- Sub-genres & Cross-overs in Horror -

- the bugbears & bogeymen that haunt our collective nightmares -

The genre of Horror is a multifaceted subject, incorporating numerous sub-genres & crossovers with tropes & idioms all its own, and this site attempts to explore them all... for better or worse - the good, the bad and the clichéd.

Click on the Quick-links to the left and right to go to each sub-genre's description and corresponding in-depth links as they become available below.

You can comment on, discuss and debate these sub-genres and cross-overs of horror by replying to the blog post HERE - and, if you think we've missed any, you can suggest others there too.

Tell us which three Sub-genres or Cross-overs are YOUR favourite? Vote in our Dark Genre popularity POLL!

Vampires, Revenants & Ghouls

Whether it's mindless revenants, gagging ghouls, or the dark aristocratic lords of the night themselves... they all need a drop of the red stuff to keep them going... they thirst for blood!
Revenants and ghouls are essentially just lesser variants of the much more dangerous vampire who retains a large part of his or her intellect and cunning. Vampires have a lot in common with some forms of shape-shifter in that they can usually transform into the aspect of various animals... bats, wolves, rats, and other creatures of the night - but there is one major and fundamental difference; they are dead, or should I say undead, they are somewhere between a mortal human and an immortal supernatural being and are almost always, without exception (in folklore at least), totally evil. Ways of becoming a vampire are many & varied, be bitten by one, practice sorcery, commit suicide or eat meat on Good Friday... to name but a few. But there are plenty of ways to foil a vampire too, including... stake them, burn them, decapitate them, bury them face down... or wave a bunch of garlic flowers at them... take your pick.

Zombies & the Re-animated Dead

Undead but not forgotten... these brain, flesh or stale bread & gruel eating corpses-that-walk just keep on coming! "How do you kill something that's already dead?!"
There are in fact many types of zombie and not all are, strictly speaking, undead reanimates. There are reputed potions, used by unscrupulous witch-doctor types, that only give the appearance of death, such zombies are apparently re-animated to an after life of drudgery and slavery, but were in fact never dead to begin with. Then there are the 'true' zombies, victims of dark necromantic rituals and spells that summon the spirits of the dead and force them to possess decomposing bodies (whether their own or not), strange poppet's, dolls or even golems. On top of that there's the cursed mummies awakening in museums and then there's the mad scientist who, either accidentally or on purpose, brings back the deceased with wildly unethical scientific advances, that inevitably end up with hoards of the living dead running amok in the country side, suburbs and / or city centers.

Werewolves & other Shape-shifters

Shape-shifting from man to beast and vice-versa, from shamanistic experience to cursed creatures of the night and warrior cults.
Stories of humans that can magically transform, or are transformed, into human-animal hybrids, or even into animals completely, have littered the world since the advent of humanity. There's the strix (screech-owl) of ancient Greece, the now universal werewolves or lycanthropes originally of Eastern European folklore, the jaguar-men of South America, wendigos of North America, shape-shifting shamans from Siberia and even the berserker (bear-skinned) and ulfhamir (wolf-shirted) warriors from North European tradition, who could channel animal characteristics to give them that brutal edge in battle.

Ghosts, Hauntings & Seances

Ghosts and poltergeists from beyond the grave, mediums and séances from under the table!
It seems the souls of the dead rarely rest easy beyond this mortal coil, what with constantly hanging round the locations that they frequented in life, or avenging wrongs done unto them when living... or indeed rapping on tables and telling the family they still love them - oh, and there's fifty grand in used notes under the floor boards in the kitchen. That's assuming they're even ghosts of the dead, supposed hauntings could be some sort of stone tape effect embedded into the surroundings by the psychic disturbance of their traumatic deaths (or you're imagination playing tricks) and, of course, mediums could be lying out of their arses for profit... hmm - d'ya think?

Demons & other Supernatural Entities

Of deities and demons - possession and intercession... private parts to the gods are we, they play with us for their sport!
Ever since time began beings from higher, or lower, planes have been messing in the affairs of we mere mortals, whether its mythological tricksters vying to make sure the cruellest jokes are on us, incubi and succubi trying to sex us up, or its the vengeful gods and despicable demons themselves battling over possession of our souls... they can just never let us lie. We can pray and compel as much as we like but they always seem to be acting to their own agenda - and are perfectly willing to deal us a duff hand, or pass a dice heavily loaded against us, whenever it suits them.

Extra-terrestrial Life-forms

Aliens!!! They're not of this world... It's life Jim - but not as we know it!
Beings and creatures from other worlds and sometimes of other dimensions - ripping through space and/or time into our safely familiar four dimensional reality from those hideously alien corners of the universe or multi-verse! A relatively modern addition to the Horror stable, Aliens have become a classic monster of the genre, beings from another planet menacing us peace loving humans past, present and future... take me to your leader. Its a good job that 'real' encounters with aliens take the form of mischievous little green men or serene Nordic types and not the murderous vegetables, über-predators or acid bleeding xenomorphs that Hollywood promotes so well... not sure I like the idea of those anal probes though!

Witches, Warlocks, Magicians & Sorcerers

Magic and the occult - dabbling in powers beyond our comprehension or just visualization and role-play for self fulfilment!
Weird men and women, those practitioners of the magical arts - whether its white, grey, or more importantly (in terms of the horror genre) black magic - have been doing that voodoo that they do (do?) so well for centuries beyond count. From shamanistic witch-doctors to pagan priests & priestesses... and from medieval sorcerers, alchemists, necromancers and geomancers to 20th century occultists and psychologists exploring the dark recesses of the unconscious mind... are they all meddling where they shouldn't - of course they are! They'll be souring your milk, blighting your crops and withering your willies before you can say "That's Freudian that is!".

Goblins, Elves & other Fairy-folk

Gather round children. Once upon a time... in a land far far away and in a time long forgotten.
The darker side of myth and legend is full of tales of strange, beguiling - sometimes giant & sometimes diminutive, though no-less dangerous - fairy folk bewitching the lives and loves of simple, pure hearted human heroes & heroines with bulging muscles & heaving bosoms. Hark back to the days when good was good and evil was ooh so evil. Warriors and wizards of differing races and differing magical abilities battle it out in times gone by while adventurous thieves sneak in and steel the loot... ah life was much simpler then, a trusty sword, a good pair of boots and a thick head of hair and you could take on anything. You'll laugh aloud when you get whisked away to the land of Faerie... spend half an hour bedding a comely elfin maiden or dashing elfin prince... only to return home and find an age has passed and every one you once knew is dead... don't you just hate it when that happens. And don't even get me started on changelings, boggarts or banshees... we'll be here all night... and its time for your bed!

Mutants & Mutations

Blind science and the headlong pursuit of progress, or the perfect weapon, is always diddling & tampering with nature and the natural order of things.
Our modern technological society seems determined to pollute nature to the point of meltdown, messing with the ecosystem beyond measure and affecting all the innocent, lovely little animals (and often the public at large) out there in weird and unpredictably dangerous ways. Strange though - how a dose of radiation (or whatever) always seems to have the affect of making very small ants very BIG and all of a sudden giving fish three eyes or hapless humans super-powers! Either that, or that mad scientist is at work again, hell bent on creating a ravenous rat-boy or some-such to clear up the scraps from around the operating table down in his cold damp lab. And of course that's not even counting the natural mutations that happen with every generation of offspring as Mother Nature experiments with her evolutionary options whether for the good or the bad.

Time Travelling Terrors

Time travel is never a good idea people - as soon as you set foot in the past or future and with every action you make, you start an alternative time-line - and God help you if those time-lines get crossed... or looped.
Travelling back through time especially can lead to all sorts of complications... not least the splitting head-ache you get trying to work out the full implications of going back in time and accidentally killing your own grandfather before he has fathered YOUR father - wait, WAIT!! If I've stopped my father being conceived - I WON'T be conceived... and therefore won't exist to go back in time to kill my grandfather - so everything's all right... isn't it? Well, no - not exactly. You see you've created a paradoxical time loop that should not and CAN NOT EXIST - so YOU and the consequences of your time travel disappear in a puff of smoke... presumably? But what happens to the grandfather - is he dead? No - you see, you didn't exist in that time-line to go back and kill him - so he lives, and there-fore your father IS conceived... as are you - and you go back in time and accidentally kill him again. You disappear in a puff of smoke... etc. etc. ... has anyone got an aspirin or two?

Parallel Worlds & Alternative Realities

Yes... the Universe IS vast! But just one universe in an infinite abyss of nothing seems SO unlikely. There must be others right, a countless number of others.
There is a potential multiverse of possibilities out there - the variety is infinite. From dark parallel worlds or antiverses accessible through strange quantum portals that mysteriously appear and disappear; to a multitude of alternative histories, where every decision or action made in history causes a multiple split into parallel continua where every possible outcome is played out in a separate universe all its own. For example, Hitler lost WW2 in our world but in another, he won. Then there's the plethora of universes out there that are maybe only slightly different to us in the terms of their grand scheme of things or the ones widely different to or weirder than ours. Worlds where magic is real or worlds that are just so alien that life (as we know it) cannot exist. And, of course there's that really unbelievable universe that's exactly the same as ours except that its version of me is even more devastatingly good-looking than I am.

Far & Dystopian Futures

Description coming soon.

Body Horror

Description coming soon.

Killers, Psychos, Madmen & Murderers

Investigating the mysterious machinations of the cold hearted killer can make for perfect Noir and for horrifyingly fiendish foes!
Whether committed by the mad, bad or just dangerous to know, the foul act of murder can be motivated by revenge, greed, lust or blood-lust, it can be a contracted act or can even be a demanding hobby? Including even the most far-fetched of teen slasher movies it can definitely be said that, in this category at least, truth IS stranger - and more frightening - than fiction. Take one look at the crimes of Jack the Ripper, the Boston Strangler, the Zodiac Killer, or of Bundy, Birkowitz, Dahmer and Shipman et al, and you'll see that not even the unstoppable antics of Michael Myers and Jason Vorhees can compare in the blood curdling and spine chilling stakes. The culprit is invariably a psychopath so clinically detached and emotionless that their actions are truly shit-yourself scary and remind us all that none are immune or impervious to the wiles, deceptions and tricks of calculating and caddish charmers or manipulative femme fatales.

Crypto-creatures & Mythic Monsters

Undiscovered creatures, missing links, misplaced dragons, mistimed dinosaurs and monsters galore... foul beasts with even fouler breath that have no right existing in a rational world!
Who knows what elusive beasties lie hidden out there in the deepest lakes and oceans, atop lonely and desolate mountain ranges or deep within impenetrable forests. The crypto-zoological discovery of the century is waiting to be made - lets just hope it doesn't end up in a side show some where, with little or no security and inadequate safety measures... 'cause its bound to escape and wreak havoc and mayhem in some big city near by (odds on Tokyo or New York). All it takes are some bold explorers foolishly thawing out specimens encased in ice or plumbing the murky depths & disturbing the dangerous deep... or just poking a big stick where it doesn't belong like idiot school boys.

Robots, Automatons & A.I.

Its long been a dream of technologists to create an obedient class of mechanized slave to do our bidding while a number-crunching box of tricks takes care of the computing... what could possibly go wrong in such a brave new world?
Everything, if many of our respected science fiction writers are to be believed... we have a dark and despairing future - society going to wrack and ruin - but what the hell... at least we'll have hover cars and big guns! Science and technology can certainly do a lot to help in the struggle that is life; battling the elements, curing disease & injury, prolonging leisure time by providing faithful robot servants, developing quicker and more efficient ways of harming and killing each other, etc, etc... but what happens when it all slips beyond our control and our newly sentient creations turn against us? Even if we manage to avoid the robot revolution... are we in danger of becoming a soulless society, utterly dependent on cold emotionless science & technology to survive and progress with our fragile brains encased in our newly indestructible cyborg bodies... oh, I can't wait!

Psychic powers & powerful Psychics

Mind over matter and thought control. Is it mind expanding, head exploding or just infuriating foolishness to bluff your enemies with?
Let hypnosis, telepathy, psychometry, telekinesis, clairvoyance and precognition expand your horizons! From the ridiculous... hypnosis being pretty well established as a recorded psychological phenomenon that weeds the suggestible out and readies them for play-acting, manipulation and exploitation - to the sublime... precognition being a totally unsubstantiated, un-provable impossibility on the surface that in fact is an intellectual exercise in creative prediction of the most likely outcomes when dealing with deceptively random chaotic systems. The other phenomena in this category all seem to lie at different points between the two but it didn't stop cold-war governments and defence organizations investing shit-loads into convincing themselves and each other that it just might work.

Artefacts, Fetishes & Totems of Power

Ominous relics, cursed artefacts and mysterious fetishes... whether as foci for the supernatural, homes of enslaved spirits or as objects of obsession and worship, they have a powerful hold!
What with witch bottles, poppets full of pins, cursed skulls, hands of glory, deceptive rings of invisibility, decisive swords of invincibility, ancient oil lamps with djinn trapped in them and puzzle boxes that open trans-dimensional gateways when you solve them. The range of items that possess some sort of dangerous weirdness is infinite... and infinitely weird. Be very careful what you pick up and/or put on - your very existence could be cursed with misfortune... till you surreptitiously pass it on to some other poor sucker of course.

Sadists & Torture Chambers

It is said that there is no pleasure without pain... and also that life without pain is life without meaning... well there seems to be plenty of people out there who will take great pleasure in giving your life meaning!
Whether used as an instrument for extracting confessions, as a correctional tool, a way of prolonging an agonizing death or as simply a sick way of getting off, there is always a twisted element of the population who will give torture a go and won't find it necessary to resort to the old excuse of "I was just following orders guv." Torture is, of course, useless as a means of gaining a confession or intelligence, for people will admit to almost anything and go along with any random train of thought the interrogator wishes to pursue - if it makes the pain stop... unless they're into it, in which case they'll never talk.

Cannibals & Head-hunters

Invite them to lunch and they'll have you for dinner... either that or they'll lop off your head and shrink it down to the size of a large potato!
Look out for lost tribes, starving air-crash survivors, inbred hill-billies and general nutters with a taste for human flesh (who invariably make it the family business for, as we all know, the family that preys together stays together). A penchant for polished bone jewellery, funny looking ornaments sprouting hair taking pride of place on the mantle-piece and home made lamp-shades made from an interesting patchwork of skin are optional. You certainly don't want them moving in next-door.

Acts of 'God' & Apocalyptic Ruin

Whether its 'God the Father' or 'Mother Nature' to blame, the apocalyptic end of the world as we know it has had many dry runs...
Oh - what a disaster! The threat, & consequences, of earth-quakes, volcanoes, flood, famine and plague, not to mention the presently popular threats of climate change or meteor/comet strike, have always been with us and always will be - until they wipe us out altogether of course... or, perhaps, just wipe the slate of civilization clean for a brave few survivors to start out all over again! Natural disasters have long been a mainstay of doom mongers and scare merchants, providing cataclysmic horror of epic proportions that few can resist... we all love that what if scenario - you know, what if another planet collides with ours, or what if the sun explodes... WHAT IF? I'll tell you what if... everybody's dead Dave!

War is Hell... literally!

The horror of war, terrorism and conflict - who cares if its in the name of land, resources, country, religion, ideology, greed or power - is probably the greatest evil ever to be inflicted on humankind!
Ever since our earliest forebears decided those funny looking Neanderthals had to go, innocent people have found themselves caught up in the stark realities of all out war. One minute your happy, living your everyday life and your biggest worry is what to have for dinner, and the next thing you know you've been called up to fight in some strange land against some strange enemy for some strange reason you don't really care about. Your friends are dying around you, people you don't know are out to kill you and now some idiot is ordering you out of the trench, to go over the top and charge the enemy with fixed bayonets... if you don't think that's the biggest horror anyone's ever likely to face in this life - your an idiot - unfortunately for the rest of us you're probably the idiot giving the orders. Its the potential Armageddon we have only ourselves to blame for.... Nuclear War anyone?

Death & other Harbingers of Doom

The one thing that scares the heebie-jeebies out of everyone is, of course, the dreaded - it comes to us all eventually - there's no escaping this one - the one guarantee in life (other than taxes)... yes that's right - DEATH!
Every-body remembers the first time they realised there own mortality and from that moment on we are all waiting for the inevitable cold bony hand of Death to land on our shoulder. The inescapable doom that awaits us all... Destiny, Destiny, there's no escaping that for me!... or you! Humanity has, throughout history (& prehistory I'm sure), been so obsessed with death that legend, myth & fable have supplied many personifications and harbingers representing the dreaded D word... from hags & harridans to ravens & black cowled skeletons with a penchant for a game of chess (trusty pale steed optional). What-ever form they take however, I can guarantee that most people - at the first hint of a such a character closing in on them will close their eyes tightly, cover their ears and shout "La la la la la la la..." till they're gone. Unfortunately you can't cheat death - even if you play a mean game of chess - and once your name is on his (or her) list it stays there till the sands of you hour-glass life span have run out.

Mind Blowing Cosmic Horror

Its tempting to simply call this sub-genre Lovecraftian but that narrows the field a little too much when dealing with our exposure to horrors so cosmically awesome that our minds simply revert to madness in the face of their own insignificance.
It's too easy to (choose to) forget that the universe is a huge, cold, dark and very dangerous place - when we're closeted and cosseted in our familiar, boring, humdrum, everyday existence. The human mind is a fragile thing indeed - especially when confronted by an existential threat or an impossibility so impossible AND terrifying that your whole world-view and belief-system are utterly blown apart. There's plenty of room in the great unknown for things so beyond our understanding and comprehension, things so massively overwhelming or highly evolved that we are but insignificant ants to them... and that's if we're lucky. Things so horrific, so indescribably horrifying, or inscrutably alien, or even - just things so inexplicable... that our hold on reality is forced to flee to hell in a hand-basket, never to return.

Dark & Forgotten Pasts

Description coming soon.

Psychological Horror

Description coming soon.

You can comment on, discuss and debate these sub-genres and cross-overs of horror by replying to the blog post HERE - and, if you think we've missed any, you can suggest others there too.

Tell us which three Sub-genres or Cross-overs are YOUR favourite? Vote in our Dark Genre popularity POLL!

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