HORROR FAVORITES FROM CHILDHOOD

Unlike so many protagonists in the books and movies I devour, I had a very happy childhood. It was an era before cell phones, and tablets. We had a home computer, but apart from Microsoft Paint and a Barbie Ice Skating game I had, it didn’t hold much appeal. During summers I was usually outside, riding bikes with my neighborhood friends or beautifying the sidewalks a la chalk. 

All of this is to say that when I was eventually introduced to creepy things, it was a novelty. I had the privilege of being scared for entertainment’s sake. And I know some people cannot say the same. 

Looking back now, I have no idea why my parents decided to give The X Files a try. My folks tend to feast on crime dramas, and twisty thrillers. Creepy shit is not their jam. Regardless, they gave it a whirl one fateful evening when I was six years old. 

I could hear the blare of the television drifting up the stairs as I lay awake in bed. I had been tossing and turning for an hour and sleep was still very much out of reach. I decided to take action. 

I crept out of bed and walked across the carpet to the top of the stairs. I got on my belly and slowly began to drag my body down the stairs – head first. Don’t ask me why. Inch by inch I made my way down the stairs, grateful that the television was on the opposite side of the room. 

After several minutes, I reached the bottom of the stairs and crawled to sit behind the couch. My heart raced, knowing I would be in trouble if I got caught. But I had to know what they were watching. 

Ironically, I don’t remember the details of the episode itself. All I remember was that it was dark, and weird, and I had a couple of nightmares in the week that followed. And I loved it. 

I snuck out of bed to watch The X Files with my parents a couple more times after that. When I received a catalog of books I could order from the Scholastic Market at school, I requested Goosebumps titles instead of my usual Babysitter’s Club. I still looked forward to watching Rugrats on Saturday mornings, but Are You Afraid of the Dark? became the true highlight of the day. 

I hungered for more. A random trip to Mcdonald’s scored me a VHS tape of The Addams Family. My friend Melissa introduced me to Hocus Pocus, and Goosebumps expanded into a television show. 

My interest in the macabre only grew as I became a teenager. So Weird became my favorite show. I saw every horror movie that hit my hometown theater. A friend of mine and I even made our own (incredibly embarrassing) version of the Blair Witch Project in the woods near my house. 

A month after I turned thirteen, The Ring hit theaters. It was October, my favorite month of the year, and my friends and I had already arranged to meet at the theater after school. Everything in the movie was blue tinted and eerie. I remember screaming my head off the moment Samara crawled her way out of the television on screen.

I spent the next few nights sleeping on the floor of my brother’s bedroom. I had a television in my room. Nevermind that it was thirteen inches wide, I wasn’t taking any chances. 

I imagine at some point my parents pointed out that I should abstain from scary things if I couldn’t handle them. But like a weirdo, I enjoyed my own terror. Being scared of The Ring made me excited to be scared again – something that wouldn’t happen until my Fourth Kind incident, but that’s a rant for another day. 

My love of horror continued to grow the older I got. In college I wrote short stories about gargoyles coming to life, and snakes coming out of bathtub drains to attack people. The highlight of my academic career was a short story about an undertaker with a crush on a new “tenant” and a newly discovered appreciation for necrophilia. 

Now I have three horror novels published and I have been toiling away with my fourth for a couple of years now. It has been stressful, aggravating, maddening, you name it. But the story is nothing short of delicious and it deserves its due – as many times over as need be. 

After I’ve worked on the book for the day, and I sit at the reference desk at work, I occasionally spend time doing research. I pour over wiki articles about missing people. I read about ships throughout history, taken out by rogue waves. At night, I go home and watch documentaries about airplane crashes. In short, I still spend an unusually large amount of time feeding my own fears. 

Is this normal? We now have several scientific studies proving that experiencing fear in controlled, limited doses releases dopamine and thus, makes us happy. My enjoyment of horror movies and novels is not unique – and thankfully so. 

But I’m not convinced the average person spends hours thinking about fear with consistent and profound pleasure. I’m not convinced the average person attends a family vacation and when looking at the ocean ponders just how many dead bodies there are in there. I feel like these are the type of things only horror writers and filmmakers do. Something weird and dark lives in the nooks and crannies of my brain, and I blame it on my childhood choices. I hope to put those choices to good use.