Being Cold

[bryant]

The answer: 70s horror flicks. The earliest obvious example is The Exorcist, which actually had refrigerated sets in order to get the effect to work. Amityville Horror also featured cold spots. I think it was a pretty common trope, and when you get right down to it it's really a ghost story thing, no? But the 70s gave us the merger with psychic phenomena.

If I was Jess Nevins I could do this better but I am satisfied enough.

Comments

[head58.livejournal.com]

I remembered over the weekend that it was a common ghost thing and was wondering about Poltergeist.

[heliograph.livejournal.com]

John Carpenter's The Thing From Another World?

[ratmmjess.livejournal.com]

I *think* that there was an early example of this in some of the late 1890s occult detective stories, but it wasn't a continually-reappearing trope, and I think you're right that the modern source was the 1970s horror films...

...unless the 1950s haunted house books did it first....

[peaseblossom.livejournal.com]

The best horror movie ever (i.e. The Haunting) was 1963, and it definitely has a cold spot (in front of the nursery).

[bryant]

I think Haunting of Hill House does some chills. Coming back to recent manifestations: duh, Dementors from the Harry Potter books.

[ratmmjess.livejournal.com]

Matheson's Hell House had it, too. I think--been a while since I read it.

[bryant]

And of course the cliche is "the chill of the grave." So yeah; ghosts are the primary vector, and sometime in the 70s that carried over to psychic manifestations, because everything had to be all scientific and futuristic.