Happy Halloween, everybody!

I wanted to write a Halloween post like I did here and here, and since I already covered movies and books, I thought maybe I would flash back and talk about my foundational horror–the scary stuff that introduced me to the horror genre and helped shaped the darkness you can often find in my fantasy.

So, we’re talking about movies and books again.

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The books growing up

In elementary school it was In a Dark, Dark Room and Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark. In middle school, it was the entire Goosebumps series. And in high school, I graduated to Christopher Pike’s horror novels and R.L. Stine’s series for older readers, Fear Street.

I simultaneously loved being scared and hated it. I was walking a fine line between being thrilled and having nightmares, and to this day I still walk it with the horror I consume.

The things that have always frightened me the most are ghosts and haunted houses. But I also love these stories the most.

The movies and miniseries growing up

It was actually much harder for me to come up with foundational movies, because in truth I avoided most horror movies because they gave me nightmares. My first horror movie was Pet Semetary (1989), which I watched in second grade (I think). A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) I watched when I was a little older, and what happened to Johnny Depp scared the crap out of me. I made sure never to sleep in the center of my bed–always on the side so nothing could grab me. I’ve since finally grown out of that, but I slept that way for a long time. Poltergeist (1982) was shown on TV all the time, and that’s how I managed to watch it. The climax of the movie where everything goes to hell has some of the creepiest ghosts I’d ever seen. Then, the odd one out is Slumber Party Massacre. All I remember is that my sister showed it to me, girls played at topless pillow fighting (which horrified me as it was one of my earliest introductions to sex and nudity), and there was a guy with an electric guitar with a drill on it. Next is Children of the Corn (1984), which HBO always played repeatedly, so that’s how I watched it. Most of it went over my head but it really bothered me all the same.

All of those movies were in elementary school. I don’t remember middle school but in 1997 (when I was 14 and a new high schooler) Stephen King wrote his own miniseries adapting his novel The Shining. He famously hated Stanley Kubrick’s version and so this new one was hyped. We watched it together as a family and lots of it genuinely creeped me out. It was also more emotional than I expected, and the ending was a little bit saccharine. But I really liked it.

That tradition actually continued. ABC would throw tons of money into Stephen King miniseries like Storm of the Century (1999) and Rose Red (2002) and my family and I watched all of them together. It was a fun tradition that shaped my love of horror.

Do you remember any of these?

This is truly pins me as a Millennial (an old one at that), but I’m wondering if anybody else has read or seen these. If so, share in the comments below.

Happy Halloween!