Haunted: On Ghosts, Witches, Vampires, Zombies, and Other Monsters of the Natural and Supernatural Worlds

by Leo Braudy,
Psychology Today, November 22, 2016

All of us are visited by monsters, real and/or imagined. They might originate, as Freud once believed, in childhood traumas. Or our fear of death. Or in the threats posed by an “alien” group. That said, Leo Braudy, a professor of English and American Literature at the University of Southern California, reminds us that “because we are drawn to see what we also dread to see” stories about monsters have pervaded Western culture for centuries.