How do you like your horror? Raw and un-cut? Gut-wrenching, heart stopping, visceral terror that shambles at you from the dark, smelling of mold and open graves; or slithers out from under your bed, dry scales scraping across the floor, reaching for you with questing tentacles?
Or sugar coated, censored, all the gory parts edited out, sparkling-vampire type pap?
Horrible Influences
I grew up reading Creepy, Erie, Tales from the Crypt, Famous Monsters of Filmland, Weird Tales and my dad’s collection of Edgar Rice Burroughs books. And watching Universal Studios monster movies. Later came the Twilight Zone, along with Godzilla, the Blob, and countless giant insect movies, born of the era of the bomb. Then I discovered the Outer Limits. And Stephen King. I drooled through all of his, along with Dean Koontz, Robert McCammon, and a host of other horror writers. My mentors, though I didn’t know it at the time.
Once I acquired a taste of ravaging vampires, vicious werewolves, moaning zombies, alien beasts, resurrected dinosaurs and their ilk, I never looked back. Or, rather, I looked back a lot, especially if I was walking down a dark road past a graveyard on a foggy night. A vivid imagination has it’s drawbacks.
Sweet – and Not So Sweet – Monsters
Then came “Twilight”, handsome vampires, sexy werewolves and a glut of paranormal type romances. I even yawned through a few of them.
I know. Those works appeal to an entirely different audience. But I like my monsters sharp of teeth, long of claw, and frenzied in demeanor. They come at you, seemingly unstoppable. They don’t want hugs and kisses. They’re not filled with angst. They ain’t looking for love.
They want your flesh and blood. They want to eat you.
I guess it comes down to past influences. Those books and films I grew up with fired my imagination and primed my writing with those type monsters. Even slasher fare like Jason, Freddie, Michael Myers, Hannibal Lector, American Psychos, and other psycho killer genre type books and movies don’t stir my blood, although they can be damn frightening in their own right. I mean, what’s scarier than a crazed killer in your house on a dark and stormy night? Human monsters can be scarier than the other kind, because there’s always the knowledge that human monsters can be real. Just pick up a newspaper.
They’ll Always be With Us
I think the monsters of old, however, still hold a place in our hearts. After all, our fear of the unknown will never completely go away. The dark will always hold mysteries. The creatures hunting the night have been with us since our first ancestors crawled timidly from their caves to tell horror stories by firelight.
There’s always that nagging fear in the back of our minds that whispers to us, “Uh, huh. Keep on believing you’re safe. That civilization holds sway. But know this. There will come a time when the virus is released. When the zombie apocalypse comes to pass. When you’re trapped in a cabin in the isolated wilderness by a slavering beast. Or alone in a starship with a creature that want’s to lay eggs in you. They’ll come at you. From the dark. And get you they will. And you’ll die.”
Because that’s what all monsters have in common. It’s where they’ve been coming from since the dawn of time.
Our fear of the dark, and the waiting grave.
To me, that’s the appeal of horror, why horror and creature fiction will always be with us, and why I’ll keep penning those type tales. We face our fear of death and the unknown in the form of monsters, and push it back. Defeat it.
Or not.
It’s one way of dealing with the coming night.
