The other day, I happened to see that my social media friend and super talented horror author Brian Keene is a contributor to a book of essays called Why I Love Horror, coming in September of this year. The book is described as “A love letter to the horror genre from many of the most influential and bestselling authors in the industry.” This got me thinking that it would be fun to share my own tale of why I love horror! I’ve actually shared this story in brief ages ago, at the very start of my blog, so I thought it would be fun to return to it with a little more detail.

In pre-teen years, I was the most sensitive child you can imagine. I had extremely sensitive hearing and would even jump at the popping of a balloon. When it came to scares, I was afraid of anything that risked being remotely scary. One example is that I refused to go into Disney World’s Haunted Mansion when we visited the park when I was a kid; another example that always sticks in my head is that I found movies such as the 1963 The Day of the Triffids too scary to watch. (It is a pretty decent movie, but not one that I would call particularly scary these days.) Basically, anything intense in any way, shape or form was too much for me, in general, and horror was completely out. I avoided roller coasters until my later teens for pretty much the same reason.

Then there was one day — I was about 14 years old, and I know this for reasons I will mention shortly — that I decided to watch an episode of Tales from the Darkside. For those unfamiliar, it was a horror anthology show that ran from a pilot in 1983 to a final season in 1988, culminating in a 1990 movie, Tales from the Darkside: The Movie. The intro to Tales from the Darkside is still a bit creepy to me today, even with its rather primitive special effects.

One weekend, I was staying at my dad’s apartment — the day and the situation is still extremely vivid to me, even some 40 years later — and an episode of Tales from the Darkside was going to be on TV. For some reason, and I’m not really sure why, I decided to watch it. I was honestly quite scared, but opted to brave the episode and see what happened.

The episode was “The Madness Room,” the 17th episode of the first season. Let me quote the Wikipedia synopsis here for more information:

Cathy and Edward Osbourne (Therese Pare and Stuart Whitman), along with their attorney Michael Fox (Nick Benedict), discover through communication with a spirit known as Ben that their house contains a boarded up room that causes anyone that steps inside it to go insane.

It is actually a quite nice setting for a creepy tale! The three main characters go into the “Madness Room” and attempt to commune with the spirits there, when everything seems to go wrong and Cathy and Michael appear to go insane. When Edward starts to have a heart attack, he follows the words of the spirits and drops the key to the room into a crack in the floor to break the spell. Only then he learns that it was all a setup — Cathy and Michael are having an affair, and planned this whole episode as a way to scare Edward to death. Breathing his last, Edward kicks over the lantern they were using in the room, starting a fire. The lovers want to escape, but they locked themselves in the room — and Edward dropped the only key into a crack in the floorboards, making it inaccessible. Then the two of them wonder who actually added the phrase “drop key in crack — the only way back” to their séance, because it wasn’t any of them! The episode ends with the room in flames and the disembodied laughter of the real spirit of the chamber that set them all up.

Overall, not a horrifically scary episode, though a delightfully creepy one, and with a humorous twist at the end! And that was the revelation for me — horror could be funny, and in fact horror and comedy often go hand-in-hand. I was always a kid who enjoyed being funny, and this one episode of Tales from the Darkside showed me that horror could be so much more than jump scares. From there, I started investigating more, and started reading some of the paperbacks from hell. I didn’t know at the time that horror fiction was experiencing a major boom, and horror novels could be found anywhere, even grocery store shelves! One book I specifically remember buying at a local Jewel grocery store was Ramsey Campbell’s Ancient Images, an amazing book that began my lifelong love of Ramsey Campbell‘s work and of supernatural horror fiction in general.

(I need to go reread that book and blog about it, which I’ve never done.)

In high school, I would go on to write some of my own horror fiction, a habit I’ve continued on and off through the years. My very first complete story was a quirky haunted house tale that I wrote for a creative writing class and titled “Manorisms” (note the pun), and it was a mixture of horror and comedy.

It’s funny how one simple act, like watching a TV show, can alter one’s life trajectory. In adulthood, I’ve taken on hobbies like skydiving, having recognized that a good scare can be a lot of fun!

For those who wish to preorder Why I Love Horror, here is my bookstore dot org affiliate link, which means I get a small commission on sales. Of course, you can always order it from any place you find convenient!