BRYAN W. ALASPA

Time is the one thing we all assume we understand. It moves forward, second by second, hour by hour, anchoring our memories and our sense of self. But horror loves to ask an uncomfortable question: What if time doesn’t behave?  What if it slips, stalls, loops, erases itself, or jumps ahead without warning? Lost time is one of the most quietly devastating concepts in all of horror, not because it’s loud, but because it destabilizes the foundation of reality. You’re not just s

We live in a world overflowing with messages; texts, emails, voicemails, notifications from apps we don’t remember installing. Words are constantly being sent, received, archived, and ignored. But just beneath that endless stream lies a quieter, more haunting digital phenomenon: The unsent message . It’s the text typed and deleted.The email sitting in drafts.The voicemail never listened to.The message that never delivered.The words sent too late.The communication that never f

Sleep is the great reset button of the human body. It repairs cells, organizes memories, regulates mood, cleanses the brain of toxins. Without it, the body malfunctions. The mind slips. Reality bends. That’s why sleep deprivation isn’t just exhaustion; it’s horror creeping in through the cracks of consciousness. Characters in horror don’t even need a monster to be in danger. If they go long enough without sleep, they become the monster, or worse, the line between self and nig

Human beings are pattern-seeking creatures. We can’t help it. Our brains are wired to look for meaning in chaos; faces in clouds, voices in static, shapes in shadows. Pattern recognition kept our ancestors alive. If you saw the same footprints twice, you knew something was hunting you. But in horror? Patterns don’t protect us.They become the threat. Whether it’s the repeating footsteps of something unseen, the same numbers appearing again and again, or a ritual cycle no one c

You can close your eyes. You can cover your ears. But you can’t stop smelling. Smell is the most invasive of the senses. You don’t choose to experience it; it forces itself into you with every breath. It bypasses logic and language, going straight to instinct and memory. One whiff can summon childhood, heartbreak, danger, or disgust so vividly you feel it in your gut. So why don’t we talk more about the horror of smell? In movies and books, we pay endless attention to what we

The voice is supposed to comfort. It connects us, guides us, asks, answers. But in horror, the voice is something else entirely. It becomes foreboding, faceless, and wrong. You can’t escape it. You can’t mute it. You can only listen, and dread. This is the horror of the voice, a sonic subgenre built not on screams or silence, but on the unmistakable, uncanny terror of a voice without a body. A whisper in the dark. A voice on the phone. A recording that speaks when no one’s th

A photograph is supposed to freeze time. A memory captured, preserved, made safe. But horror knows better. In horror, photographs don’t just remember; they refuse to forget. They hold on when they shouldn’t. They trap things that should have faded. They become haunted. From Sinister  to Lake Mungo  to Ring , horror has turned photography into something uncanny; a medium where memory curdles and ghosts live on. In an age of digital surveillance, filters, and endless storage, t

In most horror stories, being alone is the problem. Solitude invites danger, isolation breeds madness. But sometimes, horror lives not in the empty room, but in the crowded one. The horror of the crowd flips the genre’s oldest trope. It isn’t the solitary survivor who’s doomed; it’s the group. The mob. The believers. The neighbors next door. Because when fear spreads faster than reason, when identity dissolves into the collective, being surrounded by people doesn’t mean you’r

Some houses don’t just shelter the living. They remember the dead. In horror, the scariest places aren’t those filled with monsters, they’re the ones that remember . They hum with echoes, holding onto pain long after its owners are gone. The walls breathe. The floors whisper. The air feels heavy with stories that refuse to fade. These haunted places aren’t just backdrops for terror, they’re archives of trauma, physical embodiments of memory itself. They absorb every scream, e

A smile should be safe. It’s warmth, empathy, connection, the universal signal of comfort. But in horror, that same expression curdles into something grotesque. The human smile, stretched too wide or held too long, becomes unnatural, a rictus mask that hides everything we fear about being seen. From Midsommar  to Smile  to American Psycho , the horror genre has learned how to turn joy into something poisonous. The grin becomes a weapon, a disguise, a symptom of inner decay. A

Horror has always belonged to the dark. Shadows are its natural habitat, the flickering candle, the whisper in the hallway, the thing just out of sight. But what happens when the terror refuses to hide? When the brightest daylight becomes the most horrifying thing of all? Welcome to daylight horror, a subgenre that dares to expose what most horror conceals. In stories like Midsommar , The Wicker Man , and The Autopsy of Jane Doe , light doesn’t save the characters. It betrays

We used to fear haunted houses. Now, we fear haunted hard drives. In a world where memories live in the cloud, voices echo through phones, and dead loved ones linger in old text threads, the supernatural has gone digital. Horror has evolved accordingly. The ghosts that once rattled chains now hum through speakers, flicker in webcams, and whisper through corrupted data. Welcome to the era of haunted technology, where memory, grief, and machinery blur into something uncanny. Th

There’s something deeply unsettling about the idea that our bodies can move without us. That, while we lie unconscious, something wearing our face can walk, act, even kill; and we’ll wake up with no memory of it. This is the essence of sleepwalking horror, stories where the line between dream and waking life collapses, and our own flesh becomes a stranger. While horror has long been fascinated by possession and mind control, sleepwalking horror is subtler and more intimate. I

In horror, the scariest moments don’t always happen in the darkness or in the monster’s lair. Sometimes, they occur in the space between, the moment before stepping across a doorway, before lifting the cellar hatch, before touching the mirror that might not reflect you back. Thresholds, doorways, tunnels, staircases, and mirrors, are where the boundaries between safety and nightmare blur. They’re physical spaces that symbolize psychological and spiritual liminality, moments w

Horror is a genre of the senses. We see blood. We hear screams. We feel the cold breath on the back of our necks. But one sense rarely gets its due: taste . And yet, when horror does reach for it, the results are some of the most unforgettable, stomach-churning experiences in film and fiction. The horror of taste taps into the primal disgust at what enters our mouths and bodies, what we consume, and what consumes us. Whether it’s cannibalism, decadence, or body horror served

With the release of my sea-faring horror tale, The Witch of November (out now), I thought I'd explore some maritime horror. The ocean is older than fear itself. It predates civilization, myth, and even memory. It is vast, alien, and merciless, an endless expanse of shifting darkness that hides things we were never meant to see. For horror storytellers, the sea has always been more than a setting; it’s a sentient force, a graveyard, and sometimes, a god. From ghost ships and

A city without people feels wrong. The architecture still stands. The traffic lights still change. The wind still moves through the streets. But when the crowds vanish and the hum of life goes silent, something inside us recoils. Empty cities, deserted malls, and forgotten highways don’t just evoke sadness, they radiate horror. In fiction and film, abandoned city horror  has become a subgenre of its own. From Silent Hill  to The Last of Us , from 28 Days Later  to urban explo

Horror movies are more than just unsettling visuals and jump scares. They have a unique ability to touch on our most profound fears and anxieties, allowing us to experience a thrilling rush of emotions. But what makes these films so effective at evoking such strong reactions? In this post, we will take a closer look at the psychology of fear and how horror movies skillfully manipulate our emotions to create lasting memories. Understanding how fear works on a psychological lev

For as long as humans have looked to the skies, we’ve filled the void with gods. Some were benevolent, some were wrathful, and some demanded sacrifice just to keep the sun rising. But what happens when those gods are abandoned when the temples fall, the prayers stop, and their names fade into myth? Horror has long suggested that forgotten gods don’t simply vanish. They linger, festering, angry at being ignored. Forgotten gods horror is one of the most unsettling corners of th

Horror has always been obsessed with family. Not just the comforting warmth of kinship, but the shadows that stretch across generations. From Gothic castles to modern suburban homes, horror stories remind us that sometimes the greatest monsters are the ones we inherit. Family curses, doomed bloodlines, and inherited sins haunt the genre, showing us a terrifying truth: some destinies can’t be escaped. Gothic Roots: The Fall of the House The Gothic tradition laid the foundation