 Why are children afraid of the dark?One of my favourite things about Stephen King’s writing (in particular The Shining) is that he remembers what it’s like to be a child and afraid. I was often afraid. Night time was worse, because the monsters had more opportunity to hide, but the fear was never far away. This was equally fuelled and eased by the stories I read as a child. My house seemed to be full of horror anthologies and two stories have always been with me: The Vampire Of Croglin Grange by Augustus Hare is the first. It’s a famous tale about a vampire attack (although the line between it being fiction, folklore or fact is somewhat blurred) that has always gripped me because of its gothic malevolence. The second is Raspberry Jam by Angus Wilson, still one of the weirdest stories I’ve ever read and quite grotesque. It involves a boy having to watch while two women torture a bird to death. Additionally, some of the childrens’ dramas on British TV in the early 1970s were quite extraordinary and one especially resonated with me; Escape Into Night was about a girl who dreams about being inside the drawings she does during daytime. It includes huge boulders – with eyes - that move towards her house, which confirmed my belief that rocks are living creatures. I found these tales reassuring because the authors knew what horrors were really out there and were brave enough to admit it. I’ve never (knowingly) seen a vampire or a werewolf but I’m sure a version of each exists. And I’ve had enough experiences with ghosts to know that they’re ‘real’ – in whatever way that means. Basically what I’m saying here is that my childhood fears were reflections of my childhood experiences. Some did prove to be groundless – the Moon, which I was terrified of for a while, hiding in my bedroom cupboard to escape what I took to be its angry glare, until I realised that it was a friendly face that kept me safe with its light – but many others have just been confirmed over the years. Fictional monsters are said to be metaphors (and this is quite apparent in a lot of the horror fiction I’ve read) but I consider my stories to be quite literal, almost to the point of being non-fiction; somewhere, at some time, these tales are taking place. Life gives you skills to cope with many situations. As a child my encounters with ghosts were incredibly frightening. The ghosts in my childhood home were angry and threatening and I had no idea how to deal with them. Most adults would dismiss those experiences as childish imagination. Rationality is supposed to take over with age, but I’ve found no ‘rational’ explanation for those manifestations. Or for the strange event in a north London squat when I was 17. Or, for that matter, for the figure that walked across the room one night in a Cornish hotel a couple of years ago. And countless others. But as I’ve got older, I’m less frightened. Many of these fears have been addressed in my writing over the years. I write about all kinds of monsters – those who are perceived as monsters by mainstream society due to their difference, be it physical, mental or any kind of ‘otherness’. There are other kinds too, of course; monsters to be terrified of and many are in human form but not all. I think perhaps the main fear I address is death. As a child I thought death was oblivion unless you were a tortured soul, in which case you’d return as a vampire or a ghost. Over many years I’ve learned that death doesn’t necessarily mean either of those things, that it’s a transformation, a different and higher form of existence. See Dion Fortune’s Book Of The Dead, which, I was staggered to find, spelled out almost word for word the conclusions I’d eventually come to (apart from the references to Christianity). I think this belief/knowledge has made my writing a little less bleak and because I’ve been writing about death a lot over the last several years it’s allowed me to explore/speculate what it means. So why are children afraid of the dark? Is it because they don’t understand it? Or is it because they do?  Julie Travis has been writing dark fiction since the early 1990s and has been published in the UK, North America and France. Born in London, she was bass player in a punk band and co-founded the international Queeruption festival. Now living in West Cornwall, she continues to write stories and is co-founder of events company and zine publishers Dead Unicorn Ventures.  Best to put him out of his misery. The Spoiler stepped into view and picked up the knife. "You can’t touch that! The cops will need it for evidence," said the man. The Spoiler winced. She’d never liked a Texan drawl. "They won’t,” said the Spoiler, “the knife doesn’t exist yet." Enjoying the man’s confusion, the Spoiler continued. “It hasn’t been manufactured yet. It will spend some years in a kitchen drawer a few streets away from here. And this is what it’ll look like in eleven years’ time, when it’s been used to cut your throat with.” He was gawping at her; she was the maniac. The Spoiler held up her free hand. “Not by me. I don’t kill people. I just bring tidings. Shall I tell you who does kill you?” It wasn’t really a question; of course she was going to tell him. The second short story collection from British writer Julie Travis presents nine new tales of horror, dark fantasy and Surrealism. This is where you’ll find the landscape is a living thing, that monuments are built to the future and where Death is just the beginning. Enjoy contemporary fairy tales mingling amongst stories of escape from desperate times and a culture where difference is seen as a blessing, not a threat. "A feeling akin to sanctity… a reverence for the bleak and wild landscape… a kind of pantheism or Gaia worship. There’s a whiff of writers like Machen or Blackwood, echoes of Barker, a combination of ghost story and folklore." Peter Tennant, Black Static   THE HEART AND SOUL OF HORROR REVIEW WEBSITESComments are closed.
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