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If you ask 50 horror fans to define the genre, you’ll probably get 50 slightly different responses. This is partly because of how broad the horror genre is, with countless subgenres catering to everyone’s unique taste, and because horror is largely defined by the reaction it gets from the reader or viewer, which is always slightly different. However, Chuck Tingle, author of a plethora of horror and erotica novels, believes that the thing that makes horror beautiful is the empathy that it requires.

While speaking at a panel at BookCon 2026, Tingle discussed the things that make horror worth reading. “The question of, ‘Is horror made horror by our response?’ I guess I’m thinking, what would the alternative be, which is that horror is just some universal thing out there, outside of ourselves. And in my experience with horror, it’s not like that at all because, you know, the beauty of the genre is that there are so many approaches and so many things that scare people. So many things that people empathize with.”

That variety is a big part of the genre’s appeal for the Camp Damascus and Bury Your Gays author.

“It is frightening that there are so many kinds of ways to be scared, but I also think it's really beautiful. It’s kind of like one of those universal things that we all have. We all know what that feels like. We all have our own reasons for experiencing it. And so, if we see someone else experiencing horror, whether that’s a character or a person, I really think that’s an exercise in empathy. So, I would say that the actual experience of horror, what makes it so beautiful, is the fact that it’s not as static as we would think. It’s like, it mutates, it changes depending on the perception of the person.”

Watch the full Horror as a Mirror, Horror as Escape: How Lived Experiences Shape Fictional Fears panel from BookCon 2026 here:

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