My earliest experiences with the horror genre are perhaps some of the most salient memories of my youth. My elementary years were filled with Goosebumps books by R. L. Stine, easily digestible children’s books with click-bait cliffhangers at the end of every chapter where it was revealed that things were not as scary as they seemed. My favorite of these books was The Haunted Mask, which I believed to be one of Stine’s most enthralling works — scary, to be sure, but not so scary that it scared me.
I also remember watching and rewatching Coraline, a movie I felt very brave for seeing because I had heard that a group of fifth graders once went on a field trip to watch it in theaters but had all left midway through, terrified and crying. (I have since searched the internet for the news article that reported this, but I cannot find anything on that matter.) It is indeed possible that this particular event was no more than an urban legend amongst my childhood friends, but for the sake of child me’s ego, if this is so, I shall choose to remain ignorant of the fact.
One of the most jarring experiences I had with horror as a child, however, took place during the summer of 2013, during which my siblings and I wandered into my parents’ bedroom in the middle of the night (roughly 8:30 p.m., but to young me, that was as good as the witching hour). I was only eight years old at the time, homeschooled, and generally spent the majority of my days speed-reading through the Junie B. Jones chapter book series and fabricating elaborate story arcs for my Littlest Pet Shops and Barbie dolls.
At that particular moment, however, those activities were off the table, because it was past my siblings and my bedtime. So, in an attempt to forestall our inevitable bedroom banishments, we had wandered into my parents’ dwelling space and asked my mother what she was doing, to which she replied that she was going to watch a horror film titled World War Z. She informed us that we could watch the movie with her if we wanted to, but that we would have to leave and go to bed if it got too scary.
At this point, I was looking for any excuse to stay up past my bedtime, so, against my better judgment, I sat myself down at the foot of her bed and turned my attention to the TV.
Although I didn’t make it past the opening scene, the first few minutes of that film were seared into my brain for life: screaming civilians running haphazardly around New York City (or so I thought, although I would later learn that the scene was recorded in Glasgow, Scotland, and meant to take place in downtown Philadelphia), zombies bashing their heads into car windows, and, most disturbingly, a mechanical stuffed rat lying on the floor as it counts up to twelve — the amount of the time it takes for an infected person to turn into a zombie.
I left my mother’s bedroom in utter embarrassment, ashamed that I could not bear to witness what I knew, deep down, was probably not that scary of a movie. Looking back, it makes a lot of sense that a second-grader would not be able to sit through the entirety of an adult horror film, but at the time, I was hard on myself, and resolved that the next time I sat down to watch a horror movie, I would watch it in full.
I did not make good on that promise. The next several horror movies that I attempted to watch I either bailed out on or dissociated from by reading a book. It would take me many years to get around to actually finishing an adult horror movie, and when I did, it messed me up so badly that, in spite of my being a teenager at the time, I slept with the lights on for weeks. This movie was none other than The Conjuring, a film I found to be particularly haunting because it was based on the real-life occupations of exorcists Ed and Lorraine Warren. After watching that film, I thought a lot about demon possession and exorcism. Was it real? I wondered. Were there legitimate dangers to exposing yourself to the dark side of the spiritual world, even if only through a tv screen?
Unable to come to a solid conclusion on these matters, I veered on the safe side and didn’t watch anything in the horror genre for the next few years.
But I continued to read it.
I read the haunting mysteries of Sherlock Holmes. I read Gothic literature by Bram Stoker (by which I mean to say, I literally only read Dracula). I read several novels by Stephen King, including, but not limited to Carrie, Misery, The Institute, and, of course, his famous novel, IT.
Eventually, due to some coercion and a budding obsession with Finn Wolfhard, I actually summoned up the courage to watch the movie adaptation of IT, but beyond that, I kept to my rule of not watching horror movies.
In the 2020s, however, this began to change. For one, I was a lot older, but for another, so was my youngest sister. The baby of the Weisberg family was now approaching teenhood, and this meant that my sister was rapidly entering and exiting various pop culture phases. One such obsession was horror. Very frequently, her and her school friends would get together in her bedroom, pile onto the bunk beds, and scour Netflix for horror movies to watch. One evening, in an attempt to spend some quality time with my sister and get to know some of her friends better, I decided to join them. They were watching Barbarian.
Barbarian, for those unfamiliar with the film, is about a young woman who rents an Airbnb and is captured by a basement-dwelling monster who yearns for motherhood. It’s a dark horror, addressing themes of sexual harassment as well as the dehumanization of women, and it is most certainly not a light watch. While I did watch it all the way through, I wouldn’t give it a five-star review. It was uncomfortable at times, and made me feel very squeamish during some of its infamous scenes (if you know, you know). So, no, it didn’t subvert my expectations and become one of my top ten movies of all time. I didn’t like it.
I did, however, like the opportunity that it gave me to hang out with my sister. Since I was starting college and she was starting middle school, we had been growing apart over the last few years, and I was desperate for reconnection. Watching Barbarian with her gave me one such chance, and I was and am grateful for that. It also made me realize that my ability to tolerate the horror genre had increased somewhat, as that night, I didn’t even have to sleep with the lights on.
In the weeks that followed, I continued to watch movies with my sister. Some of them were horror, and some of them were not. Some genres I liked, and some genres I really only watched because she wanted to. All of them, however, were “worth the watch,” if only for the fact that they were worth getting to spend time with someone I loved.
By the time I had to leave home and return back to my university, my perspective on the horror genre had changed significantly. I had a lot of friends who really liked horror films, and I realized that I no longer wanted to inhibit them from enjoying them. I didn’t want to be the friend who banned certain genres during friend group movie nights. I wanted to be fun. I wanted to be open-minded.
The summer after my freshman year of college, I decided to get back into the horror genre the same way that I’d gotten into it in the first place. Through reading. More specifically, I began reading Manga artist Junji Ito’s short stories compilation, Shiver. Unlike the horror stories I used to read by Stephen King, these stories were illustrated, meaning that the imagery had the ability to stick with me long after I had closed the book. I expected this to prove an issue, but oddly enough, and similarly to when I watched Barbarian, it did not.
Fast forward to 2024, the fall semester of my sophomore year of college. It was August 30th, the release date of Welcome Week, a college horror anthology produced by Ethan Gomez-Zahnley, Noah Levine, Corey McCullough, and Jack McDermott. Wanting to support my brother, Logan Weisberg, who plays a central character in the film, I bought and put on Welcome Week that very night and watched it with a high school friend.
And it was fun.
It was really, really fun.
I enjoyed trying to unravel the mystery of the protagonist’s serial sibling deaths. I was amazed at the artistry involved in creating convincing wounds for the injured characters. I found myself at times laughing and at times holding my breath. Against all odds, I was actually enjoying a horror movie.
What was happening? I couldn’t explain it. How could a genre that once given me countless nightmares and forced me to sleep with the lights on now bring me joy?
Some might attribute my ability to have enjoyed Welcome Week to my brother being in the film, but I don’t think that’s it. I like to believe I had simply changed, simply grown as a person from someone who couldn’t (and later, simply wouldn’t) watch horror movies to someone who not only could watch them, but enjoyed them. While it’s true that body horror still makes me squeamish, and there were aspects of the movie that my brother was in that left me feeling less than comfortable, I was able to sit in that uncomfortableness and approach it head-on, and realize, just like I used to realize after reading past the end of Stine’s Goosebumps chapters, that it wasn’t so scary after all.
Watching that horror movie and liking it made me realize that there were a lot of things I used to be afraid of or uncomfortable with as a child that I now do all the time. Sleeping with the lights off. Making new friends. Eating salad. Going on an upside-down rollercoaster. Performing in front of an audience. Boarding a plane alone. These were things that at some point in my life, I truly never believed that I would be able to do, and yet somehow, not only can I now do these things, but my life is so much the richer for it.
All of which to say, if you are reading this and would consider yourself a person of many fears — trust me, you’re not alone. We all have things in life that terrify us, or at the very least, are a little bit uncomfortable. But all the same, we are not required to forever live within the parameters of our fear.
So, I would like to encourage you to take this spooky season as an opportunity to reflect on the things in life that spook you. This might be asking out your class crush, or going to the weights section of the gym for the first time, or maybe even simply watching horror movies. Think back on these fears, and ask yourself: am I scared, or am I just scarred?
See, oftentimes, our fears are deep-rooted in only one or two jarring memories or flagrant failures. These experiences scar us, and consequently, we spend the rest of our lives diligently ensuring that they never happen again. For instance, when a young child gets bitten by a dog, they usually internalize a false belief that all dogs are biters, rendering them incapable of enjoying canine companions for the rest of their life (unless this phobia is treated). Such a person will usually say, “I can’t pet dogs. I was bitten when I was young and now I’m afraid of them.” When we decontruct such fears, however, we can turn the monsters in our minds back into the mole hills that they always were. The dog-fearer realizes that while some dogs are biters, some also make very good pets. Additionally, as an adult, the dog-fearer is better equipped to assess whether or not a dog is safe to pet, far more equipped than they would have been as a child. Furthermore, instead of writing off ALL dogs, they need only write off dogs that they don’t know that well or that look dangerous.
In the same way, a horror movie-hater like myself can realize that I am also an adult now, and can also better assess whether or not a horror film is beyond my limits. I still don’t like paranormal horror, but I have since learned that there are many other sub genres of horror that I CAN enjoy, and some of which would only be “too scary” to me if I was still a child.
So, instead of letting your past scars dictate your present life, take the time to challenge some of your fears and do something brave. Board that plane. Ride that rollercoaster. Watch that horror movie, and you just might find those past scars healing as you realize that you’re actually enjoying it.