I was such a wuss as a kid, and hated horror movies. But one of the most disturbing was not horror movie at all: *batteries not included. It’s a family film with Jessica Tandy, for chrissakes. The decrepit building, the palpably unstable slumlord, the erratically flying aliens with glowing eyes made a very unsettling ride for little Jenny.
As for books, there are two that stand out: The Dollhouse Murders by Betty Ren Wright and The Secret Bedroom by R.L. Stine. I still read them, that’s how much impact they had on me. The idea that dolls move about when you’re not looking and recreate scenes of an unsolved murder was unnerving enough. But Stine’s tale of a girl with a secret bedroom (an introvert’s dream!) inhabited by a spirit that can not only invade your mind, but contort reality until you’re just a shell to possess, was enough to keep me up nights.
What was your biggest fear as a child?
For some reason, fire. I was never in one, I was never burned, but I’d get anxious even going near a building in the aftermath, much less look at one on TV. I found the blackness and destruction terrifying, the gaping windows and shredded wood and plaster hanging beyond the frames monstrous.
In *batteries not included, there’s a scene in which some characters take a blissful walk home after a fun night out, only to find their apartment building ablaze. I think that’s what is so upsetting: fire is such a simple, vital element, yet it can destroy your home, kill your loved ones, erase every memento from your past.
Do you like scary movies? Which one is your favourite?
Now I do. I met (and eventually married) a horror movie geek (his descriptor) and I think he was secretly disappointed that I avoided the genre altogether. But little by little he introduced me to older movies like The Seventh Victim (1943), Brides of Dracula (1960) and Masque of the Red Death (1964), and now I seek them out. I begged him to take me to The Autopsy of Jane Doe (2017).
Ghosts are guaranteed to creep me out. Have you ever had a paranormal experience in real life?
No, and I’m sure if I did I would freak right out and move. But I’d like to think we’d be pals, Casper-style. As long as he’s not the chatty type.
Has a book ever really scared you?
In adulthood, no. I’ve gotten the shivers, I’ve been creeped out, but mostly, I applaud the writer for eliciting a visceral response. Ha! Perhaps writing has ruined me for raw terror!
Can you share with us an example of fear in one of your own novels?
Certainly. My protagonist in my novel, Edge of Sundown, is an author too, and much of his motivation comes from fear. The fear he’ll be forgotten, the fear that his creative well has run dry. Turns out it’s much worse: the world moved on and didn’t leave a forwarding address, and his reality is more fiction than his book.
In real life what is your biggest fear? Do you use that when you write?
I have the same fear as my poor protagonist: that one day I’ll be out of ideas and I’ll lose my ability to write.
But also bugs. Even helpful ones, like centipedes and common spiders and crickets. There’s regular ol’ roaches, but also hissing, flying frickin’ roaches. There is no God. Yet I’m writing a picture book about a girl who’s airlifted by a horde of butterflies, or as I call them, Satan’s biplanes. Go figure.
Thanks so much for sharing – am totally with you on the cockroach front – they are pure evil. Also I really want to read some RL Stine books now, I seem to have missed those when I was growing up!
If you want to know more about Jennifer, check out her links below!
Well its Lockdown…..again….hope you had a safe and quiet – preferably cheese and prosecco fueled New Year! Im back again with some scary stuff this time joined by P.J. Mordant, author of supernatural thriller ‘When Angels Fear.’ So she knows a thing or two about what is scary – lets find out what scares her!
What movie/book scared you as a child? I’m going to choose an advertisement, seeing its the first thing that came to mind: an advert for Deep Heat, a stupid rubbing ointment. A really deep voice boomed DEEEEP HEEEET from the telly. It got so bad that I would leave the room when ANY adverts came on.
What was your biggest fear as a child? I was and still am, terrified of thunder storms. Its the combination of noise and lightening. I think it started after my dad tried to fix our old valve telly. He took a screwdriver to it and it blew up with a flash and bang! Lucky escape for all of us, but left a lasting legacy.
Do you like scary movies? Which one is your favourite? Medium scary films. I prefer supernatural rather than full-on horror movies. Very fond of ‘The Changeling’ with George C. Scott. Scary premise, musical boxes, wheelchairs, bouncing balls … a well. Great tropes.
The paranormal usually freaks me out the most when I’m reading a book. Have you ever had a paranormal experience in real life? Nah.
Has a book ever really scared you? The Repairman Jack series by F. Paul Wilson – anything by F. Paul Wilson, actually. There was one character – I think it was a young boy – who couldn’t die and Jack thought he’d put him out of his misery. YEARS later he pondered whether he had actually died so he returned to the burial site and dug the boy up.Turned out he’d been absolutely right: the boy was skeletal but with all his faculties and completely alive. Can’t remember names and whys and wherefores but … well, the idea’s stuck with me all these years.
Can you share with us an example of fear in one of your own novels? The fear a woman has when the love of her life turns out to be an abuser. In ‘When Angels Fear’, my first chapter is filled with dry-mouthed dread that he might discover her escape.
In real life what is your biggest fear these days? Do you use that when you write? I fear for the planet. It’s the theme of my sequel to ‘Angels’
Huge thanks to PJ for visiting! You can learn more about her and her books below!
Following on from my chat with Rumer Haven last week, who cited this lady as being very capable of scaring her, this week I am honored to welcome Shani Struthers, author of the bestselling Psychic Survey’s series and This Haunted World series. Her latest book ‘Cades Home Farm’ has just been released and looks pretty damn scary. I just love finding out what scares people, especially those who like to scare others….
What movie/book scared you as a child?
I don’t remember being scared by a book or a movie as a child, not to the point of being disturbed by it. Rather I enjoyed the creepy goodness of an author called Ruth Manning Sanders, who is now (sadly) out of print. She wrote twisted fairy tales, and they could get very dark indeed. As a teenager, I moved onto Stephen King, Dean Koontz and Clive Barker. Of them all, Clive Barker’s books truly scared me, as did those Hellraiser films of his! I remember watching the first one in the franchise and not being able to sleep a wink for fear of those cenobites coming to get me, especially the one with the chattering teeth!
What was your biggest fear as a child?
Spiders! And it still is. I’ve had so much therapy for it, but the fear is too deep-seated. The therapists have all given up on me!
Do you like scary movies? Which one is your favourite?
I love scary movies; they’re my favourite. An all-time favourite is the black and white version of The Haunting with Claire Bloom, based on Shirley Jackson’s absolutely brilliant The Haunting of Hill House. It’s a real ‘less is more’ type of movie, it leaves so much to interpretation, which, in my opinion, makes it far, far scarier!
I am usually most afraid of ghosts when I’m reading a book. Have you ever had a paranormal experience in real life?
Yes, I have and that is perhaps the reason I write about the paranormal now. To be honest, my experiences were mainly as a child, including one that took place on a beach in North Cornwall, when I was five. I’d wandered off from my mother and was playing happily in a cove. There are six of us kids and sometimes we could be hard to keep an eye on! Anyway, next thing I know, I’ve looked up from the sandcastle I’m building, and the tide has come rushing in, effectively cutting me off. I’m the only one in this cove and I can’t swim! I climb onto some rocks, climbing higher and higher as the sea rises. I remember looking out and seeing nothing but sea and being very scared. Suddenly, I turn around to see a couple more people on the rocks, a man and a woman. I remember the woman in particular, she was wearing a tweed jacket and matching tweed skirt, not exactly beach attire! They started talking to me, calming me, telling me I was going to be okay, that whatever happened, it wouldn’t hurt. They assured me they’d stay with me, that they wouldn’t leave me. I did calm right down and remembered thinking that it was true, it was going to be all right, whatever the outcome. A few minutes later, a lifeboat came tearing round the corner with my mum in it, pointing at me and screeching. I was rescued. Only me. When I asked my mum – and this was years later – why the man and woman hadn’t been rescued too, she said ‘what man and woman? There was only you there.’
Has a book ever really scared you?
The only book I’ve never been able to read at night (and I’m pretty hardcore when it comes to horror novels) is Sarah England’s Father of Lies, it kept giving me nightmares!
Can you share with us an example of fear in one of your own novels?
Fear is a common theme in all my novels, either imagined or real. Actually, it’s the imagined fear that fascinates me, how it can completely paralyse us.
This extract is from Blakemort, a book about a very haunted house indeed. Five-year old Corinna and her brother, Ethan, have gone to explore the dark confines of the attic, but her brother – as brothers do – has left her in there, closing the door behind him…
He stepped over me – literally stepped over me – made his way to the door and banged it shut behind him. No longer open, or even ajar, it confined me within – imprisoned me. What was overhead immediately started fluttering again and in dark corners I could sense writhing. Who was it that had whispered? A boy – the same age as Ethan or thereabouts and even worse than him, if such a thing were possible. My arms were on the floor behind me, supporting my weight but I sat up straight and drew them inwards, trying to curl into a ball instead, to make myself tiny, tinier still, invisible. I had to get up, get out of there, but I couldn’t move. I swallowed, my eyes darting to the left and to the right. Who are you? Who’s here?
Something swooped – the bat, the owl, whatever creature it was, black feathers in my face and a smell so bitter it blinded me further. I screamed but worse than that I wet myself, my arms flailing in an attempt to keep the damned thing away. Even in my terror I felt shame that I couldn’t control my bladder – that urine was pouring from me – all over the photos, staining them, destroying them. I wanted them destroyed!
“Get away! Get away! Get away!”
Surely my screaming would alert Ethan and he’d come rushing back.
“Get away!”
I pushed myself upwards. If no one would save me, I had to save myself.
The thing that was beating about my head retreated – vanished, as if it had never been. Gone. Just like that. Somehow that was even more frightening – its sudden disappearance. Looking back, I’m not even sure it was real. In fact, right now, at this moment, sitting here writing, I’d bet money it wasn’t. It was simply an illusion, some kind of magic trick. Certainly, it never appeared again. But alone as I was, or more accurately not alone, I didn’t have time to contemplate it. My chest rising and falling, sobs starting to engulf me, snot pouring from my nose, my legs hot and sticky, I could only contemplate escape – but damn my feet, they wouldn’t work!
In real life what is your biggest fear? Do you use that when you write?
Nothing terrorises me more than the sight of an eight-legged beastie! I don’t mind the small ones but the big ones, I literally quake with terror. One of my characters in my Psychic Surveys series, Theo, is also scared of spiders. She may battle with dark entities on a regular basis, but it’s an arachnid that can be the undoing of her! In Eve (A Psychic Surveys Prequel), the entity she’s dealing with is turning her own fears back on herself and yep, she’s seeing spiders everywhere, as big as dinner plates. She really has to try and come to terms with her fear, face it head on, but as we know, it’s never that easy…
Thank you so much for answering my questions Shani, I’m definitely with you on The Haunting, I love that movie, suggestion is always more terrifying. And also spiders are a big NOPE for me too, my house is full of them and I’m tempted to buy a flame thrower to deal with them.I’d never heard of Ruth Manning-Sanders but now I’ve seen her books I want them all!
Shani has an amazing back catalogue of terrifying novels, if you haven’t had the pleasure, and you like a good spooking, get yourself onto her website for more info!
Born and bred in Brighton, UK, Shani Struthers is the author of nineteen supernatural thrillers (so far), some set in various locations in England, others in more far-flung destinations such as Venice and America. Having been brought up with an understanding of the Occult and alternative views on religion, she threads this knowledge throughout her books, often drawing on real-life experiences of her own, from people she has known and from well-known Occult figures too. Please Note: her books tend to revolve more around PSYCHOLOGICAL HORROR. You won’t find gore, vampires, werewolves, zombies or the like in her fiction. Her various paranormal series have proved very popular indeed, including the Psychic Surveys Series, This Haunted World, Reach for the Dead and Jessamine. She has also written a set of Psychic Surveys Companion Novels and two Christmas Ghost stories: Eve and Carfax House. All have topped the Amazon genre charts in both the UK and the US. For more information on new releases, competitions and general news, sign up to her newsletter via her website.
American actress Vera Miles stars as Lila Crane in the horror classic ‘Psycho’, directed by Alfred Hitchcock, 1960. (Photo by Archive Photos/Getty Images)
Halloween may have passed but for some of us folk, its Halloween every day! I’ve been a fan of this lady for a while and have long suspected we have a fair bit on common as far as what things we enjoy watching and reading and this chat made me want to talk even more about spooky stuff! Rumer Haven, author of several excellent books featuring the 1920’s and the dear departed, and most recently a collection of short stories – Myths, Mothers, Mystics. She’s my kinda gal!
What movie/book scared you as a child?
Poltergeist was hands down my favorite scary movie, though it truly frightened the daylights out of me (scary clowns, skeletons in pools, and, good God, that scene where the guy peels his face off? Gah!). I still say that one holds its own; I watched it more times than I could count as a child and have seen it at least a couple of times again as an adult, and…yeah. Still scary. Impressive special effects for the ’80s and actually some great acting. I’m in denial that there was ever a remake in 2015, but I’ll acknowledge it enough to say that it’s absolute rubbish, so stick with the original—ye old cathode ray tube TV as a portal to the dead (“They’re heeeeeere!”) is way scarier than a dumb drone sent into the spirit world. The 1982 Poltergeist even had me fearing the tree outside my bedroom window!
But while the original Poltergeist was (and might still be) my favorite, the film that actually terrified me even more as a kid was The Entity. Starring Barbara Hershey, this was another 1982 horror film that I probably shouldn’t have been watching when I was so young, but it was a sleepover favorite. I don’t think I could watch that one again as an adult, honestly; it frightened me that much. Felt too real, like something that could actually happen if a malevolent spirit were to attack, and while Poltergeist is filled with wonderfully scary and atmospheric visuals, it’s what you can’t see in The Entity that paralyzes me in fear even just thinking about it now.
Book-wise, I automatically think of the Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark series. Truly, I think what scared me most about those books as a kid were the illustrations. I don’t know how to describe them, but there’s just something so liminal and watery and…hairy about them…like the kind of loose hair you’d find in a drain, which isn’t to say they’re gross, just creepy AF.
What was your biggest fear as a child?
Probably that damn tree outside my window! But seriously, aside from day-to-day fears like jumping off the diving board at the local pool or hanging upside down from monkey bars, paranormal stuff was probably the most consistent fright that manifested in many ways: fear of the dark, any creaking in the house, the space underneath my bed, dolls…(I was Team Stuffed Animal, with the exception of my Cabbage Patch Kid. Animals = cuddly and love you. Dolls = creepy and want to kill you.). As much as I was afraid of ghosts, though, I couldn’t get enough of them in stories and movies. I was just asking to be scared.
I will say, though, that my early fascination with the afterlife may have, unbeknownst to me at the time, been very closely related to another fear: death. Even as a young child, while saying my prayers at night, the line “And if I die before I wake” gave me pause. I think I really did fear every night that I might die in my sleep. What a blessing it was, then, to wake in the morning to my mom whistling and throwing open the curtains, letting in the light.
Do you like scary movies? Which one is your favourite?
You bet I do! Not gory slasher films (though I’ll indulge in those, too, around Halloween) but ones about spiritual hauntings. As mentioned earlier, Poltergeist has remained a firm favorite since childhood, though another one to emerge during my adult life is The Others with Nicole Kidman. Released in 2001, that film is exactly the Gothic atmosphere and subtle touch that I love in a scary story. It’s what’s left to the imagination that I personally find most frightening, which is why blood-n-guts or easy jump scares ultimately don’t do it for me.
I am usually scared the most by ghosts when I’m reading a book. Have you ever had a paranormal experience in real life?
The closest I’ve come to a paranormal experience was while staying at a Tudor-era holiday cottage in Herefordshire, England several years ago. By then, I had already come to realize that I can sense…something in certain places, that I’ll sometimes feel a distinct pressure on my chest that leaves me gasping for air a little. Some places are heavy with their histories, I figure. But during our first night at that cottage, I saw the fringe of my husband’s scarf sort of flutter upward from where the scarf was hanging on a coatrack. But it didn’t so much look like it had been blown upward as it was being tugged at. Just when I was about to dismiss it as my eyes deceiving me, I hear my husband say, “Did you see that, too?”
He’d witnessed the exact same thing and was actually the one staring at it more straight-on than me. That had us up on our feet and investigating the entryway around the coatrack, trying to debunk the movement as having been caused by the wind. We checked the gaps between the front door and the doorframe, the mail slot, etc., but for an old cottage, it had actually been renovated with quite modern features and was airtight. There was no breeze coming through from anywhere, and it wasn’t windy outside in the first place. We even checked the radiator, but no blowing heat was coming from that, and there weren’t any vents to be found—and, anyway, if air had blown in from any of these possibilities, the scarf was on the opposite side, facing a wall and shielded on the other side by our coats. In any case, we just dismissed it for the time being and went about our leisurely evening, watching TV and snacking.
And that’s when I heard a scraping sound right in front of me. I looked down at the floor at my feet in time to see the Doritos bag that was setting there tip over a few inches and then return to right-side up, scraping against the edge of the coffee table as it did so. Directly in front of me, with the lights on; I watched this happen plainly—the bag leaning at an impossible angle without tipping over, and not only did it not fall, it stood itself back up. My husband was on his laptop at the time, so he didn’t see it himself, but he was sitting right next to me and did hear the scraping. And once again, we immediately set about debunking what I saw. I know I had not moved my feet, but my husband had been sitting with his legs crossed and wondered if he’d been swinging his foot, causing a breeze. We tried to recreate it, with him swinging so feverishly it was funny and obviously not what had happened, and again, windows and everything were sealed tightly with no draught, and we’d have been hard-pressed to explain how one could’ve caused the bag to sway side to side the way it did anyway.
Later that night, I experienced a lucid dream in which I thought I had woken up in the same bedroom where we were staying—everything the same except for a desk by the window and an armoire against a different wall—and I met a little ghost girl who told me her name was Sarah. She had long blond hair in braids and wore an old-fashioned dress, and I clearly remember the brief conversation I had with her, asking if she minded that we were there and if there were others there, too. Fortunately, she was fine with us being there but didn’t seem as reassuring about the others, who apparently were there. At any rate, there were no occurrences beyond that first night, only that heavy pressure on my chest every time I entered the bedroom. We were intrigued by it all but not scared; it felt harmless, indeed like a curious child inspecting our things and feeling out the new strangers in a house that was probably used to sitting empty.
Has a book ever really scared you?
Automatically, I think of how American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis nearly made me vomit—literally—but that was more to do with its graphic nature. Otherwise, I’m racking my brain for one that would’ve had me leaving the light on at night… Not to say that hasn’t happened, as I certainly have gotten chills from Gothic tales like The Turn of the Screw, The Haunting of Hill House, and The Woman in Black—and anything these days by Shani Struthers and Sarah England is sure to frighten!—but for being so bookish, I actually think I’m more skittish when it comes to movies. Not sure why.
Can you share with us an example of fear in one of your own novels?
Fear creeps across all my stories, and in my paranormal ones it’s usually my main characters’ fears that render them more vulnerable to the supernatural—not in that they’re preyed upon by a malevolent entity for that reason, but that their human frailty genuinely connects them to someone in the past. That’s usually the point of any “haunting” in my stories, not really to terrify but to show the universality of the human condition across time.
Yet to cite a specific example for this question, I’ll look to my most recent story, “Revolve Her,” a novella that now features in my short story collection, Myths, Mothers, and Mystics. In this one, my main character, Ellie, immediately finds herself freaked by a murder she might have just committed, only to find it was all in her mind, which proves almost (if not just) as scary. She’s questioning whether she’s had a psychotic break or not when she begins to suspect there could be someone else’s emotional baggage that’s affecting her—a presence in her hotel room that haunts her both in dreams and her waking life. Ellie has just experienced a shocking heartbreak in her relationship with a doctor, and she’s traveled far from home, feeling alone in an unfamiliar landscape, so her sense of betrayal and sadness and loneliness all compounds to make her relatable to a ghost because of what had led to that person’s death and the ethereal existence they’ve had since. Over the course of the story, we see not just fear but the different ways people might choose to act on that fear and what the consequences could be.
In real life what is your biggest fear? Do you use that when you write?
Currently, my biggest fear is anything happening to my family while I’m overseas. I live in London, UK but am originally from Chicago, Illinois, and this separation from my family in the States during COVID is a nightmare. Aside from missing siblings, nieces, and nephews terribly, my parents are highly at risk right now, so I’m terrified of them having any contact with this virus, along with just not knowing how long it will be before I see them again, if I’m losing precious time.
I honestly think that fear is actually preventing me from writing lately. But moving away from my family in the first place did heavily influence my first novel manuscript, which was my second book to be published: What the Clocks Know. I started drafting that story while in the throes of depression, soon after relocating to London from Chicago in 2008. Since I wasn’t working for a time to follow the move, I ended up pouring my emotions into Clocks…the loneliness of missing family and friends back home and not having anyone near me besides my husband, the blank and drifting feeling I had without familiar surroundings and a sense of structure and purpose…
That big unknown about the future and not having a local network of support was incredibly frightening, and even scarier was the fact that, most days, I didn’t even really know myself anymore. I didn’t know what defined me any longer, if what I thought defined me before even had in the first place. In my early thirties, I was facing a bigger identity crisis than in adolescence, so a lot of that got dumped into poor Margot, my protagonist. I had her come to London on her own steam in an attempt to live vicariously, to feel more empowered about my own situation overseas rather than feeling like the “trailing spouse” (a horrid term, if you ask me), and I gave her my depression but with the hope that, hey, maybe it isn’t her—maybe it’s a ghost! A presence in her new flat that might be imparting its own emotions onto her, just like I pondered when I myself sat alone in my new Victorian-era space. I wished so badly that it was just residual negative energy, trapped within those walls, that would explain why I felt the way I did, why I didn’t feel like myself—because that would be less scary than the realities of my mental and emotional health. So, I explored that in the book, and, well…now it is what it is!
That’s probably the most personal example of how I’ve used fear in my writing, but even as the characters I write become less and less like myself, I still use my own fears in thinking up scenarios that would frighten me as a reader. And even if I can’t relate directly to a character’s life experience, I think fear is key to finding common ground. Ultimately, we’re all human and vulnerable and afraid of something, and even if those fears take different forms, their nature is essentially the same at the core and can topple even the giants among us.
Huge thanks Rumer, we really do have alot in common! The Entity ruined me for years, I still can’t watch it, and Poltergeist is absolute tops (and yes that remake didn’t last very long on my screen, eve with the presence of Sam Rockwell). And on the subject of American Psycho – the reason I only read it once? The Rat.
If you fancy a dip into the paranormal world of Rumer, please use the links below and get yourself some lockdown reading by stacking her books up on your shelf or virtual shelf.
“Fear is the main source of superstition, and one of the main sources of cruelty. To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom.” ― Bertrand Russell, Unpopular Essays
Hey guys its been a while! Crazy year and crazy times and I realised I spent alot of this year dealing with fear in my weird new every day pandemic life, so I decided I wanted to get back in the saddle again and have a chinwag with people about fear and what scares people. Lets face it my books show I’m pretty fixated on scares.
So first up on my study of fear is author Dean Bryant whose new book The Stairwell is out on 30 October (SPOOKY) through DarkStroke Books.
What movie/book scared you as a child?
Thanks for having me on your blog! I remember watching The Others as a child and being quite scared! It probably wouldn’t affect me at all anymore, but back then it was really creepy (I still watched it multiple times though!). Also, I used to love the Goosebumps books – they used to scare me but I loved them. I wouldn’t go to sleep until I had read some, then I often couldn’t sleep after reading them!
I loved The Others too good old fashioned simple scares are oftem the best…..only just discovered Goosebumps when my daughter wanted to to watch the Jack Black movie, I’d have loved them when I was little!
What was your biggest fear as a child?
I used to have recurring nightmares about cats. We didn’t own a cat at the time, but in the dream I would leave my bedroom and there’d be a cat there waiting for me. It would bite me and I’d wake up and could feel the bite in my leg. The first time it was just a normal cat, then the next time I had the dream it was a cat without skin, then a flaming cat, then a robot cat. I was only six or seven years old, so these dreams were quite frightening! I was only scared of the cat in the nightmares though – we had pet cats that I loved. Dogs, however, I was very scared of. As a child I was chased by a huge dog and only just managed to get back home in time. I’ve been very uncomfortable around big dogs since.
Oh no this is terrifying – I love cats, I cant imagine being scared of them but the whole cat without skin/flaming cat/robot would give me some trouble too. 100% with you on the dog thing though, Ive been scared of dogs for as long as I can remember, not even sure why.
Do you like scary movies? Which one is your favourite?
I do, but I’m not sure I could name just one. There are so many – It, Carrie, Room 237, (all Stephen King so far!), Shaun Of The Dead (that’s a horror/comedy if that counts), 28 Days Later, The Blair Witch Project, I could go on and on! I recently watched The Haunting Of Bly Manor on Netflix. It’s not a sequel to the excellent The Haunting Of Hill House, but it’s from the same creators, and it was brilliant. It’s not terribly scary, but well-written, and the characters really demand empathy from the viewer. I watched it all in one weekend.
OMG I’m OBSESSED with Hill House and Bly Manor. Just brilliant story telling and I bawled my eyes out with both in between swearing when I got a scare.
I am usually most freaked out by ghosts in books and movies . Have you ever had a paranormal experience in real life?
I haven’t had any paranormal experiences, not directly anyway. However, seven years ago, my girlfriend and I were living in Plymouth in South East England whilst she was a university student. We lived with a couple of friends in a huge old building. Being alone there always felt kind of… oppressive. There was a quite unpleasant atmosphere, and most of us who lived there didn’t like being alone in the house. Then, one day, when we went out to get an ice cream, we saw a Plymouth Ghost Tours bus stop right outside our building! We never found out why, but that was the closest I’ve come to a paranormal experience.
Oh I wanna know who the Plymouth Ghost Tour stopped for!!
Has a book ever really scared you?
Yes! I read a lot of horror, and for the most part, though I greatly enjoy them, I don’t get very scared. However, Midnight by Dean Koontz terrified me! It’s perhaps not his most objectively scary book, but there’s a scene involving a boy and his computer. Those of you who have read it know what part I mean. If you haven’t, I’m not going to give you any spoilers, but it’s one of my favourite books of all time and well worth a read. Also, I found Misery by Stephen King particularly frightening. It’s the realism of it. I’m not egotistical enough to imagine that I’ll be famous enough of a writer to one day find myself in the position of the main character in the book, but the plausibility and bleakness of the story is what scared me.
Can you share with us an example of fear in one of your own novels?
Both of the main characters in my new novel The Stairwell experience mind-bending, violent visions of horrific, unexplainable events. As if that’s not enough, these also begin to bleed into reality. They both witness people they care about being hurt or worse, both in visions and in the real world. It’s the feeling of total helplessness that the characters experience that I think readers will find frightening. Without giving too much away, both characters, though non-believers in the paranormal, experience events that can be described in no other way, than paranormal. Their entire belief systems are laid bare as they are confronted by all manner of dark, violent and disturbing events.
In real life what is your biggest fear? Do you use that when you write?
I think my biggest fear is losing my memories, or not being able to trust my own mind. This fear plays quite a big part in The Stairwell. Naturally, with what the characters go through, they question their own sanity, and the thought of this is frightening to me. I have lost two grandparents to Alzheimer’s, so I’ve seen first hand the effects of losing memories and confidence in one’s own mind, and it’s terrifying. I’m also scared of crabs! They’re huge, armoured spiders and I’m not sure why more people aren’t frightened of them when in the sea! I couldn’t find a way to fit crabs into the story, however.
Thank you so much Dean! You better put scary crabs in your next book or I’ll never get over it….
The close proximity of Halloween along with watching Mark Gatiss ‘History of Horror’ on BBC 3 has got me thinking about the great scary movies that we should all be watching this Halloween weekend.
The first scary movie I saw stayed with me for the rest of my life, one scene in particular presenting itself in nightmares. ‘The Evil Dead’ was and is my favourite Zombie movie; to be fair I don’t actually like zombie movies, all that eating of brains and insides just makes me feel ill, but ‘The Evil Dead’ has a great sense of humour about it and Bruce Campbell makes it totally watchable.
Beyond that I saw a variety of the late 70’s early 80’s horrors, one of which I have never heard mentioned when discussing movies, perhaps because it was so awful? ‘Christina’ i think it was called and seemed to be about a Frankenstein type experiment putting the vengeful mind of a introverted, bullied and facially disfigured girl into the body of a sexy beautiful woman. Needless to say, madness and murder ensues.
Hammer Horror never appealed to me, the pinkish orange of the blood never sat right with me, I preferred black and white thrillers such as ‘Psycho’ and comedy thrillers like Bob Hope’s ‘The Cat and the Canary.’
It wasn’t until I was 18 that I saw the movie I consider the scariest film ever. ‘The Shining’ and other paranormal horrors that followed seem to bother me more than any vampire, serial killer or zombie ever has. The desolation of the hotel, the endless long corridors of empty rooms stretching away in the cold hotel would probably send any one mad even without the help of murderous spirits. The simplicity of a children’s ball rolling down an empty hallway towards the young boy is enough to raise hairs. These simple scenes, though creepy, are like warnings of the more graphic and grotesque scenes that follow Particularly, the scene in the hallway where Danny sees the two girl ghosts inviting him to play with them ‘forever’ with a spliced frame of their bloody murder……I still have to look away at that moment.
If I have learnt anything about what scares me when it comes to movies, it’s that you throw a haunting from a dead child in the mix and I am going to have trouble going to the bathroom during the night. Japanese horrors used that imagery and back story to great affect in The Ring, The Grudge and Dark Water and while not as good in its entirety; A Tale of Two Sisters has a few alarming scenes thrown in. The American remakes of these movies don’t quite have the same feel to them as the originals, however the sight of Samara crawling out of the TV in ‘The Ring’ or the vengeful blood soaked ghost of ‘The Grudge’ crawling down the stairs translates fairly well. Another spooky children offering worth watching is Spanish movie The Orphanage, with its unexpectedly disturbing faceless child ghost.
More mainstream movies that delivered in that area were the TV movie of ‘The Woman in Black’ (soon to be remade by Jane Goldman) featuring a ghost child who likes to throw balls and leave toy soldiers in peoples beds, and the 1980 George C Scott movie ‘The Changeling.’ Scott plays a recently widowed concert pianist who moves to an old house in the desolate Pacific Northwest only to find that something in the house is trying to get his attention. The use again of desolate wintry locations and the children’s toys add an effortlessly creepy tone to the movie.
Another parapsychological horror that slipped under the radar for many was ‘The Machinist’ director Brad Anderson’s early movie ‘Session 9’, about a group of men clearing asbestos from a derelict insane asylum. English actor Peter Mullan does a fabulous turn as the foreman bothered by the asylums lingering inmates.
I deliberately haven’t mentioned some of the more run-of-the-mill horrors that everyone knows and loves; while ‘Halloween’ is still one of my favourite movies of its genre, I cant say it ever kept me awake at night. If you want more ideas for Halloween viewing, get onto the BBC iPlayer and watch the 3 part series ‘A History of Horror’, its a damn good look at the genre from the early black and white’s to the American slasher movies of the 70’s. Plenty of viewing material there to give you a Halloween scream.
I figure the scariest it can get for me is if someone made a movie about an insane asylum haunted by the ghost of a small child. Still waiting.
All That Mighty Heart 