Postst by "thetara" — Page 3

What is your greatest fear?

Death, in relation to myself or my loved ones. I’ve always had an exaggerated sense of mortality, even when I was very young. I’m the eldest of six children, and I was always counting heads in the park or worrying about illness. As a teenager, I went through a bad period of hypochondria, with my main fear being that either I or someone I loved had eaten glass. Then after I had my first child, I developed terrible anxiety, in which the whole world felt like a dangerous death trap. I haven’t felt like this for a long time–good therapy and maybe getting a bit older and wiser. But still now if I wake at 4:00 a.m. my mind will play with illness and death. I cannot stand the thought of either being left or leaving behind the people I love most, which maybe has quite narcissist roots, in that I mentally have put myself at the centre of these lives? I’m not sure where it comes from, as I had a happy, stable childhood, although my father is quite neurotic and was often overly protective or worried. As the eldest child maybe I absorbed some of this?

What is your earliest childhood memory of fear?

One Halloween when I was probably 7 or 8, my mother put a cut-out of witch on our front door. It had movable arms and legs, was as tall as an adult human and, looking back now, a real work of art. The next day she said it was so pretty she couldn’t bear to throw it away and pinned it to a cupboard door on the landing outside my bedroom. I had to walk past it to get to the toilet at night, and it completely terrified me. I would lie in bed trying desperately to hold in my pee and then, when the need became urgent, I would race past the witch, trying not to even look at her. Funnily, I told my mother about this recently and she was mortified, saying she couldn’t believe she’d put it there and wondering why I’d never said anything. It seems crazy that I didn’t just say something, as Mum would have taken it down, but as kids I think we totally internalise fear, which of course is not the best lesson for later life!

Is there any fear you’ve overcome in your life?

The anxiety that I was talking about in my first answer was the worst fear I’ve felt in my life. And it went on for years. At first, I tried to ignore it because I felt embarrassed. I also had a baby who needed looking after. But fear doesn’t like to be ignored, and I ended up avoiding things and feeling generally dreadful. I finally started therapy when I began to find it hard to go to the supermarket or take my son to the park. It was a long road, but it totally changed everything. For many years now I would say I’ve had a healthy relationship with fear. I know my limits, I don’t put myself knowingly in dangerous situations, and I have a perspective that helps me to rationalise what’s worth getting frightened by.

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I’m excited to chat with Carl Vonderau this cold January day! Carl and I are agent siblings—lucky enough to have the best agent, Michelle Richter, in our corner. Carl’s debut novel Murderabilia was nominated for a slew of awards and his latest, Saving Myles, is about a father who would go to any lengths to get his kidnapped son back.

Read on to discover Carl’s fears and terrors and all that happy stuff.

What is your earliest childhood memory of fear?

Strangely enough it’s Santa Claus sneaking into my room at night after I was put to bed. I was afraid he would suddenly materialize over me, so hid my head under the covers.

What is your favorite spooky holiday?

I love Day of the Dead. It happens just after Halloween, but Day of the Dead is much deeper than that. Its origins date to more than 3,000 years ago with indigenous people in Mexico and Central America.

What I like is that it isn’t about ghouls coming back to haunt the living, but the living celebrating the lives of their lost loved ones. Those who passed are alive in memories. It is a joyful time rather than a day of mourning.

We have our own little display at our house. I love the bright dresses the skeleton women wear. The skeleton men are always in black tuxedos.

Do you have a recurring nightmare?

Yes. It always has to do with a deadline for travel or an exam or some business meeting. Often I’m unprepared and don’t know until that moment that I was supposed to be there. I keep getting lost on wrong streets or wrong buildings or a car goes the wrong way. Then I wake up and am relieved.

What’s your favorite horror movie or television series?

The Twilight Zone. I still remember some of these episodes from more than forty years ago. Like the blabbermouth who needs money. He accepts a bet that he can’t stay quiet for a year. He has to live the whole time in a room with microphones to pick up any word he says. He succeeds and then, at the end of the year, we find out that the man on the other side of the bet doesn’t have the money to pay him. We also learn that the day before the blabbermouth started the task, he had the nerves to his vocal chords severed.

One thing I never realized until now is that music in that show is wonderful. The dissonant and avant guard passages fit perfectly with the strange themes.

What is creepier: clowns, dolls, or wax museum figures?

Definitely clowns. They were always scary, but since I learned about John Wayne Gacy, they’re even scarier. He made a whole series of Pogo the clown paintings where the clowns were white-faced, and their white hands often held balloons. You can buy these original paintings for $10K or more. Gacy used to dress up as a clown to visit hospitals in Chicago. He murdered 33 young men and hid their bodies in the crawl spaces of his house.

What is the scariest place you’ve ever been?

A long time ago I went to Bogotá, Colombia, to research setting and content for my first novel. It was, of course, never published. I had a friend there who worked with street orphans, and he took me to Cartucho, a section where the authorities allowed crime and drugs. Drug addicts lined the streets. Most of them were hooked on basuco, which was a cocaine freebase. They built shelters from plastic bags filled with newspaper. There were also restaurants. I remember a girl of high-school age serving someone on a terrace. She turned to cast a ferocious look at me. We came across a dead youth in his twenties who’d been shot and his body lay on the street. Murders happened there most every night. The Bogotá police were photographing him. Our group couldn’t take pictures because doing so would have offended the people there. Our guide made sure we weren’t in any danger, but I was still scared.  

Carl Vonderau grew up in Cleveland in a religious family that believed God could heal all illness. Maybe that’s why he went to college in California. After majoring in economics and dabbling in classical guitar, he ended up with a career in banking. Carl has lived and worked internationally and has managed to put his foot in his mouth in several languages. He brought his banking expertise to his debut thriller Murderabilia as well as to his most recent novel, Saving Myles. He has won Left Coast Crime, San Diego, and American Book Fest awards. Carl is president of the San Diego chapter of Sisters in Crime and also helps nonprofits through San Diego Social Venture Partners.

Rosemary Hennigan lives in Dublin, and her dark academia thriller The Favorites is now available in the U.S., so we can all read this delicious, shivery novel. You can read more about it and buy yourself a copy right here.

And then read on about Rosemary’s terrifying sleep paralysis, all the urban legends she’s terrified of stumbling into or upon, and the one animal she cannot forgive for being evil.

What is your greatest fear?

By far, losing the people I love.

What is your earliest childhood memory of fear?

As a child, I was fascinated by the Faeries, by which I mean the terrifyingly sinister Tuath de Danann from Irish folklore and not the completely unscary tiny people with wings. In my family, there were a lot of stories passed down through the generations about various strange encounters and weird happenings that were attributed to the Faeries, much of which was spoken about in hushed and superstitious tones that had a big impression on my child brain. So, naturally, I was cautious around such dangerous things as fairy rings, mushrooms sprouting in woods, and any dark tangle of trees where you might encounter a creature that would snatch a child away and replace her with an imposter. It never happened, of course, but I can only assume that was due to my constant vigilance!

What is your weirdest fear?

Well, in a totally unprovoked and shocking attack, I was once chased by two very large, very pretty, and very mean geese. It was both a frightening and humiliating experience, since I had to run through a carpark full of people to escape from the foul fowl. At least 100 people (probably more like three) witnessed the spectacle of me fleeing for my life, seeming to find this sickening scene hysterically funny for reasons I couldn’t possible fathom.

Ever since that dark and painful day, geese have been my biggest fear. I run in the opposite direction when I see them. I keep my head down and don’t make eye contact. I know they can feel my fear. Don’t be fooled! Geese are evil! Consider yourselves warned!

What is your favorite urban legend?

When I was growing up, legend had it that if you walked three times around the Black Church in Dublin, the devil would appear. I didn’t know where the Black Church was, and my bedtime was way before midnight, but I was, nevertheless, very afraid of this happening by accident. As unlikely as it might seem now, it remained a live concern throughout my childhood.

I was also very afraid of Ouija boards, as was every ‘90s kid, right? I didn’t actually know what they looked like and, growing up in the ‘90s, you couldn’t just google those things, so I was careful to avoid communicating with wooden boards of any sort, just in case I might accidentally find one with paranormal powers.

Do you have a recurring nightmare?

Ok… so, this one is quite intense.

I get sleep paralysis sometimes, and it always involves a lucid nightmare where someone (or something) is standing at the end of my bed. It’s always a sinister figure and always in the process of attacking me. Sometimes it’s just a dark shape and sometimes it’s more concretely demonic. The sleep paralysis means that I’m aware that I’m asleep, but I’m not able to wake up or move, so all I can do is scream for someone to wake me. But because I can’t open my mouth or wake up, only a horrible, strangled sound comes out and, because I’m also still asleep, in my dream this will usually manifest as the horrible thing at the end of my bed choking me. So, then I scream harder until someone hears me and wakes me. It’s truly awful, and I’m often really shaken for ages after I wake up! 

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Hi my ghostly friends! I’m here today with Mandy McHugh, whose debut novel Chloe Cates Is Missing was one of my favorite reads of 2022. If you haven’t read it yet, go pick up a copy for one of the most memorable and deliciously wicked characters you’ll ever have the pleasure to hang out with for a few hundred pages. AND I’m so excited that Mandy has a new novel out–It Takes Monsters. I cannot wait to read this one. You can grab yourself a copy here.

But now we will spend some time chatting about “the nature” and zombies and Mandy’s really great taste in horror movies. (Hi, if you haven’t seen The Descent yet? Go, now.)

What are your phobias?

My friends laugh because I call it “the nature.” Spiders—actually, all bugs, especially ones that fly or buzz near my ears. It’s so weird, too. I grew up playing outside in the woods with my friends. We’d spend all day in the dirt, picking up daddy longlegs, climbing trees, pretending we were pioneers—and none of it fazed me. Fast forward to one afternoon when I was fourteen and got lost in the woods walking back from a local lake with a friend. It was dark, humid, and we got swarmed by these black flying bugs. We had to walk with towels draped over our heads because they were on us like Amityville bad. Ever since then, I’ve had a really hard time with outdoorsy situations.

What is your favorite urban legend?

Ooh, I love urban legends. The first one that came to mind when I read this question was Bloody Mary. There wasn’t a sleepover after the age of eight where we weren’t in the bathroom with the lights off saying Bloody Mary three times. I knew it wasn’t real, but there was always that little “what if” of fear running through me right before I said her name for the third time.

This one also managed to bleed into local legend. I grew up in a small town in upstate NY near one of the most haunted cemeteries in the country. One Halloween as I was watching Leprechaun and handing out candy to the neighborhood kids, my dad told me about a statue of Mary whose eyes would allegedly bleed. He may have dared me to sneak into the cemetery that night to see for myself, which I did not do but definitely considered, but some of that imagery has made its way into my own writing. I think every town probably has some version of this story, but that’s always been one of my favorites.

“There wasn’t a sleepover after the age of eight where we weren’t in the bathroom with the lights off saying Bloody Mary three times.”

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Hi friends! This is an extra-special What Scares You today! We are celebrating multiple things here:

• Daniel Ford’s birthday!
• The cover reveal for the trade paperback version of his fantasy novel The Warden (It’s gorgeous!)
• Friday the 13th!

Go grab a piece of cake and a black cat and order Dan’s book and then settle in and read all about Dan’s fears and worries and his thoughts about time ticking away…

What is your greatest fear?

I think right now, it’s time. The horror of time. The past few months have made it even clearer how time strips away everything we’ll ever care about. I think it can really drive a person mad if you start pondering it too much. Time is passing, it’s fleeting, it’s going right now as I write these words and you read them. It isn’t coming back. Nothing we can do with or for the people and things we love will ever get a second of it back. It’s all spun out into nothing.

What is your earliest childhood memory of fear?

My childhood in the ‘80s was dominated by fear of nuclear annihilation. I grew up near a military base where they tested many weapons, and my parents harbored no fantasies of survival. My dad told me as much when I asked him around age nine or ten what we would do if a nuclear bomb went off. He said, and I quote: “Put our heads between our legs and kiss our asses goodbye.” I’m not claiming I understood all of what that meant, but it’s a fear that persists to this day, really.

Do you have a recurring nightmare?

I have a lot of nightmares about driving. For anyone that has taken I-95 North out of Baltimore, you know the long, winding, super-high ramp going over the water. I have had recurring nightmares of driving straight off that for decades. Ditto nightmares of driving on I-81 and being plowed over by an 18-wheeler.

How do you deal with fear?

Alcohol?
Is that a bad answer? It feels like a bad answer. I try to ignore it. I move on with my life. When fears of nuclear war rear up again, I tell myself…hey, your parents and grandparents were living through this when it had a much higher chance of happening, and they kept putting one foot in front of the other. I tell myself I can’t control the outcome but …

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