I LOVE A SCARY STORY.
Seriously.
It started in 1980 when I watched my first ghost story (movie), The Changeling, with George C. Scott and Trish Van Devere. It’s still my FAVORITE MOVIE of all time, and I still watch it at least once a year…usually on Halloween.
In 1983, I fell in love with anything written by Stephen King, but in ’86 I became obsessed with his novel It, and have read it at least 10 more times since. Then I saw (and bought) the made-for-tv movie that came out in 1990. I’m still a huge Stephen King fan, It is still my FAVORITE BOOK, and I’ve read almost everything he’s written before and since. Sidenote: The new Stephen King It (2017) is INCREDIBLE! I can’t say enough good things about it.
Anyway, I’ve always been crazy for a good Ghost Story. And, of course, the entire month of October is bliss. My sisters and I used to get together with all of our friends and have a ‘hen party’ near Halloween. We’d have food and drink and sit outside around the fire pit….the wind blowing through the trees, dry leaves rustling…and tell ghost stories until we decided it was time to go in and watch scary movies.
The most recent scary movie I watched was actually a tv show on Netflix. The Haunting of Hill House. I read the book ages ago (a few times) and wrote about it here.
Y’all. I was totally hooked from the very first episode. It’s a lot like the book although… not the book at all. Characters with the same names, the same story about the house…it’s the spookiest series I have ever seen. Normally, I would’ve just run out and bought it so I could watch it over and over. But, do people really do that anymore? Especially if it’s on Netflix. If you haven’t watched it, you definitely should.
I was doing some research on why people, like me, enjoy watching scary movies and reading scary books. Some talked about ‘escapism’. Like taking a trip anywhere in the world but knowing you can be safe back in your home in a seconds notice. It also talked about having a ‘sense of accomplishment’ knowing you were able to handle the horror and suspense of what you were seeing. One mentioned a ‘feeling of survival’ meaning you would know what to do in a a disaster like a zombie apocalypse or alien invasion. We all know you just stab a zombie in the head to kill it, right? Then there’s the ‘feel of something extreme’ that will take you to your emotional limits. Fear, anger, terror, surprise can all be great if you can handle it. For me? That’s too much. It’s like a haunted house that you pay to go into in October. That’s to much surprise for me. Mine is probably a cross between a ‘natural high’ and ‘adrenaline rush’. Watching a good scary movie or reading a good scary book will cause the little hairs on the back of my neck to stand up. It gets my blood pumping and my heart pounding and I find myself on the edge of my seat waiting to find out what’s going to happen next! It makes me feel like I’ve had a full day of nothing but espresso shots. Without the vomiting that would come with that…. teehee.
Young adult novelist Lou Morgan once said, “In reading books that frighten us, we have the choice of whether to explore our fears… or not. But if we do, we come away knowing that the monsters can be defeated…”
How about you? What type of movies do you watch? What type of books do you read?