starting to convince them of the horror genre’s value, we’ve already told them a compelling horror story or, hopefully, even more than one.

Time to put that foot down, and walk to the end of the cobble walkway. Perhaps it would always have come to this – perhaps it could only lead to one place.

Level 3: The Closed Gate

One of the inherent problems with a genre such as horror, is that it is unpredictable. This is usually a good thing, as it fosters the genre’s versatility and its ability to surprise and evoke the strongest emotions. But this is one of the reasons it can be unapproachable, as well. I mentioned earlier that many people not only have an aversity to intense violence and gore, explicitly mature scenes and the like, but they perhaps have a physical inability to engage with this type of writing. So the idea they can appear at any moment without warning puts these readers off the genre as a whole – a prejudice they are not wholly unjustified in feeling.

That’s why this level, the closed gate, is so valuable.

This far along our path, you find yourself reading an undeniable horror story, regardless of whether it is approached from the perspective of a child, an adult, a horror newbie or a horror elder. We’re pushing those boundaries a little further than before. The dark themes, the intention to frighten, the emotional maturity.

But it still doesn’t go all the way, and there’s one very crucial reason this is so – on this level, the book will take a single dark and frightening form, take it or leave it. We’ll be reading a book which sticks in its lane, the level of horror predetermined. It still has the build up, the pay off, suspense and frights, but the reader knows where along the spectrum it lies. No unpredictability throwing a gruesome curveball.

A great example of what’s available on this level is Lora Senf’s ‘The Clackity.’

Like No Place For Monsters, this is a middle grade horror story. But unlike Kory Merritt’s comedic light horror, The Clackity fully devotes to the horror genre. The seriousness, the darkness, the unease and the frights. There is very little humour, no safe places once our protagonist, Evie, steps into the setting of the book’s main horror.

This is also a book that pushes the boundaries – it’s not totally “safe” for kids despite being a kids’ book. The aforementioned setting of the book’s main horror, for instance, is a surrealist landscape deep inside an abandoned slaughterhouse, and Evie lives with her aunt because her parents died in a fire. I can see less mature youngsters needing to ask their parents questions while reading this book – this is also a really good thing, assuming the parents can answer them.

Speaking of, though, here's my question.

This is a book that, as a horror story, wants to push the boundaries, wants to create that somewhat negative emotional response in its readers, wants to embrace the shadows rather than the light. But it also wants to curate an experience approachable and accessible to certain kinds of readers – it wants to be Gateway Horror.

How can it do both?

Well, like No Place For Monsters, the emphasis here is everywhere except physical violence. There’s atmosphere, there’s a psychological aspect, there are horror themes rather than explicitly horrific imagery.

But since we don’t rely so much on humour and worldbuilding here, and since we have fewer human characters, and since we actively want this to be more frightening, there’s something much more vital.

Lora Senf decided to focus on danger.

Evie is in almost constant danger in this book. A supernatural being called the Clackity has sent her on an errand into a world fraught with dangers both psychological (preying on her anxieties – which I’ll come back to) and physical (the ghost of a serial killer stalking her for the express purposes of taking her eyes as well as her life).

But as a Gateway Horror novel, none of these dangers ever get fulfilled in an explicit horror scene.

We see Evie have panic attacks but she overcomes them. The ghost gets close – far too close for comfort – but never actually gets what he wants. Our protagonist, our point of identification, survives.

This means multiple important things.

For one thing, readers either young or otherwise horror averse, never have to read something they aren’t ready to experience. The book never goes too far. But it can have its cake and eat it too by nevertheless being dark and including rampant danger.

On top of this we can experience profound tension – a palpable dread that never leaves Evie’s side and keeps us frightened without having those off-putting shocks to the system – not only making the book more approachable but maintaining a constant emotional investment that offers advantages for the genre in its own right.

And crucially, there’s that all important horror theming again.

I mentioned Evie’s anxiety. Anxiety disorder is a really important topic, and it’s especially ripe for horror storytelling. But it comes up surprisingly rarely in so-called mature fiction. It does, however, get its day in children’s literature. Which is why children’s horror is so especially ripe for potential.

Evie lost her parents, and still suffers with extreme anxiety, lack of confidence, panic attacks. She might have PTSD. These experiences are frightening, especially for children who haven’t gotten used to them – if you ever can get used to them. They are also the kind of psychological vulnerability a horror setting, and a monster, in conjunction, are likely to prey upon.

Horror is ultimately an exaggeration, a hyperbolic depiction of real fears.

As I’ve stated already today, having access to these darker ideas and more frightening flights of prose is vital – and the prevalence of anxiety and other mental health conditions in our world is something people need guidance with. Guidance that a genre all about confronting the frightening is especially equipped to deal with.

But again, anxiety never gets its proper representation in adult fiction. So, if there’s a reader out there who needs that guidance, and also wants to experience horror that never goes too far… Well, there’s a book like The Clackity.

This is what is so crucial about Gateway Horror. I do not expect or want it to appeal exclusively to children. That it does appeal to children, forces the writer to find a way to build tension, deliver scares, explore darker themes, without over relying on the off-putting aspects. That’s a good challenge for the writer — it's a miracle for readers looking for exactly that kind of story.

With all that said, why is this level a “closed” gate?

That’s because it is fairly rigid in its adherence to a specific point on the spectrum of Gateway Horror. It never progresses too far, it doesn’t push its boundaries beyond a relatively signposted point. Oh, it’s definitely a horror story – if anything we’ve spoken about so far today is actually going to scare you, it’s gonna be a book from this level. But it won’t go any further than you expect going in.

That expectation is a good thing. It might sound like it isn’t, because you want to be surprised, especially in horror, right? But maybe you don’t want to be completely shocked to the point of getting a heart attack. That’s what Gateway Horror can deliver on. But a closed gate like this one can only take you so far – that has its good points, and its bad.

With a story like The Clackity, I can genuinely see those horror-phobes becoming horror fans. I can see children reading this book and clamouring to their parents for more horror, more monsters, more people in danger, yes please. I can see adults reading this book and thinking, oh, so this is why horror is so popular, this is why people get so much value from this kind of book.

But it’s still that closed gate – it’s still somewhat safe, it’s still somewhat predictable, it’s still somewhat… comfortable.

That might well be exactly the thing you need, and I celebrate its existence.

However…

What do you say?

Are we finally ready to swing the old gate wide open?

Level 4: The Gateway

The core idea at the centre of this essay is that people who are currently averse to reading the horror genre – whether due to prejudices of its quality, or physical and psychological factors beyond their control – need to be transitioned if they are to appreciate the values of this great and powerful genre of fiction.

And while I’ve praised every level of Gateway Horror so far, and rightly so, what none of those levels have actually done is… transition the reader, into a horror fan.

Why do I say that?

Well, for one thing, all of these levels have been somewhat rigid in their position. They might still have build up of tension and suspense, but they aren’t going to throw open the gates to pure unadulterated horror. For this reason, some of these levels might not appeal to adult readers at all, taken as they are at face value as children’s stories.

Even if this isn’t the case, however, they also have another problem – that being that each story on the previous three levels may just be taken as an exception to the rule. “This is a good horror story,” you might say, rather than, “This proves the value of the genre.”

In this way, even the best pieces of Gateway Horror might fail as an actual Gateway.

Which is why I was so foundationally shaken by my experience reading Adam Cesare’s ‘Clown in a Cornfield.’

Marketed as YA fiction, rather than the middle grade marketing of Senf and Merritt’s works, I of course could have guessed the levels of horror would be somewhat ratcheted up with this one, teen readers being more able to engage with darker, more mature and more overtly horrifying literature than younger readers.

This was even more clear on finding out that this book is a slasher – a subgenre of horror that, as its name might suggest, involves an increased number of deaths, with a certain implication that said deaths will be of the violent, gory and visceral variety.

First thing’s first – the book delivers on all this.

But what surprised me was just how far the book goes.

While there’s some debate to be had about whether the books discussed so far are horror or horror adjacent, I find it hard to believe anyone would call Clown in a Cornfield anything but horror, so shocking and bloody is its content.

And this is strange, because taking the YA label at its face, I assumed this would be a somewhat lighter, more approachable example of the slasher.

Yeah, no.

This level of Gateway Horror unashamedly offers a challenging horror experience that not every reader is ready for.

But why am I calling this Gateway Horror still, if it’s so overtly, well, horrifying?

Is it just because this one fits into the YA literary space on a technicality?

Partly. But there’s something really interesting at play with this book, and that is that it provides a very literal transitory experience in its own right.

Not content simply to offer ‘the next level’ of horror from its predecessors in this list, Clown in a Cornfield embodies the essence of what I think Gateway Horror needs to provide. Impossible to describe as merely ‘an exception to the rule’ for any horror-phobes who end up appreciating the book, this does not signpost readers to the horror genre, it doesn’t provide a stepping stone or path or even closed gate that convinces the reader to check out more horror. It acts as a transition from non-horror, to genuine horror, to increasingly extreme horror, all on its own – a single book, acting as an open gateway for the horror genre.

But what does this mean?

As a slasher, any reader knows to a certain extent what they are getting into here. There will be a substantial number of teenage characters – of varying relatability and hateability – who are to be killed off one by one at the hands of a masked murderer over the course of the story, until there is either no one left, or the murderer is stopped.

In this way, the prologue offers a strange introduction to the genre right from the start.

It introduces a number of believable young protagonists, sure enough, but there is no presence of a killer – instead, there is only one death, and this character dies from a simple accident.

After this, the book features almost no violence at all for a significant number of pages.

A very mild spoiler warning for this next paragraph.

The first death at our slasher villain’s hands takes place a whole third of the way through, a pretty mild occurrence, later followed by a longer, more drawn out, more bloody encounter. On top of this, the cornfield massacre the book is named after doesn’t begin until slightly over halfway through the book – and its level of intensity is also introduced, and developed, bit by bit.

But importantly, this approach allows two vital things to happen.

First of all, because the more overt and vicious horror fare is held off, for a long period of time, this book that no reader can pick up failing to understand is a horror book, offers only worldbuilding, character development, interpersonal drama. You know, the literary stuff that horror is often wrongly accused of lacking. Plus, being YA, this book has an approachable writing style, a familiar and believable cast of characters, and a well realised setting. Everything a horror-phobe wants from a book is front and centre for a substantial length of the book’s page count, and none of the things they are averse to experiencing from this genre are getting in their way.

Well, for a time, at least.

Because secondly, is that when the killing starts, the book will feature dark, frightening, even gory and gruesome scenes, but because these will be delivered gradually, perhaps even on a chapter by chapter basis, a very concrete transition takes place. The reader is, after all, choosing to begin that next chapter, knowing each chapter provides a more visceral death scene than the one before. It’s as if Cesare is actually sat reading the book with you, asking, “Okay, you’ve read this part and not put my book down yet – now, are you ready for this?” With every additional chapter the reader then chooses to begin, their implicit answer is a resounding “Yes.” With the book’s author and reader acting in tandem, the reader is essentially choosing to transition themselves into that space of appreciating horror.

No more are we talking about the reader choosing to pick up more than one book in order to transition from a more accessible, light-horror read into the more direct and overt reading experience that follows. Instead, this one book offers both all on its own. You can stop at any time, of course, decide that was the last chapter, but if you’ve come this far already… then part of you doesn’t want to.

What’s clever here, is that the book allows for this transitory horror storytelling while providing exactly what those in need of being transitioned are looking for – the character work, the interesting writing and storytelling, the thematic explorations, the worldbuilding and set pieces, the backstory, the interpersonal drama… all before getting into the horror itself, all aiding to make said horror much more effective because the characters are not mere meat sacks, but actual characters.

And this is something The Clackity got close to providing as well. None of the extreme stuff was included in Senf’s work, naturally, being a middle grade novel, but she did imbue the book with that same sense of letting the characters and storytelling take precedent in the first third before gradually developing the horror once it arrives. In fact, despite No Place For Monsters having less overt horror, Merritt too decided to place his well-realised characters in a position where the danger and the horror intensified over time.

This, I think, is what Gateway Horror should be, whether it’s as a closed gate, an open gateway, or, since all three of these books have well received sequels, perhaps a bit of both. And, as these books prove, there can still be plenty of variety within even that niche circle of horror literature, therefore showcasing another virtue of this genre we love so much.

That, at the end of the day, is the reason for my investment in this topic.

Level 5: The Dark and Wonderful Vistas Beyond

Huh? What’s this?

We’re finished with Gateway Horror now, aren’t we?

The gate was opened. You stepped through. How can there be any more?

Ahh, yeah… About that.

This is it now. This is where you were always headed, even before you knew it was so. You might not be a horror fan per se, but you’ve seen what this genre can offer now, and you want more. Admit it, you’re ready and willing to dive into – almost – anything horror literature has to offer. You’re probably not desperate to jump into the more extreme and disturbing sides of the genre, but there is still plenty of adult literature of the pure horror variety to explore at your own pace.

Because one thing I hope I’ve convinced you of with this year’s Halloween special, whether you’re a horror elder or a horror newbie, is that the horror genre is extreme in one very important way – diversity.

Yes, I think we need more children’s horror, and middle grade horror, and YA horror too, and allowing this niche to be expanded and filled in yet further has only merits. But even in the realm of horror written for adults, there’s heaps of variety.

So whether you’ve been on a long and winding path to discovering horror or you’re jumping in right here, Gateway Horror doesn’t have to have anything to do with non-adult literature.

Let’s say you’re a horror-phobe right now. Like with the previous four levels of this journey, you probably don’t want anything overtly violent or gory, you don’t want any explicitly mature scenes, you don’t want anything too dark or disturbing. But you want something that is ostensibly, inarguably, Horror.

Well, you’re in luck.

While we horror fans tend to discuss things on the more extreme side of the spectrum – the most violent, the most terrifying, the most off-putting, the most dark and most bleak – there is plenty of horror on the other side. Still offering fear and darkness, but without ruining your day and putting you off your lunch.

Because in many ways, horror is at its best when it is subtle.

And horror fans would do well not only to encourage and build up this side of the genre too, but remember that this more subtle approach to horror literature is where it all began.

But I’m not going to recommend you classic horror literature, because I’m especially interested in the present, and the future of this genre, with today’s essay.

Instead, I’m going to recommend an author who undeniably remembers this subtly unsettling ancestry of horror storytelling – a good example of what I could argue as Gateway Horror without appeasing a younger audience.

That is the author, Susan Hill, and her book, ‘The Woman in Black.’

This book is definitely a mature adult’s horror story, there is no chance of arguing against that, but it’s still somewhat approachable. It might actually be more approachable than Clown in a Cornfield in some ways.

This is because, first and foremost, The Woman in Black, like most of Susan Hill’s horror writing, is a ghost story. And ghost stories tend not to feature any overt physical violence. Instead, the ghost story is interested in the atmosphere of its setting, and the psychology of any character placed within that setting.

For most of The Woman in Black’s page count, this is exactly what happens, with our main character Arthur being isolated to a dark, fogbound, abandoned house, listening to the sounds of ghosts more often than he sees their physical forms.

It is Susan Hill’s prose that carries most of the book, as you’d expect from a piece of Gothic literature. Whether deliberating on the protagonist’s state of mind, or steadily building more and more of the setting, it is tension, build up, suspense – promises make up the bulk of the best ghost stories, and this is no exception.

But as a horror story, how does it deliver on said promises?

That is with the book’s ending. I won’t spoil anything here, because if the point of me writing all this today is to help foster a space in the horror genre to transition non-horror fans into being horror fans, then the last thing I want to be doing is telling you the endings of all the books you might otherwise have wanted to read. But the important thing is that all that dark and mysterious build up does in fact lead to a dark, powerful, emotionally rich finale that on my first reading singlehandedly justified the experience of reading the prior pages.

And if you want more Susan Hill Gothic after that, she also has a collection of four stories titled ‘The Travelling Bag and Other Ghostly Stories’ – the third and fourth stories in that collection, ‘Alice Baker’ and ‘The Front Room’ are especially worth your time, showcasing Hill’s mastery over compelling, suspenseful prose that leads to devastating horror finales.

Actually, ghost stories might be the perfect example of Gateway Horror, ghosts themselves perhaps being a symbol for every topic I’ve delved into today.

Ghosts have long been my favourite horror monster, and I think part of that might be because it’s where everything started for most horror fans. Remember the start of this essay, all the way back in Level 1 – it is pictures of and stories about ghosts that most prevalently takes over the ‘horror’ genre for young readers. And I would definitely not be surprised if ghosts dominated the horror genre for many older readers too.

The Gateway into being a Horror fan is adorned with the beckoning visage of a thousand undead spirits, waiting for just one more person to step on through to the dark and wonderful vistas beyond, that we know as the horror genre.

Final Thoughts

This doesn’t have to be something you take one set path through. Maybe you crossed through the off road and arrived at the closed gate on your own. Maybe you needed a dozen stepping stones before you were willing to jump onto the cobble walkway. Maybe you got all the way through the gateway itself before deciding to turn around – you can always come back later, after all. There is no right choice, no wrong choice, no predetermined way in which all readers must be brainwashed into consuming splatterpunk by the age of 23 years and 5 months, and no judgment (not from me at least) if you never become a horror fanatic.

The point here, is that horror as a genre is filled with immense literary and artistic value, and the fact that its most extreme residents are unapproachable to a large portion of the reading public is a problem only insofar as the space should also be providing the opposite – lighter, milder, softer-edged invitations to pull non-horror fans onto the spectrum of darker fiction, and let them take that path to the most vicious extremities when they’re good and ready.

Horror is my favourite genre of fiction – I also think it is the most valuable genre of fiction, especially for those of us who have a deep, psychological need for literature that explores darker, more mature, more disturbing subject matter.

As a result, I want as many people to find that value as possible.

And as a result of that, I want to see Gateway Horror really take off – in whatever form its creators deem it should most effectively take on.

Until then, Happy Halloween, find a new horror story to dive into (or rediscover an old horror story to reminisce over) and enjoy the rest of your year!