This past Friday was Friday the 13th. So naturally, I wore my Friday the 13th shirt, which shows a chibi style Jason, running with bloody axe and machete in his hands, with text at the bottom that says, “It’s Friday!” On Discord, a friend asked which Friday the 13th movie was my favorite; I responded, “You don’t know what you’ve done.”
Then, a co-worker said to me, “You like horror? I thought you had anxiety.”
That made me pause for a moment, because yes, I do have anxiety. Mine is the I Think Everyone Hates Me kind, not the Jump at Shadows kind. But it made me reflect a bit. So take a stroll with me down memory lane.
I can’t remember when I saw my first horror movie exactly. I have two memories, but I’m not sure as to their chronology. I suppose, if I wanted to do some digging, I could find available on VHS dates for these movies. But I’d rather just leave them as part of the bouillabaisse of my brain and call it a day. First, I saw Poltergeist at a friend’s house; also, I saw Slaughter High at another friend’s house. That one, I distinctly remember needing to listen to the radio to fall asleep that night. I needed to listen to it quietly, so my mom wouldn’t ask why I was listening to music. I wasn’t allowed to watch that kind of thing at home. My mom didn’t let me see Gremlins when it came out.
That’s not to say that I didn’t experience my share of traumatizing movies as a kid. The Neverending Story scarred an entire generation. Don Bluth’s entire animation catalogue forced us to confront emotions we weren’t ready to process. I could segue into a conversation I had on Friday with another co-worker about the definitions of Horror, from the hardliners to the “horror is an emotion” set, but that’s another topic for another day.
But I also had an older brother. I had friends with older brothers. And if there’s one thing that is universally true of older brothers, it’s that they thrive on scaring the shit out of their younger brothers (and their friends).
So I tried to watch Tales from the Crypt, but could barely make it past the opening sequence and the Cryptkeeper. I watched exactly one episode back in the day, a plot that I recognized from an HP Lovecraft story I read decades later. My older brother watched the TV movie and then read It, and described them to me in horrifying detail. I wasn’t ready for the fire yet, but I felt like I was being tenderized.
I read mostly fantasy while growing up. The Dark is Rising series was a favorite of mine, as was the Dragonlance series. I read my CS Lewis but also branched out into Michael Crichton. I read adventure/mystery novels. There was this one series about a Hardy-boys-style pair of brothers (I think) who are searching for treasure (probably) and each part of the mystery is given to them by a talking bird. That series was wild. If anyone knows the name of it, let me know.
Then came the day that I first picked up an RL Stine book. Right now, you’re probably nodding.
I don’t remember how many Stine books I had, but I bought all the ones I could get my hands on. The fact that I picked these up at a Scholastic Book Fair at my Catholic grade school just goes to show how lawless the 80s really were.
Then came the fateful day I picked up my first Stephen King book, Thinner. I wanted to read it because the movie was coming out and I wanted to see it, but I was on a purist kick, that I needed to read the book first.
The book absolutely blew my mind. The ending was unlike anything I’d read up to that point. I decided then and there that I not only loved horror, but as the calling of writer was starting to whisper in my mind, that that was the kind of writer I wanted to be. So I could evoke the kind of reaction from people that I felt in that moment.
Since then, I’ve read a lot of horror stories and seen a lot of horror movies. I finally sat down to watch Poltergeist in its entirety. I watched Evil Dead while, unnoticed by me, dusk turned to night outside, which meant I needed to go through a dark house to turn on all the lights. I’ve read stories and watched movies from other genres and enjoyed them (for example, I love comedies), but I haven’t experienced the kind of visceral gut-wrenching mind-blown feeling outside of the horror genre. It’s also deeper than that.
One time, at a convention, I was on a panel and either the subject of the panel was “Why Speculative Fiction?” or an audience member asked the question. This was my answer:
“There are questions about the human condition that can’t be answered definitively and can only be speculated about. Since sci-fi, fantasy, and horror all have speculative elements to them, these are the stories best suited to wrestle with those fundamental questions and get anything close to an answer. That’s why genre fiction will always be important to me. This shit is important.”
The questions I think most about, horror is the genre that offers any kind of insight or catharsis. So yeah, I have anxiety, but I do love horror.
The Chimerical Dark 