The September House

Psychological horror is a subgenre of both novels and films that uses the conventions, tropes, imagery, and plotlines of horror to explore topics surrounding mental and emotional health. Additionally, psychological horror aims to scare and unsettle audiences by employing macabre, grisly, and gruesome imagery to create a tone of suspense and anxiety. Erratic characters, unreliable narrators, and figures in acute psychological distress make frequent appearances and add to the drama of such narratives, and all of these factors characterize Margaret, the protagonist of The September House.

Within this framework, psychological horror uses fantastical and horror-based elements to explore darker, more deeply hidden aspects of the human psyche. The characters in these narratives therefore experience mistrust of others and of their own perceptions, along with feelings of paranoia, primal fear, suspicion, and anxiety. The dominant plot elements are often deliberately contradictory, creating an erratic reading experience that parallels the narrative arc of the characters. Misleading descriptions of hallucinations and delusions may cast doubt on the reality presented in the story, and authors often obscure which elements reflect real events and which suggest fabrications and indicate psychological disturbances. Within The September House, Margaret’s visions, the house’s malevolence, and the realities of Margaret’s troubled past and abusive marriage are classic examples of psychological horror, as is the novel’s use of slowly intensifying suspense.

Psychological horror stories demonstrate a deep understanding of human psychology but couch this insight in fantastical terms in order to explore broader questions about the nature of fear. By allowing the audience to engage with these fears through the escapist platform of literature, the genre opens up new avenues of exploration and empowers individuals to confront their own sources of dread and panic. For example, a brutally descriptive account of the spousal abuse and domestic violence in this narrative might have an entirely different impact on a reader than the supernatural elements of The September House. By crafting a novel that employs horror tropes and fantastical elements, the author explores the impact of such abuse without directly illustrating its most deeply triggering details.

Psychological horror also critiques society’s collective fears and anxieties. When Margaret observes that films like The Exorcist reveal basic, innate sources of societal unease, her assertion stands at the core of psychological horror as a subgenre and illustrates this novel’s particular set of thematic concerns. The house, its ghosts, and the eerie occurrences that Margaret interprets as messages meant for her alone are all classic elements of psychological horror and help the author to explore the traumatic impact of addiction and abuse.

Psychological horror as a subgenre has a long and rich history, and there are many noteworthy examples of texts whose use of horror elements predate those of The September House. Henry James’ novella The Turn of the Screw (1881) is an oft-cited early example of a ghost story that also reflects an in-depth psychological inquiry. Its plot, which focuses on a pair of siblings, articulates the societal fears surrounding children and child-rearing, and Margaret identifies similar themes as classic horror plotlines during her conversation with Hal about The Exorcist. Similarly, Shirley Jackson’s gothic novella We Have Always Lived in the Castle (1962) is another classic example of psychological horror that, like The September House, features agoraphobia, fraught family dynamics, murder, and an eerie family home that is the site of violence. Stephen King is another author known for complex works of psychological horror. He is a prolific writer with a long publication history, but novels like Carrie (1974) and Misery (1987) are often cited as works that focus on in-depth characterization and explorations of psychological dynamics.