To answer your question about me…

What’s with the obsession with death, zombies and horror?

The question comes from Cathy, my sister-in-law, from the post below this one.

It’s a good question and one I actually have an answer to. People have asked me this before and I have really done some soul searching around it. I can sum it up in one word: FEAR. Fear of what? DEATH. That’s right, I am a massive ‘fraidy-cat’ that coupled with having been adopted on Halloween doomed me to this life.

It developed out of my fear of my own mortality. As a child I was horrified by things like mummies, vampires, zombies, ghosts, aliens and monsters. In fact anything that could even in the remotest chance cause my demise I avoided like the plague (especially things like the plague). I feared death (perhaps even irrationally) for someone so young. I was unable to watch a scary movie without horrific nightmares for weeks or even months afterward.

Ancient Egypt, mummies and mummification scared the crap out of me so it also became a fascination culminating in my having vivid nightmares of being an Egyptian Priest who dressed in the likeness of the Anubis, the jackal-headed God of the Dead, performing funerary rites.

When my family and I attended Disneyworld I was unable to even start the Haunted-Mansion ride. Once inside the mansion I lost the my oh-so tenuous grip on my composure and had to be escorted crying through the inner workings of the mansion. My family continued on with the ride and I waited for them embarrassed, but relieved. Still to this day even a ride like a roller coaster terrifies me so much I have yet to endure one. I’m 34 and have no plan on hopping into one of those little cars to have myself a heart attack. No thanks. Too close to the edge for me.

I had to learn to cope. I think that the Haunted Mansion was a turning point. I got to see the very unscary behind-the-scenes of the ride as I made my way outside to safety.

As none of us know what’s on the ‘other side’ so rather than just hide in a closet and tremble I confront my fears of death by learning as much about them as I can. I voraciously read books on the subject; literally hundreds. Everything from Raymond Moody’s – Life After Life to the Egyptian Book of the Dead through which I even learned a bit about hieroglyphics. Right now I’m reading Stiff – The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers.

I began learning about how horror movies were made when I was very young. While other kids were playing sports I was obsessed with people classic horror movie folks like Boris Karloff and Lon Chaney and devoured books about them. That led to my appreciation of horror as a genre.

I have worked in a cemetery as a gravedigger and done security in various hospital morgues, ER’s and even at an abandoned insane asylum. I have even had the rare experience of watching a fellow employee die of a massive heart attack right before my eyes. That’s not something I wish for everyone to see, but am grateful today to have had the experience.

The fear I feel from a good horror movie, knowing how they are made and that it’s ‘only a movie’ is actually extremely fun for me. I found myself grinning like a madman at the recent Texas Chainsaw Massacre film wishing that one day I could make people feel this way. One day I will. Writing about death is cathartic and making a scary movie would be the ultimate for me in dealing with my fears.

Basically, my life has become about understanding that which I fear so much – death.

Today I love being scared.

I hope that answers your question and Happy Halloween.