I believe in Mary Worth. I believe in Mary Worth. I believe in Mary Worth.
My summer camp bunkmates and I stood around a mirror in the dark cabin and chanted. I believe in Mary Worth.
I had no idea what that meant. Wasn’t Mary Worth the kindly old lady in the comics section? Like a cross between Dear Abby and Miss Marple?
Suddenly, one of the girls let out a scream. Which scared the pants off the rest of us.
“Didn’t you see her?” the screamer asked. “She was right there in the mirror!”
I hadn’t seen anything. It was dark and there wasn’t room for six faces to peer into a hand mirror. But that didn’t keep me from being scared out of my skin.
What the hell had I been thinking? Just a few years before that, The Ghost and Mr. Chicken had kept me awake for a week. Spooky camp rituals were definitely not for me.
We all love a scary story. The flavor of the scare we enjoy may vary, but there’s something about the other-worldly that piques our interest.
I couldn’t watch The X Files back in the 90s. The episodes about aliens were fine but the ones with psycho killers would have me sleeping with the lights on. And you never knew if you were going to get the paranormal or the butcher until it was too late.
And yet I talk to dead people. That freaks some people out. Hell, pull out a deck of tarot cards and watch people run away.
What we find scary, or which type of horror we enjoy, can reveal our own hidden demons.
Slasher films are geared toward teens and young adults because their brains are still grappling with what’s real and what’s make-believe.
Monster movies often unmask the monsters that lurk within us. We are capable of unspeakable things and confronting that malevolence in a movie helps us. It’s good to recognize the evil parts of ourselves.
Movies where science goes too far offer a window into our collective fears as a society at the time. Godzilla was terrifying in post-World War II Japan. Don’t Look Up addresses our modern fears about climate change.
Of course, at the core of the love of being scared, is our desire to understand death. To conquer our fear of death.
If we can only do that, we can gain more control of our lives.
Right?
So, what scares the pants off you? I’m dying to know.