Transformation is a staple theme of horror. Whether it be the man-to-beast metamorphosis of a lycanthrope, Dr. Jekyll turning into Mr. Hyde, or the grisly decay of a rotting zombie, the genre thrives on physical change.

Horror is a tree with many branches. The classics—Frankenstein, Dracula, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, the Gothic graveness of Poe and M.R. James—serve as the trunk, and while each burgeoning new subgenre creates its own fledgling offshoot, the tree’s root is undeniably folklore.

Whether or not one believes in the existence of ghosts, we’re all haunted by them. If not literal spirits, than the memories of those dearly departed who’ve shared our lives: relatives, teachers, friends. We remember their words of wisdom, their jokes, stories they’d tell.

In its most simplified form, religion is the pursuit of knowledge about who we are, what the world is, and our place in it.

Since the first recorded discoveries of their fossilized remains in the early nineteenth century, dinosaurs (Greek for ‘Terrible Lizard’), have captivated our collective consciousness.

With the exception of horror, fantasy is likely the oldest of all literary genres.

According to legend, American author Ernest Hemingway famously penned one of the shortest short stories with the six-word tale, ‘For sale, baby shoes, never used.’ Unlike a novel, where there’s the literary legroom to overindulge in-depth narratives, short stories require an immediate seizure of the reader’s attenti

It has been said that the human mind is the true final frontier. In that squishy gray matter between our ears originates every earthly idea, impulse, urge, desire and function, and there are those who argue the mind is capable of feats—ESP, clairvoyance, telekinesis—as yet unproven by medical science.

While grand Gothic novels such as Horace Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto, Shelley’s Frankenstein, Oscar Wilde’s The Portrait of Dorian Gray and Stoker’s classic Dracula were benchmarks of early horror, beginning with the days of Poe and Hawthorne and carrying through to the pulp-e

As the infamous tagline for Ridley Scott’s 1979’s classic film Alien noted, ‘In Space No One Can Hear You Scream’, and audiences ever since have been drawn to the devilish combination of science fiction and horror.