This is not your average horror anthology. In addition to offering twenty stories (full disclosure: mine is one of them) that incorporate one of the five senses, it also offers a wealth of scientific information about the brain and just how we process sensory input.
The book is divided into five sections of four stories each devoted to the five senses. Among the contributors: authors John Farris, Ramsey Campbell, Poppy Z. Brite, Darrell Schweitzer, and Richard Christian Matheson.
An engrossing Introduction by Jessica Bayliss, PhD looks at “Why Do Horror Stories Work? The Psychobiology of Horror,” in which she explores how the brain, particularly the amygdala, triggers our emotions and how mirror neurons aid in creating experiences. And how do these psychological mechanisms get their data to begin with? Through the senses, of course – which is what nightmares in real life and in horror fiction are made of!
Bayliss opens each of the sections with a discussion of how that particular sense relates to fiction, so that readers may experience fear or revulsion vicariously through the brain’s receptors. This means, in other words, that we experience shivers not just when we watch a centipede crawl across the floor, but when we read about a character in a horror story who watches one.
In addition to Bayliess’s comments, the anthology includes a fascinating essay by Eric J. Guignard “Understanding and Incorporating the Five Human Senses into Modern Horror Short Fiction” that will intrigue anyone who writes horror or aspires to do so.
And in the Afterword, “Sensation and Perception,” K.H.Vaughan PhD raises some thought-provoking questions:
How different are my perceptions from yours?
Does a reality exist independently of our perceptions?
Can perceptions be trusted at all? (And what happens if the answer is no?)
In short, The Five Senses of Horror offers an illuminating look at how modern horror fiction manages to evoke fear through each of the senses – a must read for horror writers, readers, and students alike.