Why Horror?

Why Horror? It’s a question that people often ask me. People typically know me to be a fan of horror movies, but I’m a lover of books as well. It’s only natural that I’d be a fan of the genre in written form. But that doesn’t answer the question, does it?

When I hear that question, a Stephen King quote comes to mind. “We make up horrors to help us cope with the real ones”. While creatively, that doesn’t apply to me (I hope that someday it will.), as a consumer it certainly does. While I don’t dispute that people grew up living tougher lives than I did, I certainly didn’t have it easy. I think that fictional horror for me was an escape from the reality that I found myself in.

But how did it start? Well there’s another good question. My memory has always been a bit foggy if I’m honest. I remember bits and pieces of things, but by and large when I try to look back most things to me seem a fading memory, whether that memory is from a few years ago, or 20 years ago. What I can say, is that as a child I fell in love with Friday the 13^th, Nightmare on Elm St, and the Halloween movies. Every year when the scholastic book fairs would come to school I’d use whatever money I could scrounge up to order the latest GooseBumps books. I discovered scary stories to tell in the dark in my elementary school library. I was hooked, I couldn’t stop reading and watching, even though I had recurring nightmares of Freddy Krueger.

High school came, and life certainly didn’t get any better. What did improve, was my love for written horror. Sometime in my early teenage years, I discovered Stephen King. Salem’s Lot was the first Adult horror novel I can remember reading, and I’ll be damned if I didn’t sleep with my blankets wrapped around my head to cover the skin of my neck for years to come.

I fell out of reading for some time towards the end of high school. I was still in school but living with a friend instead of my parents. Not long after, I joined the Marine Corps. It was during my Iraq deployment that I started reading again. Horror was an escape from the reality of a USMC infantryman during a time of war. I blew through Stephen King, Devoured Joe Hill, and blasted through Bentley Little. And then I was done. Most of my friends weren’t readers. Bookstores only carried mainstream titles from the likes of Stephen King, so, I read more Stephen King.

Fast forward to 2019. My life is no longer a mess, things couldn’t be better if I’m honest. One thing that remains the same is I still love having the shit scared out of me. I’ve taken to twitter, I’ve discovered new publishers and authors and have made it a point to be engaged in the amazing community of horror writers/readers/bloggers. I don’t plan on going anywhere. I hope you’ll stick around for the ride with me.