31 Days of Horror: Day 7-- Why I Love Horror by Lisa Kröger

As I mentioned here yesterday, I appeared on the "Monster, She Wrote" podcast talking horror for kids and teens. [Click through for the details on this week's giveaway too]

Lisa Kröger is a writer who lives on the Gulf Coast, where she enjoys a life of reading, writing, and all things horror. Sometimes she uses her Ph.D. in Gothic literature to teach, but mostly she uses it to write horror in all formats: fiction, nonfiction, podcasts, and screenplays. Follow her newest work on Facebook and Twitter. She’s an active member of the Horror Writer's Association and the NYX Horror Collective, a group focused on women-created genre content for film, television, and new media.

Lisa is represented by Ann Leslie Tuttle at Dystel, Goderich, & Bourret. 

She's also a host on the Monster, She Wrote and Know Fear podcasts, biweekly casts that dissects the horror genre. Visit the Know Fear website for more details. www.knowfearcast.com 

Here is Lisa with her story of falling in love with horror. What I love about Kröger's answer to my very general call for pieces on "Why I Love Horror" is how much of her personal experiences as a young, southern girl are tied up in her essay.

You will see this going forward in each essay I feature, and that is why I do this. I ask these practioners of horror to share why they love it, why they have dedicated their lives to the genre in orderto help you see many different reasons of why someone is drawn to horror, especially if you personally are not.

 Kröger's piece is just the fist of many to come this year, from a wide range of voices. There are presented here for you to learn more about a specific author and/or some specific titles, some which may work with your readers

Click here to see every "Why I Love Horror" pieceI have ever run. But now, here is Kröger kicking things off for another year.

Horror: A Love Story

by Lisa Kröger

 

Let me tell you about growing up a girl in the South in the 1980s and 1990s. My mother dressed me up like I was a porcelain doll for most of my early years. In nearly every picture I have of myself from the ages of one to six, I am wearing a dress. And not just any dress, mind you. I am wearing a full on doll’s dress, with an underskirt that poofs out and makes me look like I am Shirley Temple. The ensemble is usually completed by black patent leather shoes with white lacy ankle socks. My hair is mostly styled in corkscrew curls. And—I am not kidding you—I have several pictures in which I am also wearing white gloves. I was a living doll. Something for my mother to dress up. I remember my aunts teasing my mother, telling her that she was going to have to let my feet touch dirt at some point in my life.

           

As a child, I truly loved wearing these dresses. I would twirl around in the skirts. I would pretend to drink tea with my little white gloves on. I still like dressing up in “girly” things, truth be told. But, let me tell you, it was work. My hair was blonde and fine and didn’t want to hold a curl. So my mother would spend what felt like hours—usually on a Saturday night—winding my hair around little pink foam curlers, fastened with plastic rods, and then I’d go to sleep. Have you ever tried sleeping with your hair pulled tightly from your scalp and little plastic rods between your skull and your pillow? It’s not comfortable. At all. But I’d wake up Sunday morning with a head full of beautiful curls, which I would wear to church.

 

At the time, my family attended a fundamentalist Christian church, where I was taught that “good girls” were sweet and quiet and never questioned what their elders said. And in my poofy dress with my white gloves folded politely across my lap, I had no trouble fitting in. My mother was a makeup artist, and she taught me how to put my makeup on so that no one could tell I was wearing any. Apparently, the good girl has a dress code. My lashes should be long and black, my cheeks a youthful rosy pink. My lips should be tinted a barely there “nude.” I even had my “colors done,” and those of you who don’t know what I’m talking about, you are fortunate. Apparently, I’m an “Autumn.” I was given a wheel of color swatches and told to wear only those colors, or else. (Cue sinister music.)

 

As I got older, the “good girl” message grew. Good girls dated boys in order to earn their “MRS degree” (yes, I know it was the 1990s and not the 1950s, but it was the message just the same). But a good girl didn’t date too many boys, or she would dirty her reputation. My dress was monitored at school and at home. I had my sleeveless shirts measured (two inches or more at the shoulder was acceptable) and my skirts measured (kneel down on knees, with a ruler). Once, as a child (maybe Kindergarten or first grade), I was sent home because my sundress showed too much of my back. My mother was enraged—I was a child in a sundress on a hot day. How was this breaking a rule? Still, the message was received: A good girl dresses modestly. Everything felt measured. Everything felt monitored.

 

I was lucky in that my mother always made sure that I had a full library of books at my fingertips, from the moment I was born. As soon as I could read, she took me to the bookstore or the library, and she let me loose. It was total freedom. Even better, she never monitored what I read. In the stacks, I found books that felt forbidden. Books that scared me. One of my favorites was Betty Ren Wright’s The Dollhouse Murders. It’s probably no surprise I was attracted to it; I loved miniatures and dollhouses, and this one was haunted! The story, as I remember it, is about a girl who goes to live with her aunt for the summer. She discovers an old dollhouse in the attic, one that is a perfect miniature of the house she is living in, right down to the furniture. Only the dolls move around at night. She finds them in horrible positions, like they’ve been murdered. Of course, then she discovers that her family is hiding a gruesome past. I read it until the cover came off. It opened a floodgate for me. I began to seek out horror and “scary” as much as I could. Christopher Pike, sure. R. L. Stine, yes please. Ray Bradbury, bring it on.

 

Around the same time, my Memaw (possibly the most Southern grandmother name out there) saw what I was gravitating towards and silently sat me down in front of the television. I remember it vividly. It was evening. My little sister and I were playing dolls (She-Ra, I think). My grandfather was asleep in his armchair. Memaw pulled out a VHS tape and hit play, saying, “I hope your mother won’t mind you seeing this.”

 

 It was the first time I watched Vincent Price’s House of Wax.

 

I had never seen any Vincent Price before, and I was mesmerized. Vincent Price was so weirdly wonderful. He was tall and strange—I couldn’t take my eyes off him. And women were being turned into life-sized wax dolls! (Are you sensing a theme here?) Reader, this began what some might call an obsession for me. I prefer to call it a love story.

 

Reading those books and watching those movies, I had an escape. I didn’t have a terrible life as a child, far from it. But I grew up knowing that I was expected to be a certain way—to follow the path of the “good girl,” the doll come to life. Horror, at first, was thrilling because it felt forbidden. I wasn’t “supposed to” like to read about grisly murders. I wasn’t “supposed to” gleefully watch people be violently hacked up. I certainly was not supposed to take my mother’s red lipstick and use it to recreate my favorite bloody scenes. (I know there is a photograph of my little sister somewhere with her entire face painted a bloody red.)

 

Horror became more than an escape—it was permission slip. It was an invitation to be something different. To explore the darker side of myself—that part of me that didn’t fit into the tight parameters of “good.” Horror allowed me to see myself as brave, and it introduced me to a certain kind of “misbehaving” women.

 

I think that’s a big part of why I still love horror, and why I celebrate women who write horror. It’s certainly why I wrote Monster, She Wrote, about the writers who pioneered the genre. And why I’m so excited to see reprints by some of my favorite women writers with Valancourt’s new series of “Monster, She Wrote” titles.

 

For me, horror is more than a jump scare in a book at Halloween. It was freedom. It was exhilaration. And maybe, it was a tiny bit of rebellion. As I grew, I took horror with me. And I’ve never regretted it.