By Thomas Kies
Things that make the hair on the back of your neck bristle and wake you up in the middle of the night.
I cut our cable service years ago. We still get our internet through that same company because they have a monopoly in our market and that’s REALLY scary. Those bloodsucking ghouls raise the price every six months or so. Why? Because they can.
So, we have a Roku stick and we stream everything. Since the beginning of October, all the streaming services have been serving up a panoply of horror movies. Some are classics, like Exorcist, Night of the Living Dead, Alien, Rosemary’s Baby, the Shining, Carrie, Halloween, and Nosferatu.
I’ve been watching some newer horror that includes a limited series on Netflix called the Fall of the House of Usher. It’s an interesting blend of Succession and King Lear with a mashup of many of the works of Edgar Allan Poe.
Why do we love scary movies, television shows, and books so much? When faced with danger, we experience the “fight or flight” response, an autonomic physiological reaction to being exposed to something that is perceived as being stressful or frightening. It’s a dose of adrenaline. It’s a rush. It’s exciting if you know the danger isn’t real.
There’s a safety net. If it becomes too much for you, you know that you can leave the theater, turn off the television or change the channel, or you can close the book.
Part of the allure of scary films and literature is human curiosity. We want to know what lurks in that cave, the basement, the attic, or the abandoned insane asylum. We want to follow a character as he or she goes somewhere that you’re secretly shouting in your head, “Don’t go down there, you fool!. Damn, you’re too stupid to live.”
But we can go down there, because we know it’s not real. Or is it?
Since this is a writing blog, let me give you some of my favorite scary books:
Of course, there’s nobody who writes horror the way Stephen King does. And it’s difficult to just name a couple of his novels but my favorites are It, the Stand, and Salem’s Lot. That last book? After reading it, I couldn’t go into our basement for months. Shudder.
Interview with a Vampire by Anne Rice, a modern classic. It was a brilliant slant on the overwritten vampire trope.
Speaking of which, the original and still the best—Dracula by Bram Stoker. Sheer Gothic terror that’s been written, rewritten, and retold innumerable times. But the best is still the original.
The Exorcist by William Peter Blatty. Sure, you’ve seen the movie, and yes, it’s one of the most frightening films of all time. But scarier still? Read the novel.
Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury. Two young boys meet the malevolent Mr. Dark at a carnival. This was more significant for me because one of my jobs when I was in college was working as a carnie. Scary, weird, and ironically comical. Someday I may incorporate all of that into my own book.
By the way, another excellent book set in a carnival is Stephen King’s Joyland. The blurb on the cover reads, “Who dares enter the Funhouse of Fear?”
Who indeed? Happy Halloween everyone! www.thomaskiesauthor.com
