HALLOWEEN HAUNTS: The Beauty of Blood
by M. Brandon Robbins
Blood is a universally revered symbol, representing life (when in the body) and death (when outside of the body) as well as passion and anger. Localized increased blood pressure (such as a throbbing in the head) can be the symbol of distress or sickness. It can the source of powerful magic, such a tome with text written in blood or as the catalyst in a sorcerer’s spell.
Blood can repulse or shock. Think about a zombie crusted in dried gore, its yellowed teeth protruding from a jagged mouth, blood pouring out over its lower jaw and down its gray skin. Imagine a decayed corpse, blood oozing from open wounds and lacerations, flies buzzing over it. A slasher victim that has had their gut split open would issue forth coiled intestines, slick with blood and shining red; one who has had their head caved in would spill brains across their back, thick with blood and cranial fluid. Who could forget the blood-splattered images that Danny Torrance sees in Stephen King’s The Shining, or the ominous message of REDRUM scrawled on the wall in gleaming blood?
You don’t even need to witness the violence that produced the blood to know that something is wrong. Walking into a room with blood-smeared walls will always be a harbinger of tragedy. A battlefield polluted with twisted bodies and pools of blood will never not be a mournful image. Remember the great scene from Scream 2 where Ghostface kills the victim in the van? After the violent act is done, blood pours from underneath the van’s sliding door. It’s a chilling conclusion to a segment where most of the violence occurs outside of the edge of the camera’s lens, driving home the story beat that is a character death. This year’s The Night Pool by Lauren Lee Smith has many images of mangled and mutilated corpses, including one in which rain is pooling in a gaping chest wound. The unmistakable shade of blood red is present in every body. It’s impossible to image a violent death without its presence.
It’s not limited to instances of violence, heightened senses, or emotional distress. Blood can be erotic. John Donne’s poem from 1633, “The Flea,” serves as an extended pick-up line centered around blood. The speaker of the poem has observed that a flea has bitten both himself and his lady love. By his logic, since their blood has mixed within the flea’s body, there’s no harm in them engaging in some light fornication; their bodily fluids have already commingled, after all. In the role-playing game Vampire: The Masquerade, a vampire’s bite (referred to as the Kiss) produces a sense of euphoria in the victim, distracting them from the fact they are being fed upon by a hematophagous beast. In vampire fiction as a whole, a creature of the night biting and feeding from a human is almost always presented as a sexual—or at the very least sensual—act.
Blood is also beautiful. The way it catches the street lights when spilled onto the sidewalk or provides a stark contrast against virginal white cloth is a type of organic art that only the horror writer could truly appreciate. After pricking her finger and spilling three drops of blood on the snow-covered ground, Snow White’s mother wished for a child with skin as white as snow and lips as red as blood. In the excellent horror film Talk To Me, a young boy falls in a shower and strikes his head. There’s a lingering shot of blood spiraling around the shower drain, and it’s one of the most exquisite shots in a recent horror film and serves as a haunting entry in the film’s visual language.
There’s a reason why we see so much blood in fiction, especially horror fiction. It communicates emotions, heightens suspense, provides powerful imagery, and can even make things a little spicy. Blood is powerful. It’s possible to write and film gripping horror fiction without it, but its addition can turn a merely spooky or creepy tale into one that shocks, disturbs, frightens, and truly stays with the audience.
Brandon Robbins is a writer and librarian from Goldsboro, NC. His short stories and poems have appeared in Trembling With Fear, The Worlds Within, Horrific Scribes, and on the Burial Books blog as well as in the anthologies The Monsters That We Forgot: Volume III, The Beauty in Darkness: A Literary Tribute to TS Woolard, Gathered Here Today: An Open Casket of Art and Poetry, and Tales From Sley House 2025. He has also had short stories featured on the Macabre Monday and The Literary Eye Substacks. His short story “Heart of Stone” was published as a chapbook by Demain Publishing. His poetry collection, The Downward Spiral, is forthcoming from Seed Bed Press in April 2027 and his novel, Mr. Haunt, is forthcoming from Sley House Publishing in June 2028. You can read more of his work on his Substack, Writing Fears, at mbrandonrobbins.substack.com.
