What started you off?

I wasn't a serious reader until college. By chance, I was waiting for a bus and sitting on the bench was a copy of Interview with a Vampire. I scooped it up and read it in days. After that, I've poked around other authors like Bentley Little and Laural K. Hamilton. If there's freaks and monsters in it I'll probably read it.

Pike

What got me into horror: when I was 11 I was at a 7-11 looking for something to read. Back then they used to actually sell books. I picked up this weird paperback that had a hand covered with eyes. I couldn't stop looking at it, it was so surreal. Finally I talked myself into buying it, went to Braums, ate lunch and devoured most of Stephen King's Night Shift.

I can't think of a better introduction into the horror genre than that book, which covers the gamut of types of horror stories, most of which are fairly short reads for the novice horror fan.

I think my favorite story from Night Shift is "I Know What You Need." I thought "The Boogeyman" was good, too, though.

What horror book that got me into the genre was 'Salem's Lot. I had read a couple Stephen King books before that which I liked a lot, but I don't consider them to be horror as much as the Lot was. I think they fit into other genres better. 'Salem's Lot is one of the scariest books I've ever read. I also think its King's scariest work, for me anyway so far. Although the short story "The Man in the Black Suit" scared me too.

I love his work. Most of it doesn't "scare" me a lot, but SL did. A lot. (Pun intended.)

E.A. Poe. It had to be Poe, probably around age 11 or 12. More specifically, The Tell-Tale Heart. What a beautifully horrific story.

I'm also sure Rod Serling had a hand in it too, although Serling wasn't exactly horror. Or was he?

You bet Serling was horror! Remember the Shatner episode with creature on the plane's wing? That was a Matheson story, the guy who gave us I Am Legend and the Incredible Shrinking Man. Ya, Serling had a lot to do with my love for horror as well.

Pike said:

You bet Serling was horror! Remember the Shatner episode with creature on the plane's wing? That was a Matheson story, the guy who gave us I Am Legend and the Incredible Shrinking Man. Ya, Serling had a lot to do with my love for horror as well.

Click to expand...

True enough about the Shatner episode. There were others too, but there were some that weren't quite what I would call "horror." I'm thinking, for example, of the one in which Art Carney played a drunk who turned into Santa Claus. Supernatural perhaps, but not horror.

Right-O. The Twilight Zone wasn't exclusively horror but did include a vast number of stories that qualified, like the old woman terrorized by a miniture flying saucer that turned out to be a US craft, or the neighborhood that was closed off from the rest of the world and everyone went into a mob frenzy. Ya, there were plenty others that were weird Sci-Fi but I tend to remember the creepier episodes.

The book that got me reading was King's Dark Tower: The Gunslinger. I read a lot of fantasy after that. I picked up his The Stand the summer after my 8th grade and it was all horror from then on. I grew up watching all the horror shows, Michael Myers, Freddy, Jason. The switch was easy to me. I still read fantasy, sci-fi but horror holds a special place in my black heart.

Even though I'm also a Stephen King fan, what got me interested in horror began when I was in grade school. I use to read R.L. Stine's Fear street books. I loved them. I think I still got a few. It wasn't until sometime later that I really got into Stephen King.

King did it for me to. I was about 16 when I read Needful Things. Before then, I had never read a novel that contained so many sub-stories that converged into one larger plot.

I saw "Where the Woodbine Twineth" on Alfred Hitchcock presents, way back when I was a little girl and should not have been awake to see it. I will admit to peeing my pants and not being able to sleep alone for a week. And FORGET about playing with dolls.

The I picked up an old old hardcover of fairy tales from my dads book collection. You know one of the old ones with detailed lithographs.. not the big lettered colorful pictures ones they give to kids these days...this one was published, I think in 1920.

The story Bluebeard...oh my. They've cleaned up fairy tales so much in the past 50 years. They used to be horror stories..."Don't go into the woods or any where people tell you not to go because...
But I digress. Between Alfred Hitchcock and the old fairy tales, I could not get enough of scary stories. I got my first hard cover of Hitchcock selections when I was in 2nd grade.

You write a good horror story, and I'll read it.
( I'm not 50!)

King started me off. Salem's Lot. Then The Shining. I was hooked.

i grew up in a lot of older homes. the first home i lived in was next to a cemetary. in second and third grade, my home was 150 years old and designed in such a way that the master bedroom was downstairs and my room (and the entire second floor and walk-in attic for that matter) was mine. a moth couldn't land on the gutter without illiciting terrible moans and creaks from the place. it had five chimneys but only two fireplaces. it was like the house in 'house of leaves,' lol.

when my parents both worked third shift, i stayed with grandma. in the spare bedroom were some books i'd read, one of them was a collection of very short stories, supposedly real. that absolutely terrified me. thus i read it over and over again. grandma always slept with the radio on, too, and i'd lay there in bed trying to hear her radio in the next room as it played horror radio dramas narrated by e.g. marshall.

i didn't get a lot of sleep as a kid, lol. it was mostly that one dumb little book, though. then i discovered 'weird war' and 'tales from the crytp' comic books, and that's all she wrote.

i can't find any decent horror i want to pay full retail for, though poe's stories scared me when i read them just a few years ago. awesome awesome awesome. makes modern writers out to be the hacks they really are.