The Horror of Childhood Things

A teddy bear.

A music box. A playground. A brightly colored bedroom.

None of these things should be inherently frightening. In fact, they’re almost boringly innocent. They’re also often assigned to childhood itself, a period we generally associate with safety, imagination, comfort, and the comforting belief that monsters disappear when Mom or Dad walk into the room.

So why does the horror genre have such a fascination with corrupting them into nightmares?

Part of the answer may be that childhood objects come with emotional baggage already attached. We learn quite early on what certain things are supposed to mean. A stuffed animal is supposed to be something you hug when you’re scared. A nursery rhyme is something a parent might sing to comfort their child or help them sleep. A playground is somewhere kids are supposed to be able run around and have fun. When horror takes one of these familiar things and assigns a sinister purpose to it, it isn’t starting from nothing. It is taking something we already understand early on in our lives, and viciously changing the rules.

A teddy bear sitting on a child’s bed is harmless by itself, but put that same teddy bear in an abandoned cabin, covered in dust, and suddenly we have some questions. Why is it there? Who left it? Why does it look like someone has recently touched it? The object itself hasn’t changed so much as our interpretation of it.

Horror loves abusing that trick!