I won’t say more than that her first name was Tina. She lived next door to us in the earliest boyhood home I can remember. She was a few years older than my brothers and me and, according to my mother, grew into quite the delinquent. She ended up in jail, I’m told. Still, even in a childhood full of scarring memories, I remember Tina as being the first person who told me a scary story. Funny how these things stick with you. We lived in Franklin, Pennsylvania, a town on the edge of the woods. Indeed, Venango County is largely wooded and populated by some of the most avid hunters I’ve ever seen. There were woods across the street from our house, climbing one of those ubiquitous hills that make the area so beautiful.
There was a man in those woods, Tina told us, who’d been kidnapping small boys and cutting out their hearts. She was telling it as the truth and well over half a century later I remember the fear that story instilled in me. Of course, Mom told her to stop telling us scary stories. I was only five or six at the time. Maybe four. My path to watching horror movies wasn’t straightforward. We were a religious family, but taking care of three young boys and an ailing mother with no husband around eats up all your time. Mom was content to let the television babysit us in the next room at times. And as late monster boomers, we watched monster movies on Saturday afternoons. They gave me a cozy feeling. Things could be worse than not having a father. Much worse.
Will the real Halloween raise its hand?
" data-orig-size="2448,3264" sizes="(max-width: 2448px) 100vw, 2448px" data-image-title="IMG_0493" data-orig-file="https://sawiggins.files.wordpress.com/2012/11/img_0493.jpg" data-image-description="" data-image-meta="{"aperture":"2.4","credit":"","camera":"iPhone 4S","caption":"","created_timestamp":"1351839121","copyright":"","focal_length":"4.28","iso":"125","shutter_speed":"0.0625","title":"","latitude":"40.568166666667","longitude":"-74.602"}" width="2448" data-medium-file="https://sawiggins.files.wordpress.com/2012/11/img_0493.jpg?w=225" data-permalink="https://steveawiggins.com/2012/11/02/two-swords/img_0493/#main" alt="" height="3264" srcset="https://sawiggins.files.wordpress.com/2012/11/img_0493.jpg 2448w, https://sawiggins.files.wordpress.com/2012/11/img_0493.jpg?w=113&h;=150 113w, https://sawiggins.files.wordpress.com/2012/11/img_0493.jpg?w=225&h;=300 225w, https://sawiggins.files.wordpress.com/2012/11/img_0493.jpg?w=768&h;=1024 768w" class="wp-image-5377" data-large-file="https://sawiggins.files.wordpress.com/2012/11/img_0493.jpg?w=768" />After high school I gave up monsters for the Gospel. Went to college to become a preacher. I ended up teaching in a seminary and didn’t want my daughter to grow up scared, like I had done. Then my world collapsed. Fundamentalists fired me from my first and last full-time teaching position. I dealt with it by watching horror films. Perhaps I was reverting to childhood coping strategies. Over the years, however, I never forgot that story that Tina told us when my brothers and I were little. It is a scary world out there, and you’ve got to learn that one way or another. Many people don’t understand my fascination with horror. In times of trouble, however, we go back to those self-soothing practices that we associate with good feelings. For some of us it was watching monster movies on Saturday afternoons and knowing things could be worse.