What do you think makes horror scary?

[spookypurple]

Not knowing....

[LittleMissTaxidermy]

generally, mentioning of the unknown. because not only will you watch/read what is to happen, but your mind runs away with it. there's a lot of background things that help out with the mood, such as lighting, atmosphere, music, character portrayals, and if in a book, the descriptions.things that seem like they could happen to you could also make it scarier.

[belle hawk]

Characters being realistic is very important.It should involve you inside the story through the eyes of characters

[Marko]

i think its when you read something or see something (even if its been on the news) what frightens you the most is the fact that most horror stories are realistic and theres nothing stopping something from coming to do something to you. (if your watching something like on TV or at the movies hardly anything makes you frightened apart from something that suddenly happens and makes you jump not make you frightened.)

[Alaizabel Cray]

It's the same way urban legends aren't always dismissed as legend right away. They all have that same underlying message: this could happen to you. If it culd happen to the actor/actress on the screen, who is doing all they can to act like your average human being such as yourself, it could happen to anyone else just as easily. Including you or the ones you love. Those things are made to get inside your head, shred a bit of the gray matter and worm their way out leaving you unsure of what's real and what's not. Personally, I love it. But thats just me.

[PersephoneX]

i havent been scared on an intellectual level in ages...i've forgotten what scares me...

[Dreaming Vendetta]

To me, horror is only truly scary when there is a contrast between what is expected and what occurs.

For instance, I do not find it particularly scary if a character is killed by a demon/ghost/zombie while walking around in a lost tomb or abandoned castle. That's the sort of thing one expects in that setting. However, if that same fiend gruesomely slaughters somebody eating lunch in their house, with no warning at all, that's scary. Also, the idea of bad things happening to good people can get to me from time to time for the same general reasons.

I get freaked out by horror when it is depicted as something that could happen to anyone in any place for any reason. I suppose it's because I could see something like that happening to me, and for that reason it sticks with me, reminding me for a few days that an unpleasant demise could await me in any darkened room or alleyway I might pass.

[Alaizabel Cray]

Dreaming Vendetta, true, the setting does have a lot do with how scary the plot actually ends up being. A guy meandering across a busy freeway getting hit by a drunken maniac in a car isn't scary, even if the manic pulls over, grabs the body and, I dunno, uses it for evil somehow to make it supposedly scary. The same guy meandering in his front yard, watering his lawn or something and getting hit by a drunken manic in a car and then carted off for whatever reason would be scarier. Ok, still not scary, but it'd be so random that it'd stick with you for a little while.

[Vampeilla]

i found that descriptive simmple haunting words due the trick for me, add conflict, sexual tension and to me that is it.
I love vampire-erotica fiction and have a couple of them published. I wrote one about a woman searching for the perfect man (you know what I mean) a vampire searching endlessy through nights shadows, and beneath the moons glow, for a lover. A lover who must bring her to the heights of passion or be doomed to a life beneath the soil of darkness.

[cradle]

Well, I find horror scary only if it is in the right context.
Living dead movies don't scare me because you can't wake mass graves, and even if you did I surely doubt that the'd eat people.
But things like House of 1000 corpses scare the shit out of me, because there are people out there that can do that, and it's intirely possible for that to happen.

[Crying_Crimson_Tears]

The characters play a huge part in making the story scary. I think that the setting and the main story plot also plays a huge part.