I’ve recently been bingeing horror movies and crime fiction in unhealthy amounts. Unhealthy because I’ve watched so much horror that none of the new releases feel unique to me anymore. Even so, there are still a few creepy tropes that I’ve always been drawn to…and then terrified by.
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Top Ten Tuesday was created by The Broke and the Bookish in June of 2010 and was moved to That Artsy Reader Girl in January of 2018. It was born of a love of lists, a love of books, and a desire to bring bookish friends together.
The Ghost in the Walls which you see in movies like I Am The Pretty Thing That Lives in the House or The Haunting of Hill House is of the creepiest tropes. It’s very unsettling to know that home will never be safe and that what we encountered in there will continue to follow us.
Haunted Dormitories sound like something out of urban legends but when you’re cooped in with several roommates, their fear starts to infect you. Urban legends that are passed down from one dorm generation to another is the worst because these stories just seem to get worse with every re-telling.
A Dead City like the City of Bones or Vaes Tolorro in A Clash of Kings by George R.R. Martin is not one I would ever wish to encounter. Can you imagine the fear of stepping into a place where it looks like time has simply paused?
Parasitic Islands would be a horror to survive. Wilder Girls by Rory Power writes about this scenario in vivid detail. Nature on the island has transformed to a point where it has even begun to infect the people.
The Unreliable Narrator trope is one of my most favourites! If you tell me a book has this, I am bound to pick it up. It’s having to work double-time when reading a book because you never know if what the narrator is saying is true or if they’re just completely disillusioned.
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What’s your favourite creepy trope? Which horror movie scared you the most?
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omg I am such a wimp at horror stuff. They scare me. I believe a lot of people think clowns are scary (?) I ever remember there being on the news of people jump-scaring others in clown costumes – that was NOT fun…
The unreliable narrator trope is awesome everywhere!! Especially in political intrigue where they don’t tell you exactly what they’re thinking and then they whip out their fantastical moves or twists!!
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Hahaha I like to be creeped out but I don’t enjoy horror? It’s kinda odd I guess. I do love dead cities and parasitic islands!! That is the kind of creepy I love. Wilder Girls is a book I read a long excerpt on that I decided to pass on (which I’m glad of because of the end) but I really loved the creepy vibe of the book! And I guess abandoned cities is why I love dystopian books? Because it must be so weird to walk into a place with very few people! ❤️
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I love stories that have urban legend in it! Whether it’s real or just made up to be the setting of the story, it always made me wonder whether it’s true or not. After all, there’s a reason this “legend” lives on…
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I love horror movies and books, so my scare-tolerance is quite high but ghosts in walls (or people living in them) ALWAYS gets me. It is just so creepy to imagine someone/thing living in your house unbeknownst to you… And if I stepped into a dead city, I would just about die myself. If that freaks you out, check out the movie As Above, So Below. It is set in the dead and blocked-off sections of the Paris catacombs and it feels so claustrophobic.
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ooh this is such a good list!! Unreliable narrator is my favourite, but ghost in the walls is such a good one!
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