There are two kinds of horror stories: those that describe a mad scientist' s experiments and those that describe a monstrous beast  In some horror stories about monstrous beasts, the monster symbolizes a psychological disturbance in the protagonist  Horror stories about mad scientists, on the other hand, typically express the author' s feeling that scientific knowledge alone is not enough to guide human endeavor
However, despite these differences, both kinds of horror stories share two features: they describe violations of the laws of nature and they are intended to produce dread in the reader
Some stories that employ symbolism describe violations of the laws of nature.