Into the Obscuradrome 1/23/26
Welcome back to the Obscuradrome. I'm Bob Pastorella, co-host of the This Is Horror podcast, author of The Small Hours, co-author of They're Watching with Michael David Wilson, and Mojo Rising, which is out of print as of this writing. This is my newsletter, housed now at my website powered by Ghost.
Keeping it Scary in 2026
Occasionally, I'll hear someone say that ______ didn't scare them. This is usually on social media, and typically as a response to the most recent horror film, series, book, etc.. And yeah, it's on social media, where the next post could be some food porn or someone complaining about whatever the recent bullshit that's come up in the world, so I get it ... there's no telling what you're going to get when it comes to media discourse, right?
Whenever I see this, I wonder exactly what does scare them?
How do we define our own personal fears?
We can list them, for sure. Even the bravest of us fear something. I'm terribly afraid of heights (... look who has high anxiety! ...) and wasps. There's a lot of other stuff I'm afraid of, but that's personal.
Of course.
Our fears, personal, often private, are subjective. There's no way we can measure what scares us other than a scale of intensity ranging between no big deal to I GOTTA GET THE FUCK OUT OF HERE. Each of us has our own private list of things that scare us, and while there's probably a ton of overlap, no two lists would ever be completely the same.
So if that's how it works for us on an individual scale, then how do writers scare their readers?
The honest answer is, they don't.
Their characters do.
Writers can't just write "scary part" on the page and go about their day. There's no way to insert scary in the prose that would somehow be a catch all and suffice for every reader. To do that would suggest "scary" is measurable beyond mere intensity, that writers are imprinting fear on the page as something empirical and objective.
We've already established fear is not empirical, that it is subjective ... intimate even.
So we write characters that are compelling. Not necessarily likable. Not like we're going to be besties and hangout together. Get likable out of your head.
Compelling.
Characters we give a damn about. Characters that we can't stop thinking about because we can relate to them, to the events happening in their lives. We share their desires, and their fears. Some of these may be universal, almost primal in nature: the need to protect ourselves and our loved ones, for one very big example. Others are personal, intimate, yet something most of us have felt at least once in our own lives. Sometimes those personal fears strike a strong chord with readers.
We fear the nasty villains who aim to destroy our beloved characters. We see the damage they are able to cause and hope our protagonist(s) can survive. We fear these villains can and probably will hurt our protagonist, maybe worse.
Every story has a character. Even that desolate place where no living thing could ever survive is a character (See: setting as character).
The way writers scare their readers is to scare the hell out of their characters. They place their characters in difficult and dangerous situations, with nefarious and evil people or entities. The goal of these characters should be to survive. They're well past the point of fleeing, it's time to face the enemy and fight back. If the writer has done their job, if they've written characters that readers truly give a damn about, characters that readers can relate to on some personal level, and they've organically put them in dangerous situations with serious stakes, when we scare those characters, the reader in turn, will experience fear.
And if the reader does not experience fear?
Either the writer has not written a compelling enough character, or the situations weren't dangerous enough, or the stakes didn't matter.
Or ... they did all of these things and the reader cannot connect with the characters. You can't write for everyone. Certain things that scare some people aren't that big of a deal to me.
Or ... sometimes the reader is a contrarian so picky and snobbish there's nothing that could ever excite them about anything in the world. Avoid these insufferable assholes like the fucking plague.
Compelling characters. Dangerous situations. Fleeing no longer on the table. Time to fight. The stakes are do or die.
Make it organic, make it flow, and make me give a damn about the character. Do that, I'll follow you to the end of the Earth.
My splatterpunk vampire novel debut, The Small Hours is out now. Southeast Texas Backyard Noir meets small town Urban Dread. It's funny, it's horny, and it's so, so bloody. Think Fright Night meets Suicide Kings and you're on the right track. A playful and gory spin on a vampire classic.
Get it at the Ghoulish website
If you've read it, please leave a review.
I was on Matthew Jackson's kickass podcast The Scares that Shaped Us talking about the book and also about the seminal vampire film Let's Scare Jessica to Death. You can listen to that episode here.
I was also a guest on my own podcast, This Is Horror, when co-host Michael David Wilson flipped the script on my and put me in the guest chair. You can listen to that episode here.
Currently reading: The Fellowship of the Ring
Currently listening: all kinds of vinyl. New turntable. Specifically, lots of Opeth, Pink Floyd, and Rush.
Currently watching: on the hunt for a new series.
Currently playing: Ghost of Tsushima, Director's Cut.
peace&love