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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

The world is full of sounds, and sound can affect us greatly. Some sounds are pleasant, like the laughter of a small child or a babbling brook in a peaceful forest. Other sounds are unpleasant, like ...

With Halloween around the corner, we asked Peter Brown, sound editor behind the movie Paranormal Activity to share his secret behind scary sound effects. Now it's time for our regular segment Words ...

You know the sound: It's eerie and echoing, and it makes the little hairs on your arms stand up immediately. So many horror movies use it to create a chilling atmosphere, and even some reality shows ...

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 ...

From the double-bass pulse that signals the presence of the giant shark in "Jaws," to the shrieking strings that slice along with Norman Bates' knife in "Psycho's" famous shower scene, horror films ...

If you’ve ever driven an electric car or have been in close proximity to one in a parking lot, you’ve probably heard a ...

This is the mecca of sound in horror films. A placid orchestra turns to dead silence right before veering into screeching violins, a death-bellow and then — the shower-drizzle. This is one of the most ...