Another Halloween has come and gone and with little or no genuine horror to worry about, we’ve got to wonder whether we’re just getting older, or if the world we live in now, is simply not as scary as it used to be.
With the latest technology we’re slowly dispelling all of the most amazing myths and stories of the old world. Nessie went up in smoke as soon as we discovered radar, the satellite voyager hasn’t run aground of an alien spacecraft and big-foot could never have gotten this far without being captured on a camera-phone, he’d probably get tagged on facebook by now.
TVs are an unexpected place for the last corner of mystery for monsters to hide in. But it makes a lot of sense. When they first came about TVs were large, mysterious and alien to the public. The large, somewhat magical box sitting in your living room could believably be the house for a spirit of demon. But in the new millennium everything has become so much more compact, sleek and elegant, it’s hard to believe the creatures of old fit the environment anymore. They’ve been made obsolete and they don’t suit the 21st century setting. You could never imagine the restless spirits of 19th century peasants climbing out the front of Samsung LCD TVs. Poltergeists used to be much scarier when they would flick between channels or turn to static; today the worst thing they could do is delete the episodes of master-chef that you had on series link.
So when you take a look round your modern home, electronic lights pushing back the darkness, reality TV replacing fireside ghost stories and Wikipedia at your fingertips to dispel any myths you want to fact-check; just spare a thought for the outdated monsters we’ve lost along the way.