Nineteenth century audiences enjoyed seeing ghosts captured in still photography and magic lantern shows, so it was natural that the techniques superimposition would be transferred to the new technology in order to tell fantastic and bizarre tales. Whilst the first moving pictures tended to be action and comedy, early film makers also used photographic trickery to explore darker stories with psychological and supernatural themes, recognisable as the first horror films.

This fragment, showing a dancing skeleton, was created by the Lumire brothers in 1895. Both audiences and filmmakers demonstrated an early interest in the macabre, although the term horror wasnt used to describe a film genre until the 1930s. These early horror films were referred to at the time as Spook Tales

The first horror film on record is from 1896 and is entitled Le Manoir du Diable. It was created by one of films earliest visionaires, Georges, Mlis. Although it has a running time of a little over three minutes, this supernatural story still manages to pack in the genre stereotypes: bats, devils, witches, cauldrons, ghosts, trolls, al appearing and disappearing in puffs of smoke.

THANK YOU, and goodnight. P.S. Enjoy the cat.