The iconic shower scene in Psycho was originally supposed to play out without music. Instead composer Bernard Herrmann created “The Murder”: as the killing transpires, violins shriek and scream along ...

Long before radio became mainstream entertainment, Edgar Allen Poe was already writing for the airwaves. Throughout the last decade of his life, his poetry and prose bristled with words and phrasing ...

Why do so many horror film scores today sound similar to The Exorcist from 1973? Why do so many horror film scores today sound similar to The Exorcist from 1973? A lot of that is thanks to Krzysztof ...

This article was featured in One Great Story, New York’s reading recommendation newsletter. Sign up here to get it nightly. Horror movies are a tennis match between the haunting absence of sound and ...

I was recently watching a scene from the 2025 film Weapons for a monograph I’m writing and noticed a familiar sound: a low, unsettling drone as a character walks down a hallway. It’s the same kind of ...

In the opening scene of Silent Hill, it’s the first time players finally get to hear the notorious siren. This is probably the sound effect that defined the rest of the Silent Hill franchise and is ...