Fragrant Terror
And asking what scary smells like.
Earlier this year, I went to Death: Life’s Greatest Mystery, an exhibition with fossils, coffins, and objects celebrating death from around the world. The most memorable part of that exhibit? A little hole in a box that guests could open to see what death smelt like.
That’s right. Lift the lid, inhale, and revel in regret.
Scent or, rather, the power of scent, is fascinating. It’s personal, visceral, and has the ability to alter our emotions and memories. In a single breath you can be repulsed, seduced, or sent to a feeling you thought you’d forgotten.
Often, my partner will revisit candles she liked from a few years back. Whenever she does, and the scent fills the room, it’ll take me back to a book I was reading, game I was playing, or something I was enjoying at the time. It’s like my brain has forever intertwined scent with feeling, and there’s nothing I can do about it.
We have words like petrichor (the smell of rain on dry earth) to encapsulate a smell so distinct it needs its own term. Supermarkets spray artificial scents of bread because they know it’ll drive our noses to the bakery, and our money into their pockets. Perfume brands pump millions into grandiose ad campaigns because they know it isn’t about selling a fragrance, but a feeling.
Given its sensory pull and how close to the bone it can get with feeling, there’s a lot of potential for smell when writing horror. How sweet did the blackberries, sugar, and arsenic smell in Shirley Jackson’s We Have Always Live in the Castle? How would you describe the stench of Pennywise’s costume? Just what does a cosmic horror smell like? No matter how you slice it, smell gets the imagination going.
When I was conceptualizing what haunted Thornfold for my supernatural horror novel BURIED BY SUNSET, smell was part of the process. In the same way you describe what something looks or sounds like, I wanted its smell to be a key characteristic. More specifically, I wanted it to smell like TV static. If I could use my hands to lift it out of a monitor, what would that smell like?
I recently finished Josh Malerman’s Daphne and noticed he used scent in a similar way. It’s a great summer slasher about a local legend that’s long haunted the small town of Samhattan, but you always knew she was close when a character got a whiff of whiskey and smoke. That instant connection between scent and fear was powerful, elevated by the fact you know, as a reader, it’s a warning that something’s about to go horribly wrong.
So, if you’re a writer, consider this a lengthy prompt. A reminder for you (and me!) to think about smell. How can we use it to elicit fear? How can we create an experience so sensorial that, years later, a real life scent could put a reader back in a room with a killer they read about the year before? What if we could provide an experience so visceral that you have someone come away from your writing saying ‘I know what scary smells like’?
Before you go
One of the best ways to support an author is to buy their books, so I’m going to shamelessly share that you can pre-order my upcoming collection of interconnected short stories, WAXWING CREEK, via the button below. Print pre-orders will be available soon. It’s about a motel called Waxwing Creek that smells like stale cigarette smoke, fir needles, and brittle carpets that need a deep clean.
If you’re a reviewer or horror lover and would like an ARC, it’s currently live on NetGalley and BookSirens.
You can also buy my debut novel, BURIED BY SUNSET, by clicking the button below. It’s a sweltering, supernatural horror story about a small town in the desert.
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/ JJW