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.