The first horror movies are mostly surreal, disturbing pieces, owing their visual appearance to some extent to expressionist painting, spirit photography of the 1860s, the story styles of the Grand Guignol Theater Company and Gothic writing. They draw upon the fables and legends of Europe, and render creatures into physical structure. Spirit photography is the act of utilizing double exposures or superimpositions to portray apparitions on film. It was mainstream from the 1860s onwards not just among Spiritualists, who may have trusted the pictures were genuine solidifying their confidence in life following death, but also among stage artists and their audiences who enjoyed them purely on a level of entertainment. While the term “horror” wasn’t
