Month: October 2022

            As October draws to its end, I felt it only natural to discuss the subject of monsters as today’s post, and not the kind one would find in black lagoons or Dr. Frankenstein’s laboratory. More specifically, two different kinds of monsters, three if you count what the mind is capable of on its own. Horrors of a much scarier nature, because they are a part of daily life for us all.

            Anyone trying to venture into writing in the horror genre will be familiar with the phrase “nothing is scarier.” What that means is simply that not showing the monster and utilizing the other senses makes for a much more terrifying experience.  One good (overall) film that does this in my opinion is the movie Chernobyl Diaries, at least up until about the last ten seconds of it.  Of course, writing does this as well, such as in H. P. Lovecraft’s The Beast in the Cave. Each individual’s tastes are different, however, so I’ll not spoil the plot to either story, and so you are free to look it up if you choose to do so, but how does this connect to real horrors? Both stories play with the premise of the unknown, and so in robbing the observer of the visual of these monsters, the mind creates something so much more terrifying than anything a special effects team could think up.

            Outside of the unknown, there are other demons we deal with on a daily basis, all stemming from fear. As I just stated in the last paragraph, the mind is capable of dreaming up a number of ghoulish fantasies that could make the bravest among us cower in fear, but this act does not limit itself to the world of fiction. Surely, we’ve all felt it; picturing something going wrong that could embarrass us, drawing a blank for a presentation you’ve been preparing for weeks, even something as basic as playing out an uncomfortable but inevitable situation that’s lurking around the corner. There are those among us who skip to the endings of books to read how it ends before starting the first chapter precisely because not knowing the ending causes them more stress than the roller coaster that the writer might take them on. Many of these reasons tie back into our fear of the unknown, and can be more frightening than anything that you have a clear picture of.

            The last thing of the real world I can think of that could rival some of the worst horror movie monsters out there is something that often looks like the hero; people. The late Steve Irwin had a quote about describing the type of creature he worked with, and to some seem preferable to dealing with people.  “Crocodiles are easy. They try to kill and eat you. People are harder. Sometimes they pretend to be your friend first.” Perhaps I’ve just been around the wrong type of people, but this is why I prefer animals; they’re more predictable than some humans. Another reason is because what you see isn’t always what you get; sometimes beauty only runs skin deep, and hides a more distorted and twisted face.

            At the end of the day, humankind is filled with creatures more heinous than anything a writer could put into a horror script, and some of our stories scarier. The simple answer is we can’t always discern what means us harm from what comes to us with honest intentions. At the end of the day, the unknown remains our biggest fear because we are free to plug in anything our minds come up with in the void that is there. In my opinion, we lose our fear of the dark only when we start to realize what that void could be filled with.

            Just a quick post for today, I think.  October is the time of year dedicated to all manner of frights, not just ghosts. While Michael Myers and other Slasher movie villains can certainly be used to evoke fear, I’ve always found those types of films to be somewhat dull, perhaps because in my opinion little imagination is used. They tend to rely on basic fears as their method of scaring us, specifically the desire to stay alive.  Even when most people I know gravitate towards an interest in serial killer documentaries, I was always drawn to a more niche type of nonfiction cinematography: the truth behind urban legends.

            Granted, there has always been a few overlaps between these urban legends and serial killers.  One such example I can think of is Pogo the Clown, better known as John Wayne Gacy. Over a decade before author Stephen King introduced Pennywise to the world, Gacy went on a killing spree which claimed the lives of at least thirty-three men and boys, often using the persona of either Pogo or Patches to lure them to him.  Perhaps King drew inspiration from Gacy’s actions in crafting his own monster, though killing and eating the children seems like a better fate than what Gacy intended.

            Last year I was asked to help to design a scavenger hunt based around my local area with the theme of legends and lore. I learned a good deal about my area, and all the shady details of its past. One such story I researched told the story of Hot Shot Charlie, alternatively known as Fingernails Freddie. According to the story, Freddie (or Charlie) was a farmer who was being harassed by some local children to the extent he took action into his own hands. Not wishing any real harm on the children, the farmer loaded a shotgun with rocksalt and fired at the children when they returned, hoping the painful burn from the salt would make them stay away. The children later decided to get him back by burning down his house while the farmer was out in his barn, but did not realize his family was still inside their home. When he saw the smoke and flames he rushed into his house to save his family, only to find he was too late. In his vain attempt to get his family out safely, his face became permanently burned and disfigured.  He stopped going into town and became even more reclusive. It is said that this man blamed all children for what happened, and took to murdering any he found wandering the woods alone.  Was this in fact inspiration for Wes Anderson’s slasher film?

            Another story I researched for the scavenger hunt was the story of Mercy Brown and her claim to be one of the first recorded vampire hauntings in New England during that time of paranoia. Mercy Brown herself was a victim of what they purported to be the work of vampires before her passing, and as the most recently departed she was suspected of being the cause of her living relative’s illness. It is said that when they exhumed her body to see if she was a vampire, both her hair and fingernails were longer than they had been prior to her passing. Here I shall not regurgitate the myth that both continue to grow after death, but rather share that in my research I found that the skin around both has a tendency to shrivel up after death, giving the appearance that both had grown while the heart stopped its beating.

            I am sure there are other examples of truths behind urban legends that I could discuss, such as the deceased sister getting her revenge with a cursed wedding gown, or that story about the babysitter conversing with the police only to find out the call is coming from inside the house, but perhaps some of my readers don’t want that. I think the reason I prefer to hear the truth behind these stories is to remind myself that’s all they are: stories. One of the most scary things I can think of is the unknown, similar to how I always prefer never to actually see the monster in horror movies, whatever an individual imagines in that void you left is scarier than anything you will show to the audience. The premise is the same. Knowing the origin of legends such as the Jersey Devil or the Scottish Jenny with the Iron Teeth take away from the power those stories have to scare us.

            Well, it’s finally here. The one month of the year devoted to all things that go bump in the night. Also, the season of pumpkin spice, though to be perfectly honest with you, my dear reader, if I made a post on that flavor when I started seeing it around, you would think I was out of my mind for posting it in late August. But I digress. The purpose of this post is to discuss something perhaps equally as scary as the pumpkin spice craze: ghosts.

            Mind you, this won’t be a full post on the history of ghost stories or how the concept of ghosts has influenced aspects of our culture, this would be a seemingly never-ending essay, reaching as far back as Cicero from the days of ancient Rome.  Rather, stories I have heard from those close to me, as well as some of my own accounts.

            One of the stories that stands out to me comes from a man I see only a few times a year when I go up to visit some family friends at their lake-house in New Hampshire. The man in question got into restoring old houses in his younger days, and still enjoys telling the stories he has from years of doing it. This story involves a house rumored to have belonged to the first governor of New Hampshire. The man was having something delivered to and installed in his basement, a washing machine I think, and it was a father/son team who did it. When going down to inspect how to get the washer into the basement, the man saw the son with his eyes fixated on a certain point in the basement. “Thomas is watching us,” he said.  Among the children of the man suspected to have owned that house, there was a Thomas who passed away when he was a child, which only supports the theory of the house’s original owner. Though the man and his son did get the washer into the house, the son refused to stay around any longer, and they left without connecting the washing machine to the water pipes.

            Though I had been fascinated with the paranormal nearly all my life, my first real experience with ghosts didn’t come until late in high school. I was signed up for a dinner with some paranormal investigators I had come to know from a talk one of them had given at my school a few months earlier on local history. As part of the team, the had a psychic medium stationed in one of the rooms of what purported to be the most haunted restaurant in the state.  Almost as soon as I walked into the room, she looked up at me and smiled. “Oh, they like you.” Maybe I should have been a little freaked out, but I had been waiting so long to have a genuine paranormal experience, I was thrilled to hear something like that. The investigators had tools there called divining rods, which some believed could be used to communicate with spirits. While some others had only faint reactions when they tried using the rods, I was given much more definitive answers whenever I asked questions using them, which I thought was such a thrilling experience.

            The other experience I have I can’t say definitively whether or not I did experience something paranormal, but the story I was told after I had lived there for about two weeks did shed some light on some unexplained occurrences. During the second abroad program I went on to Italy I stayed in an apartment with three other guys, one of which I shared a room with…for a while, anyway. Some strange things happened, like doors swinging shut of their own accord when there seemed to be no breeze in the air, or returning from the bathroom to find something not where I left it, but I just found ways to explain it away, such as breezes too calm for me to notice, or just tricks memory plays on us, but that changed after my professor told my roommate and I the story he heard from the people he rented the apartment from.  The story he heard went back to World War II, where the Allies were bombing areas in Italy.  Apparently, the apartment building itself was a library back in the early to mid-1900s, with the specific apartment we happened to be renting being used by the librarian as her main living and working quarters.  According to this professor, the woman snapped after days of Allied bombs dropping across the city, not having the peace and quiet she craved, and she took an axe to as many people in the library as she could, before ultimately hanging herself.  My love of the paranormal manifested itself in my reaction to the story, though my roommate did not share my enthusiasm.  About a week earlier, everyone who resided in that apartment decided to throw a casual dinner party, which was basically ordering a few pizzas and a few bottles of wine. At this dinner party, my roommate and my professor discovered a collection of old books, perfectly preserved.  After hearing this story, he was panicking because he personally had disturbed her books and was so freaked out over it that he slept outside of the room for the rest of the time we stayed in that city.  As for myself, after I heard that story, I found some time to myself when no one else was in the apartment, and I apologized for being there, saying I knew I was just a guest in her home and that I was leaving in a short while; that her spirit would never see me again after that week was up.  It was not until much later that I realized that I had spoken all of it in English, and that the spirit probably didn’t understand a word of what I had said. Nonetheless, I did feel a sort of tension decrease after I had said that, and though I did poke fun at my roommate for his fear, there were times I too was afraid I had overstepped my boundaries, stepping somewhere I ought not have, though I cannot change what was.

            There are many other stories that I have heard, from one man encountering what he believed to be the ghost of an entire Roman legion marching in his basement to the “Voodoo Queen” of New Orleans appearing in the form of her pet snake by her own gravesite, but those are all things I have heard from strangers. One of these tales I heard from a family friend, the others happened to me personally, so yes, I believe in an existence after death. I can only hope to have many similar experiences before I become one of them.