Recently a friend made me watch the first Terrifier film, and I’ve never regretted anything so much in my life.

I’ve been a fan of spooky things as long as I can remember. In high school, I’d spend free time writing spooky, weird stories. But there have been some things I’ve seen that were so unnecessarily over the line with gore and violence and torture that they jacked me up. I went through a phase of trying to be as jarring and intense as possible too, with many stories containing graphic violence and gore.

But I had mostly moved past this phase in late 2023, when I started Crumb Hill, a little town out in the middle of nowhere, filled with monsters and hooded figures and monsters and more! There’s a place called The Dimension, where you don’t want to get sent, and where the monsters typically come from. It was an Instagram page at first, with pictures and captions that built the lore around the town.

I wanted the pictures to be as horrifying as possible, with captions that either added to the history, were spooky and mysterious, or were laugh-out-loud funny.

Now that it has been taking off and hit 50k followers across platforms, I’ve ironed out more of what I want Crumb Hill to be, and one goal is that it will be a ‘clean’ horror world.

After watching the first Terrifier film and then reading about the two sequels, as well as handfuls of other horror films that have messed me up in the past, I’ve decided that that level of gore and torment is unnecessary.

It is possible to get genuine fear and intrigue without being so horrendously gory and violent. This is what I want to achieve with Crumb Hill: A world that not everyone can stomach — not because of gore or violence or nudity or profanity — but just the pure terror and spookiness.

There are many paths to fear besides violence, and I want to explore them:

Putting things where they don’t belong, or connecting creatures that shouldn’t be connected. Monsters. Framing things in ‘the unknown’. Plus playing on people’s general fears of deep water, heights, clowns, dark woods, creepy children, hooded figures, and so on.

It will force us to get more creative! I want it to be scary and engaging enough for adults to authentically enjoy, but also for a parent to feel comfortable sending their teen to see in the theaters (if it hits that point!).

I laugh when people comment on how ‘demonic’ or ‘satanic’ Crumb Hill looks, but they’re really just commenting on the aesthetic. As a Christian myself, I know that Crumb Hill is far more tame than the Bible is when it comes to gore, torture, sex, et al.! hah! That doesn’t mean we need to engage in more of it and fill our minds with that sort of thing.

(For more on why horror is an essential element of the Christian faith, read  this post )

So thanks for joining in this journey of exploring the many paths to fear! We’ll be taking the paths that avoid violence, gore, satanism, demons (but still having some spiritual elements…we live in a spiritual world after all!), nudity, sex, and profanity, because there’s already too much of that in the world and we don’t need to add to the heaviness! We can find horror without its disturbing elements, and have fun along the way!

Thoughts?

e

play the games, buy merch, read the book, all at www.crumbhill.com

The post Why I started an (actually scary) clean horror world appeared first on ethan renoe.