Nothing is real unless there is an audience.
Most of us would readily agree that between the chainsaw slaughters in a gross-out film and the sense of fear evoked by a writer's description of a cloud passing over the moon, the latter is more artistic. The old formula endorsed by Lon Chaney Jr., Alfred Hitchcock and Jonathan Carroll depended on incongruity. Place commonplace things where they have no reason to be. Place him where he doesn't belong and the comic or commonplace becomes sinister. I have been a Jonathan Carroll addict since his first book Land of Laughs , almost 20 years ago.