Knock knock! Who’s there? A study of doors in children’s horror

• Siobhan O'Brien Holmes
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Doors don’t look that scary until you’re locked behind one, or there’s a zombie on the other side, or somebody’s chasing you and you can’t find your key, or there’s an axe murderer smashing through it and getting dangerously close to your face.

I’ve always been fascinated by the use of doors in horror, particularly middle grade and YA horror. Doors are a threshold, a symbol of transition, taking you from one place to the next, and children’s lives are full of those, whether it’s moving up a school year, changing from primary to secondary to sixth form to university or shifting from child to teenager overnight.

Childhood and adolescence are crammed full of transition and doors can be a powerful way to represent that. Why else do people take so many photos of our kids outside the front door before their first day of school, or Instagram a picture of ourselves with the keys to our first home, or try to carry each other over the threshold when we get married?

Doors can take you anywhere. That can be exciting, right? But it can also be scary, especially if you don’t know what’s behind the door or if you know you definitely don’t want to go through it.

I’ve been working on a project for a little while now on doors in children’s and YA horror and I’m going to share it here, bit by bit. Stick with me. If you’ve got any favourite door moments in horror fiction or films, please send them to me!