Growing Up Spooky

Growing up, horror has always been an escape for me. Ever since I was twelve, maybe thirteen years old growing up in the Midwest. I found it when my mom was divorcing her ex-husband and clung to it like a life preserver. Like it was the only thing to keep me grounded during those awful days. Movies, books, comic books, anything that I could possibly get my hands on I did. I read and watched anything to escape the shit going on in my life.

Buried my nose in them to stop caring about how my world was crumbling. Never perfect or stable and probably wouldn’t be for years. Watching careless people dying because they didn’t abide by slasher rules.

If you’ve watched 'Scream', you know them by heart. But for those that haven’t heard Randy say them out loud then I’ll tell you them.

1. Never drink or party or have sex.
2. Never go check the scary noise.
3. Never say ‘I’ll be right back’ because you never will be.

If you follow those rules, then you were pretty much could survive every basic horror. That wasn’t always typical in slasher movies. Or always true. If Nancy’s boyfriend, Glenn, wasn’t proof enough that it doesn’t always save you. Sidney was also proof that you could be a nonvirginal final girl and live when you probably shouldn’t have.

But we’re not digging deep into these tropes right now. We’re talking about my connection with horror and why. The why is escapism. The why is the connection that I sometimes felt with the final girl or final boy. Sometimes with the killer themselves as they felt more like people that I could understand. Or at least somewhat sympathize with. Like Jason Voorhees. He didn’t ask to be made into an unstoppable killing machine. Just wanted to avenge Pamela’s murder. And who wouldn’t be messed up after seeing someone you love being murdered like that?

I know I would have been.

Sometimes it inspires me to write my own horror. To draw my own terrible serial killer character with a badass protagonist that’ll come and stop them. Sometimes. Sometimes I just make comedy about them with other slashers for fun. Because being evil, scary, and monstrous was what helped me survive Middle and Highschool. As other kids saw me as other and wrong. So why not make something to terrify them then?

Be the monster they saw me as?

That was the logic back when I was on DeviantArt posting this. Along with other horrifying works of fiction. Creepy pastas were one of my fun safe havens. Along with an ARG that I took part in for a short while. Being the final girl, it was before I transitioned, that needed help from others to survive the monster that was after the character. Making some friendships that didn’t last outside of the games we were playing on YouTube. And in all honesty, it was for the best that it didn’t last all that long.

I was getting too stressed, and people were taking it too seriously for my liking.

Now I’m back to what I used to do. Writing horror stories that I find some form of pleasure in and others like. Like when I was fourteen or fifteen on DeviantArt. But with a lot better grammar and a lot better characters. As well as better plot.

Horror as a genre gave me a bit more bravery than I thought it could. And so did knowing what was going on behind the scenes. Knowing how the scenes were made and that it made it fun. But a whole lot less scary. Made me want to know more about how they were made. It never ruined the magic of the movies for me. Just made me enjoy them more thoroughly for how much effort it took to make them.

The movies and the T.V shows.

Stephen King was one of my biggest loves when I was a teenager. Thirteen or maybe fourteen in my school library and reading every one of his books that I could. So fast that the librarians barely believed I read them. Or that I was getting my actual schoolwork done. Which was strange for me since my grades were about high ‘B’s’ if I remember it right. I think they had been around that time.

Maybe.

Anyway, it sparked a lot of my work and need for more. Need for more scary stories with plot twists and movies with them. Which weren’t as good as the books they were trying to recreate for the big screen. Though I still love Kathy Bates as Anne Wilkes. She scared the absolute shit out of me when I saw her portray her. Still one of my favorite performances of hers.

As well as her performance in AHS Hotel.

Though I’ve found it hard to read some of his works over again. Such as ‘It’. As I just can’t get back into the mindset that I had when I was a teenager. Which really makes me wonder how I managed to read the whole thing when I was so young. And I haven’t been able to since I bought the damned door stopper nearly four years ago. So, I gave up on trying to read that and branched out into different horror. Better horror if I’m being honest. Most of the stuff by Stephen Graham Jones has gotten me out of a funk.

I’ve been reading it and listening to it to help with stressful times.

Recent favorite horror movie is ‘Bones and All’. Which helped inspire ‘The Gnawing Hunger’ along with ‘Ravenous’. Both movies are just absolutely out there in different ways and I can’t recommend them enough.

As I grow older, I don’t know if I’ll continue to love and watch horror. Since lately it’s been hit or miss if it’ll be of any substance. Or if it’ll be mostly style to cover what little it has going on. But I don’t think I’ll have it in my loveless heart to stop trying and watching. In hopes that the love I felt for horror as a too young teenager will ever be recaptured. Until then, I’ll never stop watching and writing.