Those kinds of shifting tastes are really interesting, aren't they — in both directions. As you say, it takes having a deeper understanding of literature, knowledge of the world, and life experience, and then your response to a story is very, very different.

I saw you saying in another post that you've never been scared by the written word, and that's very understandable. For me (and this goes for visual horror as well), what is explicitly depicted is never, ever as terrifying as my own mind filling in the blanks and imagining things, so I'm quite capable of being made terrified by the written word, or by visual horror which takes place mostly off-screen.