Today is Halloween and in the blogosphere I’ve noticed some people are posting lists of the movies they consider the scariest. Not the books, but the movies. This made me think of something that Simon Strantzas discussed in a recent blog entry, specifically the purpose of horror fiction and whether or not the intent should be to scare the reader.

Have you ever been frightened by a horror novel, or do you feel there is nothing scary about a bunch of words, no matter how cleverly they’re put together? How about horror movies? Ever seen one that made you jump, or is it all just a bunch of silly special effects?

I know quite a few horror authors, but I couldn’t tell you how many of them write horror with the intention of instilling fear. I have heard readers describe certain books as scary, but I often wonder just how much it truly scared them. Is it the same kind of scare you get from a horror movie? It doesn’t seem so. A scene in a book describing a serial killer jumping through a window to grab someone from behind doesn’t seem to have the same punch as actually witnessing it in a movie. Some people jump in their seats, some people even scream out loud, and that’s not something you get in even the scariest novel. Fear in fiction seems to be a subtler fear, which is not to say it’s any less effective or frightening.

One of the scariest scenes I ever read in a book was in Stephen King’s Bag of Bones. The protagonist is standing at the top of the basement stairs listening to someone — or something — down in the dark rapping on bags of insulation. He begins to question the presence and receives replies — one tap for no, two for yes. A simple scene, but very creepy.

In terms of my own horror stories, I don’t tend to write with the intention of scaring my audience. I take it as a compliment when I do, but it’s strictly an added bonus.

Maybe I’m desensitized to these things, or maybe I’m just a product of my generation, but I find horror movies scarier than horror novels. Perhaps it’s because film is a visual medium and much more impressionable on the ol’ imagination. I’m sure some people will differ with me on that one, but it’s not meant to be taken as a slight against the written word. I simply believe that, when it comes to delivering the most potent scares, film is a much more effective medium than literature.

I think this is why I have such an aversion to the type of horror novels I think of as “blood and boobies.” The b&b books are the literary equivalent of slasher flicks, and when I meet someone who is taken aback by the fact that I write horror, it’s usually this kind of crap that they’re thinking of. I quickly mention that I don’t write “that” kind of horror, which sounds snooty, but it’s really not because, quite frankly, you don’t have to aim that high to be better than some of the tripe that qualifies as horror these days.

I think another reason I find horror films to be scarier is that I grew up on them. I read a lot of horror fiction as a youngun, too, but it didn’t have the same effect on me. A movie with frightening images seems to speak louder than words, especially to the young and impressionable. I recall having to turn off The Evil Dead the first time I saw it and finish it in the morning. Most recently my wife and I were suitably freaked out by a French horror movie called Ils and it’s American doppelganger The Strangers. So I do have the capacity to be scared by horror, but it doesn’t seem to happen that often in books.

To be fair to both mediums, I’ve listed below ten of my favourite horror stories and ten of my favourite horror movies. I’m not calling them my all-time favourites because I will no doubt forget one or two that don’t spring immediately to mind. It’s hard enough limiting the number to ten, so let’s just say these are my favourites at this precise moment. Fair enough?

Ian’s 10 Favourite Horror Stories (Novels/Novellas/Short Stories)

1. “The White People,” by Arthur Machen
2. “The Yellow Wallpaper,” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
3. The Haunting of Hill House, by Shirley Jackson
4. I Am Legend, by Richard Matheson
5. IT, by Stephen King
6. “The Mist,” by Stephen King
7. Falling Angel, by William Hjortsberg
8. “Family,” by Joyce Carol Oates
9. The Keeper, by Sarah Langan
10. The Road, by Cormac McCarthy

Ian’s 10 Favourite Horror Movies

1. Alien
2. Jaws
3. The Shining
4. Eraserhead
5. The Evil Dead
6. Black Christmas
7. The Blair Witch Project
8. Halloween
9. Ils
10. Videodrome

Honourable Mentions (which means I had too many movies and not enough room on the list)

The Changeling
Don’t Look Now
The Exorcist
Jacob’s Ladder
Phantasm
Ringu
Session 9
Se7en
The Thing
The Village

And, a special bonus:

Ian’s “5 Movies That Freaked Me Out as a Child”

1. Alice in Wonderland

I was so afraid Alice would never find her way home and would be stuck forever in Wonderland, which I found to be an extremely disturbing place. The Cheshire Cat was an asshole and I thought Twiddle-Dee and Twiddle-Dum looked like escaped lunatics.

2. The Dark Crystal

If Sam Raimi ever directed an episode of “The Muppets,” it might have looked something like this. Not as freaky now, but it scared the bejesus out of me as a kid.

3. Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory

For some reason I thought the movie was going to end with some big reveal that Wonka’s chocolate was made from children, and that the ones on the tour would end up in the next batch. I probably shouldn’t have watched this right after Soylent Green. Also, Wonka himself kind of disturbed me; he struck me as kind of crazy, like he belonged in an asylum. Maybe in a cell next to Twiddle-Dee and Twiddle-Dum…

4. Poltergeist

Okay, so most people didn’t see this one when they were young. But I did, and I tells ya, I couldn’t go near a television for weeks afterwards.

5. The Wizard of Oz

Two words: flying monkeys.

• Currently reading: Ring, by Koji Suzuki