Steven LaChance Blog

Horror has always been more than entertainment. At its core, it is a mirror that reflects the fears buried in our collective heart. Every great horror story grows from something real inside us, a shadow of the anxieties we live with. That is why these stories never die. They adapt, change, and take on new faces, but they are always about us.

Take Frankenstein. It is not simply the tale of a monster stitched together from corpses. It is the dread of unchecked progress. Mary Shelley wrote it during the early sparks of the Industrial Revolution, when the world was reeling from machines that could outpace human labor and science that was beginning to rewrite life itself. The creature is the embodiment of a fear that has never left us: that we will create something we cannot control. Today, when we talk about artificial intelligence, genetic engineering, or weapons of terrifying power, we are still telling the story of Frankenstein.

Then comes Dracula. His terror is not only in his thirst for blood but in the promise he holds out, eternal life. He is the dark answer to the fear of death. In the Victorian age, death was everywhere: plagues, cholera, war, the constant reminder that human life is fragile and brief. Dracula’s gift is immortality, but it comes at the price of corruption, addiction, and soulless hunger. He is both seduction and curse. Even now, with modern medicine stretching life expectancy, the fear remains. We may live longer, but the shadow of mortality never fades.

Zombies claw at a different nerve. They are the terror of losing individuality, of becoming just another body in the mass. Born in folklore and reshaped in the twentieth century, the zombie became a symbol of conformity and consumerism. George Romero’s films did not simply show corpses walking. They showed us, stumbling through shopping malls, hungry for things we did not need. In their mindless hunger, we recognize ourselves.

Ghosts are more intimate. They are the weight of the past that refuses to release us. A haunted house is never just about creaking doors or cold spots in the hall. It is about memory, grief, and guilt. Ghost stories frighten us because they suggest that the past is never gone, that it lingers and watches, waiting for us to open the wrong door.

Witches carry the fear of the outsider, especially the woman who wields power outside of patriarchal control. For centuries, they were the target of persecution. The witch trials were not only about superstition but about control and fear of those who stood apart. In modern horror, the witch still unsettles us, because she represents the ungovernable, the refusal to submit, the possibility that the other knows something we do not.

And what about the horrors of today? Technology has become its own monster. Social media consumes our attention, privacy erodes, and we find ourselves haunted not by phantoms in the night but by algorithms that predict our every move. Mass shootings, cult leaders, and killers we cannot explain remind us that the true monsters are human. The modern landscape has given us horrors that do not always need claws or fangs.

That is the secret of horror. It takes what is hidden inside us and makes it visible. It is not about escape but about recognition. When we look at these monsters, we are looking at ourselves, our history, our choices, our fears.

Which brings us to the monsters of now. They do not rise from legend or folklore. They come from institutions, experiments, power, and secrecy. They are killers made, not born. They are the living proof that horror has never left reality, it has only changed faces. And this is where my work begins, because the most terrifying creatures of all are not imaginary. They are our Modern Monsters.