Writing Horror Stories

I’m writing a horror story for a short story contest. I’ve always felt that horror is difficult to write, as it’s something that I feel comes across better visually. I’ve written horror before with my short story, The Disgraceful One, and a gothic horror short story, The Waves of the South Sea, so it’s not totally unfamiliar to me and a good challenge.

This will help me work on being more descriptive and setting up a certain type of mood or atmosphere. I have a general idea of how the story plays out, but creating the mood to emit fear is proving difficult. I also don’t want to resort to horror tropes like haunted houses, abandoned cabins, or hospitals.

I’m not big on horror that resorts to gore and violence, so I’m going to try to refrain from too much of that in this story. I like the horror utilized in Pan’s Labyrinth, where it is indeed scary, but not needlessly bloody. I’m trying to go with something a bit more psychological here, and I hope that it works.