CHILDHOOD FEARS: VIC KERRY

18/4/2022

Now as an adult, I understand why I enjoy writing about the darkness in life. Not to sound too Freudian, it is a cathartic release. Most of my professional career has been spent working in public mental health as a psychotherapist. I’ve seen things that make Jason, Freddy, and certainly House look like Hans Christian Anderson.

Some kids are fearless and in adulthood remain so. Other kids become more cautious once they grow up. I am neither one of those things. As a kid, I was afraid of lots of things, but as an adult, I have an unhealthy lack of fear. I believe it is the fact that I grew up being a relative wienie when it came to scary stuff that changed me as an adult.

I was a kid of the 1980s—the last awesome time to be a kid. It was before helicopter parents and the micromanagement of kids’ lives by those hover-parents. The toys were awesome, the cartoons rocked, and free-play with lots of imagination ruled. It was also a hell of a scary time to be kid.

I can remember watching TV in the evenings with its steady parade of slasher movie trailers flickering through darkness. The snippets of Freddy, Jason, and Chucky presented in those 30-second blurbs terrified me, but I remember well the movie trailers that gave me nightmares. Of all the possibilities, it was the movie House. You know the one with Norm from Cheers. Almost 40 years later I can still remember the nightmares vividly. It wasn’t even that scary of a movie, but it scarred me back then. That must be evident since I can still remember the nightmares.

My dad used to tell a stupid story to scare me as well. I can’t really remember much about it beyond a guy named Tom cutting off the Devil’s tail with a hoe, and the Devil wanting it back. “Ooo, Uncle Tom, I want my tail!” he would say in his most frightening voice.

Beyond those snippets, I supposed my fears were rather prosaic. I was afraid of dogs (although I’ve owned a hell of lot of them in adulthood). Storms terrified me, but to be honest I lived in the Tornado Alley of Alabama. I didn’t like snakes or bugs. Sometimes if I was riding my bike at night, I thought the Headless Horseman might come after me, but the true phobias which stick with me even until today are: I hate heights and avoid power saws at all cost. Those two things are the only fears that truly followed me into adulthood.

I have considered how my childhood of being afraid turned me into a horror writer. I’m not completely sure. The strange thing is despite being afraid of the George Wendt movie House and trailers featuring hockey masks and knife gloves, I loved monsters—the classic ones at least. I also liked to write about scary things. The first story I ever wrote was a scary one. It was in Mrs. Payne’s third grade class and about ghosts that killed you and ate your head. The Ghostbusters showed up and killed them (I guess it was fanfic?). I gave it the CCR ripped-off title, “Bad Moon Rising,” and colored the paper with a brick red crayon to make it look bloody. I don’t have that story because I gave to a kid that really liked it, but that’s were it began.

Now as an adult, I understand why I enjoy writing about the darkness in life. Not to sound too Freudian, it is a cathartic release. Most of my professional career has been spent working in public mental health as a psychotherapist. I’ve seen things that make Jason, Freddy, and certainly House look like Hans Christian Anderson. Working the in that field ridded me of most of my fears. When working in the in mental health field, people’s wellbeing and lives depends on you not being paralyzed by irrational phobias. After being hit and kicked too many times to remember, spit on, cursed, had sundry things, ranging from a TV set to a dirty tampon, thrown at me, and of course being shot at, I quit being afraid of anything except heights, which I can overcome with enough willpower, and power saws, which again I avoid like all get out. Horror writing is a way to keep me grounded in a bit of reality, as bizarre as that sounds. It keeps me aware that there is scary stuff out there. It keeps me sane.

A childhood of being afraid of everything led me to an adulthood that is almost fear-free, but it gave me nightmare fuel to produce what I love: horror fiction.

That being said, I’ve just published a new novella called A Place That Should Not Be. It’s a bit of ghost story that I wrote on a dare of sorts. My wife bet me I couldn’t write about a haunted tiny house. She wanted something funny. I came up with something else entirely. The link was previously included. Thanks for taking the time to read my ramblings.
Darkly,
Vic Kerry

A Place That Should Not Be
by Vic Kerry

Lauren, a horror author with a serious case of writer's block, goes off the grid in the middle of a Louisiana swamp in hopes of finding her creative spark again. Her first night brings nightmares that never seem to stop. As the days of solitude push on, more and more bizarre things occur until Lauren is faced with a horror from which she can never recover.

Vic Kerry

Vic Kerry lives in Alabama with his wife, two dogs, and two cats. He is the author of the novels: The Children of Lot, Revels Ending, Jubilee, and As an Old Memory, the novellas: Decoration Day and A Place That Should Not Be, as well as the collection, Thorazine Dreams. He holds an MFA in writing popular fiction from Seton Hill University.
WEBSITE LINKS
A Place That Should Not Be. Link: Amazon.com: A Place That Should Not Be eBook : Kerry, Vic: Books Trigger: slavery
http://www.vickerry.wordpress.com