Librarians' Day is Live and a Bonus Why I Love Horror for Dia de Los Muertos

Welcome to the launch day for the 4th Annual Horror Writers' Association's Librarians' Day, this year brought to you virtually with the help of ARRT.

Everything you need to participate, view, and access resources is all on this one page courtesy of ARRT [and in particular, Steering Committee Member, Stacey].

November 1st is Also Day of the Dead, and I am combining both Librarians' Day and Day of the Dead into one bonus "Why I Love Horror" blog post. Welcome to the blog, LD panelist, Cynthia Pelayo sharing more of her personal horror journey with us.

Watch her with Daniel Kraus, Stephen Graham Jones, and me in our "State of Horror Today" panel. Link here.

And keep an eye out for my upcoming review of her brand new novel, Children of Chicago, in the January issue of Library Journal.

But first, why Pelayo loves horror...

Why I Love Horror: Day of the Dead Edition

by Cynthia Pelayo

I am never going to be like my mother, I used to think. I always liked to think of myself as more like my father. My father is more positive and adventurous, and my mother is quieter and more reserved; choosing her words very carefully, or providing little to no words in a conversation at all, but I have learned over time that I am like both of them. And each of them gave me an early introduction into the horror genre, a genre for which my love has only grown.  

I was lucky in that I was able to meet three of four of my grandparents, and my mother’s father was very much like her, a solemn – and quite frankly – frightening man, who spoke little, but was always aware of those around him and what they were saying. My father’s parents were salt of the earth kind of people. They were beyond poor, but so kind and willing to share anything they had in their near-empty refrigerator with you, that they would supplement with hours of wonderful conversation peppered with intense laughter, seated on the front porch of their home on a mountain top.

I am the sum of all of these people, my parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents whom I have only heard vague stories about, and great-great grandparents we have tried to trace back and beyond. 

It is Day of the Dead, and what I recognize on this day is the hard work my ancestors put in so that I could find myself with you here today. We believe that death is not an end, but another continuation of our story, and while all of my ancestors may not be by my side today, and every day, I am here and I am the product of each and every one of them. I am the product of their decisions, stories, laughter, and maybe a little bit of the things they loved, and one of the things my parents loved was a good scary story.

So, why do I love horror? I can tell you how I fell in love with horror, and it is because of my mother, that woman I said I would never be like. My earliest memory of a scary story was told to me by my mother. 

She told me the nursery rhyme - 
There was an old woman who lived in a shoe,
She had so many children, she didn’t know what to do

And the nursery rhyme continues with how the woman who lived in the shoe later whipped her children, and this was all absolutely terrifying to me; that this ghastly woman hit her little children, and how they were all crammed in this shoe. 

From that moment on, I was captivated. My mother then recited all of the nursery rhymes to me that she had memorized. She would later read me whatever fairy tale stories I could get my hands on from school, and the scarier the better. While my mother struggled to read those later fairy tales and stories to me, given her first language was Spanish, she tried as best she could – for me, stumbling through new words, and falling into old worlds she had experienced when she too was a little girl. 

My father liked to tell me old folk tales of ghosts who lived in the mountains of his childhood home. He told me of spectral lights and whispers that carried in the wind at night, and when I asked him what he believed was the cause of those lights and those whispers he said plainly - ghosts. When I asked him where he learned those stories he told me those were tales that were told to him by his mother, and likely further back.

Maybe that’s something that you and I share, maybe it was a parent, or sibling, or a close family member that introduced you to the horror genre, whether through words on a page or a scary movie. I can tell you that one of my favorite things to do now is to sit and watch scary movies with my young son, be it Gremlin’s or Bettlejuice, or maybe something a little scarier like Poltergeist. We gather popcorn and candy, and curl up on the sofa with blankets in the dark, and those are some of the best moments – he and I watching these Gothic scenes unfold, our hearts racing as little creatures appear on screen, or a ghost floats across the television. Then, when the movie is finished and the lights come on we laugh and hug, because it was all just a scary story – something we survived together. I hope that these moments are as special for him as they are for me.

My fascination with folk and fairy tales has since found itself continually appearing in all of my own writing, from fiction to poetry to essays. There’s also this wonder about reading the Grimms’ Fairy Tales, knowing that when I read “Hansel and Gretel,” “Rumpelstiltskin,” “The Pied Piper of Hamelin” or “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” that I am sharing in a tradition that goes far back, beyond me, my parents, and grandparents. In reading a fairy tale, I am likely sharing in something that you yourself experienced with your own family, that you found wonder and magic and terror in, but that you too survived.

Stories unite us in the most fantastic ways. And so, I have continued on the tradition of sharing fairy tales and scary stories with my own children, continuing this wonderful gift that my parents gave to me that I can now share. So, I suppose I am like my mother, in many ways, and because of her, I share my love of fairy tales, of story, and horror with my little ones whom I hope can continue on that tradition long after I am gone, when I am then their ancestor – a picture in a golden frame on top of their altar for Day of the Dead.