I've always been fascinated by ghost stories and drawn to the supernatural. The problem is that most stories I read or watch are stupid. There are very few authors and directors who can really find the balance between telling a great story and not making it look to cliche. Take all the horror movies since the 70s: they either follow the same narrative over and over again or they jump into cheap and sadistic violence. So you ask yourself what's the point of all this? Why am I watching or reading this? I simply want a story that haunts me and not something that's predictable or disgusts me. People obviously crave miracles and the existence of the supernatural but in times where things are increasingly monitored it becomes hard even for the Catholic church to justify beatifications.
have been reading a lot of interesting stories on creepypasta and there are some very good ideas around but I simply got bored with it after a while because the quality of the exposes is a bit too erratic.
The Haunted Book is written in a very simple and almost classical style of a story inside the story and there is zero pretense in there. It is in a way a very English book. It took me a couple of pages to realise that the book doesn't actually consist of true stories at all and that they're all made up.
The first horror movie I remember watching was The Fog. I must have been eight or nine - far too young for the movie for sure - but my friend, whom I was watching with, assured me it would be fine and there was nothing to fear, not a lot of blood and not many scenes of real terror. It was a warm and she allowed us to watch it on their VHS, a machine that wasn't introduce in our home until much later. We could have easily played out in the sun that afternoon, either in their garden or meeting some other kids out and about. We didn't and instead we closed the blinds of the huge window in my friend's living room so we could block out all reality fully enjoy the movie. In the end, the predictable happened and my friend was laughing his arse off during the rough scenes while I covered my eyes and ears. I was terrified. Especially the ending lingered on for a long time in my mind as I went home and then later to bed. It may have been the first time that I was awake between midnight and 1a.m. because naturally I expected them coming to slaughter me and my family. If I had been awake I felt I could run away or do something at least. So I lay in my bed that night, scared to death watching for changes in the air, for the fog to come and enter through the slit under the door. I left the lights on during my sleep. Even admitting to myself that it was only a movie and there are no ghosts wouldn't help. I really thought they'd come for me. This went on for a several months and every night I would follow the same procedure and make sure I'd be awake during witching hour. I then swore to myself never to watch a horror movie again. It didn't really help. In the end it took a long while to recover from this trauma and it took the most natural remedy - time - in order to kind of cure it.
What worked very well with a young boy's mind however, is repelled by the adult's because stories are often too clumsy. The real horror isn't in the obvious, it is hidden underneath the surface like an exotic spice to an even more exotic dish. It's something that you can't really explain but you can taste it - somehow. That really is the trick that a lot of storytellers aren't getting right. They just don't know how to handle the spice and consequently the soup turns out bad. Jeremy Dyson, on the other hand, knows how to cook. And even though the stories aren't fantastic or overwhelmingly scary, they linger on and spawn little offsprings in your mind. They are well-written examples of ghost stories transported into the 21st century.
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