EXCERPT Aversion to stimuli of fear or terror, whether personal or cultural, offers no great mystery beyond the psychological. Neither does the pattern of habituation and desensitization resulting from levels of fear and terror sufficient only to gradually bore the mind and senses. Similarly straightforward is the pattern of trauma, burnout, and malady proceeding from constant and unremitting over-exposure to stimuli producing anxiety and stress. These phenomena, while intriguing to the scholar of behaviour and cognition, offer nothing to compete with the philosophical fascination engendered by contemplation of their weirder sister, Horror. She presides over a genre of art which violates boundaries of medium as surely as she violates the preconceptions of those who apprehend her; yet she shares her imageries, even her key signs and signifiers, with genres which would seem at first examination to be quite distinct…