In College Comp I yesterday, we finished reading Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s horror classic, “The Yellow Wallpaper.” As we discussed it, and as I tried to explain some of the more horrific events that many students gloss over on their first reading of the story, one student asked the most essential question in all of horror literature: “Is there something wrong with people who write this stuff?” That was followed by, “Why do people want to read things like this?”
And those are the questions every true fan of horror must answer. At some time. In their own way.
I read in a Stephen King biography that the author was attending a session at a horror convention where a psychologist was talking about why horror writers write the things they do. King was on the panel with the shrink, and he offered this confession from his childhood. King and his neighborhood friend would play together and scour the neighborhood as children tend to do. One day, apparently, they were walking along the railroad tracks close to their neighborhood. Kind said that he returned home. Alone. His mom noted that he was unusually quiet and withdrawn. Then she asked him where his friend was. King had no recollection. Eventually, as you might expect, King’s friend was found. He had been hit by the train. King had no idea how close he had come to being hit by the train or if he had witnessed his friend being hit. In fact, King told the panel and audience, to this day he had no recollection of the event at all. King did state, though, in typical Stephen King fashion, that he did recall adults mentioning that when they went to pick the child’s body up, they had to use a basket because he had been knocked to pieces by the train.
The psychologist looked down the table at King and pronounced, “And you have been writing about that event ever since.”
Apparently, that traumatic event so impacted King’s subconscious that that is the reason King produced Carrie, The Shining, Cujo, It, and The Dark Half.
I’m not saying I believe that. But I am saying that it is very, very interesting.
All of this speculation on horrific events and how they impact the lives of authors got me to thinking, of course, about my own life and my deep fascination with, if not an outright addiction to, horror films and literature.
When I think back on my list of all-time favorites - songs, videos, movies, short stories, and novels, they all seem to sway heavily toward the macabre or horrific.
The first real video I ever was fascinated with was Michael Jackson’s Thriller. Watching it as a 10 year old scared the crap out of me. But there was just something about it that fascinated me. I couldn’t wait to share it with my own kids when they were old enough. Watching it again with Cash and Kenzie, I realized it had a familiar look to it, but wasn't until much later that I learned it was directed by John Landis who did the classic American Werewolf in London.
I recall that vividly because it was on during one of those HBO marathons where they issued everyone with cable free HBO for a week.
I was all set to watch it - even with my parents' begrudging approval - with my brother. However, I could only make it through the first few minutes where the two main characters are back packing across the moors of England, and they are attacked by a werewolf. Once the monster started tearing into one of the poor unsuspecting back packers, I was up and in the kitchen with my parents, who I think were playing cards.
After a few minutes of lurking by the refrigerator and peering through the dining room and into the living room, I worked up enough courage to venture back to the living room. However, the protagonist, who had been mauled by the werewolf before it was killed, was recovering in the hospital. While there he had these terrible nightmares of running through the woods naked and killing a deer. Well, again, that was enough for me, and I was up and in the kitchen for good.
But after a few more minutes, I couldn’t resist the call to sneak another peek at the TV screen. By this time the narrator was having hallucinations and nightmares. Those were scary, but I was able to handle them, closing my eyes when I had to (such as when the crazy Nazi monsters showed up shooting the narrator’s family). But then the most amazing werewolf transformation scene occurred. The narrator was home alone at his girlfriend’s flat when he back to sweat profusely and feel ill. Suddenly, his body began to change. I’ll never forget the look of pain on his face as he holds up his hand to see the fingers elongated and the palm flatten as it transforms into a paw. This was nothing like any of the transformation scenes I had witnessed previously, which basically had the man transform into a werewolf by slowly adding a badass five o’clock shadow to his face while making his teeth extend into fangs.
The transformation of David Kessler into a werewolf was the craziest thing I had ever scene in my life up to that moment. Once his legs began to extend and morph, I was again dashing back into the kitchen where Mom and Dad had had enough of me trying to watch the film. They calmed me down and then sent me to bed.
This maybe was the worst thing they could have done, for as I buried myself beneath my pillows and blankets I could still hear (or I thought I could hear anyway) the screams of the werewolf’s victims coming from the TV downstairs.
My mind raced. What was happening to them? How was he attacking them? Who were his poor victims? What was going to happen to him?
My mind couldn’t help but pick up the narrative where I had last seen it. And that was somehow ever worse because now I couldn’t stop thinking about the film and its events.
That was the last night I would spend in my room all summer. I was even too terrified to venture up there during the day, let alone sleep up there at night. It hadn’t been bad when my brother and I shared a room, but since my sister moved out when she got married, we had separate rooms. And since my brother had been moved to the graveyard shift at the beat plant, I was left all alone upstairs. Well, maybe not all alone. As hard as I tried not to imagine it, I couldn’t help but hear heavy footsteps just outside my door. I imagined the beast stopping just outside my door to sniff. Thus, I begged Mom and Dad to let me take refuge on the couch.
One night I had fallen asleep on the couch (any guess as to why I couldn't sleep alone in my room upstairs?) when I woke up to find my brother home from work. He was seated in the recliner having a late, late supper and watching . . . you guessed it, American Werewolf in London.
I was stuck.
There was NO WAY I was going to go to bed upstairs with that show on. And there was NO WAY I was going to be able to fall asleep.
So I carefully pulled the afghan around my head and worked it out so I had a little peep hole to watch from. I also knew that if Dad woke up (their bedroom was right in back of the living room), I was in for it. He'd never let me watch it and make me go to bed.
Which is exactly what he did when he woke up just as things were getting good in the film.
Off to bed I had to go. I recall very clearly not sleeping a wink that night - at least until Kevin came upstairs to go to bed. This time I had all the covers securely tucked around me - God forbid I leave a limb dangling out and my head securely covered as well, with just a crack for fresh air.
I knew it wasn't really from the movie downstairs, but I couldn't avoid hearing the werewolf howl and the screams of the victims. This was worse than before.
And that was the beginning of my overactive imagination and my passion for werewolves.
Soon I was checking out all of the folklore books in the JA Hughe’s library. One of my favorites was on the monsters of Hollywood, focusing on Dracula, The Wolfman, The Mummy, The Thing from the Black Lagoon, Godzilla, and King Kong. I read that nightly. Then I discovered the book Meet the Wolfman by Georgess McHargue, and I was hooked. I would consume all the books I could on monsters, namely werewolves.
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