The Frighteners: Why We Love Monsters, Ghosts, Death & Gore

Description

The Frighteners follows the quest of Peter Laws, a Baptist minister with a penchant for the macabre, to understand why so many people love things that are spooky, morbid and downright repellent. He meets vampires, hunts werewolves in Hull, talks to a man who has slept on a mortuary slab to help him deal with a diagnosis, and is chased by a chainsaw-wielding maniac through a farmhouse full of hanging bodies. Staring into the darkness of a Transylvanian night, he asks: What is it that makes millions of people seek to be disgusted and freaked out? And, in a world that worships rationality and points an accusing finger at violent video games and gruesome films, can an interest in horror culture actually give us safe ways to confront our mortality? Might it even have power to re-enchant our jaded world? Grab your crucifixes, pack the silver bullets, and join the Sinister Minister on his romp into our morbid curiosities.

Peter Laws is the author of crime fiction novels Purged and Unleashed (Allison & Busby, 2017) and is an ordained Baptist Minister. He writes a monthly horror movie column for the Fortean Times and hosts the popular podcast/YouTube show The Flicks That Church Forgot, exploring the deeper and sometimes spiritual themes of morbid culture. He is a regular public speaker and lives in Bedfordshire with his wife and two young children.

'Phrases like page-turner and tour-de-force are slapped on any old tome these days, but in this case, it is fully deserved. Truly the Bill Bryson of the horror think-piece, in literary terms, the highest honour this writer can bestow upon another.' 9/10 * Luke Spafford, Starburst * 'A paradoxically jolly book about our fascination with horror' * Daily Mail *