In a guest post on Chuck Wendig’s blog, Alan Baxter talks about the power of the small town as a horror setting. “Good horror can happen anywhere,” he says. “But there’s something particularly delicious about hamlet hideousness. Why?”
Baxter identifies a few reasons, such as: Everyone knows who you are. You’re isolated. There’s a unique local culture, customs, and habits. “It’s that combination of peculiar local culture and isolated location that lets small towns develop into genuine horrors, if we let them,” he adds.
Being isolated also makes it harder to find help when things go bad. “In a small town, the cops are very far away,” Baxter notes. “In a small town there’s no public transport to help you get away. In a small town there are often cell phone dead spots. In a small town, you can’t do anything without someone seeing you and taking note.”
Small towns are often older and packed with abandoned or haunted places. Gossip, rumors, and grudges can be just as old. “Despite the idea that small towns are friendly and supportive, they frequently also create sharply opposed cliques, groups at loggerheads with each other about any number of issues, small or large,” Baxter says. “This engenders all kinds of potential conflict. Now the town is small, isolated, with a dark past, and there are factions and gossip running rife. Who fits where? And why? Or why not?”
There’s one thing small town denizens can agree on, however: Outsiders are bad. “That alone creates some wonderful fodder for horror,” Baxter writes. “But what if you’re part of that community but also, somehow, always seen as the outsider?”
