Music has always been used to tell stories. Ancient epics were written in verse, ballads were a means of spreading popular legends—there’s something about the combination of plot, character, rhythm and rhyme that helps a story stick in the mind when music is used to help spin a yarn. Naturally, musicians have all sorts of interests, so the stories they tell are as diverse as those you’d find in a bookstore—which means that genre fiction is represented alongside romance and action. Genre music flourished in the 1970s.

indulgent and masturbatory, though usually for very different reasons. The horror author is labeled a decadent: she’s a sadomasochist, someone for whom physical suffering and mortal terror are both bread and caviar. The poet is stereotyped as a different kind of pervert, one who enjoys the depths of his own navel and the taste of his own toes, and furthermore, one who wants everyone to know this about him.He too is considered a sadomasochist, obsessing about his tortured existence and taking everyone else into his private Hell.

That seems to be the litmus test to which horror is most often held. When you get back from the latest movie about ghosts or serial killers, put down your favorite horror novel, or mention a spooky story on social media, it’s the first question that you’re likely to be asked. In our eternal struggle to find the boundaries of this vast and often contradictory territory called horror, I’ve seen more than one writer resort to “it aims to scare you” as a working definition.

In many ways, fairy tales could be seen as the first horror stories, full of terrors such as the death of a parent, being eaten alive or of being abandoned. In Hansel and Gretel, the children are left to their fate in the forest because there isn’t enough for the family to eat. The parents in Rapunzel and Rumpelstiltskin trade away their babies. Bluebeard tests his wives’ obedience and murders them when they fail. There is enough betrayal, jealousy, murder, cannibalism and cruelty in the stories to satisfy any horror fan.

When it comes to shapeshifters, werewolves are at the top of the heap. There are more stories involving werewolves than any other shifter out there. While I like a good werewolf story, I’m tired of them. Their archetypical stories have been told and retold until they are rote. But I’m not going to say it’s time to give them a rest. Like all the classic monsters (vampires, zombies, mummies, et al.) they will never be put down for good.

Christmastime. Cold white snow outside, warmth from a glowing fire and loved ones inside. A tree beaming with decorations and tinsel. Brightly wrapped presents beneath. A veritable feast of turkey and all the trimmings. The hope of a new year ahead and treasured memories of the year coming to an end. And somewhere, lurking in the shadows, a vicious murderer in a Santa Claus suit, wielding a blood-soaked axe . . .

Short of physically walking through a haunted house, there is no narrative experience more immersive in the horror genre than modern video games. […] I could never have imagined the bright colorful worlds of video games and the gaudy darkness of horror fiction interacting, until the day I lead the intrepid members of the Special Tactics and Rescue Service into an abandoned mansion deep in the woods . . .