The Subtle Art of Writing Psychological Horror: Techniques and Tricks
Horror wears many faces. Sometimes it’s the visceral horror of body mutilation, the gut-wrenching dread of something crawling under the bed, or the creeping inevitability of a fate worse than death. But psychological horror? That’s a different beast.
This isn’t about blood splatters or things leaping from the dark. This is the horror that slithers into your brain and makes itself at home, leaving you uneasy long after you’ve turned the last page. It’s the fear of the unseen, the unreliable, the things we know but don’t fully understand.
So, how do you craft a psychological horror story that lingers like a half-remembered nightmare? Let’s talk fear, manipulation, and the slow unraveling of reality.
1. Subvert Expectations—Trust Nothing, Question Everything
Psychological horror is at its best when the reader feels off-balance. The world should feel almost normal—but something is wrong. Maybe the timeline doesn’t quite add up, or the protagonist keeps remembering things differently. Maybe the people they trust seem... slightly off, their smiles a little too sharp, their words a little too rehearsed.
Techniques to try:
Introduce small, subtle inconsistencies—details that don’t seem important at first but become impossible to ignore.
Make the protagonist (and reader) question their own perception of events. Was that shadow moving… or did they just imagine it?
Lead them toward a “twist” they expect, then pull the rug out from under them. Nothing is scarier than realising you were looking in the wrong direction the entire time.
2. Build Atmosphere—The World Is a Monster Too
A haunted house is scary because it feels wrong. The lights flicker, but only when you’re alone. The air is too still. The walls seem… closer than before.
Atmosphere is about creating tension before anything even happens. Psychological horror thrives on subtle cues that trigger unease—the uncanny, the slightly off, the sense that something is lurking just out of sight.
How to do it:
Use sensory details to disorient the reader. Make the air thick, the silence too quiet, the shadows a little too deep.
Describe mundane things in a way that makes them unsettling. A perfectly symmetrical room can be more disturbing than a bloodstained one.
Create a setting that feels like it’s watching the characters. The world itself should be a source of paranoia.
(Bonus tip: Try writing a horror scene where nothing explicitly scary happens. Just build dread through the setting and atmosphere alone. If your reader feels like something is about to happen but never does? You’ve nailed it.)
3. Make the Protagonist Vulnerable, And Take Away Their Sense of Reality
Sure, you can chase your protagonists down a darkened hallway. But what about making them question whether or not the hallway ever existed in the first place?
Your protagonist should be vulnerable> Not necessarily weak, but human. Someone with real fears and doubts, or traumas that can be manipulated by the horror they’re facing.
Ways to do this:
Give them a personal fear or past trauma that mirrors the horror in the story. The monster outside should reflect the monster inside.
Create isolation, both physical and psychological. If they reach out for help, they should be met with disbelief—or worse, indifference.
Let them start out grounded in reality, then slowly strip it away. Bit by bit. No one believes them. The things they know are true start to unravel.
The best horror isn’t about what happens to them—it’s about what they become by the end.
4. Use the Unreliable Narrator—Lie to the Reader, Just Enough
Nothing messes with a reader more than realising they can’t trust the story they’re being told. A great unreliable narrator truly believes what they're saying. Maybe they misinterpret events. Maybe their memory is faulty. Maybe they’re keeping a secret from the reader until the moment it truly sinks its claws in.
Tactics for unreliable narration:
Let the protagonist be wrong about something important—something the reader assumes is true.
Drop clues early on that things aren’t adding up, but don’t confirm it too soon.
Give them contradictory memories or accounts of the same event. Which version is real?
Why it works: Because what’s scarier than realising the person telling the story doesn’t even know the truth?
5. The Slow-Burn Horror—Fear That Festers
If traditional horror is about the jump scare, psychological horror is about the slow, inevitable descent into madness.
This isn’t about monsters leaping from the dark. It’s about the monster that’s been waiting all along—the one that was always there.
How to build slow-burn tension:
Hold back information. Give just enough to keep the reader on edge, but never enough to fully understand what’s happening.
Let the horror creep in. One disturbing detail at a time. A misplaced object. A shadow that moves when it shouldn’t.
Don’t release the tension too soon. Let it sit. Let it fester. Let the reader squirm.
Think of movies like Hereditary (probably my favourite horror movie of the last... ever). The horror doesn’t truly reveal itself until it’s too late to do anything about it. By the time you, and the family, understand what's really happening, they are already doomed. They have been doomed all along. That’s the feeling you want.
6. Tackle the Uncomfortable—Because Real Fear Isn’t About Monsters
The most unsettling psychological horror taps into real human fears—isolation, grief, loss, guilt, paranoia. Things we can’t outrun. Things we carry inside us.
Some of the most disturbing themes in psychological horror:
Losing your identity (who are you if your memories aren’t real?)
Being trapped in an endless cycle (what if every choice leads you back to the same nightmare?)
Paranoia and gaslighting (what if everyone around you insists you’re wrong—even when you know you’re right?)
Unseen horrors (the suggestion of something, rather than the thing itself)
The best horror doesn’t give easy answers. It leaves readers questioning their own fears, long after the book is closed.
Why Psychological Horror Stays With Us
And don't forget, psychological horror doesn’t end when the story does. It stays. It lingers. It makes you second-guess the dark corners of your own mind.
And that’s why it’s powerful. Because the true horror? It was never about the monster outside.
It was always about the monster in your head.
What’s Your Favourite Psychological Horror Story?
Have you ever read (or written) a psychological horror story that genuinely messed with your mind?
Drop a comment—I’d love to hear what haunts you.