Cheyne explains that since horror is an emotional and cognitive feeling but one that also causes physical reactions/ symptoms, it is appropriate to say that work in the horror genre ultimately affects the bodymind. Additionally, as many works of horror focus on disabled or altered bodies and the inner mind of a given character as well as the relation between the two it is also appropriate to say that horror both affects the bodymind and is often about the bodymind.

Claremont Graduate University

The Horror Genre does not merely attempt to produce a purely cerebral sort of disgust in readers/ viewers. Rather, it hopes to produce a physical response or bodily symptoms of these feelings as scholars Linda Williams and Carol Clover note that the feeling of horror is a so-called "body genre" that illicits bodily responses (sweating, shaking, etc.). Much of these physical symptoms are also associated with revulsion or fear and when disability is employed in horror it therefore connects the presence of these symptoms to a reaction to the presence of the disability itself.

Horror and Bodily Affect and Implications of Ableism

Cheyne, R. (2019). Disability, Literature, Genre: Representation and Affect in Contemporary Fiction. Liverpool University Press. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctvsn3pp7

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