User blog comment:Creepy Thomas O./How do you define creepy?/@comment-26030957-20150728193952

I would like to point out the two ways in which creepy causes an "unpleasant feeling" in this definition. First there is "fear" and then there is "unease."

Fear is the traditional way in which creepy is looked at and is at the center of what most consider the horror genre. This is most simply defined as something that makes one scared. There is the fear of physical harm, say from a monster or crazed killer. Then there is spooky fear, like that from a ghost. So we have "scary" as a source of creepiness.

Next there is "unease". This term is a bit more hard to label than may appear.

As Dupin pointed out there is the unease created when a simple, everyday event has a twist put upon it. Freud would describe this as "uncanny". Freud says the uncanny "derives its terror not from something externally alien or unknown but--on the contrary--from something strangely familiar which defeats our efforts to separate ourselves from it." According to Freud you would achieve this by straddling the lines between what is real and what is not real. I suppose the pasta Psychosis would be an example of this in that the reader is unsure whether the thoughts of the protagonist are real or the product of paranoia and mental instability.

Then there is, as A.V. Christine pointed out, things which are simply disturbing. I have developed a reputation as a disturbing writer and have had readers say to me, "that isn't creepy it is just disturbing." But they are one and the same. Creepy means to make the skin crawl. Whether this is achieved through fear, like a creature beneath your bed ready to grab at your ankles or a killer lurking in the shadows or a spooky apparition in a window, or whether it is achieved through "unease" which could be the paranoid feeling that someone is watching you or you are an unwitting participant in some dark conspiracy, or truly sickening and bowel-churning subjects like infantcide, snuff films, forced prostitution, necrophelia, incest, trans-orbital lobotomies and other dark corners of humanity that cause the eyes to twitch and water and the stomach turn.

So, I think creepy can be seen in the context of two categories each with two sub-categories:

1.Fear a. Scary b. Spooky 2.Unease a. uncanny b. disturbing

If anyone would like to add to this paradigm I would very much like to hear your thoughts.