Dark Beginnings
I've been steeped in horror ever since I was a child. Born in 1994, I was just the right age to fall into the Goosebumps hype. I loved Goosebumps so much that I had a pillowcase with Skelly on it. I was so little that I would climb inside the pillowcase to be carried over to my grandparents next door when it was time for them to babysit me. My grandfather was a huge fan of Edgar Allan Poe and during those times together, he introduced me to him. Although truly understanding Poe was well beyond my reading comprehension, I read "Masque of the Red Death" by age eight. Lastly, my uncle lived with my grandparents and was a huge fan of the old World of Darkness roleplaying games by White Wolf. These included Vampire: the Masquerade, Werewolf: the Apocalypse, and Mage: the Ascension. Although the content of the World of Darkness was not appropriate for me at all, I leafed through each one completely fascinated. These books were my introduction to the classic monster archetypes and heavily influence me to this day.
GOATs of Old World of Darkness
- Vampire the Masquerade: Lasombra Antitribu
- Werewolf the Apocalypse: Glasswalkers
- Mage the Ascension: Cult of Ecstasy
- Changeling the Dreaming: Sluagh
- Wraith the Oblivion: Proctors' Guild
We also can't forget Courage, the best dog, which ran during my childhood. I own the whole series on DVD.
Another book from my childhood that haunts me to this day is Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark. The stories in this book are for children and are not particularly scary, but the art is on another level. The images from this book gave me nightmares, made me cry and scream in the middle of the night until my parents intervened. Even as a teenager, the art creeped me out and made me get scared of things when I was alone. Unfortunately, the art was changed in 2011 to be much less scary. I bought a copy of the original and have kept it solely as an artbook.
Another book that traumatized me as a child around the age of 9 or so was the Zombie Survival Guide. I ended up reading World War Z in a single sitting after. I would stay up and be scared all night that zombies were going to come through my windows and eat me. To this day, zombies are a recurring theme for my nightmares and I'm vaguely uncomfortable with zombies compared to other classic monsters
My first love in horror cinema was A Nightmare on Elm Street, mainly the first film and to a lesser extent the third. The second is super, duper gay and I recommend it for its gay camp but it's not good. The beauty of A Nightmare on Elm Street is that the horror (to me) is not Freddy. The horror is that Nancy is in danger, she knows she is in danger, and she's trying to protect her friends and warn the people around her. The response of the adults? To take her to the hospital and put bars on her windows. I definitely feel that as a woman, an archetype that goes all the way back to Cassandra, the cursed prophetess, in the Iliad.
During my teen years, I read the complete works of H. P. Lovecraft. That dude was racist; his story "The Street" is literally about killing Eastern European immigrants. His dialogue also sucked. He did, however, launch an entire genre of horror. I would definitely only bother with the best hits though and expect to read things that would never fly today if you do. In my opinion, he's more important for the ideas he brought to the conversation that his actual fiction.
