Online Archive of University of Virginia Scholarship
Persuaded by Play: Detection, Fear, and Religious Belief in the Haunted House Story3 views
Author
McCrary, C. J., Religious Studies - Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, University of Virginia0009-0007-1738-5348
Advisors
Geddes, Jennifer, Religious Studies, University of Virginia
Spittler, Janet, Religious Studies, University of Virginia
Booth, Alison, English, University of Virginia
Mathewes, Charles, Religious Studies, University of Virginia
Abstract
Much research has been done in the past 30 years to explore the theological significance of modern horror fiction, but between the scholars of English literature on the one hand and theologians on the other, little attention has been devoted to studying why the horror story is such a favored medium for theological, and especially Christian, discourses about faith and belief. This dissertation accounts for not only the modern horror story’s power to influence real life religious practice, but also for the role of the “scary story,” or supernatural fiction, in early medieval Christianity and, before that, to the late antique Greeks and Romans. Drawing upon the game studies work of Roger Caillois and C. Thi Nguyen, this dissertation builds the case that the haunted house story is a type of narrative game that harnesses the uniquely social quality of fear in the service of reinscribing cultural norms of piety. Beginning with Latin theatre in the third century BCE and progressing through to the modern horror novels of the twentieth century, the chilling literature examined herein is decidedly profane, popular, and sensational, but therein lies these stories’ greatest powers of persuasion. By uniting fantasy to the felt reality of fear in the body, the scary story proves itself a uniquely transformative game, which catalyzes fear into courage or devout awe and reinforces the divisions between piety and superstition, legitimate and illegitimate religious epistemologies.
McCrary, C. J.. Persuaded by Play: Detection, Fear, and Religious Belief in the Haunted House Story. University of Virginia, Religious Studies - Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, PHD (Doctor of Philosophy), 2026-05-01, https://doi.org/10.18130/ap38-ha70.
