I never thought of myself as a horror fan.
I grew up with “horror” meaning either 1) gore, like the projectile vomit in “The Exorcist” or bleeding walls in “The Amityville Horror, or 2) something so terrifying it kept me awake. I particularly remember one sleepless week after finishing Stephen King’s “Pet Sematary” (I know, but I was fourteen and lived with a big black cat at the time, after reading that book he was terrifying!)
Then I read through NPR’s 100 best horror stories and realized not only have I read and enjoyed about half the list but that my definition of horror was incredibly narrow.
I’ve read du Maurier’s “Rebecca” and Jackson’s “Haunting of Hill House” multiple times to savor the wrongness creeping in. I didn’t know “psychological horror” was a genre and now I find myself writing it.
Dracula, Carmilla, Lestat and Louis… well, I never found vampires scary. Quite the contrary. Being “the things that others fear” sounded like a good deal to my insecure teenage self. Many years post-goth and I still love vampires.
The inclusion of Strieber’s “Communion” tickles me because while as non-fiction it’s controversial to say the least, it’s compulsive reading if you take it as fiction, with an “extraordinary intruding on ordinary” vibe that still gives me the chills.
So I’m going through this list with my library card (tangential: I forgot how much I loved the library! Online renewal and automatic download of e-books makes them even better!) because it turns out I am something of a horror fan.
What’s a genre you never thought you would (or did) enjoy, until you did?