Posts in "What Scares You" Category — Page 3

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! 

Read More

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.

---

---

Read More

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 …

Read More

What better way to welcome the Halloween season than to have a Halloween expert join us here at What Scares You? I was thrilled to have the opportunity to chat with Lisa Morton about all things scary. Lisa has been called “one of the world’s leading authorities on the supernatural.” She is the author of such acclaimed and award-winning books as Ghosts: A Haunted History, Calling the Spirits: A History of Seances, Trick or Treat: A History of Halloween, and The Halloween Encyclopedia (now in a second edition). Her latest book, The Art of the Zombie Movie, releases on October 15, 2023, so go pre-order your copy now.

---

What is your greatest fear?

 The onset of dementia. I was my mother’s caregiver through 17 years of dementia, and seeing the confusion and terror she struggled with was horrifying. I also took care of my great-grandmother when she had dementia, although hers was more of the forgetful variety, whereas my mother’s frequently involved nightmarish hallucinations and full-blown fantasies. Mom’s dementia set in when she was 73, and even though there’s no guarantee I’ll get it, I nonetheless feel every second ticking away.

 What is the scariest thing you remember from childhood?

One of the scariest things I remember happened when I was (I think) 6: I grew up in Southern California, and we used to go to both Disneyland and Knott’s Berry Farm a lot. Disneyland used to have a man dressed up as the Phantom of the Opera standing in front of the Main Street Cinema, and my dad always wanted me to go stand next to the Phantom for a photo, but, even though I had seen the movie and loved it!, I was too scared to do it. Dad did finally get one photo of me standing a few feet away from the Phantom…with my eyes closed! 

What is your favorite urban legend?

Los Angeles has a fantastic urban legend about lizard people who once lived beneath our streets. I first encountered this story while visiting the website for the Los Angeles Public Library many years ago because they used to have a mention right on the front page about a part of the story that claimed there was a door to the lizard people’s tunnels in the basement of the downtown public library. This story really started in 1933, when a guy named G. Warren Shufelt convinced the city that he’d developed a way of using radio waves to locate gold, and a Hopi chief had told him that the underground city of the lizard people was lined with the stuff. Shufelt drilled around L.A. for a while before abruptly vanishing. I love the idea of this vanished civilization beneath L.A. and have used it in a number of stories (including my novella Placerita, co-written with John Palisano and coming from Cemetery Dance in December). 

Read More

Sarah Strohmeyer writes fantastic suspense novels. If you haven’t yet had the opportunity to read her latest, We Love to Entertain, I highly recommend it. She’s also incredibly funny and an amazing person with a ton of great stories. I’m thrilled to welcome her to What Scares You so we can all hear about the creepy ghostly encounters she’s had in her lifetime.

---

What is your earliest childhood memory of fear? Or the scariest thing you remember from childhood?

Oh, man, my childhood was filled with terror! I was the youngest kid of three. My brothers were much older, and my parents were old parents. So, while it was the Sixties and Seventies, there was something very Victorian about my childhood.

The worst was being sent to bed before everyone else. We used to rent a small, silver-shingled house on a remote island off Cape Cod (now very trendy, unfortunately), and I had to sleep in a bedroom off a long hall with the utilities. The pines whispered outside the windows, and there was a separate door to the outside. (God, now that I think of it, it was LOVELY!)

Anyway, my bed faced that damn hall. No feng shui at all. I’d wake up several times a night and see figure in the doorway. Even when I got into my teens, I screamed and ran to the rest of the house.

Years later, I rented the same house with two friends. One got up and left in the middle of the night, vowing never to return. Felt icy fingers through her hair. My best friend of all time, a diehard Roman Catholic and horror reader, said she’d sleep there no problem. And she did. No ghost.

My sister-in-law slept there with her newborn and woke to find two figures standing around the crib. So, yeah….

The house has been expanded. It’s now a super fancy mansion. I left a note in the door to ask the owners if they’d ever had an experience; heard nothing. So, somewhere in Massachusetts is a rich family that thinks I’m nuts.

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

Flying. I used to be in a long-distance relationship in my twenties and had to fly frequently from Cleveland to New Jersey. Had several scary flights (Maybe because I was going from Cleveland to New Jersey?)

Later, when I became an author and they sent me on book tours, I realized I had to make myself get over this fear. I started by pretending that we weren’t 35,000 feet in the sky. Then I took up knitting, which helped as a distraction, and then I got old and figured, screw it. If we go down, we go down.

Now, flying is scary for other reasons, of course.

Read More

Today’s What Scares You features cozy mystery writer Jennifer J. Chow, who writes the L.A. Night Market Mysteries. They will keep you turning pages and also make you very very hungry. Kirkus Reviews said her latest, Hot Pot Murder, has “great characters and a delightful mystery filled with luscious descriptions of food.”

Are there any foods that Jennifer is afraid of eating? Urban legends that unsettle her? Childhood memories she can’t quite shake? Read on to find out…

---

What is your earliest childhood memory of fear?

I remember watching The Fly and irrationally believing I would turn into a giant insect. That night, I begged to sleep with my parents.

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

Public speaking. I hated doing school presentations in front of the class. In high school, I joined the drama club and overcame that fear. It’s helped me understand that I can be confident in myself and reminds me to continue to learn and achieve.

What is your favorite urban legend?

During summer camp one year, I heard the ghost story about the woman who wore a velvet ribbon around her neck to keep her head attached to her body. For some time afterward, I was worried whenever I saw someone wearing a choker necklace.

What’s something that most people are afraid of that you are not?

Snakes. I’ve picked snakes up without a problem. And I think it’s kind of nice touching their cool scales.

Is there anything you are terrified of eating?

Live bugs. But apparently, also cooked bees. I was once treated to a local delicacy of bees and larvae. I just couldn’t with the wings.

---

---

What scares you most about the writing process?

The muddy middle of a manuscript. I always hope I don’t get sucked into its murky depths and never finish the actual draft.

What’s creepier: clowns, dolls, or wax museum figures?

Clowns, for sure. We stayed at Circus Circus in Las Vegas one year. It was the worst hotel experience I ever had as a kid.

---

Jennifer J. Chow writes cozies filled with hope and heritage. She is an Agatha, Anthony, and Lefty Award-nominated author; her most recent series is the L.A. Night Market Mysteries. Death by Bubble Tea was reviewed by the New York Times, featured in Woman’s World, and hit the SoCal Indie Bestseller List. Jennifer currently serves as president on the board of Sisters in Crime and blogs at chicksonthecase.com. She is an active member of Crime Writers of Color and Mystery Writers of America. Find her online at JenniferJChow.com.

Greg Herren lives in New Orleans, which means ghosts follow him around everywhere. Right? Well, you need to read on to find out. I will say that his writing is filled with a gothic spooky atmosphere and mood that makes you feel like you’re in a haunted Southern home where anything can happen.

He has two novels coming in fall 2023: Mississippi River Mischief and Death Drop: A Killer Queen Mystery. And you can read more about his greatest and weirdest fears right here!

---

What is your greatest fear?

Being buried alive. I have both a fear of the dark and claustrophobia. Whenever I see a new report about someone being rescued from being trapped somewhere in a tight space after “days,” I always think, they’d pull me out of there stark raving mad and I’d never come back from it.

What person living today terrifies you the most and why?

It’s a six-way tie between the conservative Supreme Court justices. They seem determined to rewrite our judiciary system “under his eye.”

What are your phobias?

Spiders, snakes, claustrophobia, the dark.

Do you have a recurring nightmare?

It’s not always the same, but similar enough: falling from a great height. Sometimes I dream I am bouncing on a trampoline and wind up going too high to safely come down; sometimes it’s out of a window, sometimes out of an airplane, sometimes off a cliff. The last thing I see in the dream is the ground, rushing up to me, and I wake up just as I hit the ground—sweating, shaking, and breathing hard.

How do you deal with fear?

I avoid great heights, the dark and tight spaces. If I don’t have a choice, I grit my teeth and just start counting until I’m no longer in a scary place.

Have you ever had any paranormal experiences or premonitions? How did you deal with it?

I live in New Orleans, where every house is haunted. Yes, I’ve had unexplained experiences in every apartment we’ve lived in here. The worst was when I was pet-sitting for a friend who’d just moved into a new place. The entire time I was there I just had this sense of being watched, like I wasn’t alone in the space, but whatever else was there was just out of my sight. It finally creeped me out so much I had to leave and come back later to feed the animals and walk the dog. I never did stay overnight there, and any time I’d visit I felt uncomfortable. The ghost in my current appointment likes to play simple tricks—moving something from one counter to another when my back is turned. I’ve never gotten a bad feeling from that ghost, but sometimes I know he or she is there.

Is there anything you are terrified of eating? Why?

Yes. Anything that has a slimy consistency—eggs, flan, custards, oysters. I always think I’m swallowing snot.

What is your greatest fear as a writer?

That one day the words and stories won’t come; that the bottomless well of creativity in my brain will eventually run dry.

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

There’s a scene in my book Lake Thirteen that was based on a real experience that I think is terrifying, but others might not agree.

What’s your favorite horror movie or television series?

Movie is the original 1963 Robert Wise production of The Haunting. TV series? Friday the 13^th the Series. I wish it was streaming somewhere.

What’s the scariest book you’ve ever read?

‘salem’s Lot by Stephen King. The scene when Danny Glick comes to Mark Petrie’s window. I was living in a very small town in Kansas when I read the book and stayed up reading during a thunderstorm. Just when I got to the part where Danny scratches on the window, a tree branch brushed against my bedroom window. I think I had to change underwear and wash the sheets.

People often say death is their greatest fear. What are your feelings about death/dying?

I don’t know that people are so much afraid of dying as they are afraid of not knowing what happens when you die. I’m a gay man in his sixties who lived through the HIV/AIDS pandemic. I never thought I would live this long, frankly, so it all feels like extra time for me. No, I’m not afraid of death, but it’s not something I am looking forward to, either. I’m afraid I’ll die before I write all the things I want to more than I am afraid of actually dying.

---

---

What’s the scariest place you’ve ever been?

The empty back country roads of rural Alabama at night. It gets so dark there.

What’s something you’ll never do because you’re too scared?

Visit the observation deck of the Empire State Building.

What’s creepier: clowns, dolls, or wax museum figures?

THEY ARE ALL EQUALLY CREEPY.

Which evil, murderous persona most matches your personality and why: slow-walking psychotic serial killer; vampire stalking victims in the wee hours of the night; rich megalomaniac with grand plans to take over the world; centuries-old demon witch looking for revenge; or Hyde-like, fueled with rage and no impulse control?

Centuries-old demon witch for sure. I live for revenge.

---

Greg Herren is the award-winning author of more than 40 novels and 50 short stories. He is also an award-winning editor, having edited over 20 anthologies.