C. Matthew Smith is author of the novel Twentymile, as well as short stories that have appeared online and in magazines and anthologies such as Mystery Weekly and Mickey Finn: 21st Century Noir. His second novel is due out late 2025. He lives with his family in Newnan, Georgia, and from what I hear, they KNOW how to do Halloween right.
But what scares him? Let’s find out.
What is your greatest fear?
Hands down, my greatest fear is heights. I don’t consider it irrational by any stretch–you fall from a significant height, and you either die or wish you had. But what my brain considers a significant height is admittedly pathetic. You get me above say eight to ten feet, and my mind starts spinning. You get me way up, and all I can think about is how I’m getting down. Eiffel Tower? Empire State Building? I’ve done them because my family wanted to do them. I didn’t enjoy them for a second, and I wasn’t up there any longer than I had to be.
What is the scariest thing you remember from childhood?
This will date me, but I have a vivid memory of watching a TV commercial for Stanley Kubrik’s The Shining. That movie was released in 1980, so I would have been five at the time. The ad included a clip of Jack chasing Danny through the snowy shrubbery maze with the axe. Seeing a child roughly my own age depicted in such danger absolutely terrified me. Maybe my mind has pasted this on over the years, but I also have a vague recollection of my parents realizing what I had just seen and the trouble it was about to cause them getting me to sleep.
Have you ever had any paranormal experiences or premonitions? How did you deal with it?
We live in a house built in 1894, and naturally a number of people have died in it. I’m a pretty rational guy, but we’ve had a number of experiences in the house that defy explanation and make it hard for me to be too much of a skeptic when it comes to the notion of ghosts. It started with this scent showing up now and then around the house—an old timey floral scent befitting a perfume. I smelled it. My wife, Cindy, smelled it. It’s not a scent you’d encounter in nature. It couldn’t have just drifted in on a breeze. In addition, Cindy and I both have experienced what feels like a hand pressing down on our chests when we slept in one particular room. It was unlike any sleep paralysis I’d ever experienced. Most concerning is that every now and then something in the house will disappear and later appear in a spot you know you searched but that you also know you hadn’t left the item. For example, this Fitbit charging cord went missing a few years back. We looked everywhere. We eventually threw up our hands and went to Best Buy to get a new one. When we came back in the house, the damn cord was draped across a chair in the living room. No way all four of us would have missed that just lying there. So I guess whatever ghost we have is a prankster.
“Every now and then something in the house will disappear and later appear in a spot you know you searched but that you also know you hadn’t left the item…So I guess whatever ghost we have is a prankster.”
Heather Daughrity loves all things macabre, dark, autumnal, supernatural, and horrific. She writes horror—the quiet, creeping, psychological kind, full of moaning wind, shifting shadows, and psychological pain. When she’s not writing, she works as a freelance editor, helping authors make their stories the best they can be.
Heather’s solo works include Knock Knock, Tales My Grandmother Told Me, and Echoes of the Dead. Her short stories have been featured in several anthologies, and she is the curating editor of the House of Haunts and Hospital of Haunts anthologies.
Heather loves digging in the dirt, hiking in the woods, whipping up delicious desserts in the kitchen, and generally soaking up all the weird and wild beauty of the world. She lives in Oklahoma with her husband, author and publisher Joshua Loyd Fox, where together they spend their days reading, writing, and being blissfully bookish.
But what scares her? Let’s find out!
What is the scariest thing you remember from childhood?
When I was around 10 or 11, my mom—a very religious woman—became obsessed with the idea of spiritual warfare. So, on Sunday nights, a group of maybe 10 or 12 of us would go walking through the church buildings in the dark after nearly everyone had left, with the adults calling out any evil spirits that might be lurking about and casting them out in God’s name. There were definitely some creepy, anxiety-inducing moments during those dark hours. People claimed to see things or feel things, and I certainly had some washes of prickling trepidation upon walking into certain rooms.
Now—was there anything actually there or was I an impressionable kid caught up in a sort of small-scale mass hysteria built on eerie suggestion and spooky atmosphere? I don’t know. But I can still feel the goosebumps breaking out on my arms and the tears which would spring inexplicably to my eyes upon entering specific spaces.
What is your weirdest fear?
I have an immense fear of anything covering my face. Well, covering both my nose and mouth. If one is covered but the other is not, I’m fine, but having them both covered sends me into a panic. I can remember being very young and getting sweaters stuck on my head trying to get dressed or undressed by myself and feeling trapped and unable to breathe. I would freak out. I sometimes question if I am afraid of this now because of those moments, or was I freaking out then because I was already afraid of it?
In a related note: the COVID quarantine was HARD for me. Wearing a face mask that covered both my nose and mouth felt like I was constantly on the verge of suffocating. I DID wear one when I went out to places that required it, but I avoided going anywhere unless absolutely necessary because of this fear. And even when I was out, I would have to occasionally pull the mask away and take in a great gasping gulp of fresh air.
“I have an immense fear of anything covering both my nose and mouth. Having them both covered sends me into a panic.”
Do you have a recurring nightmare?
Sort of, and this is related to the fear described above. A few times a year I will have nightmares that my husband has to physically wake me up from. I will thrash about and mumble and groan in my sleep. The dreams are different, but always involve me either not being able to breathe or not being able to speak to someone (and what I’m trying to say is always life-or-death important, like “Don’t open that door, there’s poisonous gas out there!”). After several years of doing this, I realized that I only have these dreams when either I’ve fallen asleep on my stomach (so that in my sleep I end up with my face in the pillow) or the blankets have somehow gotten bunched up around my face and covered my mouth and nose.
So, to reiterate: even in my sleep, I do NOT like having my mouth and nose covered.
What’s something that most people are afraid of that you are not?
Bugs. Spiders. I was creeped out by them as a little girl, for sure, but after years of gardening, I’ve come to love most and at least tolerate others. It IS amusing to me when a big, strong man freaks out over a spider and I’m up with my face inches away from it going, “Look at this beauty!”
What’s creepier: clowns, dolls, or wax figures?
Well, not dolls. I’m pretty sure I could kick a doll across the room. Wax figures are meh, I mean just the whole Uncanny Valley thing makes them creepy, right? But clowns—clowns are the most truly horrifying because that’s a real person and unfortunately, we all know that the true horror in the world comes from what real people do to each other.
What’s your favorite horror movie or television series?
I LOVED Penny Dreadful. I grew up on those old-school Victorian Gothic monsters, and that show brings them all together in such a wonderful way. Each time a new (old) character was introduced, I would be absolutely giddy.
What’s the scariest book you’ve ever read? Is there a particular scene that really haunts you still?
This is a tie. For supernatural horror, Adam Nevill’s No One Gets Out Alive. That book is like six horror stories rolled into one. Just when you think you’ve escaped one danger, another one shows up. For man vs. man horror, Dean Koontz’s Intensity gave me actual nightmares. I wanted to DNF so many times, but something in me had to keep reading, to see how it ended, because I knew all the possible scenarios that were running through my mind were going to continue to haunt me if I didn’t get some closure.
People often say death is their greatest fear. What are your feelings about death/dying?
I have no fears about death and dying. Now, I certainly don’t want to go out in a painful way—whether that be a long, drawn-out illness or a violent car crash, but death itself doesn’t bother me. I’ve always had a sort of “it’s all part of the circle of life” mindset when it comes to this. Beautiful babies are born, lives are lived, people grow old and die; seasons change—nature is constantly in a cycle of birth, life, death, rebirth—I think it’s beautiful, really, and am just glad to be a part of it.
Born in Pittsburgh, Keith Donohue is the author of six novels, including The New York Times bestseller The Stolen Child, and Angels of Destruction, Centuries of June, The Boy Who Drew Monsters, The Motion of Puppets, and most recentlyThe Girl in the Bog. He also edited and wrote the introduction to the Everyman edition of The CompleteNovels of Flann O’Brien. His work has been translated into two dozen languages, and he also writes reviews for the Washington Post. A graduate of Duquesne University, he lives in Maryland and works at the National Archives.
What is your greatest fear?
Fear is a tricky business. In some regards, I’m not afraid of anything. I don’t suspect a murderer is hiding behind a tree or giant mutant fascist spiders will one day hatch from the desert and lay waste to the nation. Almost never do I wonder if Norman Bates is hiding behind the shower curtain, and I certainly do not need to check under the bed for the bogeyman or a vampire or dust bunnies with chattering sharp teeth suddenly springing out to gnaw at my toes.
On the other hand, I love a good “jump scare.” Jonesy, the cat in “Alien,” gave me a heart attack. Even worse than the creature bursting from the astronaut’s belly.
Okay, then, what are your phobias?
That’s another matter altogether. I have an irrational fear of falling from great heights. So, bridges, cliff edges, the observation deck of 30 Rock, the Grand Canyon, and other such canyons, accidentally skydiving, the space beneath the railing of an ocean liner or a boat, ladders, roofs, observation decks, tall piers, and so on. It is not the height of the place (I am totally fine on an enclosed airplane or spacecraft) that bothers me. I simply do not want to plunge to my doom.
How do you deal with fear?
Rather poorly, for the most part. I try to confront panic and anxiety by staring into the abyss and telling myself it isn’t real. Or mutter a string of foul curses under my breath. I’ve tried using the mindfulness technique of naming things and saying their colors to take my mind off the perceived threat. It actually works sometimes!
Or I coolly avoid the situation, and if I am with other people, I say you go ahead and climb to the top of the mountain while I turn my back. I don’t want you to fall to your doom, either.
Since his first appearance in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine in 1968, more than a hundred and twenty of Josh Pachter‘s short crime stories have been published in the U.S. and internationally. He’s also the editor of two dozen anthologies, including Happiness Is a Warm Gun: Crime Fiction Inspired by the Songs of the Beatles and Friend of the Devil: Crime Fiction Inspired by the Songs of the Grateful Dead, and the translator of more than sixty novels, short stories, memoirs, and comic books from Dutch to English. His own first novel, Dutch Threat, came out in 2023 and was a finalist for the Agatha, Lefty, and Macavity awards. His latest publication is the children’s novel First Week Free at the Roomy Toilet, which will be published by Level Best Books on September 24.
What is your greatest fear?
Pre-pandemic, I watched two dear relatives—an aunt and uncle—descend into dementia. They lived less than half an hour from me in Northern Virginia, and I visited with them at least once a week during their final years. My uncle had spent his working life in the aerospace industry and my aunt had been a teacher, so they were thoughtful, intelligent people, and seeing them lose their ability to follow a train of thought, to form coherent sentences, to remember recent events—though she recalled her time at the Manhattan Project and he his WWII experiences as an aircraft navigator with crystal clarity to the very end—was sad and terrifying. One sharp memory I have is the day I showed up at their nursing home to find them lying side by side in bed, holding hands like teenagers … and my aunt looked up at me and asked, “Are you my husband?”
I can’t think of anything more frightening than losing my past to the ravages of Alzheimer’s or dementia, of lying helpless in bed and not recognizing my wife or my daughter. That’s the scariest thing I can conceive of.
Is there any fear you’ve overcome in your life?
As a child, I was petrified by heights, but I mastered the fear by forcing myself to go right to the edges of tall buildings, high cliffs overlooking the ocean, and the like.
In 1973, I was living with a girlfriend in Nevada, and we gave each other skydiving lessons for some occasion. We took a several-hour training course and then went up in a little plane for our first jump.
The idea that skydivers barrel out of the plane yelling “Geronimo!” comes from old war movies, but the reality is—or at least at that time was—very different. Novices did what was called a static-line jump, where your ripcord is attached to the plane and pulls itself once you’ve dropped a certain distance. As you approach the carefully manicured drop zone at a height of about three thousand feet, you climb out onto a strut jutting from the side of the plane and hold onto another strut just above eye level. Then, when the jumpmaster taps the back of your leg, your training kicks in: you let go of the upper strut, the plane keeps going forward, you head groundward, and the static line pulls your ripcord.
When it was my turn to climb onto the strut that day in 1973, I was completely frozen with fear. The only reason I didn’t chicken out was that my girlfriend had already jumped, and I was more afraid of looking like a wimp in her eyes than of going through with it. So, I took my turn … and once I was hanging under the parachute’s canopy, the descent was one of the most beautiful, peaceful experiences I’ve ever had.
Yay! Today we get to chat with the always amazing Susanna Calkins, who writes the award-winning Lucy Campion mysteries set in 17th century London and the Speakeasy Mysteries set in 1920s Chicago. Her writing has been nominated for the Anthony, Agatha, Mary Higgins Clark, Macavity, and Lefty awards. She is a historian by training and teaches at the college level. She lives outside Chicago with her husband and two sons, with whom she shares a general terror of rats.
What is your greatest fear?
I’d have to say that I’m terrified of the El (“L”, as we say in Chicago) or really any train. I’ve taken trains my whole life, especially growing up in Philadelphia, and I’m still afraid of the great gaping expanse where the tracks run. I’m afraid of jumping in as the train speeds towards the station–NOT, to be absolutely clear, because I’m suicidal. I’m not. It’s something different altogether. I spent some time researching this, and I learned that it’s not trypophobia (fear of holes) or acrophobia (fear of high places). Apparently, I experience what the French call “L’appel du Vide” or “the call of the Void.” (The call of the Void! How French is that?) I’m ALSO afraid of being pushed in front of the train by a random stranger, so I stand as far back from the track as I can, discreetly holding the back of a bench. I mean, you hear stories about people pushing other people in front of trains all the time, so I feel fully justified.
What is your greatest fear from childhood?
I was terrified of dying in a nuclear disaster. (Or perhaps worse, surviving as my skin and bones melted away.) I blame the fact that, as a child of the 80s, we were REQUIRED, actually required, to watch The Day After, which described the devastating after-effects of nuclear war on regular people JUST LIKE ME. There was no debrief, no one to talk to about it. For weeks after, I would just bury myself under the covers, hoping that the nuclear war (which seemed sadly inevitable) would happen in my great-grandchildren’s time, not in mine. (Poor great-grandchildren!)
What’s your weirdest fear?
I constantly imagine myself tripping and falling onto a spike that goes through my face. Like, my left eye. It’s a weirdly specific fear. I also fear this for other people, especially little kids, when I see them running awkwardly. I can imagine the whole thing playing out in slow motion, and it really turns my stomach.
What is a phobia you have?
I have an entire category of driving-related phobias. I’m afraid of people who drive without their headlights on. I’m also afraid of people pulling up directly alongside me. I will edge up or back to not be parallel with them. I will absolutely not make eye contact with anyone in the next lane, unless one of us is trying to change lanes. I will not drive down alleys where I can get blocked in. I’m just assuming that any of these situations is going to get me murdered. I don’t feel you can prove me wrong on this.
“I’m afraid of people who drive without their headlights on. I’m also afraid of people pulling up directly alongside me. I will edge up or back to not be parallel with them… I’m just assuming that any of these situations is going to get me murdered.”
I thought I just had driving-related phobias, but now that I think about it, I have a number of other phobias that relate to me being murdered. (Even writing this for public view now makes me feel like I’m going to invite a murderer to my door.) I’m afraid of secluded walking paths in forests (even though I am very comfortable walking around city streets). I would never ever go camping, because that is definitely where the murderers lurk. I’m afraid of taking a self-defense class because I assume that the criminals keep an eye on those classes to find vulnerable people who haven’t learned what to do yet. I’ve also been deathly afraid of revolving doors ever since I saw a scene of The Godfather, where someone gets mowed down in one.
What else, Susie? What else?
I was always worried that my dolls and stuffed animals would come to life and want to kill me for how I treated them. (I mean, I mostly made them sit through “school” all day, but I did leave them out in the rain from time to time.) Then when I saw Toy Story, and the attack on Sid, it made me VERY NERVOUS. That, and I know a famous writer named Tara Laskowski who regularly freaks me out with her crazy dolls…
Mary Jumbelic, M.D., is an author from Central New York and former chief medical examiner of Onondaga County. A board-certified forensic pathologist, Mary has performed thousands of autopsies during her 25-year career. She has received awards for her work from the National Transportation Safety Board and the New York State Senate, and has been recognized as a trailblazer by the National Organization of Women. As an expert witness, she has appeared on numerous national broadcasts, most recently Dateline and 48 Hours.
In retirement, Mary has published many nonfiction stories, accounts of her life both in and out of the morgue. Using her experiences, she provides a strong voice for the deceased as explores the human imprint made by those departed, demystifying death for herself, and others. Her book Here, Where Death Delights was published in 2023.
I had the great fortune to take an online class with Mary a few years ago, where she taught us how to accurately describe dead bodies in our fiction. It was one of the most fascinating classes I’ve ever taken, and I appreciated Mary’s great care in discussing sensitive, traumatic situations and all the experience she’s had working with the dead and telling their stories. Her book describes a lot of her experiences, and I highly recommend it.
So what scares someone who’s spent her entire career with the dead? Read on, friends, to find out…
What is your earliest childhood memory of fear?
It started during at the Maryland State Fair in Timonium, an event occurring annually since 1878. As a child I loved the state fair with its crowds, hawkers, noise, and excitement. Mom and Dad watched as I rode the kiddie rides and ate cotton candy. We strolled to the edge, where a caravan lined the periphery. Large canvas placards in yellow and red announced the entertainment: The World of Wonders with such intrigues as Rubber Boy, Blockhead, the Mermaid. There were snake charmers, fire eaters, and sword swallowers. For one dollar, you could enter the tent and see the advertised spectacle. We never went in. The posters haunted me.
One image stayed with me––a half-human, half-snake creature with the head of a woman and the body of a python. Her brown hair flowed toward her reptilian body. The blue eyes, human shaped, followed me as I gripped my parents’ hands.
When we got home, I headed upstairs. The snake woman waited for me in the recess of a dark room on the second floor. I closed my eyes and ran past her, jumping into bed and pulling the covers over my head. My heart raced. My head felt hot. It took a long time to fall asleep.
This female reptile lived for a long time at my childhood home. Eventually I made peace with her by forcing myself to keep my eyes open and really see her.
What is your favorite urban legend?
Waking up with a surgical incision on my flank in a bathtub full of ice with my kidney missing creates a chilling picture for me. While trafficking in human organs is an international phenomenon, the victims are not the random tourists of urban legend. People in poverty in third world countries fall prey to this trade to better their economic circumstance. The urban legend twists the reality into a freakish fear. When I read Kazuo Ishiguro’s NeverLetMeGo, I had chills with the reveal. He takes this fear and worldwide problem to a frightening, futuristic level.
Do you have a recurring nightmare?
A dream that has repeated itself for me throughout my life is driving off a bridge into water. I am not afraid of heights or traversing water when I’m awake. Curiously, my mother had a longstanding fear of overpasses. When we drove across the Chesapeake Bay Bridge, she would put her head down into her lap. I just shook my head as I drove. Yet perhaps I absorbed this into my subconscious. In my nightmare, I crash through the guardrails and plunge into the icy current. The auto sinks as the river closes over me. Murkiness surrounds, and sound is muted as I struggle with the seatbelt. I wake up gasping before the water rushes in and drowns me. I keep an emergency tool in my car, just in case.
What is your favorite horror movie or television series?
I’m not a big fan of horror, having been scared into holding a crucifix on my chest as I slept after seeing TheExorcist as a kid. My family enjoys the genre, so I’ve seen my fair share––BlairWitchProject, DragMetoHell, Midsommar. My favorite is a TV series that falls into the horror-light category––X–Files. I have watched all 11 seasons more than once, the first pass with my oldest son, and other viewings with my other two boys or alone. There are special episodes I love to rewatch. The scientific and law enforcement backdrop combined with the strong female character of the doctor-FBI agent, Dana Scully, and her chemistry with Spooky Mulder made the show a big hit for me.
Today please welcome mystery writer Delia Pitts to What Scares You! You can grab yourself a copy of Delia’s newest book, a contemporary noir mystery, Trouble in Queenstown. She is also the author of the Ross Agency Mysteries, a series set in Harlem. She has published several acclaimed short stories, including, “The Killer,” which was selected for inclusion in Best American Mystery and Suspense 2021. Delia is an active member of Sisters in Crime, Mystery Writers of America, and Crime Writers of Color.
Delia and her husband live in central New Jersey and have twin sons living in Texas.
But what scares her? Read on to find out…
What is your greatest fear?
Like most parents, my greatest fear is suffering the death of my children. I have twin boys, now in their thirties, and this dread courses through me like a railroad train every time I get a phone call from one of them. Texts from them are a different matter, somehow less urgent and friendlier. I made the reality of this devastating loss the underlying disaster that drives all the central characters of my new book. Each asks and answers the question: Am I still a parent after I lose my child?
What is the scariest thing you remember from childhood?
Fleeing the movie theatre because I couldn’t bear another minute with the flying monkeys in the Wizard of Oz. This was at about five years old. But those scenes with the Wicked Witch of the West still can make me turn off the TV even now.
I also remember waking in the middle of a summer night and standing on my bed looking out the window at the black sky over the bungalows in our neighborhood. I was ten years old. To this day, I’m certain I saw the bright light of an airplane plummet straight down to the ground. No explosion, no reports the next day of a crash. But I swear even now this disaster happened: The fierce streak of light perpendicular to the ground is etched on my memory. Having no one else confirm what I saw with my own waking eyes didn’t undermine my experience. In fact, my isolation made this event even more terrifying.
But the scariest thing I ever saw as a child was when both my parents wept at the assassination of President Kennedy. I had never seen them (or any grown-ups) cry. About anything. So, witnessing their trauma at the devastation of unpredictable loss was terrifying to my sixth-grade self.
How do you deal with fear?
My tendency is to analyze it into submission. The more I pick apart a fear, the smaller it becomes. I am the nerdy one who broods, noodles, and dissects until the fear withers to dust. This is why those flying monkeys still haunt me: To this day, I can’t figure out if they are little people made up to look like monkeys. Or real monkeys trained to wear flying gear. Which is it?
“Those flying monkeys still haunt me: I can’t figure out if they are little people made up to look like monkeys. Or real monkeys trained to wear flying gear. Which is it?”
What’s something that most people are afraid of that you are not?
Visiting new places seems to spook lots of people. Understandable, as the unknown could contain dangers. But I’ve always enjoyed exploring new places, people, food. A few months after college graduation, I headed by myself for a year-long stay in Dakar, Senegal. I knew no one there and no one who’d ever visited there. I had a grant that gave me the confidence of money. That plus extreme youth carried me forward. I can’t imagine doing that same land-on-the-moon sort of adventure now. My imagination is pickled with too much knowledge, I suppose. But I am forever grateful that I had that stupid bravery when I was twenty-one.
Do you enjoy scaring other people?
No, I think scaring other people is the lowest form or sadism. Except in my fiction, then its fair. One of the loveliest reviews I ever received for one of my serialized short works of fan fiction was when a reader wailed that the ending of the chapter had her gnawing her arm off to the elbow. She couldn’t bear the four-day wait for the next installment of my story. Sweet triumph!
What scares you most about the writing process?
That I won’t be able to finish the story I’ve started. All those voices yammering in my head, demanding to be heard, propel me to write. I keep at it until I satisfy the characters that I’ve done my best to share their story as they want it to be told.
What is your greatest fear as a writer?
Losing my draft, of course. I’m haunted by the story of Hemingway’s wife Hadley who brought his first draft of The Sun Also Rises in a suitcase for a train ride to Switzerland, only to leave the suitcase on the station platform. Horrifying. When I was in Gambia doing my doctoral research, I spent hours each evening typing the day’s interviews on a portable Remington typewriter. I made carbon copies (yes, I am that old) and mailed the copies each week to my parents in Chicago. My fear was that a fire would devastate my room, and I’d lose the originals of those precious interviews with Gambian weavers. I never feared the fire, only the gut-wrenching fate of having nothing to show for my year of research.
Mark Morton, author of The Headmasters and Cupboard Love: A Dictionary of Culinary Curiosities (nominated for a Julia Child Award), is also the author of three other nonfiction titles, The End: Closing Words for a Millennium (winner of the Alexander Isbister Award for nonfiction); The Lover’s Tongue: A Merry Romp Through the Language of Love and Sex (republished in the UK as Dirty Words), and Cooking with Shakespeare. He’s also written more than 50 columns for Gastronomica: The Journal of Food and Culture (University of California Press) and has written and broadcast more than a hundred columns about language and culture for CBC Radio. Mark has a PhD in sixteenth-century literature from the University of Toronto and has taught at several universities in France and Canada. He currently works at the University of Waterloo. He and his wife, Melanie Cameron, (also an author) have four children, three dogs, one rabbit, and no time.
What animal scares you the most?
Wood ticks and leeches. I am absolutely terrified of little creatures that attach to me and then start sucking out my lifeblood (or as General Jack D. Ripper calls it in Dr. Strangelove, my “vital essence”). If I see even an unattached wood tick or leech, a full-body cringe sweeps through me, and I have to repress a guttural vocalization. It’s a very pesky fear, because it means I’m afraid to hike through trees and long grass, or to wade into ponds and lakes. But I leveraged this fear in my novel The Headmasters. The headmasters are alien creatures that look like plate-sized wood ticks. They attach themselves to the backs of humans and slide their coils through your skull and into your brain—by doing so they’re able to control that human for about eighteen hours a day. I feel sorry for my characters that I’ve created such a repulsive overlord for them.
Have you ever had any paranormal experiences or premonitions?
Oh my gosh, I haven’t told this to anyone in decades, because when I did, people either wouldn’t believe me or thought I was delusional. I was about twenty and living in a bachelor apartment in an older building in Regina, Saskatchewan. I went to bed as usual, fell asleep, and then found myself being awakened by a grizzled old man who was shaking my shoulder and saying, “Hey, buddy–hey, buddy, how did you get in here?” I was still half asleep and looked around and saw that it was my apartment–except it wasn’t. It had the same layout, but the furnishings were all different, the most noticeable of which was a leather saddle sitting ominously on a wooden frame.
I realized I was in the apartment either directly above or below my own. In retrospect, I’m astonished that the old guy didn’t grab a frying pan before waking me, but he didn’t seem alarmed, just puzzled. I told him I must have sleepwalked (which I’d never done before) from my apartment and wandered into his. He said no–he always locked his door, and when I glanced up at the door chain, it was indeed in the door frame’s chain plate. I was also, ahem, totally naked, which was odd because I always went to bed in a t-shirt and sweats. So, from a rational perspective, what I must have done was gotten up in a sleepwalking state, taken off my clothes, wandered up the building’s stairs to the next floor, opened the door of my upstairs neighbor, who for some reason left his door unlocked, walked in without awakening my neighbour (his bed was right beside the rug on which I was laying), and fallen back to sleep.
Alternatively, I “ghosted” up through the ceiling and onto my neighbor’s floor. Which is the simpler explanation? The latter, I think. Anyway, the old guy lent me a pair of his pants, and I went back to my apartment, got into my own clothes, and lay back down on my bed. It was two in the morning, but I couldn’t fall back to sleep. For the next couple of weeks–I’m not kidding–I tied my right hand to the bedpost. I didn’t want to wander away again–or ghost through the ceiling.
Letitia Trent is the author of Summer Girls, available for pre-order from Agape Editions, Haunted Doll House imprint. Her other work includes the novel Almost Dark and the poetry collection Match Cut. Her poetry and short stories have most recently appeared in Biscuit Hill, Figure 1, and Smartish Pace. Her short story “Wilderness” was nominated for a Shirley Jackson award. She lives in a haunted Ozark mountain town with her family and works in the mental health field. She can be reached via her substack Tell Me Something Good or Bluesky.
Do you have a recurring nightmare?
Ever since high school, I’ve had dreams of losing people in a crowd or waking up in the morning and finding myself alone in the house with my parents. The one about waking up alone wasn’t much of a horror scenario (sometimes), but my relationship with my parents has always been rocky. Losing people in a crowd, though, would really rattle me. This became a recurring dream after I got married. In this dream, I’m always at a party where I feel uncomfortable or alone (not an uncommon real-life experience). In the confusion of people, my husband drifts away from me and gets lost in the crowd. When I realize he’s not next to me, I look for him and see him from a distance. I end up following him from room to room, unable to ever really get to him in the press of bodies. In my panic, I bump into people, knock over drinks, and am generally rude. I follow his retreating figure out the front door, where I rush to catch up, but when I go out the door, I find the street empty and him gone.
Have you ever had any paranormal experiences or premonitions?
I’ve always wanted to see a ghost, or a UFO, or something anomalous, but the closest I’ve come is when I used a Ouija board with a friend a few months after I had my son. I’ve rarely ever found a friend willing to use Ouija with me, and my husband is too scared from his Southern Baptist childhood and 80s horror movies, but I was raised by a lapsed Catholic and daytime television, so I’m up for anything. I’ve never gotten one to work on my own, but my friend and I got the planchette moving. At one point, when we asked who was here with us, the board spelled out “I hear the baby crying,” which was pretty freaky, because my baby actually was crying. I am still completely baffled by this today, though I can’t say this made me afraid, since I’m still not convinced we weren’t somehow manifesting the movement unintentionally–it did feel like an outside force). I’m still waiting for somebody who is willing to do the Ouija again with me to see if I can repeat the experience, but I live in Arkansas now, where Ouija board fear is roughly equivalent to the fear of copperheads and the air conditioner breaking during a heat wave.
“The board spelled out, ‘I hear the baby crying,’ which was pretty freaky, because my baby actually was crying.
What is your greatest fear as a writer?
I’m afraid that I’ll never quite get my ideas on the page exactly the way they feel in my brain. Every time I finish a novel (and now I’m wondering, have I ever truly “finished” a novel or do I just stop when I have to?), it’s on to a new challenge, one that always feels just out of my reach. I just finished a novel, Summer Girls, where I challenged myself to write something more in the domestic suspense genre. As a writer who struggles with plot, I enjoyed the process of seeing how a more genre-oriented novel gets filtered through my brain that leans more literary and horror, and what I learned is that I constantly felt at the edge of failure. I’m happy with the outcome and incredibly grateful to my editor and early readers who helped guide my way, but I truly didn’t know what I had until the end of the process. I love that surprise, but I also feel like I’m going to mess it up every time. My next novel is a kind of supernatural crime horror, a genre mashup that feels completely out of my dreamy, atmospheric wheelhouse. I can’t say I’m intentionally leaning into my fears as much as following my obsessions right down into possible disaster, but at least I’m never bored.
What’s the scariest thing you’ve ever written?
I’ve written a couple of traditional horror stories, one that even appeared in the Best Horror of the Year, Volume 8, but I think my current novel is technically the scariest because it’s about something that makes me truly fearful: how vulnerable our human brains are, and how early messages about the world, ourselves, and our worth can take hold and shape the trajectory of our lives. Summer Girls features a character who joins a cult, and I find cults fascinating and terrifying because so many otherwise intelligent, educated, and functioning people can end up in them. The Chad and Lori Daybell story, NXIVN, the Mother God cult, Heaven’s Gate, Twin Flames, or even the Tik Tok dancing cult, all have various levels of harm, from actual murder to abuse both suffered and commited by members. I was interested in how this happens: how do we decide to submit our will to people with both rhetorical or actual power? How much of it is even a decision, and how much is manipulation, and how can we see outside of our own experience? I’m using the word “we” here because I suspect many of us are vulnerable to bad ideas in the right circumstances, and that basic human vulnerability is terrifying to me because I know I have it, too.
What’s your favorite horror movie or television series?
HANNIBAL! It’s beautiful, well-acted, deeply weird, and also disgusting. I adore it. I love how stylized and mannered it is, how everybody refers to everybody else by their full names. It’s darkly funny, too, which I caught more often in my recent third rewatch. I think the ending is perfect and wish I had endless seasons.
What’s the scariest book you’ve ever read? Is there a particular scene that really haunts you still?
Definitely The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson. What terrifies me about this book is that it’s ultimately a seduction: the house wants Eleanor/Nell, and because Eleanor is lonely, she’s vulnerable. It might be terrifying to her, and to everyone else, but it seems to know her, invites her, and ultimately feels more comfortable than the human connections she tries to make with Theo or any of the other people in the house. I relate to Nell a lot – she’s not good with people, she’s isolated, she’s had little opportunity to build connections, and she doesn’t quite know what she’s capable of. This goes back to what scares me about cults and the human mind: we are far more vulnerable than we think we are, and so we can be maniuplated without even realizing it. It’s also just beautifully written. We are in Nell’s mind, throughout, filtering the experience through her eyes, so the turn at the end feels like a gut punch.
What’s something you’ll never do because you’re too scared?
Skydiving is an absolute no for me. Even if you show me hard evidence that parachutes open 99.9 percent of the time, I can’t be sure that I’m not going to be the one person who ends up squashed like a bug. It would be an incredibly embarrassing and expensive way to die.
What’s the scariest place you’ve ever been?
This is going to sound like a joke, but I was truly scared in this situation. Once, my husband got recruited for some kind of weird MLM before MLMs were as much in the mainstream awareness, maybe around 2005. He was working at a videogame store and some very clean-cut guys who looked more like missionaries than customers complimented him on his sales skills and invited him to an “exciting career opportunity.” He agreed to go check it out and I tagged along.
These guys took us out to the suburbs of Columbus, Ohio, where we parked in what appeared to be an enormous, empty parking lot. To our surprise, they said the place we were going only had street parking, so they’d drive us the rest of the way. I had not watched as much true crime as I have now, so I did not know to never go to a second location, but I still felt pretty strange about the whole situation. They took us to a very clean, empty McMansion where we sat on folding chairs in front of a large white pad of paper on an easel. A man who had to be under thirty, in an ill-fitting white button-up shirt and slacks, came out to applause and asked how many of us wanted to be rich. This, apparently, was the “leader” of this business. I didn’t raise my hand, because I didn’t really want to be rich, just able to pay my bills. He immediately clocked me as not the right type of person for this opportunity, which revealed itself to be a pyramid scheme involving selling dial-up internet boosters to low-income communities, but the real sale was the recruitment of people in those communities to start their own “small business.” I was not exactly educated in business, but I could tell this wasn’t a viable model. Once we were released from the seemingly endless, painful meeting, we were taken from the empty house to the empty parking lot by an extremely perky woman, who at one point turned to me and asked how I liked the leader’s speech. I made some positive noises in her direction, and she said to me, beaming, “He’s such a believer.” It was a freaky moment because this woman seemed so disconnected from reality, joining an organization that was supposed to be a business on the basis of belief, and seemingly so happy in that delusion, that I started to feel like she could be capable of anything. Hell, maybe if we didn’t take the fifty-dollar starter pack, she’d slam us all into a brick wall. I have never been so excited to get back to my car before.
Jackie Layton and I often end up sitting next to each other at author signing events, given the way our last names nudge up against one another in the alphabet. Lucky for me, because I love talking with her! Last time this happened, we had a great conversation about terrifying things, and I said, “You know…I have a blog for you…” and here we are!
Jackie is the author of cozy mysteries with Spunky Southern Sleuths. She lives on the coast of South Carolina, where she enjoys walks on the beach and golf cart rides around the marsh. (And, as you’ll find out, running into scary wildlife.) Reading, gardening, and traveling are some of her favorite hobbies. She always keeps a notebook handy to write down ideas for future stories.
You can check out her latest book, Clover Covered Corpse, which is book 2 in the Texas Flower Farmer series. And then you can read on to hear more about her greatest fears…
What is the scariest thing you remember from childhood?
When I was in third grade, we moved to a new town, and our house had a basement. Before this, we’d lived in a little house that was one story. For some reason it terrified me to walk down the stairs into the basement. I imagined everything from bats to kidnappers.
What are your phobias?
Claustrophobia. I don’t like small, confined spaces. I don’t like blankets over my head. Jerky elevators scare me because what if they break down, and I’m stuck on one? If I pull on a shirt and it gets stuck on my head, I start to panic that I won’t be able to breathe. It’s silly, but that’s my worst phobia.
Is there anything you are terrified of eating?
Shellfish. I used to love eating almost all seafood, especially on vacation when it was fresh. Over time though, I started getting sick when I ate shellfish. The first couple times, I thought it was food poisoning, but when it happened the third time, I thought I was going to die. My doctor told me three times that I can’t ever eat shellfish again, and he made me repeat it.
What scares you most about the writing process?
Promoting my writing. It’s a challenge to find creative ways to market without looking ridiculous.
What is your greatest fear as a writer?
My greatest fear is that nobody will like my stories. Then they’ll give me one-star reviews. Then I won’t get contracts for future books. Then my writing career is over.
Do you have a childhood memory of your parents or other trusted adults being truly terrified by something?
One Friday night, my best friend and her dad came and picked me up to go to the local high school football game. I lived on a cul-de-sac. When I came outside, a UFO appeared over us. My friend’s dad and my friend got out of the car. The three of us stood on the street and watched it for a few minutes. When it disappeared, we looked at each other. He said, “Girls, get in the car or we’re going to be late for the game.” I think he was scared, and we never discussed it. I don’t know what it was, but the three of us experienced something that night.
“My friend’s dad and my friend got out of the car. The three of us stood on the street and watched it for a few minutes. When it disappeared, we looked at each other. He said, “Girls, get in the car…”
What animal scares you the most?
Alligators. I live on the coast of South Carolina, and there are frequent stories of people being attacked by alligators. When we first moved here, we were told alligators were only found in fresh water. Too bad nobody told the alligators.
There are also a lot of snakes around here. I’ve had friends kill snakes with guns and shovels. When I come across a snake, I just run.
