As I mentioned here on Tuesday, I appeared on the "Monster, She Wrote" podcast talking horror for kids and teens and announced this week's DOUBLE giveaway. [Click through for the details on how to enter.]
Today, I am featuring co-host Melanie R. Anderson and giving her a chance to tell us all why she loves horror. Here is her bio:
Melanie R. Anderson holds a Ph.D. in American Literature from the University of Mississippi. She is an assistant professor of English at Delta State University in Cleveland, MS, where she teaches courses in American literature. She researches and writes about the American Gothic and supernatural literature (with occasional forays into pop culture). When she is not writing or teaching, she is one of the hosts of The Know Fear Cast, a podcast about horror and all the things that scare us. She also co-hosts The Monster, She Wrote Podcast, a podcast about women creating in the darker genres. Presently, she resides in the Mississippi Delta with her dog, Bobbie.
One of the things Anderson shares is her journey to understanding herself as a horror fan. I also greatly appreciate her discussion of how much more she appreciates horror since she has become an academic who specializes in it. There is much here for all library workers to take away, but especially those of you who look down upon the genre.
Why I love horror
By Melanie R. Anderson
This is going to seem like a strange beginning for an explanation of why I love horror, but, for the longest time, I didn’t think of myself as a horror fan. I don’t think I’m alone in this, but I so identified horror with slasher movies that I just assumed I wasn’t a horror fan since I wasn’t a fan of the movies. When I was in my early 20s, however, I met people who liked the same types of scary stuff that I liked, and I realized horror has way more variety than I was giving it credit for.
Looking back on what I read when I was a kid, I definitely see a path to the horror genre. I read a lot of fantasy and sci-fi and was a big mystery fan, but I was drawn to spooky stories. When I was really little, one of my favorites for my mom to read to me was There’s a Monster at the End of this Book. When I was in elementary school, I read Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark and the Bunnicula series. I liked mystery series that incorporated paranormal investigation, so I blew through the local library’s collection of The Three Investigators books. They were like the Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew mysteries I read, but they were really into investigating hauntings and the books had references to Alfred Hitchcock as a peripheral character. My mom has always been a fan of creature features, particularly Godzilla and The Creature from the Black Lagoon, so I watched classic monster movies. When I visited my grandparents, we listened to dramas on the public radio station during dinner, and I vividly remember hearing someone perform Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart.”
Speaking of Poe, I loved reading his stories and poems for school. It was like getting away with reading my creepy mysteries when I should have been reading Literature with a capital L. I felt the same about a few of Hawthorne’s short stories. Though high school me hated The Scarlet Letter, I did like The House of the Seven Gables and its Usher-esque aspects. I encountered other scary writers in school, too. I remember reading Ray Bradbury’s “There Will Come Soft Rains” in middle school and feeling terrified, but wanting to read more. I was introduced to Shirley Jackson via “The Lottery,” which properly shocked me. That story led me to pick up The Haunting of Hill House when I saw it in a bookstore, and I loved it. In college, I read Toni Morrison’s Beloved in a class on the American Novel. The true events that inspired Morrison took place near where I lived, yet I hadn’t learned about them in school. That made me see more possibilities for supernatural fiction. It could force readers to face the real horrors of history that still haunt our present moment.
When I was a kid, ghost stories forced me to think about things beyond my own little world. Those stories let me ponder the terrors of death and things we can’t explain in a controlled fictional setting. Reading them made me aware of history, not in a sophisticated way, of course, but in a-lot-of-things-happened-before-I-existed kind of way. Ghosts are people from the past! Other people lived in our house before us! Maybe our house is haunted!
As I read more and became an academic who writes about supernatural fiction, I began to appreciate how writers use horror to call our attention to parts of history we may not learn about in school. It shows us that the past isn’t really behind us or completely unrelated to where we are now. I realized that houses like Jackson’s Hill House aren’t just haunted places with ghosts. These haunted places make us face the horrible truth that houses can hide pain and dysfunction. Real life horrors can hide behind fictional ones. Once I knew this was what I wanted to write about, I had a lot more weird and supernatural stuff to read.
I think this is part of the allure of horror. Our lives swing precariously around scary things we don’t want to think about, like death, loss, a painful past, our inability to explain the world to our children or ourselves, or fear for our safety. Horror becomes the space where we can see someone else trying to deal with these things. We face the abyss vicariously. Plus, since horror has so many subgenres, there is something for anyone who wants to try it. Horror also has a penchant for slipping into other genres, which I love. Recently, Lisa Kroger and I recorded an episode for The Monster She Wrote Podcast on Kelly Link’s “Two Houses.” I don’t think a story could fit more solidly within my wheelhouse. It was influenced by Ray Bradbury, it has aspects of the weird, and it’s set on a possibly haunted space ship. I was sold from the first page.
Of course, I still love a good old haunted house tale with some creaking floorboards, unpredictable doors, a creepy caretaker, moving portraits, unreliable electricity, strange whispers, and maybe an attic or basement that wasn’t in the original blueprints. Is there a team of investigators staying for a few nights who are convinced they can explain everything? Even better.
I guess I am a fan of horror after all.
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