Kevin Rush's Blog - Posts Tagged "bram-stoker"

After my rant on another space against what Halloween has become, I thought I’d revisit what Halloween once was. A kid’s day of campy fright and copious candy? Of course, there was that, but there was also a sense of horror, closer to its original meaning. The word has Latin roots, stemming from the verb “to bristle,” as in hair standing on end, due to dread—and get this—veneration and religious awe. This is what separates classic horror from conventional slasher films. Horror is not just the fear of temporal harm or torment. It’s the dread of a supernatural force that attacks us on the spiritual level.

For me, nothing I’ve ever seen or read captures that definition so completely as Bram Stoker’s celebrated horror novel, Dracula. The horror Stoker depicts isn’t simply creepy or scary, it’s cosmically consequential. Deranged murderers wielding machetes or chainsaws are frightening, but they cannot touch their victims beyond the grave. Mourners can bury them believing they’ll rest in peace. But Stoker’s novel is horrifying, because he threatens the notion of eternal rest. Stoker creates a world of perverse religious veneration, where the Count is a false god, collecting souls as well as strewing corpses. Dracula is whom Jesus warned us to fear in Matthew 10:28: “…do not fear those who kill the body, but are unable to kill the soul; but rather fear Him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell.”

Continue reading at: https://kevinrush.us/2021/10/30/unear...