• Horror encompasses more than just fear and terror.
• The elements of horror that, in one person, cause extreme upset can, in another, be a source of catharsis.^[1] There is a certain release that can only be found in the witnessing and speaking of topics deemed unspeakable. Grief wants to be witnessed, without denial or minimization.
• Fictional horrors can echo the ones we have seen and experienced. The infection must be drained before the wound can heal; fiction provides a space to examine the wound without touching it.
• The upheaval of the status quo - the utter breaking of what we took to be foundational truths of the world - is hope to those whose suffering and anguish have been considered an inevitable, unchanging truth.
• Through clever use of narrative decisions, even horror can have low stakes for the audience.^[2]
• Familiarity with the story, setting, and for games, its mechanics, strengthen positive associations with the media. The sense of competence and accomplishment from being good with a game in particularly is pretty powerful.

Games

Book of Hours

The horror is not overt, but it is present. The descriptions of the various items and rooms in the Hush House paint a gruesome history, full of inadvisable use of esoteric knowledge, anguished lives, tragic stories, and supernatural forces that drive the unprepared into obsession and madness. Interactions between the villagers and the visitors of Hush House in the DLC further emphasizes just how strange and dangerous the world the Librarian works at even more. But as the Librarian, the player is not embroiled in these stories, only offering knowledge to those who are.

See also: Collection: Cozy games that aren't just farming sims

Crime Scene Cleaner

Steam

Cleaning simulators and unpacking games meet murder and organized crime. Instead of house flipping or just unpacking, you clean up after gruesome scenes of carnage. A single-player, more grounded version of Viscera Cleanup Detail, with less fiddly physics.

Cult of the Lamb

Official site

The Binding of Isaac meets Animal Crossing where you play as a cute lamb who is also a cult leader. Decorate your cult, manage its resources, and recruit more followers while crusading against the believers and gods of the old faith.

Despite the cute art style, the game does not hold back in its depictions of cult behavior, both the fantastical "satanic" ones (human sacrifice, demonic possession, cannibalism) and the more realistic ones. Followers can have their entire identity be stripped away and changed, be indoctrinated into the cult's teachings, have their money exploited, and be punished with public humiliation at your whims.

Still, the atmosphere remains innocuous. The gameplay loop itself is calming, and the rogue-like battle phases provide a good amount of challenge. The occasional bouts of dark comedy and scatological humor also cut through more of the realistic horror of cults.

Dredge

Fallen London

Forty years ago, London was stolen by bats.

Discover a dark and hilarious Gothic underworld where Hell is close, immortality is cheap, and the screaming has largely stopped…

Welcome. Delicious friend.

A free-to-play browser text game with paid content. Set in an alternate reality where Victorian London had been dragged underground by bats and are now neighbors to devils, squid people, men made of clay, and citizens of the previous cities taken.

Strange Horticulture

Welcome to Elderfield

itch.io| Steam

Stardew Valley but horror, basically. Takes a lot of its aesthetic cues from Junji Ito's art style, and utilizes Fear & Hunger's dice roll mechanics for its events.

Currently only available as a demo.

Literature

Graphic Novels: Comics, Manga, etc.

Berserk

The Sandman

Novels and Short Stories

Podcasts

The Magnus Archives

Welcome to Night Vale

Official site| YouTube

"A friendly desert community where the sun is hot, the moon is beautiful, and mysterious lights pass overhead while we all pretend to sleep. Welcome to Night Vale."

A surreal horror-comedy podcast presented as a local talk radio on the eponymous fictional town Night Vale. The host, Cecil, talks about very supernatural happenings (such as aliens, UFO, conspirational shadow governments, eldritch hauntings) and completely absurd non-sensical ones as if they were just day-to-day occurrences.

Cecil's smooth and calm baritone and the slower music the podcast plays at the end make it a great night time listen.

Moving Pictures: Animation, Film, Movies, etc.

Mononoke

Mushishi

Sleepy Hollow (1999)

Music

• Harsh and dark ambiences.

Extreme Metal

• Extreme metal in general.

Horror Media Soundtracks

"I also find it fascinating that the contrast to horror isn't happy, either, it isn't bright and bouncy. Happy music is just distorted by the scares. Instead, it's just a return, to something like, neutral."

-- Why Do Horror Games Sound So Beautiful? | Jacob Geller | YouTube

Sometimes, "coziness" does not come from knowing that everything is all sunshine and rainbows. It's the acknowledgement that things are bad, and providing a respite from the distress. Soundtracks used in "save rooms" in horror games do very well to capture that feeling of "return to neutral", without erasing the fact that the distress was real in the process.