Horror Fiction Can Prepare a Person for a Pandemic, University Study Shows

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I hope everyone had a groovy Independence Day. Now that the neighbours’ cherry bomb firecracker blasting has toned down a bit, I can concentrate on other disasters. That is, disasters such as my current fiction projects that I’ve been working on and trying to get in order. More on that in a bit. Right now, I’d like to go over something a little more relevant to the challenging times the world has been going through. If you’ve ever wondered if reading, writing or watching horror is really some hedonistic waste of time, you can take comfort in a scientific study to back up your reasons for loving the genre. This new study has shown that horror fiction can help people mentally prepare for a pandemic such as the one we’ve been going through. Or, at least it can do this with horror fans.

The Study

The study was done by experts from the University of Chicago, Pennsylvania State University, and Aarhus University. It concluded that fans of horror fiction are more psychologically prepared for and more enduring of a crisis such as the present pandemic than people who are not fans of the genre. The study says that even though the event of a horror story, such as a zombie apocalypse, is not likely to occur “it may be analogous to situations that would occur in real-life events that are more likely to occur.” It goes on to explain that the chaos that comes up in many zombie movies and books is like the chaos that real-life natural disasters can result in. And so the study explains how horror fiction can serve as simulation for a real-life, social-impacting crisis like a pandemic, better preparing fans of the genre for it. Therefore, when the crisis does come the shock and trauma won’t be as intense.

The study makes a similar point about highly morbidly curious persons (people who are inclined to learning about dangerous and threatening situations). It discovered that around the beginning of the pandemic these kinds of people watched films involving similar events more than people with a lower morbid curiosity.

I can see in myself as both a fan and writer of horror how true it is what this study is showing. Ever since this pandemic started and my area had to shelter in place, I’ve almost felt like I’ve not had to do much more than what I’ve already been doing: I was already watching, reading and writing disasters in horror fiction and so I only had to live the one we’re in now. At the beginning of the Covid-19 outbreak I didn’t watch any pandemic horror or sci fi films but I did order a copy of “The Andromeda Strain” by Michael Crichton from Half Price Books and read it all the way through. I even recommended a list of apocalyptic fiction around that same time here at the blog. And throughout this time of plague I’ve frequently, in a sense, asked myself what would Robert Neville from “I Am Legend” do? Often, in my mind’s vision the question has specifically been “What would Vincent Price Do?” since his version of Richard Matheson’s novel is my favourite of the movie adaptations. No wonder why I’ve never felt a need to purchase a copy of Max Brooks’ “The Zombie Survival Guide”.

Revising My Current Short Story

One of the stories I’ve been working on is one that I resumed revising about a week ago. I had given myself a break from it way before the Covid-19 outbreak because, like the outbreak, the story has been a disaster. I’m not talking about the disaster that occurs in the story which involves a mysterious missile bombing. I’m talking about the story itself being a disaster—to my head. I had been trying to write it outside its chronological order because of the trauma of the situation it involves and the strange obsession that the protagonist has that mentally distances him from the bombings. And since it deals with parallel universes it’s complicated to write and organize to begin with. So, writing it in the achronological sequence I had been was making me go nuts, it seemed, and so I had to put it in chronological order so I could understand what the hell I was trying to make the story say. Now I have to fill in some gaps (connect scene A to scene B) and rewrite the ending which will have been at least the second rewrite of that part.


Speaking about pandemics, because the libraries in my area are slow to opening back up and have limited hours, I’m going to have to postpone next week’s Book-To-Movie to the week after like I did last month. I’m currently reading an Isaac Asimov novella and so put a DVD of the adaptation to it on hold at one of the libraries in my area. I was going to drive out to the library and pick it up today but it’s just been too damn hot to be driving 10 miles out from where I live and that’s the closest library to me that carries it. So I’ll have to get and watch it during the week sometime but probably won’t have time to do a review of it for the next post. I’ll have something else for you here next week, I just don’t know what yet.

Are you a reader or watcher of horror or disaster fiction? If so, do you feel you’ve coped with the pandemic better than most people?

Until next time . . .