Women in #Horror Month 4 - We Like Horror Because...

I've asked female horror authors to share their thoughts on what made them horror fans for  WOMEN IN HORROR MONTH. 

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The question is: What horror film or book first grabbed your attention and made you a horror fan, and why?

* See Women in Horror Month post 1 with Stevie Kopas, Suzi M and C.A. Verstraete *

* See  Women in Horror Month post 2 with Karina Fabian, Jaime Johnesee and Claire C. Riley, * 

* See Women in Horror Month post 3 with A. Carina Barry, Melanie Karsak and Lori R. Lopez

* See Women in Horror post 4 with Sarah Lyons Fleming and Chantal Noordeloos.  

* See Women in Horror post 5 - Jaime Johnesee explains why it's good to be a Horror Hag. 

* See Women in Horror post 6  - with Vickie Johnstone, Pembroke Sinclair and Julianne Snow.

Sarah Lyons Fleming, author of  the series which starts with Until the End of the World (Until the End of the World, Book 1) (including So Long, Lollipops, Book 1.5 - novella; And After , Book 2; All the Stars in the Sky, Book 3), doesn't remember the exact time she became a horror fan, but she knows why.

 "Maybe it was those true story ghost books they had on offer in every Scholastic book order when I was in elementary school," she says. "You know, the ones that had actual photographs of the Brown Lady of Raynham Hall amongst other creepy things. (They’re not in there anymore—the book fair catalogs that come home with my kids are decidedly less frightening.)

"Or it was watching Invasionof the Body Snatchers with my parents. That haunting scream at the end—I still shiver. Plus, the movie had the added benefit of being both post-apocalyptic as well as horror. Or maybe it was reading Pet Sematary at 10 years old. Or my grandmother telling me stories of ghosts she’d encountered.

"Whatever the case, I liked being scared. What I didn’t like, however, was being truly scared.

Books and movies allowed me to be scared at my own pace, by my own choosing. The things that really did live under my bed, the vampires that scaled the bricks of my apartment building at night to peer in my window, and the faceless murderer I just knew lurked by the door to the alley by the mailboxes—those weren’t as fun.

"It could be that the fake scary stuff allowed me to see the fears through and watch characters—some of them, at least—come out on the other side. That way, when the hand of the thing under my bed finally managed to snag my ankle, or the vampires opened that squeaky window wide enough to enter, or the man by the mailboxes climbed those few dark steps, I’d know exactly what to do."

  

Chantal Noordeloos, author of Angel Manor (Lucifer Falls Book 1) and the Coyote: the Outlander series, says that for her, "it wasn’t a book or a film that first seduced me to liking horror, it was a ghost story. I can’t remember exactly what happened, but the trope was a ‘ghost ship’(I think it might have been the title as well), and as a young girl, I found this wonderfully exciting. The story was in a book filled with more innocent fairy tales, and it belonged to my aunt. Each time I would visit, I would ask her to read me the tale of the ghost ship. After that I collected scary fairy tales, myths and ghost stories. I think that’s what got me interested in horror."

 ** As an aside, Women in Horror Month has had its detractors. This year it resulted in a situation where it also became known as Horror Hags Month. Why? Author Jaime Johnesee explains her take on it so be sure to come back Wednesday for that post!