Creepy, Spooky, All Together Ooky….

Or why I just stopped to do the dishes and clean the kitchen at 2 AM.

October, one of my three favorite months of the year, came creeping in less than a week ago. It’s arrival was not greeted by my customary set up of all things orange and black. My ghosts and skeletons have yet to take up residence in their temporary graveyard. A few pumpkins have made their way inside, but my spider family sleeps still. It’s unusual for me to let them rest this long. I am one of the first in the neighborhood to unleash the spooky.

That’s not to say I haven’t done anything festive. My daughter, who loves this time of year even more than I do, has set up a list of movies – a Halloween movie countdown of camp and horror. Out of morbid curiosity (Side note – why do we drop the u when changing curious to curiosity?), I have decided to join her. I wasn’t a big horror movie fan as a kid. I am willing to bet I wasn’t even allowed to watch them (probably because my parents didn’t want to deal with the nightmares.) I think I was frightened of Poltergeist (in my defense it had a clown and a creepy old lady – creepy old ladies are the worst!), but I laughed at The Exorcist and felt no kind of fear of The Birds. I mention these movies because my older sister was petrified as both – to this day she fears birds. I was not afraid of Frankenstein, ghosts didn’t bother me. Blood and gore had no effect.

When I think back to the things that did scare me, I noticed one thing in common. Let’s see if you can pick it out. I was afraid of the witch and the munchkins in The Wizard of Oz, the Oompa Loompas in Willy Wonka, the aforementioned creepy old lady in Poltergeist, and the worst was the song “Have You Ever Seen a Dream Walking” in The Lady in White (one of the scariest movies of all time). Did you figure it out? It’s voices. Voices do me in every time. The higher they are the more I am freaked out by it. Auditory horror? Maybe. Voices and clowns – I freaking hate clowns (in horror movies) though oddly IT does not creep me out. To be fair, I don’t like clowns in reality either. I hate that their faces are painted one way, but the way they are feeling can be another. It’s supposed to be funny, but it scares the ever living crap out of me.

Anyway, we have been watching these horror movies – campy horror – the kind of movies you talk through and make fun of and never take seriously. I love these. We watched Gremlins the other night. It was her first time – she loved it. Tonight was Ginger Snapped. This was my least favorite so far – werewolves are fine, but it wasn’t as campy as the others. There was a deeper subplot of sisterly love co-dependence which felt too complicated than the movie called for. I can say that the movie had to be a little unsettling because it made me clean my kitchen. I clean when I am nervous of upset, so it had to get to me on some level – probably the problematic family bond, I know something about that.

Watching the movies made me think about writing horror. I’ve tried. I have written one or two horror stories, usually psychological horror. I wrote them as an assignment for a competition. It’s not my genre. I like happiness – little happy butterflies of love and sunshine. I like humor. I like writing for kids. I like romance. I like mystery. But horror – horror involves delving into the parts of people’s brains that I don’t like to go near. It involves reaching into the dark corners and bringing out fear or rage. That’s not easy for me, I prefer to think of people as being good on the whole. But, watching these movies has me a little fascinated with the idea of writing something scary. Should I open the pandora’s box inside my mind and let unsettling thoughts come out to play? If I do that will I ever be able to close the lid?

What fears live inside your pandora’s box? Do you recognize them? Monsters, clowns, creepy faces, blood and gore, dark haunted houses, high-pitched voices? What’s your trigger? And what settles your mind agai