One of the most common staples in horror films is the jump scare. This technique involves having a character enter a threatening situation, then get lulled into a false sense of safety, and then… bam! A sudden and oft-monstrous attacker comes at them, typically accompanied by a jarring sound effect. A classic example is in the movie Psycho. Detective Arbogast slowly walks into the big old house on the hill, climbs a flight of empty stairs, and then… out of a side room comes Mother with a huge knife! She hacks his face and sends him sprawling to his death.

The power of the jump scare rests in a lull shattered by the suddenness and creativity of the shock. Alfred Hitchcock knew what he was doing.

Even more than the jolt, though, there is something psychologically rudimentary in the jump scare. This relates to what we may call the "Unseen Thing."

The Unseen Thing is the monster that we know is out there, but that we can’t locate.

To understand this threat, we must begin with the fact that monsters and monstrous people are........

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