My First Horror Movie

My first horror movie I can remember is Salem's Lot by Stephen King in 1975. The original name for this movie was "Second Coming" but his wife opposed it, because it sounded like some bad sex movie, which were becoming volatile in the late seventies. The second name was "Jerusalem's Lot" too religious for the King, and he is the King" so he settled for "Salem's Lot".

As a child growing up in the rural south along the bayou's of Arkansas, we were not allow to see such movies, deemed adult, but this came on television about five years after the book hit the shelves. I was glued to the television. It was all in color. I use to sneak a peek at old Vincent Price movies and Bela Lagosa, but none were as memorable as this one, because I savored every moment of terror. I lived terror and it was all I knew. My bout with Rheumatic Fever left me with nightmares, that seemed so real, that sometimes I'd see things with my eyes wide opened. The disease affects the muscle, my brain is a muscle. It also did not help that my step-grandmother abused me physically and emotionally on a regular basis. (Fighting the Rapture is available on Amazon.com for your Kindle or I-Phone)

Stephen King put vampires, which I feared as a child, because a bat got into our house and my grandfather shot it with his rifle. After I watched this movie I wondered if he had a silver bullet in it. This movie. "Salem's Lot" was about a writer, the one thing I wanted to be, who went back to his home town to do a story, but found out vampires took it over. What a great plot line? A plot line, that scared the hell out of me. At one part of the movie I leaped into the air from the couch and found myself on the floor. The head vampire had came out of nowhere and he looked worst than death itself.

A year later I entered my first writing contest. I wrote a story entitled "I Was Only Dreaming" and sent it in to the Twilight Magazine's contest. I received a letter stating I did not win, but it was a great story. Just four years later, the movie was made. "Nightmare on Elm Street" it was my story almost verbatim, minus Freddy. In my story, my character used "No Doz" to stay awake, but he used some generic name, but the story was the same. Exactly the same.

Stephen King instilled in me a desire to write horror, but Wes Craven, who's best friend was a judge in the contest, made me not share another story or enter another contest for 13 years. I found out about copyrights and I copyrighted everything after that. Stephen's King's "Salem's Lot" instilled my love of writing horror and I let one lost story defer me from my dream, but I learned from this. Fear inspired me to put my nightmares on paper, come up with a story good enough to steal from a fifteen year old, and fear of not accomplishing my dreams made me write again. (With a copyright of course)Download my stories at http://www.horrorsofmymind.com by audio or e-book.

The Real Evil

What is real evil? I think society has gotten it wrong. We are convince, by myself and other writer's that real evil is a vampire, werewolf, witch, ghost, or some other unseen entity made up by humans to defer us from real evil. A very good friend of mine, would not let her children watch Harry Potter, because she believed it to be evil. Yet she would let her son play adult video games, watch adult (R-rated) movies, and give children parties where alcohol was served for adults. One day we were trying to find a movie to watch at her house and she made a statement, "That people who wrote horror movies were demented and something was wrong with them" I stated "That's what I write, but I think the evil people are the ones were my boss who fired me, because she wanted me for her friend only, or people who kill for money." I also stated it is human that is evil, not some made up caricature, it is evil to choke yourself as a game..." Her son knew all about it and said they play that at his school and most of the other games he made up, like "Spinning Quarter" it's where you spin the quarter and hit it with your fist, if you miss it you get "bloody knuckles" which is also another name for this sadistic game. We should be more worried about a child's reality and allow fantasy to play a part of a child's life. I think the unreal gives them hope that maybe a prince charming will ride in on a horse, love my mommy, and be my wonderful step-father. (They are always portrayed as good in fairy tales) Instead as children don't want on the horse, they go out with a gun, hold up the man (who could have met their mother and fell in love) shoot him, kill him, steal his horse, (car)and ride off with all the happiness that could have been their mother's. Now the child is in jail, the mother is spending all of the little money she has to get him out, and she feels like a failure, starts shooting heroine into her arms, and dies; all because the child had no imagination and couldn't wait on the damn man to ride up on the freakin' horse. Some kids don't even know who jumped over the moon. Whew!

I think we need to re-evaluate what is evil. We are pushing reality television down our kids throats. It has gone beyond talent shows or game shows, it has spilled over into looking into the lives of supposedly real people. We show lives of the unorthodox to get great reviews, yet if we let our children watch these shows without guidance or supervision, our children leave out thinking they should fist pump when they give the right answer in the classroom, flip over tables in restaurants, or throw drinks in a person's face when they are angry. Our children think they should have babies at fifteen so they can hang with the stars on the red carpet or get hooked on drugs because some reality show will sign you on for your fifteen minutes of fame, making the sacrifice of abusing their bodies with a foreign substance worth while, because now the whole world knows me. Then there's the body image thing, where young girls are defiling their youth with unnecessary plastic surgery and thinking a sex video and a big butt will make you a millionaire, especially if your mom supports you being a media whore.  These are just some of the real evils. I have many more real life stories to share and real evils to reveal in my future posts.