You're running down an empty street at night.
Flickering yellow light reaches down from looming streetlamps, shadows crawl between cars, and you feel like someone's watching you.
You stop to catch your breath. You're tired, but home is still a long way off. You pull out your phone and change the music to the soundtrack of It Follows. The eerie synth pulses through your head, then you see someone walking toward you. Your heart races. You run.
Fear is a powerful emotion. Some freeze up when afraid, but when genuine terror triggers the fight or flight response, you move. I have a playlist on Spotify for creepy, unsettling music. It's filled with soundtracks to horrors, dark ambient for good measure, and atonal classical or avant-garde pieces by György Ligeti and Krzysztof Penderecki (try pronouncing that). I listen to that playlist when I'm out at night, writing horror, or just in the right mood. It may be weird, but I love music that can make me feel something, even if it's fear.
When I'm alone outside at night, I appreciate the serenity of the quiet darkness. I also appreciate how similar my situation is to nearly everyone who dies at the beginning of a horror. It's even better with the appropriate music. The only way I'd be more of a target for a masked killer is if I told my girlfriend that I'd be back in a moment (it's just the wind, babe).
Typically, I ride my bike at night or jog because of the cool air. This means that if I embrace the idea that something's following me or chasing me, my ordinary bike ride just became a lot more interesting. It's like pretending the floor's made of lava; it's a game. Fear is exciting, so let the music push you.
As an aspiring writer, I like to play around with different genres and write scenes or short stories whenever the whim arrives. Horror is fun because it thrives on atmosphere. Stanley Kubrick's The Shining isn't particularly scary, but it's impressively disturbing. Every moment the camera pans through dull wallpapered hallways while Ligeti's howling violin score undulates is filled with dread. What's behind the corner? What's going to happen?
I can't include music into my writing, but I can be inspired by what I hear. Like exercising, I channel the music-inspired fear into something productive. It's easier to write a tense scene when my own dread grows sickeningly palpable. Oh, and I recommend wearing headphones. Blaring horns mixed with ululating voices don't go over very well in dorms.
So is creepy music only as good as its usefulness?
Music is art, so it's meant to evoke a response. A good song should make you feel something! Elvis once said that he didn't like a song because it didn't "move him," and I think that's what music is meant to do. Maybe we don't dance to it, but we should feel stirred to some emotion: joy, anger, sorrow, and fear. We can listen to music to affirm an emotion or to explore that feeling in response to something in our lives.
I often listen to horror music in crowds. It doesn't soothe me, but it shouldn't. A happy song would be jarring or ineffective. Something unnerving affirms what I'm feeling and triggers a response of excitement that helps me navigate through the people. There's also something really funny about listening to 28 Days Later's soundtrack while squirming through a crowded Walmart. They might be zombies, but they're not going to bite. Most of them, anyway.
If you're not incredibly averse to being afraid, I'd recommend finding some music that scares you and letting it seep into your imagination. Don't do it if you don't have a tolerance for fear!. Fear is exciting, invigorating, and can be fun as long as you separate the fear you make with the reality around you. No, someone's probably not chasing you. Of course that truck's following you, there's only one lane! That guy covered in blood is—actually no, run.
The beauty of truly unsettling music is that it can make the mundane feel sinister. It's a different kind of daydream, but it's definitely engrossing. You're in a horror movie and anything can happen. Maybe those shrieking violins are signaling that someone's in the room with you. Maybe if you look closely, you'll see another face in your computer screen.
Look closer.
If you're interested in this kind of music, check out my playlist on Spotify. It's called Creeping Dread (of course) and it's filled with the delightful music of nightmares.
