I loved scaring myself as a kid–Stephen King was my favorite, and I read Dean Koontz when I got a little older. But what scared me most was a movie I can’t remember the name of, but had the line “Have you checked the children?” My brother once called the number of the house where I was babysitting and said that line. Needless to say, my parents had to come over and calm me down.

I can’t remember the name of the book or the name of the story, or even the storyline. All I remember is the vivid mental image of a misshapen undead creature rising from a crypt and scuttling across a dark field. And I’ll never forget the gush of pure, unadulterated terror.

That was the end of ghost stories for me. It took years before I could see that image in my mind’s eye without feeling the fear. I still don’t read anything in the horror genre. These days, if I want to be scared, I just read the news.

I read it in elementary school, and the night I finished it, I could hardly force myself to walk down the dark hallway to my room alone. I flipped on every light switch from the bathroom to the hallway, knowing I’d get the wasting electricity lecture from my mom the next morning. I didn’t care. I did it anyway.

I haven’t gone back and re-read the book. Ever. I’m still too creeped out.

I graduated to Christopher Pike and R.L. Stine, and by the time I was 12 or 13 I had moved on to Stephen King and the like. I remember reading Dean Koontz’s Darkfall late at night and hearing some small little creature scurrying around the attic and being too terrified to sleep. 😉

Really, though, I just love being scared. I’m almost immune these days, but horror is still one of my favorite genres. I find it more suspenseful and disturbing than frightening, but if I ever found a book that really *did* scare me I’d be thrilled. Joe Hill is one of the best new horror writers I’ve seen and he does such a great job at atmosphere that he’s probably closest to truly scary I’ve read in ages. Love it.

I had this baby-sitter until I was about four who would watch horror movies all the time. She must have thought we wouldn’t absorb them or something. Most of the scary images I got in childhood were from movies as a result; I don’t remember any of their names, but I still remember this one where a girl went into her parents’ bedroom, stabbed her mother in the forehead, and then (I think) killed her father. Anyway, because I was so used to being visually scared, it was really hard for me to be scared of books as a kid, because the images were safely tucked between pages (for me). I found the Goosebumps/Fear Street series more interesting and silly than scaring. (I think I remember Thirteen, actually.) When I got a little older I liked being creeped out by Poe, but books never really kept me up out of fear. Gory movies still will, but if I read a gory scene in a book, I’m still able to compartmentalize it; I guess I need to actually *see* something for me to be scared of it in the dark. It’s a little disappointing, really.