Posts in "What Scares You" Category

Honestly, Dan had me sold when I found out he wrote novels set in the 1970s, my favorite decade by far. Check them out here for all the disco and grit you need.

But as to his deepest, darkest fears? Those were still a mystery…but no longer. Join us as we take a trip into the shadows and learn about what makes a great monster and how hypnogoria makes David Letterman seem utterly terrifying.

What are your earliest childhood memories of fear?

I had intense fever dreams when I was very young, and they terrified me. There was one in particular that I still remember, about cannon fire echoing and reverberating so loudly that it actually became physically painful. It was actually worse than the spider dreams.

And of course I had all the usual piles of clothes and half-open closet doors that transformed into menacing shapes at night.

While we’re on the topic of dreams, what about recurring nightmares?

I’ve never really had recurring nightmares, but I have had several instances of hypnogoria, which is when your dreamstate carries over into waking life. I’d wake up and dream imagery would literally be imposed on the world around me. So I might walk down the hall to find someone standing there, looking as real and substantial as any other person. Which is, you know, kinda disconcerting.

It’s a condition that often gets attributed to supernatural causes. I totally understand how people can interpret it that way and might have done so myself if it weren’t for the fact that the images almost always reflected the last thing I’d seen on TV before going to bed. For example, one time I found David Letterman standing behind my bathroom doorway. (This was before he had the giant beard, so it wasn’t as frightening as it could’ve been.)

“One time I found David Letterman standing behind my bathroom doorway.”

What is your greatest fear as a writer?

That I don’t have what it takes to keep producing high-quality work. I usually work at the fringes of my craft, meaning that I’m pushing myself to get better with every project. The upside is that it’s extremely rewarding, the downside is that I constantly feel like I’m about to fail. I strive to always deliver the best work I can, but there’s part of me that thinks that still won’t be good enough.

Scariest movie or TV show you’ve ever seen?

Holy crap… ALL of them! When I’m immersed in a good story, I have a very visceral reaction. My mirror neurons fire on all cylinders, and even the most laid-back movie gets a strong reaction from me.

What is your favorite type of monster?

I’m torn on my favorite monster—I can never decide between Godzilla and Springheel Jack.

I discovered both of these monsters at a very young age, and they’ve both stuck with me through the decades. They’re two ends of the spectrum in that Godzilla and other kaiju are forces of nature, almost cosmic horrors that plow over the face of the Earth with little regard for humanity and our petty concerns. Springheel Jack, on the other hand, is a character with roots in true encounters (whether that was originally pranksters, amateur magicians, or malevolent assailants), but over time he became an urban legend, imbued with powers and a narrative far beyond anything tied to reality.

You are driving alone on a road at night and your headlights illuminate a man standing alone with a lantern in the middle of the road. What do you do? Also, is it more or less scary if it’s a little kid in pajamas?

So, the flip side of being scared of every movie is that I stumble through life in blissful ignorance. The old man with a lantern would certainly cause me to slow down and peer at him with curiosity. The kid in pajamas might cause me to stop completely and put in a call to the police. No matter how initially weird the scenario, I just plod happily along.

In short, I’m *totally* the guy in the movie who goes into the basement alone, with the half-dead flashlight, to see what that weird noise is during the thunderstorm.

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Dan Stout lives in Columbus, Ohio, where he writes noir with a twist of magic and a disco chaser. His prize-winning fiction draws on travels throughout Europe, Asia, and the Pacific Rim as well as an employment history spanning everything from subpoena server to assistant well driller. Dan’s stories have appeared in publications such as The Saturday Evening Post, Nature, and Intergalactic Medicine Show. His series of noir fantasy novels, The Carter Archives, is available from DAW Books.

Happy New Year’s Eve! The last day of 2019, a time to look back and look ahead to (hopefully) more good times. Do you feel any sort of dread or fear when a new year rolls around? Too many expectations? Resolutions? Another year older?

Or do you find a new year exhilarating? A chance to start over, conquer your fears, try new things?

Whatever your feelings toward ringing in a new year, I wish you all the very best in 2020. May all your spooky dreams (and, ok, non-spooky dreams) come true.

To say goodbye to 2019, I have Dana Diehl here today to talk about her fears and anxieties. In reading some of Dana’s answers, I identified with her on a number of levels, especially the anxiety pieces. I, too, am a worrier. It’s hard to conquer those types of fears.

Dana and I both went to Susquehanna University for undergrad, though at different times, so we share that as well. And Dana is a fabulous writer. Her stories are delightful and surprising and original, and I’m so pleased to feature her here today.

Let’s darken the lights and chat. In 10-9-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1……

What is your earliest childhood memory of fear?

As a kid, I was afraid of heights, and robbers, and snakes in my bed.

But the most intense fears I had were of all the ways my body could fail. I remember one night, sitting in the hallway, back against the wall, gasping because I’d convinced myself I couldn’t breathe. I remember watching the episode of Arthur in which the cartoon aardvark gets his glasses, and then spending an afternoon testing my vision, terrified that my eyes had stopped working, too (I wouldn’t actually need glasses for at least another five years).

I have vivid memories of the summer the kids next door all had chicken pox, and I searched my arms and stomach for red welts every morning, horrified at what could spring up from under my skin. The more I learned about the body, the more it seemed full of hidden traps, an enemy lying in wait.

Do you believe in ghosts? Why or why not?

I both believe and don’t believe. There’s a line in an Amber Spark’s essay, “Magical Thinking for Girls,” that I think answers this question for me: “What I mean to say is that I have never believed in ghosts, but I have always been afraid of ghosts.”

Recently I was talking to a friend who has had experiences with spirits, and I told her that I’ve never seen a ghost and never want to. It would be too scary for me. She suggested, as others have before her, that maybe that’s why a spirit has never presented itself to me. To be honest, part of me does want ghosts to exist, because I love magic and mystery and because I believe in my friends’ experiences. But another, bigger, part of me doesn’t, because I don’t want to live in a world where I’m afraid of what might grab me from the shadows of my own home. Because I’m afraid that my version of reality is wrong.

Here’s an almost-ghost story: When I was in middle and high school, I had a friend who lived in a farmhouse next to this incredible old barn. I think her dad used the barn to store tractors and tools. It also contained some pet rabbits that we’d pet with our pinkies through their wire cages. My friend told me, in secret, that both the barn and her house were haunted. The ghosts spoke to her at night. As proof, she showed me a crude carving of the house etched in one of the barn doors. It looked spooky. I slept over that night but couldn’t drift off as I waited for the ghosts to talk to me, too. In the morning I knew my fears had been silly, that my friend’s stories couldn’t be true. But in the dark, I had believed.

“I don’t want to live in a world where I’m afraid of what might grab me from the shadows…”

Do you have a recurring nightmare?

I have recurring nightmares about being on the top floor of a too-tall building. A building so tall it sways, threatens to snap.

I also dream regularly about being back in high school or college. In the dreams, I’m usually running late to class. Or I can’t remember my locker combination.

In other dreams, I’m not a student, but I’m a teacher. And I realize at the very last minute I’m not wearing the appropriate pants! Or maybe I’m showing my 4^th graders a video but don’t realize until it’s too late that there’s cursing in this video, and the projector won’t turn off, and now the kids are upset, and I’m going to get so many angry parent emails!

What’s the scariest movie or TV show you’ve ever seen?

In high school, my friends and I had regular sleepovers in a friend’s basement. We liked to go to Blockbuster and rent the scariest-looking movie we could find from the horror section. It was fun to turn off all the lights and huddle together on the couch, laugh-screaming and covering our eyes with a shared blanket.

We rented the movie Signs in 2003 when I was thirteen. It wasn’t the goriest or most suspenseful movie I’d ever seen, but it genuinely unsettled me. The scariest part was the home video of an alien stalking through a kid’s birthday party. The way the horror was brought into broad daylight. It showed me that fear didn’t just exist in haunted houses or dark cornfields or thick forests—it could show up at any moment, when you feel your safest.

Is there any fear you’ve overcome in your life? How has that changed you?

I’m not sure if I’ve overcome any fears, but I’ve gotten better at understanding my fears. And at sorting the useful ones from the ones that don’t serve me.

In my early twenties I was diagnosed with a generalized anxiety disorder. Like when I was a child, worried that I might suddenly forget how to breathe or be struck by chicken pox, my worries are often directed at qualities within myself instead of at anything tangible in the world. I worry about the choices I’ve made, about hidden illness, about if I’m honest enough or good enough at what I do.

I have an Ursula K. LeGuin quote on a broadside on my wall: “To learn which questions are unanswerable, and not to answer them: this skill is most needful in times of stress and darkness.” Figuring out which questions (or worries) are helpful to pursue and which aren’t has made me a happier and less fearful person.

Who is the best villain?

I’m a sucker for the bad-guys-turned-good-guys trope in fiction. I love villains like Spike from Buffy, Loki from The Avengers, Snape from Harry Potter, and Mr. Darcy from Pride and Prejudice. I’m hoping Kylo Ren from Star Wars will make this list, too (by the time this interview is published, I’ll know!).

These characters are fun, because even when they’re good, they’re still a little dangerous. They still don’t like to follow the rules. There’s always a chance they’ll go back to the dark side.

What’s the scariest thing you’ve ever written?

I just published a story about a woman who starts dating a man whose city apartment is full of nothing but tons and tons of dirt. She’s kind of into it at first. But then some spooky stuff happens where he starts looking like her ex-boyfriend. And then she finds objects from her past buried in the dirt.

My editor described it as “powerfully unsettling” and my “darkest, for sure,” which made me very happy to hear. I’m hoping that my writing continues to get even spookier over time!

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Dana Diehl is the author of Our Dreams Might Align (Splice UK, 2018) and the collaborative collection, The Classroom (Gold Wake Press, 2019). Her chapbook, TV Girls, won the 2017-2018 New Delta Review Chapbook Contest, judged by Chen Chen. Diehl earned her MFA in Fiction at Arizona State University. Her work has appeared in North American Review, Passages North, Necessary Fiction, and elsewhere.

When I thought of the idea for this blog series, I immediately thought of Ellen Datlow as someone to reach out to. Ellen is an expert in horror, after all. She reads hundreds–maybe thousands–of stories each year for the Best Horror of the Year anthology, currently in its 11th edition. Her latest anthology, Echoes, features 30 ghost stories by writers such as Joyce Carol Oates, Paul Tremblay, Alice Hoffman, and others.

Given that she spends so much time reading about the darker side, I wanted to know if she also spent a lot of time thinking about what truly scares her.

And today, my friends, you shall find out…

What is your greatest fear?

Loss of control of my life by Alzheimer’s, paralysis, that sort of thing.

Do you believe in ghosts?

I don’t. I don’t believe in an afterlife. However—I do believe there are inexplicable occurrences.

“I do believe there are inexplicable occurrences.”

Do you have a recurring nightmare?

My nightmares are only scary to me—and usually pretty obvious as soon as I think about them when awake: I’m in a phone booth, it’s an emergency, and I can’t dial the phone (rotary);  I work in an office, and when I come in one day, I can’t find my office or the furniture’s been rearranged (I haven’t had this one since I started working at home); I’m on the street where I live (not the real street) and can’t find the entrance to my building; I’m in a foreign country and don’t remember where I’m staying (this one prompted me to start getting cards of hotels with their addresses on them).

What’s the scariest book you’ve ever read? Is there a particular scene that really haunts you still?

The circumstances while I was reading Salem’s Lot scared me. I was in a friend’s large apartment on the upper west side of Manhattan (most apartment in NYC are small), reading alone in the living room as it was getting darker out. There was very little light in the room. At a certain point I was afraid to get up in the dark apartment to go into any other rooms. There must have been other people in the apartment, but I don’t recall them being around.

Who is the best villain, fictional or in real life?

Hannibal Lector. He’s fascinating and utterly terrifying

What’s worse: closed-in spaces or heights?

For me, heights. I think it’s the idea of falling, tripping, being pushed.

Have you ever had any paranormal experiences or premonitions?

Maybe. Several of us were hanging out in a partly deserted house that a friend was caretaking. The others all went out while I stayed in to read. I was pretty sure I was the only one in the building at the time, but I heard what sounded like footsteps upstairs. I kind of freaked, but figured maybe someone else stayed behind. I did NOT investigate. I ignored it, kept on reading, and waited for my friends to return. They said they all had gone out.

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Ellen Datlow has been editing science fiction, fantasy, and horror short fiction for almost 40 years. She currently acquires short fiction and novellas for Tor.com. She’s edited more than 90 anthologies and has won multiple awards for her work. Her next original anthology is Final Cuts, an all-original anthology of movie horror. She has won the Karl Edward Wagner (special) award given by the British Fantasy Convention, and Life Achievement Awards given by the Horror Writers Association and by the World Fantasy Convention.