This section provides a brief history of horror as a genre and the evolution of short stories.

Whenever we talk about “scary” or “horror” people automatically think about Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein or Stevenson’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. But this genre is so much more than that. A horror or scary story writer explores the limits of what people are capable of doing and experiencing. He/she ventures into such the realms of human psyche which contains chaos, psychic trauma and emotional wastelands, thus opening up abysses of imagination. Achieving a level of such fear and terror is easy in the field of cinematography. When it comes to writing it becomes a challenge to keep the audience engrossed. Scary stories need not necessarily be based on real life incidents. Surreal is where we need the supernatural elements such as ghosts, demonic creatures and witchcraft. Writing a scary story is therefore an art in itself.

Short stories came into existence through the tradition of oral story telling. The purpose of such story often was to act as mnemonics, i.e., for easy recalling. Forefathers of short story are myths, legends, parable, fairy tale, anecdote, etc. However, the history of short stories is peculiarly linked to the ‘literature of terror’. In 18^th century, short stories came to be developed partly as a result of the popularity of gothic novel in Britain. Such was the appetite for the then new kind of horror story that by the 18^th century a large number of short stories had been published. By the 19^th century short stories came to be highly evolved especially as in the shape of scary and horror story. Thus making the horror most popular genre in short story writing.