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The
following essay was commissioned for Halloween 2003 by The
Charlotte Observer. In it, I grapple with the question of why I
write the kinds of thing I write . . . and why people like you read
it.
I don’t think
this is my last word on the subject: not by a long shot.
Newspapers just don’t have the space to allow for full consideration
of such a complex topic. You could write a book on the issue--and
maybe someday I will.
This is a start,
though. And even though I think there might be other reasons--and
more complex ones--for our love of the macabre, I’ll stick by the thesis
of this essay. This might not be the only explanation. But I still
believe it’s an accurate one.
Why We Love Scary Stories
by Dale Bailey
It’s that time of year again. The chill of
fall is in the air. Jack o’lanterns grin from our porches. The
candy aisles at the supermarket are just about depleted. Down at
the bus stop, the children’s voices clamor in anticipation of
tonight’s festivities.
It’s Halloween. You know: ghosts, goblins, the
skeletons of the dead.
All in good fun, right?
Let’s stop and consider that question.
Let’s talk about the fact that a movie called
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre raked in more than 40 million
dollars over the last three weeks. Let’s talk about the fact that
America’s best-selling writer is a man named Stephen King.
Let’s talk about scary stories. Let’s talk
about why we like them.
I ought to know. I write them: sunny little
books like The Fallen, The Resurrection Man’s Legacy,
and House of Bones. Books with a body count. Hardly a day
goes by that someone doesn’t ask me why. Am I sick or something?
And I say: Are you?
After all, I didn’t buy all those movie
tickets. We’re in this together, you see. When you ask why I write
it, youíre really asking why you read it.
Why do we like scary stories?
In a word, the answer is death.
That’s right. Death. Think about how rarely
you actually see the word in print, how infrequently you hear it
said. People pass on and pass away. They bite the dust and buy the
farm, cash in their chips and go to join the Lord. But they do not
die.
Except they do, of course. And I will, too.
And you.
As the saying goes: It can happen to you.
Yet how rarely we pause to examine the cold
truth of the matter. We couch it in euphemism if we talk about it
at all, and when it shows up on our doorstep, we ship it off to the
professionals. People don’t die in their own beds anymore. They
die in hospitals. And home funerals are a thing of the past. We
let the undertaker clean up the mess, and then we gather in a
neutral room to examine the sanitized result. Doesn’t he look
natural, we say.
But he doesn’t.
And that’s a fact we don’t like to think about
much. So we repress it. We bury it deep. It’s always there,
though--don’t kid yourself about that. Psychologists tell us that
whatever we repress comes back in another form. Horror writers
confirm it.
The truth is, we need scary stories. They
tackle the biggest taboo of all: the cold fact of our own
mortality. So tune in the scary movie marathon, pick up a horror
novel, and stock those candy bowls for the trick-or-treaters who
will soon be at your door.
It’s better this way.
You can tell yourself it’s just a story. You
can turn off the television. You can close the book, locking your
fears safely inside. And when the doorbell rings tonight and you
greet the skull-faced stranger on your doorstep, remember that it’s
just pretend. Comfort yourself with the fact that underneath the
mask is a smiling, friendly face. Try to forget that underneath
that smiling, friendly face--it could be your face--another
skull waits to reveal itself forever.
And that skull, my friend, is not a mask.
Happy Halloween.
First published in The Charlotte Observer 31
October 2003: 1V, 8V. Copyright © 2003 by Dale Bailey. All rights
reserved.
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