I think one of the things about the horror in Night Vale, in the sort of post-Lovecraftian genre that it comes from is the concept that everything is normal. That's part of what makes it so amusing, and also so absurd, is that everything that happens in Night Vale is normal. It's normal to have the Sheriff's Secret Police, it's normal to be told by the City Council you don't know anything about the Celestial Hierarchy of Angels, and part of that is that people die and the population is decimated. I think that in a world as strange as Night Vale, death isn't the final be-all end-all of horror the way that it is in the real-life or film conception of horror, given what they live with on a regular basis. *shrugs* Either you buy into that kind of world or you don't. I dunno, I think that's amusing as part of the cosmic horror, but I guess to each his own. The Lovecraftian or post-Lovecraftian thing isn't for everyone.