Monsters Within: Exploring Internal vs. External Threats in Horror

What really keeps you up at night? Is it the creak of a floorboard in the dark or the gnawing thought that you might be capable of terrible things? Horror fans know better than anyone: monsters come in many forms. Some are loud and grotesque, others are quiet and invisible—but the most terrifying ones? They live inside us.

Welcome to the battleground of internal vs. external threats in horror fiction, where the lines between the monster under the bed and the monster in your head get blurred. Let’s dive into this psychological war zone and explore how horror taps into both primal fears and personal demons to terrify, disturb, and delight us.

The External Threat: Classic Monster Mayhem

Let’s start with the familiar: the external threat. These are your slasher killers, vampires, werewolves, demons, ghosts, and eldritch abominations. They come from outside the protagonist, with claws, teeth, or reality-warping powers, and they have one clear goal—kill, destroy, devour, or possess.

Think of Michael Myers in Halloween. He’s the embodiment of external evil—silent, unrelenting, and coming for you no matter how fast you run. Or the Xenomorph in Alien, a perfect organism designed to hunt, infect, and obliterate.

External threats tap into what horror does best: put us in survival mode. These stories trigger that lizard brain response. Fight or flight. Barricade the doors. Grab a weapon. Don’t go into the basement.

They’re often metaphors too—stand-ins for war, disease, nature’s fury, or societal collapse. Zombies, for instance, have represented everything from consumerism (Dawn of the Dead) to pandemics (28 Days Later) to mindless political conformity (They Live).

External horror is visceral. It's chaos pressing in from the outside world, and the fear comes from what happens to you.

The Internal Threat: Hello Darkness, My Old Friend

Now for the real mind-benders—the internal threats. These stories flip the script and ask: What if the horror comes from within?

Internal horror is personal. It’s psychological. It’s the breakdown of the self, the soul, the sanity. Here, the monster isn’t always visible because sometimes, the protagonist is the monster.

Take The Shining. Sure, there are ghosts, but the real horror is Jack Torrance’s descent into madness and violence. The hotel may whisper, but Jack is the one who picks up the axe. Or how about Black Swan? A ballerina is consumed by perfectionism and hallucination until she literally tears herself apart.

This type of horror is deeply unsettling because it suggests we’re never truly safe—not even from ourselves. It probes mental illness, trauma, guilt, addiction, repression. It forces us to confront parts of ourselves we’d rather pretend don’t exist.

Stories with internal threats are often slow burns. They live in unease and ambiguity. Is the protagonist haunted or hallucinating? Is there a curse or just a breakdown? And when the truth comes out, it's often more tragic than monstrous.

When Internal and External Collide

But let’s be honest—some of the best horror blends both. The truly chilling tales use external threats as a way to reveal or exacerbate internal ones. A haunted house story might not just be about ghosts—it might be about grief, regret, or abuse.

Take The Babadook. On the surface, it’s about a creepy book and a shadowy monster. But as the story unfolds, it becomes clear that the Babadook is a manifestation of unresolved grief and depression. The real horror isn’t the creature—it’s a mother’s fractured mental state and the way she struggles to bond with her child after trauma.

Or Hereditary. Yes, there’s a cult and some demonic nonsense. But the raw nerve at the film’s center is family dysfunction, unresolved resentment, and inherited trauma. The external horror becomes the vehicle for exploring inner collapse.

When done well, this combo-pack horror hits hard. It scares you in the moment, then lingers in your thoughts for days after, poking at your own emotional baggage.

Why It Matters: Scaring the Body vs. Scaring the Soul

So why does this distinction between internal and external horror matter?

Because it helps us understand why something is scary. External horror scares the body. It's about immediate danger. Slashers, monsters, curses—these make your heart race, your palms sweat, your body tense.

Internal horror, on the other hand, scares the soul. It worms into your thoughts, your identity. It forces reflection. Maybe too much reflection. It leaves you unsettled because you see a little of yourself in the madness, the guilt, the despair.

As horror fans, we chase both sensations. We want the jump scares and the dread. The scream and the slow, creeping sense that something isn’t right—even after the credits roll.

And when authors (or filmmakers) nail that balance? That’s when horror becomes transcendent.

Internal vs. External: Pick Your Poison

Let’s break it down with a few more examples you’ll recognize:

Title	External Threat	Internal Threat
The Thing	Alien creature impersonating humans	Paranoia and mistrust
Get Out	Cult-like body snatchers	Fear of assimilation and racism
It Follows	A shape-shifting stalker	Sexual trauma and guilt
Jacob’s Ladder	Visions of demons	PTSD, trauma, death
Midsommar	Pagan cult	Grief, identity, dependency

See the pattern? The scariest stories often blend the physical and the psychological. They force you to ask: Even if I survive this... will I still be me?

Final Thoughts: Who’s the Real Monster?

Ultimately, horror isn’t just about gore or screams. It’s about fear—and fear is personal. The question isn’t just what is the monster? It’s what does the monster reveal?

Sometimes, it reveals society’s darkest impulses. Sometimes, it reveals our own.

So whether you’re writing horror, watching horror, or just devouring it like the ravenous ghoul you are, pay attention to the balance between the inner and the outer threats. The mask may be terrifying, but the face beneath it is often worse.

Stay spooky, my friends. And remember: the scariest monster might already be inside you.

Terror awaits you at the outer edges of the universe in my sci-fi horror novella Obsidian.

Or you can just visit my online bookstore for all of my work in all formats.