Topics for a Horror Blog

If I had a horror blog I'd just write about things that interest me: new movies, tv series, novels (any I read or saw I'd review), facts about stories or movies inspired by real events, and local legends or hauntings. Good luck!!!

Ghosts and dead things.

I post about necrophilia a lot. And poop.

But lately it's been about how much I love Satan.

Then there's evil incarnate. It's all good.

One thing that I really don't see blogged about almost anywhere, and that I've always wanted to read about, or write about but never really have had enough time to do, is a semi-critical, mostly entertaining writing / analysis about assorted ghostlore / horror legends. There's so much out there, but most of it's just the standard rundown of what it is, not any sort of look at how bizarre some of it is, or speculation on where this sort of thing might come from. That might be too detailed / intricate for a blog. But it's an idea, and I know I'd be interested. For instance, I just bought a couple of books on ghost / horror legends, one covering the general South, one specific to Western North Carolina. One story is about the "Devil's Mansion" in New Orleans, which is just so strange and interesting (any legend that is based around the idea that the devil takes time out of his presumably busy schedule just to fuck with a few locals strikes me as grimly humorous and terrifying all at once--see also, the old legend about the Devil's Footprints in Devon, England).

God, if I had the budget and time, I'd love to do a horror-lore version of "This American Life" in blog and / or podcats form.

ShaunHorton said:

So, what topics of Horror would you expect to see on a blog that purports to be at least partially about Horror?

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I would like to see an analysis of particular horror story/novel or film and why you felt it worked or did not work as horror.

Not so much a review but more of a nuts and bolts literary analysis of the characters, story structure, pacing, plot line and why they added up to something that was effective (or not).

But perhaps this too much to take on with a blog post!

Jim

JimRac said:

I would like to see an analysis of particular horror story/novel or film and why you felt it worked or did not work as horror.

Not so much a review but more of a nuts and bolts literary analysis of the characters, story structure, pacing, plot line and why they added up to something that was effective (or not).

But perhaps this too much to take on with a blog post!

Jim

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The HWA published a wonderful book of essays on the matter.

TedTheewen said:

The HWA published a wonderful book of essays on the matter.

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Sounds awesome! Do you happen to know the title or one of the authors? Didn't see anything at first glance on the HWA site. On Amazon I found "On Writing Horror: A Handbook by the Horror Writers Association" but that doesn't seem to be the one.

That's the one. It has some very good essays in there from established and talented horror writers. Mort Castle, Tom Piccirilli, Stephen King, Joe R. Lansdale. Great people.

Thanks, I'll check it out!

It's well worth the read.

Also, I would highly suggest reading what other horror writers hold dear.

I know this is a little old but...

I took a peek through your blog and you have no idea how happy I am to see posts about animals/monsters in horror fiction. I love monsters but I always seem to have a hard time finding good books that feature them. I would love to see more on that, especially reviews of books if you do that sort of thing at all. I read them when I find 'em, which isn't too often sadly.

It might be worth reposting the reviews on the blog itself if you want to drive a bit of traffic. /shrug Up to you. I honestly didn't even see that review section in there, I was only looking at the posts because I'm lazy. The idea of having actual lists of book monsters is really exciting to me--easy enough to find endless lists of movie monsters, not so much with books. It's a shame. I don't often watch the movies because they tend to be unnecessarily gory and while I can read anything, I have a low tolerance for it on the screen.

Side note, finding a really good book featuring the Jersey Devil would be amazing. And since you didn't list it in your post, there is an old Animal Planet show called Lost Tapes that does have a Jersey Devil episode. It's a kind of cheesy, low budget found footage show depicting people getting attacked by various types of cryptids. If you like that sort of thing (and I do) it's pretty entertaining. I've actually found inspiration for a couple of stories through it.

Ya, it got kinda weird but they definitely had some good ones.

There'd be plenty of material. Monster Quest, Destination Truth, etc. The fake documentaries Animal Planet has done.

I guess it depends on if you want to be the "horror monster" blog or not lol. I for one would follow it religiously but I know I've got pretty niche taste in general.

Here some topics:

1.Did Nazis try to create zombies? Who are the Nazi werewolf
2. Top ten most scariest forests of all time.
3. Most mysterious people of all time.
4. Top ten horror films of all time.
5. Top ten Poe stories.
6. Top ten vampire novels pre-Twilight.
7. Top ten occult novels of all time.

One thing you could do, since you seem to like writing about monsters already, you could try and write posts about the connections between mythical creatures and the real ones that inspired them. If you're a fan of River Monsters at all, Jeremy Wade does this a lot. He had a great episode about monsters in Japanese mythology (the namazu and the kappa), where he tracked down the actual river creatures that inspired these legends.

I only read horror blogs that have book reviews in them. A horror fan/blogger who does book reviews is a personal godsend. If I were you, I'd choose horror authors from this website (ahem) and do interviews with them/reviews of their books. This way you're getting their books out there, and establishing yourself as a reviewer/blogger.

Also I like philosophical posts on the nature of horror, what is horror, what makes something scary, etc.