Executive Editor of Rue Morgue Magazine, co-host of the Faculty of Horror podcast, and Horror Queen of the North, Andrea Subissati offers us her horror expertise in this week's blog post. Read on to discover what gives her the heebie jeebies, and the importance of feeling said jeebies in the first place:
(Written on November 2, 2024)
In my line of work, the term “heebie jeebies” is perhaps the equivalent to what a surgeon might call a paper cut. I have, after all, made a career out of articulating appreciation of the horror genre – between my day job editing Rue Morgue Magazine, my monthly academic horror podcast The Faculty of Horror, and previous gigs curating horror lectures for The Black Museum. There’s an old idiom out there that the Yupik and the Inuit have dozens of words to describe snow; its differing textures, wetnesses, crunch factor, what-have-you. That claim is contested, I’ve now learned, but, the fact remains that my line of work entails being able to describe the nuance between terms like horror, terror, and dread, which would be interchangeable synonyms to your average English speaker. All this to say that the heebie jeebies, while perhaps a wee bit infantile or “vanilla” term for the seasoned horror fan, do occupy an important discursive space in the genre.
Just as there is soft snow, crunchy snow, and the yellow variety my Pomeranian likes to produce, horror fans come to the genre for a variety of reasons that range from superficial preference to psychological need. A simple aesthetic affinity for suspense and violence comes up a lot in these discussions, but so does catharsis. For myself, I tend to perceive the world as fraught with terrors, both immediate and abstract. From the perception of danger I experience as a woman to the deep dread I feel at the imminent climate crisis to the American election that is to take place mere days from now, the horror genre has offered me a space that seems to say, “Yeah girl, the world is a scary place and you’re not crazy to think so.” And conversely, the silly exploits of cis hetero white dudes making content about hot tub time machines or Tiger Kings or an escalating array of hot wings don’t interest me in the least. That’s not to say I don’t enjoy any comedy, mind you, but I’m inclined to feel patronized by narratives made by people who don’t share my worldview, be it due to choice or sheer genetic privilege.
But getting back to the heebie jeebies, horror also offers thrills that occur on a physiological level rather than a cognitive or critical one. It’s harder to articulate as a result, but it’s also easier for more folks to relate to. Even the most ardent non-horror fan has experienced this sensation at one point or another. Many of us know what the heebie jeebies feel like - that sense of crawling wrongness that jumps up into one’s throat and sets their hairs on end. This is the sensation that horror creatives (the ones worth their salt, anyway) aspire to induce. While faintings and vomitings at festival screenings tend to bring accolades, the heebie jeebies are what make someone walk out of a darkened cinema with the sense of being affected on a purely unconscious level. That feeling is, to me, something primal, something so fundamentally human as to be on the purest level of experience.
Personally, my favourite heebie jeebies are the ones that happen completely organically and surprise me – a broken doll sighted in a pile of trash, a creepy old clown lamp at a thrift store, etc. They’re hard to replicate because they are, by nature, random and seemingly personal in nature. Those creepy items that get too popular often wind up overused in the genre and diluted to the point of cliché (I’m looking at you, Annabelle) so there’s something extra fascinating to me when I feel that tingle in unexpected places and concepts. The last time that happened to me caught me completely off-guard, even though I was willingly and deliberately consuming a piece of horror media, just by virtue of its strangeness.
One needn’t be a hardcore horror fan to be familiar with the work of Junji Ito – the Japanese dentist who retired his practice to write and illustrate bizarre horror manga and now remains one of the most prolific and respected artists of the craft. Ito is known for his offbeat storylines and dark sense of humour, but what fascinates me is how scary they can be in spite of being so bizarre. I was introduced to him through a film adaptation of Uzumaki, a story about a small town whose occupants are gradually driven mad by their communal obsession with the spiral shape. Weird? Yes – but it’s also deeply unsettling. Perhaps it’s because obsession is often irrational, and maybe there’s a little streak of our irrational selves as we see the story’s cast unable to help themselves as they hypnotically swirl their soup. It was through Uzumaki that I next discovered Ito’s Gyo, which concerns a weaponized stench. That’s right, a stink. Doesn’t sound all that scary, does it? I dare you to read the manga and see if you experience a foul whiff the same way again.
But the Ito story that reigns supreme in my heebie jeebie hall of fame is a short story that was included at the end of Gyo – a little palate-cleanser after that sensory assault on the senses. “The Enigma of Amigara Fault” concerns an earthquake that splits the Amigara Mountain in half along a Faultline, exposing a mountain face full of odd, humanoid-shaped holes set deep within the rock. Scientists are baffled by it, and their bewilderment continues as nearby residents start to disappear into these holes, seemingly compelled by the idea that there was one made expressly for them, calling out to them. Eventually, these scientists discover another fault at the other side of the mountain, and the hideous fate of those who explored their personalized hole is revealed…
I know how it sounds – preposterous, ridiculous – but this story remains the scariest thing I’ve ever read; something about it just speaks to the darkest parts of my soul. I’ll admit, I’ve always had something of a fatalistic streak – Freud called it a death drive, “the call of the void,” where people who approach the edge of a cliff might feel a momentary urge to jump. Personally, I feel it most acutely when I’m waiting on a subway platform. I think it’s a byproduct of the brain trying to process the enormity of the fact that a simple step off the ledge could have such permanent ramifications – that’s a lot of responsibility to take in at a given fleeting moment, when you stop to think about it. But I tamp those thoughts down and pretend they’re not there, and perhaps that’s why Ito’s narrative twangs at my nerves like an especially tight guitar string ready to snap. If I found my hole, meant just for me, and heard it calling my name… could I possibly resist it, even if it promises certain doom?
Be it manga or fiction, movies or series, there’s never been a better time for the horror fan to match their freak. The heebie jeebies abound in common spaces, but it’s still a special, singular experience when you find one that seems to be made… just for you.
Commentaires