Only Kids Understand Horror

Most horror flicks don't do a damn thing for me. You have to have a suspension of belief in order to be frightened by them. I can't suspend it long enough because that rational part of me is always shooting holes in the plot. However, you should of seen me prior to ten years old and what horror flicks did to me then. When your a kid, you believe everything!

To this day I can recall one I saw on TV, when I was five, called “Five Million Years to Earth.” It had a decent story I was told but when you're five, great writing means shit. The jist of it was that construction workers unearth a five million year old spaceship that's has dead aliens on it. After accidentally powering it up, the alien history, life force or whatever begins to take control of the local populace. As it grows in power, it projects an image of itself over the city of London. When I first saw it, I ran into the kitchen to tell my father; “Dad! DAD! The DEVIL is on the TV!” It looked like the Devil to me. I had to alert my father to what was happening in the living room.

I really believed it.

This pic may seem corny but to a kindergarten kid, this was hell to take. I felt bad for the scientist who was the only one to understand what was going on and manage to swing a construction crane into the image to “ground” it to the Earth and stop the alien program. He and the crane went up in a shower of sparks. I probably had bad dreams for days after seeing this. And that's another great subject, nightmares you had as a kid that made you soak your PJ bottoms.

The next one I still remember was a TV show called “Trilogy of Terror.” It was a Richard Matheson piece where one of the stories had this lonely girl buy a Zuni warrior doll. On it was a gold chain that kept the spirit locked up inside. But of course, the chain falls off the doll and he comes to life. His only goal is to slice up the poor girl with a steak knife. The rest of the piece has her nearly escaping the doll's ambushes, tricks and traps. She then finally subdues the doll and gets it away...but has she? In the end, you see her smile, with a row of needle teeth while she's stabbing the floor boards with a knife. The doll had won and taken over her soul.

This thing doesn't deserve to be on anyone's coffee table. You're nuts to bring this into your house.

One TV show that I loved/hated was “Circle of Fear.” I'd watch it on late Friday nights only to have bad dreams. The worst one I saw was called, “Dark Vengeance.” A couple discover a box that's been buried and tightly bound. Of course, you're not supposed to open it and they do. In it is a carousel looking doll horse. On one side of the box, there's a mirror, which the new owners accidentally crack. Well, that did it.

The toy horse then proceeds to terrorize the couple as they desperately try to find a way to stop it. After investigating the toy horse through an antiques dealer, they come to find this toy is cursed beyond belief and it'll kill any owner who happens to come upon it. They also find out the last owner had put it in a box with a mirror to trick the horse into thinking it's mate was with him. That was the problem! The toy horse had a complementary female toy horse. She was lost or somehow broken and the boy horse went apeshit over losing his girlfriend. The new owners catch the horse, put him back into the box with a new mirror. Hey presto, the horse calms down and the they bury it under concrete this time around.

As a kid, you have to develop plans, actions and other things to ward off evil, ghosts, monsters and the such. If you don't, you're not going to wake up the next morning after you go to bed, because they will come out and KILL you.

I forget how young I was but my Mom told me she had purchased a toy horse for me that was advertised on the back of some sugary cereal box. “Four box tops and $2.99” sent to Battle Creek, Michigan and I got my toy horse. Apparently I loved it so I was told I carried it around everywhere in this neighborhood. I was four, so give me a break! I kinda wish I had it now but at ripe age of 10, I swore off all “baby” toys in this house and threw him out, along with a ton of other things I could make a killing on Ebay with.

But, after seeing “Dark Vengeance” I knew that horse upstairs in my bedroom was PURE evil. I had to get it out of my room...hell...out of the damn house! I managed to sneak it and me outside into the dark night and shoved it into our shed that did have a lock on it. I put the horse in there, yanked the door shut with a solid click. Only then, could I go to bed. For added measure, I kept my ceiling light on because spirits, monsters and lunatic horses are afraid of the light at night.

This is the Evil Horse of Dark Vengeance...

This is MY horse Sugarfoot...well, it's obvious to any 7 year old, the two are the same!

“WHO THE F*CK LOCKED THE DAMN SHED!” I heard my Dad yell the next morning. He was ripping the house apart for the keys to it. We never locked that shed and the keys were somewhere in the house, lost due to non-use. I just kept my mouth tightly shut. I counted myself lucky that I managed to imprison that damn horse for the night. 

Do you remember how pissed frightened you could get as a kid? It's that long ago...really. Here's a cute story for which I'll never forgive my older brother for, but that's what older brothers do, torment their kid brother's because “it's fun.”

I used to love playing in the cellar. It was full of cool things like hammers, tools, toys, old furniture from my grandmom's and tons of other things. We had a semi-finished basement that was all concrete all around but it was dank and damp at times and bugs would love to move in. Spiders mostly and the occasional centipede. Evil things that need to be stomped on.

If it was daylight outside,then it was safe to play in the cellar because I could see where the bugs might be. Also, demons, monsters and the like are afraid of the sun. I could do whatever I wanted down there with impunity.

However, at night, you had to have the light on, or Dad down there. No creature would dare to bite me if Dad was there.

After dinner one night, I flicked on the basement light and went downstairs to fool around. I must've been there for about four minutes when the light when dark. I couldn't see a damn thing. I did remember enough to know where the staircase was and I ran up it to find the door locked. I started banging on it like a trapped sailor inside a damaged, sinking submarine, screaming and yelling my head off to open it. I can remember looking around over my shoulder at that blackness and knew...just knew all those evil things were coming out to get me.

I hear my Mom then yell, “DAMMIT Kenny! Let him OUT!”

The door busts wide open and I come crashing through, panting and heaving with the look of terror upon my face. What do I see? I see my brother, half bent over laughing his ass off. He really couldn't control it, this was the funniest thing he ever saw. He had tears on his face from laughing. I then started screaming at him because I truly believed that being in that cellar in total blackness, would've gotten me killed. He was 10 and knew that there were no evil things in the cellar, but he knew, at five, that I believed it.

I'm 51 now and you know what kind of nightmares I get now? Boring adult ones. I once had a dream where my car broke down on some lonely road in Foster and no matter how far I walked, which person I talked to, there were no phones nor mechanics. I started fretting about how I would get home and how to fix the car. Yaaaawnnn. Well, it IS an adult nightmare if it came true.  

Now this scares me...even though it's pedestrian as hell, nothing like the wild fantasies I had as a kid.