Peter Laws - The Frighteners: A Journey through Our Cultural Fascination with the Macabre

Copyright 2018 by Peter Laws.

First Skyhorse Publishing Edition 2018.

First Published 2018 in the UK by Icon Books.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available on file.

Jacket design by Erin Seaward-Hiatt

Jacket photo credit: iStock

Print ISBN: 978-1-5107-2676-5

Ebook ISBN: 978-1-5107-2677-2

Printed in the United States of America.

For Emma and Adam

This bookabout scary things sometimes being funended up as a celebration of self-acceptance. But it takes thousands of words to get there, and there are some pretty freaky bits along the way. So, for now, you can just read the shorter, nine-word version of the book.
Here it is:

Be who you want to be, okay? Be you .

CONTENTS

C HAPTER O NE

THE SINISTER MINISTER

Im in Luton airport, and the guy on security is rummaging through my bag. He keeps squeezing and prodding stuff. Checking if my pants are ticking or if my toothpaste contains a nerve agent. He asks me where Im off to. Finally! Ive been hoping he would ask that because I get punch-the-air excited when anybody does. I beam at him and I say, all chipper, Im going on holiday.

Yes, but where to?

[mental drum roll] Transylvania!

He drops the toothpaste, frowns, then eyes me up and down. Really?

Yep.

Its a real place?

Course! Its in Romania.

Youre going to vampire land? He tilts his head. On holiday ?

I want to slap my hands together like a sea lion. Im staying in a spooky old Saxon village. Its gonna be amazing.

He does something next that Ive seen other people do in this situation: he slowly glances at my wife, as if shell explain this anomaly. Its not like hes found cocaine in my bag, or a severed limb. Hes not horrified by me, but I can tell hes confused. My wife shrugs: He likes morbid stuff, and hes wanted to go since he was a kid. She looks apologetic. Its his 40th birthday present.

His eyebrows spring up. Yes, but why on earth would anybody want to go there?

To be honest, its the same reaction Ive had from most people this last month, when Ive told them where Im headed for five days. I say the five-syllable word and they do a double take Transylvania . They dont exactly cross themselves and stumble backwards, like the gasping, creeped-out innkeepers from the first ten minutes of a Hammer Horror movie, but its close. A mate of mine had a similar frown last week. All he could say was: Why? Is Benidorm shut? Another told me about her upcoming break in France, and when I mentioned my trip she burst out laughing, right in my face. Wow, Peter, she said. You are so weird.

Im used to these sorts of looks. Like when folks come round my house and see my home office; they cant avoid the huge vintage drive-in posters of 70s movies like Draculas Dog (1978) and Nightwing (1979). Or my badass Grizzly (1976) poster that screams 18ft of Gut-Munching Fury! Or maybe they spot my bookshelf, which is bulging with titles like Dreadful Pleasures, Ghoul Britannia and Everyone Loves a Good Train Wreck . Maybe they spot my signed collection of the complete soundtrack to all of the Friday the 13th movies (about a guy in a hockey mask who chops up teenagers), or if theyre really observant, they might recognise a chunk of stone that I nicked from a supposedly haunted church, famous for grave desecrations in the 60s. I have a piece of it on my window sill. Next to that are the original storyboards from an 80s horror movie called The Mutilator (1985). And piles of magazines and books with real-life tales of the paranormal.

When guests see these morbid items, as I politely take their coats and offer them Earl Grey, they sometimes give me a look that says: Is it wise to accept this tea?

Ive had the youre-a-bit-kooky glance a fair bit because Ive loved creepy and macabre things pretty much my whole life. And by that I mean Ive really loved them. The dark, the mysterious, the weird, the scary, theyre valuable to me. They matter. I reckon if you slice my brain open, thered be a whole section dedicated to the gothic and strange. Or more likely its threaded all over, like when you spill coffee on your laptop and it gets everywhere.

One of the earliest places I noticed my love of the dark side was at theme parks. Id always slap open the map and search for the ghost train first. The big rollercoasters? The thrill rides? I skipped them, because I get spectacularly motion sick. I braved the waltzer once just to impress a girl and ended up puking on her shoulder and chest. Yet Ill giddily push through cobwebs and hanging fake tarantulas in a fright ride because it clicks a pleasure switch in me that I dont always understand; I just know that its there.

When Halloween comes around, Im the fella in the supermarket lurking in the tacky novelty fang aisle. Im trying on masks and chasing my squealing kids down the ready-meal section. Ive got this compulsion to squeeze and prod every single prop to see if it makes a ghostly scream or a blood-thinning cackle. Often I set them all off at once, just so I can unleash 30 wailing witches through an otherwise jolly store.

My humour cortex has a little horror spilled on it too. I saw a photo the other day of a plastic baby-changing unit, one of those drop-down ones you get in public toilets. Somebody had written on it: PLACE SACRIFICE HERE . Im not exactly pro baby sacrifice, but man, I laughed hard at that. When I showed it to others, they looked at me like I was insane. Which made me chuckle even more. So I looked even um insane- er .

Yeah, Im that guy.

In the car, I sometimes listen to electro, sometimes kitsch lounge musicthe type youd hear in a 70s supermarket. And sometimes I even listen to normal everyday music that plays on low-number radio stations. But often its the soundtrack to films like Creepshow (1982) or Tenebrae (1982), Dont Look Now (1973) or Pet Sematary (1989). And as the violins squeal (minor chords, naturally) Im popping to the shops or doing the school run. Not feeling glum or depressed at all, just living my life like everybody else, only threading it with a little spook.

Now, other fans of the morbid dont have any issue with this at all. They slip into the passenger seat, hear the music and say, Wow! This is The Omen soundtrack, cool. But let me be frank, and perhaps obvious: most other people dont say wow or cool. When they gather in my kitchen for my 40th birthday and see the cake has meticulous icing replicating the hotel carpet from Stanley Kubricks 1980 film The Shining (complete with sugary axe embedded in the centre) they say Oh yeah, you like those things dont you? And theres a nervy little twitch behind the awkward smile. A flicker that makes a statement: Maybe its not just odd to love morbid culture, maybe its odder than odd. Maybe its twisted, dangerous even, to be so into the dark side of life.