Halloween Haunts: Why Write Horror? by Megan Bledsoe

Halloween Haunts: Why Write Horror?

by Megan Bledsoe

My mom remembers sitting side-by-side with me in a vinyl green recliner back when I was two years old. She had her arm around me, was cuddling me close, when I suddenly gasped and twisted to look behind me.

“What? What is it?” Mom asked.

“Scary man pinch me.”

Mom says that I said those words in earnest as I rubbed my backside, that I was dead serious.  I don’t remember doing any of this, but Mom says that she twisted around in that squeaky recliner herself and looked around the room for the scary man before wondering if the house had a ghost.

It did. I’m sure of it.

So why do I write horror?

While still living in that same spooky house, the one perched atop the bluffs, surrounded by struggling evergreens, just steps from the beach—a house that ultimately burned to the ground—I remember lying in my toddler-sized bed and watching a hand, a gray, melted hand, rise from beneath my bed, through the crack between the left side of my mattress and the wall. The hand reached over my midsection, its fingers bent and mangled. It plucked at the fuzzy yellow fabric of my blanket. And pulled it off me.

I watched, mouth gaping, not breathing, hairs tingling at my hairline, as the hand slipped back down through the crack between my bed and the wall. It dragged my blanket with it, the fabric slipping, ticklesome, over my bare legs.

I didn’t move, didn’t even shut my eyes, not for the whole rest of the night, which was probably only thirty minutes—the window gave enough light that I could see, so it must’ve been almost morning—but I remember it feeling like eternity.

Eventually Mom came to wake me up in the morning, and I was still lying there, scared as could be, taking shallow sips of breath.  She looked down at my supine body, arms stiff at my sides, bare legs poking out of my nightshirt.

“Where’s your blanket?” she asked.

So why do I write horror?

Fast forward enough years that my mom is no longer down the hall, and I’m once again in bed. I’m fast asleep.

Until I’m not.

My eyes flash open, and two monochrome beings are crouched on either side of me, one white and one red.

The red one vanishes immediately.

I can’t move. I’m frozen in bed. I’m an October baby who’s been interested in Halloween and horror and things that haunt for a while now, so I know that I’m in a hypnagogic state, complete with sleep paralysis and hallucinations.

In other words, I know it’s all just a dream.

Right?

But that monochromatic white being is still there, still crouched beside me, its shins brushing against my shoulder.

And then it stands up.  I watch as it rises, slowly, as if trying not to frighten me, and then it steps backward, off the bed. It actually sinks a couple of feet, as if it were stepping downward, onto the floor.

I watch as it backs away from me, slowly, no sudden moves.  It backs up until it reaches the sliver of wall between my bedroom door and the closet.  It stands there, and it watches me, holding its hands in front of its abdomen. Its fingers fret themselves. The movement gives a troubled energy to its featureless pure-white face: troubled and intent as it watches me.

And as I watch it.  I watch it while I try to wiggle my fingers, as I try to stretch my toes. I watch it as all twenty digits come back to life—as the solid white being fades to nothing before my wide-awake eyes.

So why do I write horror?

I don’t know.

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Megan Bledsoe is the debut author of Girl, Incorrupted: a love-horror story. Read the first few chapters at https://tinyurl.com/ReadGirlIncorruptedNow  .  For links to the Look Book, Megan’s website, and all the other fun things, visit: meganbledsoe.com/linkinbio.