The immediate threat to life is the scariest. When you have a knife pointed at you, it's a very real and close danger. Just one wrong move could lead to serious injury or death.
The unpredictability of the attacker is also terrifying. You don't know what they will do next. They could be high on drugs or just completely unhinged. In some stories, the attacker might suddenly change their demands or become more violent without warning.
One horror story is about a woman who was held at knifepoint in a dark alley. She was on her way home late at night. The attacker demanded her purse. She was so scared that she could barely move. But then she remembered her self - defense training. She managed to use her keys to jab at the attacker's face and ran away.
The scariest elements often include the unknown and the cosmic horror. Lovecraft's stories often deal with entities that are beyond human comprehension, like the Great Old Ones. Their mere existence challenges our understanding of the universe and our place in it, which is truly terrifying.
The unknown is the scariest. In 'as is horror stories', things are often left in their natural state, so you don't really know what's lurking in the shadows or what's causing those strange noises. It's that sense of not having all the answers that makes it terrifying.
Isolation is also a key element. When characters are alone in a spooky place, like an abandoned asylum in one of the stories. They have no one to turn to, and that makes the situation even more terrifying as the horror unfolds around them.
The unknown is one of the scariest elements. When things are not clearly defined, like a strange figure in the fog in some stories from '1001 horror stories', it makes our imagination run wild. We start to create the most terrifying scenarios in our minds.
The scariest element could be the sense of the unknown. For example, in many stories, there are strange noises or happenings that the characters can't explain. It's that not - knowing what is causing the fear that really gets to you.
The isolation in many of the stories is really scary. Like when a character is alone in an old, abandoned building, cut off from the outside world, and they start to feel like they're being watched by something malevolent. There's also the fear of the supernatural, such as ghosts or demons that defy the laws of nature. This makes the characters, and the readers, feel powerless against them.
I'm not sure specifically as there could be many different stories within this 'knifepoint horror visual novel'. It might involve horror elements related to knife - perhaps stories of survival in dangerous situations where a knife is involved, or it could be about some kind of mystery with a knife as a central object in a visual novel format.
The sudden movement of the LPS toys when they're not supposed to be able to move is really scary. It goes against what we know about them as inanimate objects.
The unknown and the supernatural. Take the Black Shuck for instance. A huge, black spectral dog just appearing out of nowhere is terrifying. There's no rational explanation for such a thing, and that's what makes it so spooky in UK horror stories.