HUMAN APPEAL TO HORROR: WHEN EASTERN LEGENDS AND WESTERN GOTHIC MEET

Abstract

This paper focuses on human appeal to horror in literature and traces the link
between the old legends and myths from Eastern and Central Europe and Gothic literature
leading to creatures that invoke apprehension and terror in Romantic writings. We begin
by examining horror elements in some of the initial proto-vampires to be encountered in
European folklore and analyse several eastern legends with the purpose of depicting and
defining their specific features. This paper also aims at probing into the psychological and
social issues that incite human want for horror stories. The cultural theory of the emerging of
horror in literature will be presented and discussed as well as what the horror that the vampire
represents stands for.