"Into the Dark"

Darkness is something that lurks around every corner. Something that makes you believe something might be there when in fact you are all alone. Darkness is, simply put, the absence of light. And in that absence of light, it brings you the inability so know what might be lurking there. Could it be the dark outline of a coat rack, or is it a man watching you from across your room?
In this darkness you don't find yourself thinking logically. You don't think how silly it would be that someone might have broken into your house without even a sound being heard. That would be ridiculous, you think. It must just be your mind playing tricks on you. You might then find yourself chuckling, coming down from the feeling of shock and make your way to your room, paying no mind to the fact that the coat rack you believe you saw, just moved.
Or perhaps you don't use that level of logic at all and run to hide in your closet. You might listen carefully for any footsteps. Nothing but silence. But then your ears adjust to the quiet and you being to pick up on the small sounds, believing them to be movement of some kind. Your heart begins to race as you swear the sound is getting closer. Are you hallucinating or is there something really hiding behind the corner, ready to pounce?
No matter what may be truly happening, what is the likelihood of the fear taking over your mind, actually presenting you with the real situation? Our fear mixed with the inability to see the entire situation take place only makes our imagination even wilder. We've seen the scary movies, we've heard the horror stories, we know of the things that go bump in the night.
What you fail to realize is that in horror there is always the jump scare. Often times the anticipation that slowly builds and builds, leaving you on the edge of your seat, wincing and blocking your sight before sneaking a peak at the jump scare that strikes you in one moment. And it's that single feeling building right now inside of you. You feel that something is just around the corner. You feel it in your gut that something is about to happen. You can't think of anything else but the scare coming. The anticipation builds to a point you wish it would hurry up and happen already. And the fact that it hasn't only makes you feel more terrified.
As a writer, I can tell you a reason why visual medium to scare is more effective than written. Because in the movie, you feel like you are in their shoes, like your life is actually in some kind of danger. If you've noticed, this story has no characters. There is nobody running around in the dark. You are projecting that out of your own free will.
All in all, it's perfectly fine that there are no characters in this story besides you. It means I can shift this story to whatever I wish. You could be transported to a beach, or a restaurant full of people, transport you to the most embarrassing moment of your life. I could do all of this, mold you into whatever I want, do anything I'd like. But I won't.
I won't because, unlike every other night, I don't want to tear you away from your reality. I want you to come face to face with your nightmare. Have you read this in the dark? Because this is the only time this will work. I may be a fiction writer, but I study horror for a living. I know things that nobody should know. I promise you that if you look up and hear a sound from anywhere in your house, it means they're already inside. The location of that sound is where they ran to. They know you know about them.