A great horror writer [H.P. Lovecraft] once said, "The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown." I agree.
While I might not be afraid of the dark itself. I do fear the things that lurk in the dark. The things that I cannot see. Fear is one the most powerful emotion that exists. We fear loss, death, pain, solitude, etc.
I myself don't enjoy most horror films. Now when I say 'horror films' I'm referring to the monster movies, and slasher flicks. I am easily startled by sudden movements and loud noises, so jump scares basically give me cardiac arrest. Now the kinds of horror that I do love are the ones that make you think, the ones that take real life and make you think, 'oh my god, that could actually be real.' The films that are more psychological and cause you to think.
Cabin in the Woods is a great example of that. While it is technically a spoof of the horror genre, It combines the typical horror story with an element of Cosmic Horror. Also anything Joss Whedon has any role in is pure gold.
Horror in literature is completely different from film, in the idea that it can't rely on timing and terrifying imagery. It relies on the basis that a person's imagination will scare them more than anything else. Mary Shelly and Bram Stoker, while labeled by most people as 'Horror', in my opinion are not in my paradigm of horror as the stories don't scare me. To me they are Gothic Fiction.
Horror books to me are the writings of H.P. Lovecraft, Edgar Allan Poe, and Steven King. Those stories to me are terrifying because they make me think, or they tell the stories that discuss the perversion of the human mind.
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