My Horror History

I was a huge fan of horror stories as a child and a teenager. I read quite a few Pan Book of Horror Stories collections. They were the gateway to horror for me. Some of the stories were boring, some were scary and some were absolutely terrifying! I read the first set when I was about 11 and one of the stories that stayed with me was the tale of a young soldier who was captured and tortured. I can still remember the ending which gave me unsettled nights. I graduated to Dennis Wheatley and the book Final Conflict was my favourite of his. It was the Second World War fought on the astral plane and it was amazing. From there it was on to James Herbert whose book The Fog was a favourite of most teenagers that I knew partly because of the combination of sex and horror, the twin currency of teenage interests! There was a book that I read quite a few times over a period of years called The Vampire in Legend, Fact and Art by Basil Copper which I came across a couple of weeks ago when I was sorting through books in the garage. I will definitely give that a reread in the New Year to see how my much older self reacts to it.

Alongside the books there were the films, some of which I saw far too early. I remember seeing Dracula, the classic 1958 version with Christopher Lee, at the age of 9 or 10 and it was both terrifying and exhilarating. Here was a film that had a much more subtle mix of sex and horror than that of James Herbert and, in Christopher Lee himself, the best portrayal of the vampire in any film or TV series. I definitely had sleepless nights after that one but it was definitely worth it. Around a similar age I saw The Signalman on television with Denholm Elliott. It is the best of the 1970s Ghost Stories for Christmas and is one of the core memories of the festive season!

I got a portable television as a 13 year old and that opened the floodgates for me. I watched loads of horror films which definitely wouldn’t have been countenanced by my parents on the main TV. The Exorcist was without doubt unrivalled in terms of the effect it had on me. It was perhaps the darkest film I have ever seen because it is relentless. There is no respite, no knowing humour, no tropes that you have seen before, just sheer horror. The only one that came anywhere near was The Wicker Man mainly because of the ending. That was another Christopher Lee masterclass and Edward Woodward was outstanding as his protagonist. A lot of the horror movies were variations on a theme and they relied on jump scares rather than psychological horror but some of them were good despite that. The Omen trilogy, particularly Damien Omen II, combined the horror tropes with the jump scares very effectively.

To be honest, I have avoided the genre for many years now. Not entirely, of course, but I definitely haven’t sought out scary books and movies since I became a parent. Something happened in my brain that pushed me away from horror, perhaps because I was fearful of real life affecting my children and that was scarier than any made up story. I don’t really know the reason, but I get far more unsettled by any horror nowadays and I cannot take violence in any form at all. The fears that strike home now are fears for my family, for the future my children are facing due to the mess my generation and the one before it have made of the world, and for the fate of a species that insists on electing the very worst examples of humanity to make decisions that affect the whole world. That is where the real horror lies!