ETYM Formerly written horrour.
1. Intense and profound fear.
2. Something that inspires horror; something horrible.

Calculated to inspire feelings of dread or horror; bloodcurdling

Genre of fiction and film, devoted primarily to scaring the reader or audience, but often also aiming to be cathartic through their exaggeration of the bizarre and grotesque.
Dominant figures in the horror tradition are Mary Shelley (Frankenstein 1818), Edgar Allan Poe, Bram Stoker, H P Lovecraft and, among contemporary writers, Stephen King and Clive Barker.
Horror is derived from the Gothic novel, which dealt in shock effects, as well as from folk tales and ghost stories throughout the ages. Horror writing tends to use motifs such as vampirism, the eruption of ancient evil, and monstrous transformation, which often derive from folk traditions, as well as more recent concerns such as psychopathology.