Writing on the site Pocket, Ian Frazier presents a short but insightful article about the mysterious things that bond people together in fear. Sensibly, he posits that no matter how awful crimes may be, we can ultimately learn to deal with their aftermath because we can make sense of them. They have been committed by a person or people. But what of those things that go "bump" in the night? Frazier's article doesn't relate to films but the point he makes is easily transferable to an appreciation of the horror/suspense film genres. Most contemporary movies achieve depicting horrible images but they are not necessarily suspenseful. For my money, films such as Robert Wise's The Haunting and Jack Clayton's The Innocents deliver the goods because there is an ambiguity about what we see or don't see. Both films are classic haunted house tales but we are never quite certain whether the allusions to the supernatural are simply illusions. Once in a while, the film industry still gets it right, as in the case of The Blair Witch Project, which tantalizingly leaves any sensible explanation for the horrific events shrouded in mystery. Even those of us who are skeptics about the existence of the supernatural will have to confess that there are times when we have let our imagination get the better of us. Who among us can't relate some eerie circumstance that we have yet to find a way to deal with? If you are home alone late at night during a bad storm (speaking of cliches!) and you hear a thumping coming from the attic, it's only a bothersome noise if you recall there was a loose shutter on the window that you keep forgetting to repair. However, if there isn't a loose shutter, the sound can represent something more ominous precisely because it is what you can't see or explain that really scares the bejesus out of us. Click here to read Ian Frazier's article.