5 horrifying stories that double as lessons in philosophy
Each of these stories rests on a foundation of great ideas that will scare you to death and make you think.
This week, Big Think Books regular Scotty Hendricks examines the philosophy lessons haunting five of our favorite horror stories.
By Scotty Hendricks
The best horror stories are those that don’t rely on jump scares or bloodied campground killers to frighten. The scariest part of The Wicker Man isn’t its eponymous effigy; it’s realizing what the natives of Summerisle will do to placate their gods. And while the ghosts haunting the Overlook Hotel may unnerve readers of The Shining, it is Jack Torrance’s maniacal relapse that truly grips the spine.
Tales that rely on cheap tricks can be fun, but the ones that exhume their horrors from within powerful ideas endure.
For that reason, we’re taking a look at five horror stories that double as philosophy lessons. Each one rests on a foundation of great ideas that can wrap around your mind like a tentacle and force you to really think about what has frightened you.
Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus (1818)
“My person was hideous and my stature gigantic. What did this mean? Who was I? What was I? Whence did I come? What was my destination? These questions continually recurred, but I was unable to solve them.”
We begin with Mary Shelley’s masterpiece, written when the author was still a teenager as part of a friendly competition to see who could pen the best horror story. Her Gothic tale has become bedrock reading for several genres, particularly science fiction, and offers perennial insights into the themes of humanity, the natural order, and the search for knowledge. It is difficult to overstate Frankenstein‘s importance to literary history, but it is safe to say that Shelley won the competition. (The runner-up, John Polidori’s “The Vampyre” (1819), was the first modern vampire story and is pretty good in its own right, too.)
The novel’s basic story is well-known: The young scientist Victor Frankenstein sets out to conquer death and discovers how to reanimate dead tissue. With this breakthrough, he brings a humanoid made of stitched-together body parts to life, but terrified by his own creation, he quickly abandons it. The Creature, who remains nameless throughout the novel, develops into a sensitive and inquisitive soul, yet one shunned by the world for his appearance. Cursing his creator for abandoning him, the Creature seeks his revenge.
While an obvious take on the classic hubris narrative — the subtitle kinda gives the game away — Frankenstein also explores the nature of scientific ethics. Victor “plays God” when he breathes life into the Creature, but he doesn’t take responsibility for his actions. He never names it, cares for it, or educates it; the Creature learns by observing a peasant family while hiding in a hovel connected to their small cottage. Victor also never considers what duties he may owe his creation or how his single-minded pursuit may have unintended consequences. When he finally comes to this realization, it’s too late, and the bodies have already piled up.
The reach of Frankenstein is such that it is still directly referenced and quoted in philosophy and bioethics publications today. If you haven’t read it and would like to check it out, the book is in the public domain and can easily be found online.
The Colour Out of Space (1927)
“It was just a colour out of space — a frightful messenger from unformed realms of infinity beyond all Nature as we know it; from realms whose mere existence stuns the brain and numbs us with the black extra-cosmic gulfs it throws open before our frenzied eyes.”
This short story by H.P. Lovecraft is one of his first to blend science fiction with his trademark “cosmic horror” and is often considered among his best by fans of his work. It is also a prime example of the horror subgenre that would later bear Lovecraft’s name.
“The Colour Out of Space” takes place in a rural area in New England. One day, a strange meteorite lands in the fields of the Nahum family. The meteorite exhibits many odd behaviors, among them emitting globules described as a “colour” that even University scientists are confounded by. Shortly after, an unusual rot begins to affect the farm and its inhabitants.
The titular “colour” is an alien of some kind — probably … maybe? — but it is so alien and so separated from the world of human experiences that “it is only by analogy that they called it a colour at all.” The human characters are baffled by what is happening and have no way of knowing if what they’re dealing. Trying to figure out why it acts the way it does is a one-way ticket to insanity.
Lovecraft’s work is largely defined by his philosophy of cosmicism, which he summarized as “the fundamental premise that common human laws and interests and emotions have no validity or significance in the vast cosmos-at-large.” His stories, particularly the later ones, center around the idea that the Universe is a godless cosmos that is entirely indifferent to humanity.
Unlike nihilism, with which cosmicism shares some similarities, the focus is on how small and incidental humanity is. Lovecraft’s characters are often placed in situations where they come face-to-face with the cold, uncaring vastness of the Universe, their inability to affect change in any meaningful way, or aliens so bizarre that their minds cannot comprehend them or integrate them into a coherent worldview.
Many philosophers have posited solutions to nihilism and the realization that the universe isn’t centered around us. Absurdism suggests we “revolt” against the meaninglessness of the universe. Existentialism contends we should forge our own meaning. Lovecraft goes in another direction entirely — his stories present a universe so indifferent that it would drive most people insane if they ever stopped to really consider the implications.
Fair warning for those interested in exploring Lovecraft’s stories further: Even by the standards of the 1920s and 30s, his views were staunchly racist and anti-Semitic. He was also a classist — to a degree that would shock many a monarchist — and he once described himself as pro-fascist, though his actual political stances don’t quite line up with the ideology.
His stories do hint at these misguided views, but they tend not to linger on them and lean more toward the allegorical than the overt. His personal correspondence, however, makes these views very clear. If you still want to dive into the cosmic horror, you can find “The Colour of Space” here.
Blindsight (2006)
“PREDATORS RUN FOR THEIR DINNER. PREY RUN FOR THEIR LIVES.”
Peter Watts is a deft writer when it comes to fitting big philosophy into his novels, and Blindsight is no exception. It is a terrifying deep-space exploration that forces readers to contemplate ideas such as consciousness, evolution, sociopathy, and the question of how to engage with non-human life.
In the late 21st century, the spaceship Theseus and its crew of transhumans, vampires, and an artificial intelligence head to the Oort Cloud to make first contact with an alien ship named Rorschach. However, attempts to communicate with the first extraterrestrial guests to our solar system don’t go quite as planned, and to keep this spoiler-free, I’ll stop there.
The novel explicitly references several philosophical thought experiments. Perhaps the most significant one is John Searle’s “Chinese Room.” In this thought experiment, readers are asked to imagine a person sitting in a room with a large book on how to answer questions in Chinese. The book doesn’t teach the reader Chinese; it only provides instructions on what characters to write down as answers in response to other characters given as questions. However, to an external observer, it appears that the person in the room is a fluent (if somewhat slow) speaker. Replace the person with a computer, and the thought experiment suggests that computer systems don’t understand information. They just process it.
Blindsight‘s characters reference the thought experiment and its central problem: What does it mean for consciousness to exist? A common interpretation of the problem is that because the computer doesn’t grasp what it is doing, it doesn’t have to be conscious to perform its actions. Similarly, the extraterrestrials don’t appear to be conscious, but do they even have to be to be menacing? What does their potential lack of consciousness mean for humanity and its offshoots?
Unlike the other authors on this list, Watts is a noted scientist, one of many who have written some excellent sci-fi novels, and while this entry is more recent than the last two, you can still read it for free online as he has made it available under a Creative Commons License.
House of Leaves (2000)
“This is not for you.”
How about a philosophical horror formatted like an academic paper and flavored with several heaping handfuls of satire? If you think that sounds just fine, have we got a novel for you: Mark Danielewski’s 700-page tome, House of Leaves.
The central story of the novel focuses on two men who have never met: Zampanò and Johnny Truant. Zampanò began working on an academic review of the cultural impact of the documentary film The Navidson Record, which is about a bizarre incident affecting a family in an unusual house. The work was unfinished before being picked up by Truant, who attempts to take it in his own direction. Along the way, he falls into obsession, paranoia, and vice-ridden insanity, which he also attempts to document.
Stepping outside of the academic format of that plot line, the book also provides the narrative of The Navidson Record as told by Zampanò. The tale of the Navidson family and friends exploring their eldritch abomination of a house features death and survival horror alongside impossible architecture and geometry.
This summation is much more cursory than the others on this list. The book is metafictional and more than a bit convoluted, but it has the potential to reward readers as much as it challenges them. In addition to being written as though it were an academic publication — a format House of Leaves satirizes — the difficulty of reading the book extends to sections that require the reader to rotate it; layouts designed to invoke claustrophobia, isolation, and unease; and the general need to intently focus to understand even the basics of what’s going on.
This encyclopedic novel touches on several philosophical themes, not the least of which is questioning the nature of reality. Zampanò, Truant, and the characters in The Navidson Record struggle to understand what is happening around them and frequently encounter inconsistencies between their experiences and what makes logical sense.
Is reality bound to follow rules we understand? Does the world remain fixed, or does it warp itself with our perspective? These are the questions that philosophers and readers of House of Leaves relish in exploring.
The Metamorphosis (1915)
“I cannot make you understand. I cannot make anyone understand what is happening inside me. I cannot even explain it to myself.“
While not often shelved in the horror section of the bookstore, Kafka’s best-known work has left plenty of readers with feelings of existential dread over the past century. In fact, the term Kafkaesque — which describes a bizarre, nightmarish situation where alienation and a lack of control permeate — is perhaps best applied to this novella.
One day, salesman Gregor Samsa awakens to discover he has transformed into a giant “vermin.” Seemingly beetle-like, he finds it difficult to crawl out of bed to get to work and frightens his family with his newfound appearance. His family, dependent on his income and repulsed at what has become of their son, must then determine what is to be done with poor Gregor.
While many of Kafka’s works examine the question of alienation and its consequences, that question takes on a different dimension in The Metamorphosis. For instance, in The Trial, Kafka looks at alienation vis-à-vis a faceless, impenetrable bureaucracy. Here, he explores it from the more personal realms of the self, family, and the world.
Many of the people around Gregor view him less as a person and more as a worker. His boss views him only as a salesman, his family as a means of support, and his co-workers as competition who cuts into their business. Eventually, this changes him. Whether the change is psychological —as Marx would argue alienation does to us all — or also physical is left as an exercise for the reader. Several translations of the work exist. Here is an English one you can read for free.
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“The House of Leaves” sounds good. Thank you.
T.E.D. Klein was also an interesting author in this genre.
The real horror begins when you realize that ideas, once believed, start thinking for you.