It Must Be A Horror Thing

From the time I was a little tyke I loved the bizarre. Darkness scared me because of what I imagined could lurk in it, yet the very thing that I feared compelled me to no end. I craved the strange.
I had a set of Time-Life books circa 1968 that dealt with the mind, matter, health and disease, the cell, and all manner of science. They were filled with images of the human body and its inner workings. They contained artist rendering that both attracted and repelled. I loved those books and poured over them for years being fascinated by there combination of beauty with the grotesque.

Cartoonists like Charles Addams of "The Addams Family" fame terrified me. His drawings were hypnotic. I found myself examining there intricate Grand Guignol leanings for hours on end. In the same vein I found the humorously exaggerated animation of Terry Gilliam both frightening and funny. His contributions to the Monty Python legend were strangely unsettling indeed.

I suppose I found the creepy everywhere in my youth. The public library held untold visions of thrilling terror not only within the likely pages of Poe or Wells, but also in the tales of simple children's literature. "The Runaway Pancake" would eventually be devoured and "The Gingerbread Man" always left this Earth a quarter at a time.

The intriguing darkness only grew when EC Comics entered the picture. "Tales from the Crypt", "The Haunt of Fear", and "The Vault of Horror" cast no veil over the blood and gore they wielded. Add to these fantasy funny book nightmares my access to my Grandfather's Boxing magazines and my minds eye was fright-mare bound.

Television and the movies fed the horror beast in me. It was the sixties and seventies after all. Every local hometown TV station had there own horror host and every drive-in blazed dusk to dawn terror into the star covered night.

So, yes I love the bizarre, the grotesque, the things that go bump in the night. I soon hope to examine the choicest  bits from my warped memory so that all of you can get my 52 years honed perspective on horror. Just one little girls daydreams of blood.