KILLER

a story in which the focus is on creating a feeling of fear. Such tales are of ancient origin and form a substantial part of the body of folk literature. They can feature supernatural elements such as ghosts, witches, or vampires, or they can address more realistic psychological fears. In Western literature the literary cultivation of fear and curiosity for its own sake began to emerge in the 18th-century pre-Romantic era with the Gothic novel. The genre was invented by Horace Walpole, whose Castle of Otranto (1765) may be said to have founded the horror story as a legitimate literary form. Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley introduced pseudoscience into the genrein her famous novel Frankenstein (1818), about the creation of a monster that ultimately destroys its creator

The horror genre was very effective on radio because of the gruesome and frightening images that coulde

In the era the German and the American raised the horror story to a level far above mere entertainment through their skillful intermingling of reason and madness, eerie atmosphere and everyday reality. They invested their spectres, doubles, and haunted houses with a psychological symbolism that gave their tales a haunting credibility.

Science-fiction writer Ray Bradbury discussing Edgar Allan Poe's "The Fall of the House of Usher" in an Encyclopædia Britannica Educational Corporation film, 1975. Bradbury compares the screenplay with the written work and discusses both the Gothic tradition and Poe's influence on contemporary science fiction.Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.