First off welcome to my email list and blog.
I am an author and am publishing my first novel through Unveiling Nightmares.
Now my relationship with fear.
I was always a fearful kid. Everything scared me, from the sound the wind made with our trailers metal siding. To walking down my long driveway for the bus to pick me up. I am sure a good therapist could explain to me why.
What cured me of this, was more exposure to horror. At about four I would watch my brother play Resident Evil, and sure the I found it scary at first, but it was controlled. I could leave at anytime, he was playing the game. The stakes were so low that it barely registered. When I eventually played video games myself my first exposure was Ocarina Of Time. The Stalchildren that came out at night was enough to give me nightmares.
What scared me was how sudden they appeared, one minute you're running around Hyrule field without a care in the world, then the sun goes down. A wolf howls, and they come out of the ground. There were many terrifying things in that game for my young self. Same with Majoras Mask. Then as I got older, Halo and the flood scared me.
Looking at this motif I realize this is where I grew to love unexpected horror. Or the shift in a story when everything goes from normal, to terrifying. The movie From Dusk Till Dawn does it extremely well, but Halo completely caught me off guard when I played it. I was in maybe third grade, playing with a friend on split screen and he said. "Oh this is where it gets scary."
Of course playing the game with someone is different than when you're playing it alone. This though, this is what I love. Horror and terror when you least expect it.
I grew to love it, I am sure this is what Sensationalist media would call "Desensitization of the youth." or what not. I think it's important though. Fear is a part of life, and learning to deal with it makes you a stronger person. Now this of course depends, sometimes it can trigger trauma, and that is something else entirely.
My first horror Novel was The Watchers by Dean Koontz, it also solidified my fascination with Sci-fi and horror. I still have the paperback, it smells like cigarette smoke and garage musk. It was my mother's, she was a voracious reader and always loved scary movies and books. I read this book in a weekend, and was hooked.
The one issues I have now though, is it is far too hard to find things that actually scare me. Usually I find something that sticks with me. The author that does this the most for me is Adam Neville and Laird Barron. Neville is a master of atmosphere, and Barron mixes it with truly strange horror.
The Reddening stuck with me for months, and most of the stories from Barron's Occultation are freshly seared into my mind.
Although as a father, the one thing that will stick with me the most and truly disturb me, is something happening to a child. I had a hard time finishing Metro 2033 the book for this reason.
The fear of something happening to your child is something completely different though. It's atavistic, visceral, and enough to make someone go insane. I have physical reactions when I read something awful happening to children, real or fictional.
It's also a fear that not everyone can fully relate to. I read The Road ten years ago, and found it bleak and horrifying. I know if I read it now, it would hit me on a whole other level.
There is no inoculation for that, and anyone who has lost a child knows a pain more than most could bare.
Comments