When the sun slips below the horizon and shadows uncoil from their daytime shapes (always more fluid and dramatic when you’re not looking), the world drifts into its most unreliable hour.
Twilight.
For lovers of horror and the supernatural, dusk is more than a time of day. It’s an atmospheric threshold. And thresholds have always belonged to monsters.
In daylight, the world is obedient. Edges stay where they should. Colours behave. Distances make sense. But twilight refuses that order. It blurs everything we trust. Whole landscapes are smudged into ambiguity. The moment the world loses definition, our imaginations surge forward to supply their own.
And, let me tell you, monsters adore those spaces we create!
I’ve mistaken horses in a field for hulking wolf-men. I’ve spent an entire car journey convinced that a wet, shifting sound in the dark footwell was a creature preparing to bite through my Achilles tendon. Of course, it was just a half-empty bottle of cola rolling around. But twilight invites these nonsensical thoughts all too readily. Logic steps back, and instinct steps forward as it remembers something we’ve forgotten.
In the wild, dusk is the handover point. Day creatures retreat and night hunters stir. For a while, neither day nor night holds full authority. And humans, despite our electric lights and central heating, still carry the old wiring. Something ancient in us whispers: Get home. Now.
We no longer fear wolves stalking behind us, but we do feel a prickling awareness at dusk. Sometimes it’s simply a reminder that we still haven’t outgrown our primal instincts, no matter how modern we pretend to be.
For horror fans, dusk is inspiring. It’s a built-in mood setter. Beauty stitched with unease. It’s the moment characters choose the wrong path. The moment something stirs in the woods. The moment when ghosts, if they were going to appear, would choose to show themselves. Twilight opens a door and the storyteller in us can decide what comes through.
As the days shorten and dusk arrives earlier each evening, we slip deeper into that uncanny in-between. If you enjoy the supernatural as much as I do, you might agree that the longer the twilight lasts, the more chances we have to meet the monsters hiding there.
And perhaps, in December, we’ll even meet a few winter ghosts.
R. H. DIXON 