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Me, circa 1988, modeling my clown makeup.
I am, and have always been, a horror girlie through and through. I was recently stopped by a community access television team on the street to answer questions about movies -- unprompted, all of my answers were about horror films. Some of my favorite books growing up were the Scary Stories to Tell In The Dark series, and R.L. Stine's Fear Street series. When I was pregnant, I not-so-secretly hoped that my daughter would be born on Halloween so that we could have Halloween birthday parties forever.
My first horror movie memory is a scene from Friday the 13th, though I couldn’t tell you which one. All I remember is that hockey-masked Jason is chasing a young woman through the woods. She screams as she runs through the trees, and Jason ambles along after her, his long strides somehow closing the distance between them.
That’s all I remember. I must have been maybe 4 or 5 when I saw this. It must have been on in the background at my mom’s friend’s house during a party. Even though I was so young (too young), I wasn’t terrified or scared. I was too young to know what was going on or to be worried about death.
I can't imagine showing something like this to my own child at so young an age. Now that I have my own kid, my relationship to horror has changed in unexpected ways.
Now, what I'm about to tell you will sound wild. Like, really, extremely out there. If you don't have a kid or have the same values as me, this might be a horror story in its own right, but I'm going to tell you anyway.
From the time my kid was about 6 to 9 months old, she slept just fine in her crib, in her own room. She slept through the night every night, and everyone got great sleep. As soon as she hit the 9-month mark, she began waking up instantaneously upon hitting her crib mattress. Sometimes, she would open her eyes mid-transfer and refuse to go back to sleep unless I picked her up. Sometimes, I'd be able to put her down and sneak out, only to have to return 5 minutes later when she woke up and realized she was no longer being held. My husband, M, would try to settle her, and she would only cry harder and louder. The only way my kid would go to sleep and stay asleep was to be held. By me.
And so, I started getting ready for bed when she did, which meant I was holding my child for hours in our nursing chair, reading a book or watching Gilmore Girls on my phone, until I was ready to go to bed — so I was essentially changing into my PJs, brushing my teeth, and going to bed with my kid around 8pm. I didn't get to watch tv or enjoy precious alone time with my husband. Sometimes, we would swap places so I got a break -- she would always stir or wake up during a transfer, though, and M would have to hold her tight and shhh her back to sleep. We were like two lone, exhausted ships passing in the night, tossing a small, infuriating but wholly beloved package back and forth. It was another lonely time.
A friend, who has raised her own children, suggested that I hold her while I watched tv or movies in the living room with M, instead of going to bed when she fell asleep. We tried it out one night -- and it worked. It turns out our Velcro kid is a heavy sleeper (except when she's being put down?!), and we were able to once again spend time together and watch our shows and movies. Of course, we had a tiny sleeping third wheel, and we had to whisper everything to each other, but we were able to return to a somewhat normal routine (...while holding a sleeping child).
In this new phase of life, I was able to begin watching horror again (again, while holding a sleeping baby/toddler). It felt like stumbling out of a dark cave (a la The Descent) into the light. I had no idea where I was or what new horror movies had come out. I didn't even know what I was in the mood to watch most of the time.
We started out light with My Best Friend's Exorcism (Disappointing! The book by Grady Hendrix is and will always be better! Please read it!). I kept falling asleep during Teen Wolf (1985). I finally watched and loved Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1992). And then we waded out a little farther into the horror waters with Hellraiser (1987). And then we dove into the deep end with Barbarian (loved it) and The Black Phone.
The Black Phone stars Ethan Hawke as a truly terrifying man who kidnaps children, keeps them captive in his basement and eventually kills them. (I’m getting the creeps just seeing the thumbnail of the trailer above.) It's worth a watch, but not more than one. As a mother, actively holding her sleeping child while watching a child in a film be terrorized, this film was bone-chilling. Of course, I wanted our protagonist to make it out alive and I felt a deep sorrow for all the dead children and their parents. Most surprisingly though, the largest thought in my mind was: this serial killer was a baby once. He had a mother and a father, and he was a small, innocent child at one time. What happened to him?
Yes, yes, I know, he's not real, he's a character in a horror film. But I've found that this sentiment has traveled with me to most other human interactions in life. Even my girl, Britney Spears, talks in her memoir about this _seeing_ of other humans after becoming a mother. I listened to the audiobook (highly recommend!) so I wasn’t able to underline the things she wrote that were profound (which were many!), so I'm paraphrasing. She says something about how she looks at everyone, even those who have fucked her over, and thinks about how they used to be a baby.
There's something about how this way of seeing people unlocks a deep compassion for others, a way into understanding who they are and why they are the way they are. It’s not a path to excusing bad behavior, but understanding it. For me, this has become a form of radical empathy, providing a foundation for setting firm and loving boundaries with the people in my life.
The other thing I've discovered about horror films when I watch them in this way (while holding a sleeping angel) is how the body physically reacts to the terror on the screen -- the jump scares, the eerieness, tension.
When I was learning how to breastfeed, I learned that relaxing my body helped my baby relax, which helped her nurse better. Breathing deeply helped my fussy baby calm down. The same applies to the contact nap -- my relaxed body leads to a sleeping baby. A tense body might mean baby has a harder time getting comfortable and falling asleep, or they might wake up more easily. (This is all just my personal experience, not a science!)
So watching a horror movie -- especially one with jump scares The Nun and The Nun 2, I'm looking at you) -- shed a light on all the ways horror is a bodily experience. I can't remember what we were watching, but there was a jump scare and I somehow had enough control over my body (which, remember, was holding a sleeping baby) to NOT jump. Instead of jumping, though, I felt every hair on my body stand on end. It’s how I imagine it feels like to realize you’re being watched by a creature in the dark woods.
While watching the first Orphan film, I found myself holding my breath because I was so worried about the children. I had to keep taking deep breaths, and at one point, I turned to my husband and whispered, "Are these kids going to be okay?" I remember he looked at me and said grimly, "I don't know."
And of course, there are the jump scares where I actually jumped and/or whisper-shouted, "Oh shit!" Miraculously, my kid stirred but did not wake up a single time after one of these incidents.
I have expanded my definition of horror and spooky, which has expanded what I love. Paradoxically, what has also changed is that I now have limits on it -- what I know I can enjoy and when.
I’ve discovered that I have a distinction between comfort horror (i.e. The Lost Boys (1987), Fright Night (1985), The Crow (1994)), horror that I love that truly scares me (i.e. The Taking of Deborah Logan, The Ritual, Pontypool), and the horror that is out to get me in real life (meaning it is scary enough to keep me creeped out after the film is long over) (i.e. Evil Dead Rise, Barbarian, Hereditary). Entire months can go by where I don't watch a single horror film because I just don't have the stomach for any of it. Daily parenthood shreds my nerves enough some days.
Something else that’s new is my renewed enthusiasm for horror literature. While spending hours nap trapped, I came to read and love so much horror lit. The Hacienda and Vampires of El Norte, both by Isabel Cañas. Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia. Motherthing by Ainslie Hogarth. Bad Cree by Jessica Johns. Mister Magic by Kiersten White. Empire of Wild by Cherie Dimaline. In the Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado. I could go on for awhile.
My definition of spooky has come to include murder mysteries, noir, and some thrillers. I'm talking about Tana French novels, and Sherlock (starring the dream team of Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman), and things like Glass Onion and Knives Out, Only Murders in the Building, and the Poirot murder mystery movies (like A Haunting in Venice).
I appreciate a well-built spooky atmosphere, an uneasy ambience, characters that feel untrustworthy but you're not sure why, the feeling that something is not quite right but you can't put your finger on it (see: the Midnight Mass limited series on Netflix for a master class in what I'm talking about).
These days, I am able to transfer my sleeping toddler to a sleep surface (our bed), so I am learning what it feels like to enjoy horror -- and also regular films! -- with the wholeness of my body again without trying to suppress my body's reactions, or whisper my shocked profanities.
September means that Spooky Season is officially here. This year, my husband and I have decided that our Spooktember film list will be comprised mostly of our favorites, rather than trying to watch every horror film we haven't seen yet that is on the streaming platforms we have access to. We'll be watching what I consider comfort horror -- The Crow (1994), Fright Night (1985), The Lost Boys (1985), the entire Phantasm series, The Ritual, and I Know What You Did Last Summer (1997)are a few of the titles on our list.
I've prematurely asked my toddler, who has no sense of time or seasons, what she wants to be for Halloween and how she feels about going trick-or-treating. She doesn't quite "get" Halloween yet, but I hope she eventually comes to love it the way I do. I'm unsure what movies I'd feel comfortable introducing to her and and at what age. We'll figure it out when and if the time comes. Right now, she's an Xmas girlie. If she never shares my enthusiasm for the spooky, that's okay. I have room in my life to enjoy the extra sparkle of lights on the tree, wrapping presents, the warming comfort of butter rum shortbread cookies, the punchy spice of gingerbread, and the chilly terror of Krampus (2015).
P.S. Now that I’ve finished this letter, I’m finding I have so much more to say about the intersection of motherhood and horror, so this is very likely the first of a few letters about it. Stay tuned.
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