I love scary stories.
I’m also a total chicken. I grew up telling stories on the playground, huddled around trees, or crawling into quiet places with friends to listen to urban legends and frightening tales, from La Llorona to Bloody Mary, to strange tales of a woman with the ribbon around her throat that literally held her head on her body, to creepy dolls come to life the moment you closed your eyes to sleep at night. I knew I’d never be able to sleep at night, but I couldn’t help myself.
I devoured them!
In class, we learned more about La Llorona (a figure that inspired my novella, Weep, Woman, Weep), Baba Yaga, and all sorts of spooky stories that gave me a good chill but were rather less terrifying than what I heard on the playground.
Of course, there was no better time to tell and listen to these stories than fall. As the season slowly ripened into Halloween, the days got shorter, and the cool evenings and turning leaves were the perfect backdrop for stories that reminded us that there is more to this world than meets the eye.
I would come home from school filled up on those terrible tales and, after playing in piles of leaves in my backyard, would feel a growing sense of unease as the sun began to set and darkness took over. I was certainly grateful for the comforting presence of my dogs when night stole across the sky. The feelings were pushed away with dinner, in the cozy brightness of the kitchen and the warmth of family, but readily came back when I was tucked in bed later that night.
Every creek, howl of wind, or cricket chirp sounded like a ghostly footstep, the weeping woman, or all manner of supernatural threats. Mirrors were not to be looked in when the sun went down. Windows must be closed at night, lest La Llorona find a way in. Blankets were to be tucked around you up to your chin to protect you from whatever might be lurking under the bed.
I felt would never fall asleep!
But, of course, I did. And with the coming sun came the confidence of youth that there was nothing truly scary in this world and I went right back to the playground ready to consume more lurid and horrible tales.
They were terrifying. They were also thrilling. I couldn’t help myself—even when they gave me nightmares and my mom tried to get me to stop listening to these stories—they had this allure to me, pulling me into a world of the strange and the gothic.
The feeling didn’t go away as I got older. Take, for example, the time I went trick o’ treating with a friend in middle school, one of the last times I would venture out on that childhood ritual. I was no stranger to haunted houses—there were plenty in my neighborhood. I lived next door to one and there was another a few blocks away that looked like something out of a gothic novel: big, dark, looming, and a story about a murder so strange and unexpected it devolved into its own neighborhood legend with everyone having a slightly different explanation for why the house just felt…off.
My friend and I were alone on the street and were doing our best to casually walk past the house, feeling very brave and very adult in our fairy costumes, proud of the fact that we could trick-or-treat unchaperoned. But once we neared that house, suddenly home felt so very far away, other groups of Halloween revelers so very far away. There was only the darkness surrounding us and the specter of that gina those before us.
Then we heard something—a yip, a yell, from someone in the distance—and we screamed, running for the safety of my home. Gone were the bold, brave adults, and in their place were two frightened children who wanted nothing more than the warm lights and safety of home. As it turns out, the noise we heard was from a bunch of wild partiers, but it became so much more frightening when it was disembodied, and the shadows fed our imaginations, as did all the terrible tales I’d been consuming that season.
As scary as that was, and as silly as my friend and I felt in retrospect, there was no denying the fun we had, nor the deep sense of comfort we felt in returning to my house. That’s what scary stories do for us. They bring us home. We find catharsis in facing the darkness and making it out the other side. We appreciate the light where and when we can find it.
Here I am now—still loving scary stories. Still a total chicken. Still ready for a good tale of terror…in the daylight. Still not looking in mirrors and closing all my windows at night. And I speed up whenever I have to walk by that haunted house, indeed any haunted house, less the specters inside think to invite me in.
That’s the beauty of these early childhood frights. They gave me a solid appreciation of the thrills of a good scary story and a healthy respect for the unseen worlds or even vibes I get that tell me a person or situation is more than meets the eye.
This is why I tell spooky stories today. They reveal so much more about ourselves and the world around us than many an ordinary tale. From writing horror comedy about the terrors of dating in Hungry Business to the haunting wails of La Llorona in Weep, Woman, Weep, all my tales are inspired by the ordinary gothic all around us, pairing catharsis as we face the dark and find the light.
What do you love about scary stories?
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