21st February 2019
Not only does horror pull away the safety blanket we have stitched together out of reason, logic, and scepticism, but it can also be a great unifier, that can be shared by the faithful and the faithless alike.
‘I’m an atheist but this film about ghosts/witches/possession/Satan [delete as appropriate] scares the shit out of me’. This sentence, or a version of it, is one that has been uttered in quite a few episodes of the Evolution of Horror podcast and it always gets me wondering. Why are atheists seemingly obsessed with depictions of supernatural forces? Why do such depictions affect them so deeply?
I would describe myself as agnostic, a position which is often mischaracterised as ‘sitting on the fence’, but actually means I have made a firm decision: I refuse to take positions of certainty on metaphysical beliefs that cannot be ‘proved’ either way. In practice this means I live as an atheist but without dogmatic belief in the certainty that God/s, ghosts, teapots orbiting the sun, or Pazuzu, do not exist. Anyway, these are discussions for another time, so let’s just say that I too am an atheist (agnostic), and I too find supernatural and occult horror to be the most thrilling, interesting and terrifying of all the sub-genres. The three films that have scared me the most in my life are testament to this: The Omen II, Paranormal Activity, and Hereditary. Also my very favourite horror film (and probably my favourite film in general) is The Exorcist, even though I don’t really find it scary (I did read the book when I was 14, before seeing the film, and it scared the shit out of me).
There will be lots of reasons as to why such an apparent contradiction as an atheist being scared by supernatural / occult fiction seems so prevalent, ranging from an individual’s past experiences to commonly shared psychological traits, all of which will have been explored by more qualified people elsewhere, and will undoubtedly feed into what I’m going to suggest here, which is that watching and being affected by an occult / supernatural horror film is akin to, or even a form of, religious experience.
You may scoff at the idea; if you’re an atheist or an all-out believer, you will have good reasons for doing so, but stick with me. The term ‘religious’ is obviously deeply loaded and problematic, covering a bewildering range of contradictory beliefs, practices and institutions, but I think, beneath all of that, it points to something much more primal. Part of the problem with any kind of religious practice, especially for those of us who have made efforts to leave them behind, is the way they have been rigidly defined: by zealous individuals and institutions on the one hand, and their opponents on the other (a notable example being the so called ‘New Atheists’ from the early 2000s).
All of these parties insist that to be religious is to interpret scripture with varying degrees of literalism, and then follow incontestable rules. It’s either: ‘this is the truth and these are the rules’ or ‘this is irrational nonsense, let’s reject the whole schebang’. But these overly dominant and unyielding narratives often fail to consider the deeply personal nature of experience, and the remarkable similarities that can be found between religious practices around the world, regardless of the belief systems that underpin them.
Religion, or at least religious experience, doesn’t have to be wrapped up in dogma, and in many cases it isn’t. Take The Unitarian and Free Christian Church (Unitarians), who state: ‘Most Unitarians are happy to acknowledge the movement’s roots in Christian tradition. Some are glad to call themselves free or liberal Christians. Equally, many find it difficult to come to terms with Judeo-Christianity. Among Unitarians you will find people who have Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Humanist, Buddhist, Pagan and Atheist perspectives – as reflected in our varied and diverse congregations’.
That’s just one example, but the Quakers, most schools of Zen Buddhism and Humanistic Judaism all operate on similar lines, and I’m sure there are other examples to be found throughout any of the major world religions. Not only that, I’d wager there are plenty of people who are perfectly happy in their religious communities but do not ‘believe’, and that their experience can still be as profound as their neighbour who does.
Such experiences help us to understand ourselves, our connection to others and to the world around us; not in a ‘sciencey’ way but in an experiential way. Science can explain, in remarkable detail, what happens to someone’s body and mind when they pray, or when they practice mindfulness, but it cannot describe the experience of that individual. It can explain what happened to my mind and body when I watched Paranormal Activity in 2007: the hormones that caused instant physical reactions; the psychological process that made a dark haired woman standing almost motionless as her partner sleeps, so freaking terrifying (it might be because my wife has long dark hair and has been known to do exactly that). What it cannot do is accurately describe my experience. Sure, it can use terms like anxiety, palpitations and unanticipated gastric events, but such descriptions only tell part of the story. This is true of all experience of course, but more so with those that are extreme or unusual. I could tell you that I’ve stood outside and felt an icy breeze, and because of your own previous experiences, you’ll probably have a fairly accurate understanding of what I’m feeling. However, if I told you what it was like to watch Midsommar, you wouldn’t really understand unless you’d seen it too. It would be like trying to describe what it’s like to eat chocolate to someone who’s never eaten it.
Art, poetry, music, sports, prayer, meditation, film, and so on; the list of deep experiential activities is endless, but there aren’t many that can cause the most sceptical of sceptics to temporarily behave as if they have a hard-core belief in the supernatural. But when we feel our guts twist into knots at the sight of a chandelier swinging in Paranormal Activity, or when we shout “What the Fuck!” as we finally see what’s lurking in the corner of the bedroom in Hereditary then, light a candle and douse us in holy water, we believe. We have as much faith in the cosmic forces of good and evil as any God-fearing Catholic. Heck, we even shake our heads in exasperation at the obligatory sceptic, as they continue to ‘rationalise’ in spite of the mounting evidence that they are fatally wrong.
Yes, we could say this about any fiction. When I watch Superman I believe he flies, I believe that he can spin around so fast that he literally drills a hole in the road, and I believe that the spectacles/ slightly different hair style disguise actually works. When I watch Toy Story I believe that Andy’s toys are alive, a fact that nobody seems to notice, even though at one point they are literally riding down the middle of a busy road on a radio controlled car, that they are clearly controlling themselves with the full agency of intelligent beings.
This is what good fiction does, but do I believe that Superman can fly, or that he even exists when the film has ended, or that Toys come alive when nobody is watching them? No, but I do look up to the corner of my bedroom from time to time - shamefully terrified about what might be waiting there, I won’t say Candy Man five times in a mirror before turning out the light, and I would not, despite my 38 years of age and my apparent confidence that ghosts don’t exist, spend a night alone in a supposedly haunted house.
I think this is a wonderful property of Horror: not only does it pull away the safety blanket we have stitched together out of ‘reason’, ‘logic’, and ‘scepticism’, like a malevolent entity exposing us to the possibility that we could be wrong, but it can also be a great unifier, creating a staggering array of profound spiritual experiences (often disguised beneath a superficial veneer) that can be shared by the faithful and the faithless alike. Hallelujah, Praise the (Dark) Lord.
By Richard P. Serin