The thing on the doorstep

To learn what we fear is to learn who we are. Horror defines our boundaries and illuminates our souls. In that, it is no different, or less controversia!, than humor, and no less intímate than sex. Our rejection or acceptance of a particular type of horror fiction can be as rarefied or kinky as any other phobia or fetish. Horror is made of such base material—so easily rejected or dismissed—that it may be hard to accept my postúlate that within the genre lies one of the last refuges of spirituality in this, our materialistic world. But it is a fact that, through the ages, most storytellers have had to resort to the fantastic in order to elevate their discourse to the level of parable. Stevenson, Wilde, Víctor Hugo, Henry James, Marcel Schwob, Kipling, Borges, and many others. Borges, in fact, defended the fantastic quite openly and acknowl-edged fable and parable as elemental forms of narrative that would always outlive the much younger forms, which are preoc-cupied with realism.