The Scariest Monsters Look Like Us

 by Thomas Kies 

In honor of Halloween (and the Day of the Dead), I’d like to touch upon one of my favorite subjects.  Villains. Bad guys. Boogeymen. Ghosties and ghoulies and long-legged beasties and things that go bump in the night. 

When I’m writing, I enjoy creating my protagonists because they’re fun to be with, even if it's only in my own mind.  But there’s real joy… and catharsis… in writing the villains.  

Don’t we all harbor that dark side? When your boss makes a humiliating comment, wouldn’t you like to do something horrible to him, even if only in your imagination? When a store clerk ignores you, wouldn’t you like to grab them by the collar and give them a good smack? Do you have an ex who has cheated on you?  Honestly, don’t you think about digging a shallow grave in the woods?

But enough about my twisted imagination.  Let’s talk about some truly great literary villains. And a lot of them look normal.  Just like us. 

You can’t talk about legendary bad guys without including Bram Stoker’s legendary vampire, Count Dracula.  Wealthy and sophisticated, he enjoys the nightlife. He’s suave, handsome, and a great seducer.  He’s undead and enjoys a hearty meal of blood. At first glance, he doesn’t look scary. 

Dracula has spawned an untold number of vampire novels, short stories, and movies.  These include Interview with the Vampire by Ann Rice (which has spawned its own literary, movie, and television industry) and Stephen King’s Salem’s Lot. 

Speaking of Stephen King, he’s given us a treasure trove of literary villains.  Pennywise, the shapeshifting stealer of children from It. That novel didn’t make me any less afraid of clowns. Emily and Rodney Harris, the retired college professors who also happen to be cannibals from the novel titled Holly. Jack Torrance, the teacher/writer going mad at the Overlook Hotel in The Shining. In the sequel to The Shining, there’s Rose the Hat from Dr. Sleep.  She’s a vampire that hunts children with psychic abilities to torture and feed from them.  Randall Flagg, the pure embodiment of evil, from The Stand and The Dark Tower series.  

But if you’re a writer, the most memorable villain is Annie Wilkes from the novel Misery. A few years ago, I was doing a book signing and a woman came up to me and said, “I’m your biggest fan.” I about peed myself. For a moment I thought she was going to offer me cookies.  

Don’t think I didn’t check whether she was carrying an axe. 

But at first glance, Annie Wilkes didn’t look scary. 

On to other villains.  We have to include Professor Moriarty, Sherlock Holmes's arch-nemesis and intellectual equal.  Moriarty would sit like a spider in the center of his own web of wickedness and do his evilness without ever getting his hands dirty. 

Another villain who has sparked his own industry is Hannibal Lecter from Thomas Harris’s The Silence of the Lambs. A brilliant psychiatrist, cultured, articulate, and impeccably mannered, Lecter is also a cannibalistic serial killer. He's proof that evil doesn't necessarily announce itself with a hideous face or a sinister laugh. Sometimes it wears a nice suit and speaks with perfect diction. At first glance, he doesn’t look scary. 

And what about the villain who works behind the scenes, manipulating, whispering, scheming?  The villain who understands human weakness and knows how to exploit it. Iago from Shakespeare’s Othello is that kind of character. You could liken those characteristics to advisors to current business leaders, politicians, or even presidents. At first glance, those advisors don’t look scary. 

Who are my favorite villains in my own stories?  Bogdan and Valentin Tolbonov from Darkness Lane and Graveyard Bay.  The Tolbonovs are half-brothers running their own faction of the Russian Mafia. Valentin is coldly charming and manipulative.  Bogdan is the muscle.  Both are devoid of any shred of conscience and aren’t afraid to show their streak of sadism. 

Those boys were fun to write.

Now, if you really want something to think about, many real-life serial killers look normal.  Ted Bundy- handsome, well-educated, charming.  John Wayne Gacy- ran a construction business, participated in community events, dressed up as Pogo the Clown for children’s parties (there’s that clown thing again). Dennis Rader- the BTK Killer (Bind, Torture, Kill) was unassuming in appearance, married, and had two children.  

None of them looked scary.  And there are dozens of other serial killers just like that. 

So, I hope you had a fun Halloween. Yes, it’s time to put away the costumes and masks.  Now, tonight, before you turn off the lights to go to bed, check on your loved ones and make certain they’re safe, then make damned sure those doors are locked tight. 

You never know what’s lurking outside.  And remember, if someone comes to the door, at first glance, they may not look scary. 

Our Fascination with Bad Guys and Evil

I enjoyed reading the latest blogs from Donis Casey and Frankie Y. Bailey about their take on their literary villains. When blocking out a story, I often fixate on the villain and then I wonder why. Why do we have such a fascination with bad guys and evil?

I reached out and asked a number of writer friends who their favorite villains are. Some of the answers were quite interesting: Randall Flag (from Stephen King’s The Stand), Tony Soprano, Jack the Ripper, Long John Silver, The Joker, Draco Malfoy, Maleficent, the Pied Piper of Hamelin (well, when he wasn’t paid for eradicating the plague ridden rats from town, he reciprocated by stealing all the town’s children), Hannibal Lecter, Nurse Ratched, and of course, Darth Vader.

Some answers drew more than a one word answer. “Patricia Highsmith’s Tom Ripley. He could seem so normal as to be a sociopath. She really placed a light into that dark world. A villain…anti-villain.”

“Jack in Lord of the Flies. He is proof we are all base when stripped of rules, that hunger is what drives us all.”

“John Wilkes Booth…even though he killed Lincoln, he was a somewhat sympathetic character, a lost soul, pathetically delusional.”

When she mentioned John Wilkes Booth, it stopped me in my tracks for a moment. Booth thought what he was doing was the right thing. Don’t most villains rationalize their crimes as ‘doing what’s right’? Don’t they view their actions as beneficial for the greater good…even though their ‘greater good’ is criminal, repugnant, and destructive?

And the statement about Tom Ripley seeming so normal? The philosopher Hannah Arendt, while watching the Nazi engineer of genocide, Adolf Eichmann, stand trial in Jerusalem, realized that the most striking thing about evil was its banality. Eichmann looked like a bank clerk not a textbook villain. He was a bureaucrat who murdered millions of innocent people.

Ted Bundy, boyish, handsome, and charismatic, was a sadistic sociopath who confessed to thirty murders. But he looked so normal.

John Wayne Gacy tortured and murdered at least thirty-three teenage boys and young men. Before he was caught, he attended parades, children’s parties, and charitable fundraisers dressed as a clown. A CLOWN!!!! Okay, that’s pretty scary.

How many times have we heard the television interview with the neighbor of a serial killer who had been arrested say, “He seemed so normal”?

So back to why we’re so fascinated with evil.

Carl Jung believed we need to confront and understand our own hidden nature to grow as human beings. Healthy confrontation with our shadow selves can unearth new strengths, while unhealthy attempts at confrontation may involve dwelling on or unleashing the worst parts of ourselves.

Sigmund Freud viewed human nature as inherently antisocial, biologically driven by the undisciplined id’s pleasure principle to get what we want when we want it. We’re born to be bad but held back by society.

In the early 1970s, Stanford psychologist, Philip Zimbardo carried out his infamous Prison Experiment. The mock jail he created in Stanford’s psychology building where “guards” abused “prisoners”, revealed the speed with which ordinary people can begin to carry out depraved acts in a toxic environment.

I’m certainly no expert, but is it possible the reason why we’re fascinated with bad guys is that the line that we need to cross to get to the Dark Side is incredibly narrow?

Or is it that being good is boring and being bad is wicked fun?