31 Days of Horror: Day 21-- Why I Love Horror by Jonathan Lees

Today I have another brand new addition to the Why I Love Horror universe, but it is not another librarian for youth. Rather, today I have the man responsible for the Final Frame Film Festival which happens every year at StokerCon, Jonathan Lees.

But Jonathan is not just the Final Frame guy. No, he is also an accomplished writer. In fact, he has a great novella which came out on October 1st from one of my favorite small horror presses (Lethe), entitled August:

Discharged in disgrace and punished for the very thing done to him, a young veteran returns to his sweltering Massachusetts hometown, under siege by a heatwave, to find his parents won't open the door. They've left him a check and a note. They're hiding in their own house. And August, the boy he's loved since before either of them had words for it, is in a hospital bed wrapped in gauze, severely burned nearly to nothing in a fire that gutted a gay bar in town.

Something is wrong with the light here. Strangers dissolve into smoke at the edges of his vision. The men he finds in blacked-out bars shed their skin for something older and hungrier underneath. And every thread he pulls on, trying to find who set the fire, leads back to the people who raised him. August is a novella that burns at both ends-part elegy, part fever dream, part act of arson an inflammatory rant against everything that failed to protect family, country, God. Visceral, hallucinatory, and unflinchingly queer.

So you may think you know him as the short horror film festival organizer, but get to know him as w writer to watch through his new novella and his essay below.

Ad come back tomorrow for a chance to win your own copy of August along with 2 other books.

Here is Jonathan Lees on why he loves horror.

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Why I Love Horror

By Jonathan Lees

Of course I love horror.

Horror is illustrative of danger and I’ve been drawn to danger my entire life— as a child skateboarding through the rusted remnants of an industrial town gone to seed, as a teenager flinging myself into the throng of a hardcore show, as a young man coming out and cruising as the AIDS crisis hit its boiling point. I grew up in an age where parents thought we’d have just as much a chance being impaled with a broadsword trademarked by Gary Gygax than killed for who we were or what we believed in. 

People ask us how we can love horror when the world is horrific enough.

I then ask, when has the world not been horrific? Should we look away? Are the same people telling me not to read it, the same ones that claim I’m welcoming in ill behavior, the ones shutting their eyes and praying it all away, the same people that have no issue watching cities catch fire, or the casualties of foreign lands while they chew on lukewarm animal flesh?

The more the world gave me to fear, the more I investigated with a sharp light and a hesitant step. I am that idiot walking down the dark hallway towards the things others run from, and also, the person that thinks every misshapen shadow is a potential threat. I am very well aware the spider on the ceiling might nest in my throat the second I shut my eyes. In fact, I anticipate it.

So, it came to be that the artists that made such a deep impression on me were like, “Oh, you think the world is scary? Well, what about this?!” Those bold enough to try to marry very real human reactions and emotions with the superstitious, supernatural, or surreal. The ones that understood the rot under your mother’s prized rug or the seed of Satan susurrating from the basement. Whether inhaling the yellowed pages of mass market paperbacks or watching the light flicker through film prints or deciphering the in-between glitches on tape, horror had its hold on me and those that were drawn to the dark arts I considered visionaries, artists who knew how to process all that is terrible and terrifying for those who didn’t want to shy away, those who wanted a magnifying glass held to it.  

Horror can be one of the most honest expressions, the emotions that bleed into everything else from humor to romance to fantasy. There is no life without horror, as I see it, and I must have recognized that at an early age before I even knew what true horror was. I sought out and found horror in everything. So, even when I didn’t have a paperback lying around, or an old copy of Fangoria, I conjured my own sinister imaginings. There is a grace within horror that rests its beautiful head on rot and inhales deeply. In deft hands and daft minds, it is the language, the vision, the senses, that I prefer. I will gladly take its hands and allow it to show me the sights as it offers a protection, a rulebook, a glance at the worst the world could offer and beyond –a world that wants to see us dead. 

Alone or together, facing what we fear whether metaphorical or physical makes us stronger. It helps us understand what others have gone through and what makes us more human.

It was easier for people to assign concern to the demons we want to believe are real rather than the ones we know are. I know better. I sometimes felt safer walking the streets of New York at three AM than I would walking around a suspiciously quiet suburb at three PM. The only horrors I enjoy come with a page count, not an actual body count. A perceived terror over the perpetual punishments of reality. An instinct for survival, against all odds, is what horror taught me… which is more than I could say for the textbooks of my grade school years. More than I could say for the ones that make a performance of turning  away from horror, the ones who pretend not to shiver with the thrill of fear, the same ones think the goth kid is the problem, that we’ll all be sacrificed in an underground tunnel by obsessed gamers, that the queers are grooming our kids, or ignore that the drugs in those teens hands were made and distributed by adults and forced into their neighborhoods. Seemed like the ones who make a show of looking away are often the problem themselves. You might even see a slight grin as they turn.  I’ve learned my nightmares aren’t as scary as what ensues in broad daylight but that doesn’t remove my desire to explore the darkness further and see what new terrors our imaginations can uncover. 

So, twist my wrists, infect my brain, drain me, and drag me to hell and let us scream in the face of fate. Whisper things that make me shake and bury my bones in it. Blood is the paint of horror, and it makes sense since it is literally what keeps us conscious, alive.

Of course, I love horror.

31 Days of Horror: Day 20-- Why I Love Horror by Writer and School Librarian Jose Cruz

The children are reading horror in large numbers. The children have always read horror in large numbers, but the librarians are starting to note the checkouts rising. In fact, later this month I will have a post with more facts about this claim. 

As I wear my hat as on of the Co-Chairs of Summer Scares, I have also noticed more school and public libraries using the Summer Scares selections and programming guides to engage kids with horror all year long.

The increase is so noticeable, we have recruited two Middle Grade librarians to help us as we craft the programing guide for 2027. We have always had volunteers who work with an adults and teens, but for the Middle Grade programming ideas and planning, we have not had specific experts.

No longer. This year we welcome both a public library and a school library MG Horror expert to our Summer Scares Programming Guide team. 

But before we put them to work on the guide, I asked both to introduce themselves by sharing a Why I Love Horror essay with all of you.

Yesterday we heard from Maisie Iven. Today it is Jose Cruz:

Jose Cruz is an elementary school librarian and author based in southwest Florida. His scary chapter book, NIGHT LIGHT, is out now from Capstone Publishing. He is also the host of School Book Scare, a podcast dead-icated to the world of middle grade horror and the people who bring it to life, from authors to librarians and everyone in between. He is currently hard at work on his first middle grade novel and trying to convince the world that kids should be able to read the things that interest them. He has three kids, two cats, and one wife. 

I met Jose at StokerCon last June. He won the Scholarship from Hell which pays for an emerging writer to come to StokerCon. I was connected with Jose before we got to Pittsburgh because, as well as being a writer, he is also a school librarian.

I am so glad he applied and was chosen because the Libraries Committee has plans for him and Maisie. As I mentioned above we are excited to have them help enrich our programming offering for kids. More on that soon, but first, here is Jose on Why he loves horror...

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Why I Love Horror

by Jose Cruz

“Mr. Cruz, where do you keep the scary books?”

It’s a question I get at least once a week. Once answered, I watch as a horde of students swarm around four tall shelves with dark, foreboding signage. The words “SPOOKY” and “SCARY” proudly proclaim their spot in the elementary school library where I work. The signs display images of cuddly monsters, creaky houses, wailing ghosts, a pointed witch’s hat, and a mangy cat with its neck twisted at an unhealthy angle. 

If something inside of you kindled at the mention of any of those, you have already answered that perennial favorite, “Why do you love horror?” On its most primal level, the answer is simple and ever the same: it speaks to you. 

Our experiences may provide different shades to our reasoning, but we all operate from that one primary color. We see it, and it sends sparks through the cobwebbed corners of our brains. 

This was my experience from the days of toddlerhood, when it took nothing more than a pack of bats flying across a sated moon to set my blood tingling. Since then, I have acknowledged and nurtured this love with very few reservations. I like what I like, just like everyone else. 

And though my own history might prove to be an item of passing interest, my primary interest these days is seeing what I can do to acknowledge and nurture this same curiosity in the hearts of the kids I serve. 

It’s my contention that, at some point in time, horror draws in almost everyone. Even if only for the most fleeting of seasons or moments. At each end of the horror spectrum are what I call the “lifers” and the “toe dippers.” The terms are self-explanatory. I reside very comfortably in the “lifer” neighborhood. Horror is never far from my mind, and it always feels like home. 

On the other end are the “toe dippers.” These folks are the social drinkers, the ones who only imbibe when they trade a ghost story during a sleepover or brave a Halloween haunt arm-in-arm with a friend. Their interest in the scene lasts as long as it remains a point of conversation. But the interest is still there, and in my mind it should be satiated just as much as the ravenous hunger of the “lifer.” 

It is from this same spectrum that my students come to me seeking knowledge. I treat every question, request, and opportunity for reader’s advisory with the gravity that I believe it deserves. And while every section of my library receives as much care as the next, the scary section holds an obvious place in my heart.

This was the first area of the library that I “cross-pollinated.” Gone were the needless distinctions between fiction and nonfiction and the random segregation of formats. Here now was a one-stop shop that not only had picture books, chapter books, graphic novels, and story collections all rubbing shoulders, but one where the books on cryptids, the paranormal, and any other tangentially spooky subject previously relegated to Dewey Decimal Land were invited to share space with the strange bedfellows they deserved to be with. 

It was the kind of section I always dreamed of having as a kid. One of my first orders of business my first year as librarian was to make sure the kids at my school would get it.

If we as librarians create a section like this in our spaces, we help legitimatize the genre to our patrons. We assure them that it is worthy of our time and attention just as much as an interest in sports or animals. 

Granted, a “lifer” like me won’t bat an eye when a student comes seeking a book with “jump scares” in it—ah, youth—or wondering if I have a title that details real-life murders. This will be a challenge for those librarians closer to the “toe dipper” side, or those who fall off that side of the spectrum completely. 

While conversations about age- and school-appropriateness are a whole ‘nother kettle of fish, we must refrain from wrinkling our noses, shaking our heads, or giving any other social cue that implies our patrons are wrong for liking these kinds of things. Books are, after all, perhaps the safest outlet through which people can explore these topics, a fact sadly lost on too many politicians both now and before. 

Make them feel seen, make them feel safe. Better yet, have conversations with them. 

“Mr. Cruz, what’s the scariest book you have?”

“Well, the things you and I think are scary can be very different. Why don’t you tell me what kind of scary stuff you enjoy, and I’ll see if we have something close to that.” 

“Mr. Cruz, do you have any books with true crimes in them? Murders?”

“Well, I have a lot of books about haunted spots and spooky places, and people say they got that way because of the crimes that happened there. Would you like to see some of those?”

“Mr. Cruz, do you have any books about Backrooms or [INSERT CULTURAL ZEITGEIST HERE]?”

“I don’t think anyone’s written a book about that yet! But I’ll keep checking and add it to my shopping list if I find it.”

Specific questions like these may come from those who are more “lifer” than “toe-dipper,” but send one kid to the horror section and watch the feeding frenzy that grows from there. Regardless of the depth of their passion or interest, everyone wants a little thrill. A shock that they can be in control of. Like with humor, a chance to feel something outside the dreary sameness of simply being. In a word, an experience.

The landscape of school-age terrors is as rich and vibrant as it’s ever been. Now is the perfect time to start cultivating those macabre leanings in our youngest readers and provide a safe ride for those who just want to take the rollercoaster around once. As lovers and champions of the genre, it is in our vested interest to bring up these kids in a world where horror is accepted. Where they are accepted.

After all, I believe the children of the night are our future. 

31 Days of Horror: Day 19-- Why I Love Horror by Public Librarian Maisie Iven

The children are reading horror in large numbers. The children have always read horror in large numbers, but the librarians are starting to note the checkouts rising. In fact, later this month I will have a post with more facts about this claim. 

As I wear my hat as on of the Co-Chairs of Summer Scares, I have also noticed more school and public libraries using the Summer Scares selections and programming guides to engage kids with horror all year long.

The increase is so noticeable, we have recruited two Middle Grade librarians to help us as we craft the programing guide for 2027. We have always had volunteers who work with an adults and teens, but for the Middle Grade programming ideas and planning, we have not had specific experts.

No longer. This year we welcome both a public library and a School Library MG Horror expert to our Summer Scares Programming Guide team. 

But before we put them to work on the guide, I asked both to introduce themselves by sharing a Why I Love Horror essay with all of you.

First up today is Maisie Iven, the Nichols Library Children’s Services Manager for the Naperville [IL] Public Library. They are also a former member of the iREAD committee. iREAD is a sponsor for Summer Scares.

What I about Maisie's essay is they are able to connect their own experience with horror as a kid and through into adulthood with their kid patrons. We have Maisie's personal story and one specific kid they interact with at their public library.

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Why I Love Horror 

by Maisie Iven

It’s 8:03 pm on a school night and the children’s department of the library is mostly empty. This makes sense–most of our prime customers have early bed times, having to turn in before they turn into cranky monsters. 

But there is one little girl standing at the reference desk, she’s nine and wearing mismatched knee socks and an oversized Minecraft hoodie. “I need the scariest book you can find, stat,” she says.

“Hmmmmmm, how scary we talking? Bone chilling? Spine tingling? GROSS-GUSTING?” I ask. 

“So scary I can’t think straight.” 

And we’re off. I hand her piles of books, we talk about things she finds scary, things she doesn’t. We talk about what the last scary book she read was and why she thought it was scary. She tells me about how her parents want her to read more and they don’t care what, how her teacher read Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark (Alvin Schwartz) for Halloween last year and she’d loved it, and then, so quiet I can barely hear, she says “I liked it because it made everything else feel less scary.”

It catches me for a second, because she’s nailed it, she’s gotten exactly to the core of what horror has always meant to me. 

I think like a lot of kids, my default emotion as a child was fear. I was scared of strangers. I was scared of tests. I was scared my mom–a single parent after my dad passed away–would be in a horrifying house fire and die, leaving my brother and I as displaced as orphans (à la  Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events) to be passed around to various eccentric relatives and wayward guardians. 

I crafted elaborate rituals to ensure that she was fine. If I paused reading for the night with a paragraph left in a chapter, she wouldn’t die in her sleep. If I avoided stepping on the black tiles at school, and only stepped on the blue, she wouldn’t be in a car accident. If I avoided using the bathroom during class hours, nothing bad could happen to her while I was at school that day. My worries gnawed at me all day long, making it hard to let myself just be a kid. 

Maybe it’s important to know that most people with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder will spend years dealing with a brain designed to loop fears and worries in twisted cycle after cycle before being diagnosed. When I was small, these fears mostly had to do with various people in my life dying in strange and unsettling ways, usually gleaned from whatever fragment of a news story I’d encountered. (Don’t get me started on the anthrax attacks of the early 2000s). 

While mine was an extreme case, it’s rare to encounter kids who don’t have some deep core nightmares.

After all, we come into this world without a guidebook and with so many new things to learn about, many of which can be deeply frightening. Emergency sirens aren’t designed for sensitive kid ears. All foods are new at some point. Strangers–good and bad–abound. Learning to navigate all of that can be overwhelming and anxiety producing. I often find myself thinking that childhood is the home of horror.

And in the same way, horror is also the home of childhood. It’s where we all come from, and as we learn more, we forget how scared we were and recontextualize it as learning. I can promise you, the rose-colored glasses we think about childhood with are something we get when we’re older.  When we’re young, we know it’s overwhelming, and frightening, and everything feels awful. 

But something being fine in hindsight and something being horrifying in the moment are two things that can, and must, exist at once. 

When it comes to treating OCD, the number one skill you have to learn is sitting with discomfort, holding worries and fears within while you do the scary thing anyway. It often feels like the hardest thing in the world. But the thing that made it bearable, the thing that let me put aside my fears for just a little while, was horror. 

This might seem counterintuitive. I was worried about my mom dying so I read books where kids encountered vampire guidance counselors (Debbie Dadey’s Dracula Doesn’t Drink Lemonade), ghosts haunting their stepsisters (Wait Till Helen Comes by Mary Downing Hahn), and even monstrous librarians running the summer reading program (RL Stine’s The Girl Who Cried Monsters). But it did help, and it taught me two very important things. 

All my myriad fears were ultimately less fraught and awful than what the protagonists of my favorite books might face. Sure, I may have bestowed myself with the responsibility of keeping my family alive at age 8, but I wasn’t also dealing with a vampire rabbit (James and Deborah Howe’s Bunnicula). Some of these books were so scary that they did, just as my future Minecraft-clad patron would one day tell me, make everything else less scary.

But the other lesson, which was far more important, was that there was always something to do, always something to try. 

While adult horror might stray into the bleak and defeated (and some of my favorite horror novels and films do), horror for children tells you while there ARE monsters, that doesn’t mean you’re stuck. While fantasy might resolve with the noble protagonist dethroning the evil king and slaying the hungry dragon, horror can often be bleaker, darker, which feels in many ways far more honest. Sometimes the monsters win, sometimes they lose, but either way, you will try your best. 

Since becoming a librarian, I have used horror as a spark point to have deep discussions about race in North America with a group of teen boys (thank you, The Diviners by Libba Bray and The Marrow Thieves by Cherie Dimaline), helped a middle school girl find books that would actually keep her interest (snaps to Undead Girl Gang by Lily Anderson and Clown in a Cornfield by Adam Cesare), and helped a woman find books to binge read to distract her from the discomfort of chemotherapy (the perfect excuse for Stephen Graham Jones’ extensive back catalog). But the moments that have stuck with me closest are the times I’ve helped our youngest customers find those titles that tell them that fear is not insurmountable, suffering is not the end, and that you will face monsters, but you will rise to the challenge. 

We live in a world in which children die of brain tumors, genocides, and school shootings. We ask young people to swallow hard truths and face threats that would overwhelm adults. And we ask them to do all this while also learning how to do math, how friendships work, and how to eat vegetables even if you think they’re smelly. Of course kids love horror, didn’t you love your childhood home? 

It’s 8:34pm on a school night, and we finish checking out the stack of books. 

“Can I come back and tell you if they were scary enough?” the girl in the Minecraft hoodie asks, her pile of titles tall and precarious. 

“Absolutely, and if they’re not, we’ll find something scarier.” 

“Perfect,” she laughs. 

And it is perfect, the scariest things in life usually are. 

And because I’m a librarian and can’t stop myself from giving recommendations, I got permission to share Minecraft hoodie’s top ten best scary books she’s read, and they are below: 

1. Small Spaces by Katherine Arden
2. Scary Stories for Young Foxes by Christian McKay Heidecker
3. Fake Blood by Whitney Gardner 
4. Scritch Scratch by Lindsay Currie
5. Spirit Hunters by Ellen Oh
6. The Ghost Book by Remy Lai
7. The Jumbies by Tracie Baptise 
8. The Bellwoods Game by Celia Krampien
9. It Found Us also by Lindsay Currie (can you tell who her favorite author is?)
10. Tunnel of Bones by VE Schwab

She comes into the library at least once a week to plow through another stack of books. Recently, she’s graduated up to YA titles, and I’m excited to hear what else she’s been reading. 

31 Days of Horror: Day 18-- Weekly Links Roundup

Every Sunday during 31 Days of Horror, I will have links that I have gathered throughout the week to share here.  

• Take the New York Times Spooky Book Location Quiz (gift link)
• As part of Book Riot's Best Books of the Century So Far, they released their Horror list.
• It is alphabetical and they do not repeat authors
• This is a great suggestion list to pass on to readers
• I will repost this as part of another end of the month post as well
• Scary Audiobooks and Other Listening Suggestions for Spooky Season via Reactor
• Six Haunting Books About Sinister Houses via Reactor
• Halloween Haunts is the annual blog series by the Horror Writers Association. Authors write about their favorite Halloween memories. 
• Watch the video of the event I moderated at the NYPL -- Night at the Haunted Opera: Best New Horror 2026 Launch event.

31 Days of Horror: Day 17-- Why I Love Horror with Greg Greene

Today and yesterday, I am featuring two people who, while not horror writers with books you can add to your collections, are instrumental in our community. They both do a lot of work to support the horror world, but most importantly, they both stepped up last year to co-manage the StokerCon virtual programming. And the result...it was amazing, the best we have ever had. 

I wanted to invite them here to the blog this year because their personal Why I Love Horror stories are important. The fact that they spend so much of their free time working with and supporting the horror community is important. Sharing why horror means so much to them personally is also instructive to all of you, the library workers who work with horror readers. Understanding why 

 Yesterday I featured Robb Olson here. But today it is Greg Greene's turn:

Greg Greene lives in Nashville where he obsesses over horror film & fiction. He's a Fangoria contributor, host of the podcast Chthonica, and proprietor of threadsofdread.com, a shop of celebratory artifacts (ahem, merch) dedicated to horror authors, including Stephen Graham Jones, Paul Tremblay, Daniel Kraus, and Laird Barron. You can find Greg on Bluesky, Instagram, and Threads at @igreggreene, and at facebook.com/greg.greene. His new literary magazine, Rough Beast, launches this fall, featuring flash fiction, poems, cartoons, and commentary by contemporary legends of horror & weird lit. More information at roughbeastmag.com.

I met Greg when he made his first horror t-shirt-- Jade Daniels is my Final Girl. He got it ready just in time for the release of the second book in Stephen Graham Jones' Indian Lake Trilogy, Don't Fear the Reaper. He reached out to me to wear the shirt (along with SGJ) for the B&N virtual event for that book's launch. Click through on the link for video proof that it did happen!

Greg and I not only stayed in touch, but since my young kid goes to school in Nashville, we have been able to hang out and become friends. Like Robb he is an amazing human first and one of the genre's biggest cheerleaders second. Our collaboration on the Ask Me Why I Love Horror T-shirt has been amazing. And now, Greg is venturing into the horror publishing sphere with his new literary magazine (linked above in bio). I for one will be subscribing. More on that soon.

Thank you to Greg for all you do to support horror and for sharing your personal Why I Love Horror story with everyone here today. It starts with a cheerleader (fitting I think) and ends with viscera.  Love it!

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Why I Love Horror

by Greg Greene

My friend Judith was an NFL cheerleader for a season. Exciting, no doubt, but it came with strings: she couldn’t be seen in public sans makeup, had to dress sharp at all times, and fast food was verboten. I asked what she missed most while on duty. “Coca Cola,” she said, then leaned in and whispered, “I like the burn.”

* * *

Before asking Why horror?, let’s start with Why tragedy? 

From Medea to King Lear to Death of a Salesman, tragic narratives have a grip on us, always have. My theory is that seeing a protagonist laid low by the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune lets us re-experience - at a safe distance - our own misfortunes. Tragedies, conveyed in the media of theater, film, and oration, are a communal form of psychotherapy, letting us retell the darkest parts of the human experience within circles of empathy, and so slowly ameliorate our anguished hearts. Horror provides much the same service, letting us re-experience shock, trauma, and fear - mostly rooted in the powerlessness of childhood - at arm’s length.

And it’s not limited to postmortem reflection. With horror, we initiate our tribe into a wider, scarier world. Tales of hunting told around the campfire. Fairy tales told by the hearth. We speak of the perils of going into the woods at night, the risk of hunting alone. Horror can be a warning, yes, a simple survival aid. But more profoundly, it’s a way to teach the village children not what to avoid but what to expect; that humanness is lived on a razor’s edge. Forces we don’t understand are arrayed against us. We can be here today and disappeared tomorrow - without a trace, and without a word of warning or parting.

Horror gives flesh to the unimaginable. The Walking Dead’s domination in ratings and popular conversation was a surprise - this was an abnormally violent, gruesome, and grim show for American audiences. The series premiered in 2010, the same year as “Snowmageddon,” the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, and a Russian heat wave that killed 55,000 people. One wonders if we aren’t subconsciously preparing ourselves for the apocalypse.

Horror is valuable and beneficial. It soothes the searing wounds of trauma and provides framing and perspective for our most existential of fears. It is preparing us for the psychic shock of a climatological or societal collapse and the anarchy to follow, empowering more of us to survive. This genre, this narrative mode, offers a degree of utility missing from all others. Horror is good for the human race.

But is that what I love about horror? No, not really. 

I like the scares. The macabre. The sizzle and the scandal and the transgression. I like the viscera, I like the vivisection of souls, and the consequent welling up of courage in the face of abomination. It’s what my friend Judith said:

I like the burn.