YOU’RE NOT ALONE IN THE DARK, PART 1: HORROR AND ME ARTICLE BY AWARD-WINNING EDITOR, EUGENE JOHNSON

The horror genre and storytelling have always been there to help me face the real-world pains that I could barely face on my own. Even now, as I struggle worse than ever with my disabilities, they are my primary coping mechanisms, third only to my faith and family

YOU’RE NOT ALONE IN THE DARK
Part 1: Horror And Me Article

By Award-Winning Editor, Eugene Johnson

May is Mental Health month. I’ve been struggling horribly for a while now with disabilities including PTSD, anxiety with panic attacks, bipolar depression, ADHD, dyslexia, agoraphobia, and more. Over, the last few years these have been impossible to manage, affecting every area of my life from my physical health to my relationships. I struggle with suicidal ideations everyday, wanting the ongoing pain to stop. Throughout my life, one of my primary coping mechanisms has been storytelling in the horror genre. I found myself creating fiction in the horror genre as a form of therapy and escape. Lately, I’ve been thinking of my struggles and how storytelling and the horror genre have been such an important part of my survival. I decided to write a series of articles based on my reflections, covering my experience on how a genre that some see as taboo has been a lifeline for me all my life. Below is the first article.


Stephen King once said, “we make up horrors to help us cope with the real ones in the world.”


Looking back on my life, seeing how horror has helped me cope with my own trauma and mental illness, I believe that King’s statement above may sum up why people are so drawn to horror. Horror allows us to escape real-life monsters, even if it’s for just a few moments. Horror is an important piece of our culture, helping us to cope with the dark side of humanity that is sometimes too hard for a person to face.

When I look back at all the horrible times in my life, I can see I was drawn to the horror genre as a way to deal with the all too real horrors I faced daily in my home at the hands of abusive and neglectful parents. 

My father was very abusive, taking the majority of his anger out on me from when I was a very young age. I was his outlet—he and my mother blamed me for everything that went wrong in their lives.

He even pushed my mother out of a moving car when she was in the late stages of her pregnancy with me. They thought they were going to lose me for a bit. When I was born he directed his anger towards me taking it out on me any chance he could. So from an early age, my maternal grandparents would take me as much as they could, inviting me to stay at their house in Rockwood, Michigan to spare me of the terror of my parents.

I grew up on horror in the late seventies and eighties. Everything was horror and the fantastic. My grandmother introduced to me to the genre. I still remember going to the theater with her to see Poltergeist shorty after my fifth birthday. The clown scene scared the crap out of me, along with the scene with the corpses in the water. Yet I loved the movie.

At the time, I wasn’t sure why my grandmother, an old-fashioned church-going woman, decided to introduce me to horror It was much later in life that I discovered that my grandmother had loved horror before any of her children were born, reading the old paperbacks when she could, or catching a creature feature at the drive in. She even introduced all three of her children to the horror genre, turning them on to it. I also found that she had had a very bad childhood herself, full of pain and possible abuse, and that she had lost her first child just days after she was born. My grandmother also struggled with depression and possible anxiety, though she never talked about it. My grandparents were from a generation that did not believe in therapy or talking about feelings. They believed in appearances, and what people went thought was meant to be kept inside. So, looking back, my guess is horror might have helped distract her from the real-world darkness. She might have even thought it might help me. I don’t know the real reason she introduced me to all the creepy fictions most grandmothers turn their noses up at. But I’m so thankful she did.

Whenever I stayed with my grandparents, I consumed anything I could related to horror and the strange—within reason. Which was pretty often, seeing as I grew up with very abusive parents. For a while, I basically lived there with my grandparents. So, I took in a lot of horror. Whether it was sitting on the old white wooden swing in my grandparents’ back yard, reading old horror comics. Or sitting in front of the big box television set on the 70’s style pea green carpet of their living room watching black &white reruns of the Twilight Zone, Creature of The Black Lagoon, the old Hammer Horror films, and many more. I collected any monster related items from my cherished Remco Monsters to the Crestwood Monster book series. I even had one of those large official Alien action figures that my grandparents found at a garage sale for me.

When not reading or watching horror on TV, Grandma and my babysitters would take me to the theater, (both the Jolly Rogers Drive in and South Gate in door theater) to catch the new scary movie releases. Some of my very few positive childhood memories are of me going to see movies with her, such as Poltergeist, Gremlins, Critters, Day of The Dead, The Evil Dead, The Hand, and  more. I was raised on everything science-fiction, Horror, or Fantasy-related, and I loved it. The escape to the different worlds took my mind off the horrible things that awaited me when my grandparents had no choice but to send me home.

Growing up, there was something special about scary stories that grabbed my attention. Don’t get me wrong, I also loved other fantastic genres such as fantasy and Science fiction, horror just connected with me more than any other gerne as well. I remember being scared to death, but not wanting to look away. I was fascinated with the monsters, yet I was rooting for the heroes at the same time. In those stories, anything was possible. The monsters brought together people of all types, no matter their differences. The heroes always had hope, even when everything around them was telling them they should just give up. In gernes like action, the heroes were almost always trained warrior types, rushing to try to keep something bad from happening. Working to keep the villain from making the world worse fears to happen by setting off a nuke or more. Yet in horror tales, the heroes were regular day people given no choice but to run toward or face their worse fear to survive. It was in these worlds that I learn the importance of surivial.  While in those worlds, I forgot the abuse I was going through at home and the real monsters that waited for me there. Instead, I had hope and was brave and thought anything was possible. I learned the importance of having hope, creativity and so much more from my beloved horror stories.  From a young age, horror and storytelling would become my main coping mechanism whenever I was going through a hard time.
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I have no doubt of this, as I look back at my life, which is filled with trauma and abuse. I lived through 15 years of every type of abuse you can think of, from two sick addicts who where supposed to love me, a drive-by shooting, the loss of both my grandparents, horrible health issues and disabilities,. The horror genre and storytelling have always been there to help me face the real-world pains that I could barely face on my own. Even now, as I struggle worse than ever with my disabilities, they are my primary coping mechanisms, third only to my faith and family. I definitely think Mr. King was on to something as I’m not sure what I would do without such an interesting genre such as horror as an outlet for all the real-life nightmares I have battled inside.

eugene johnson

Bio: Bram Stoker Award®-winner Eugene Johnson is an author, editor, and columnist. He has written as well as edited in various genres, and created anthologies such as the Fantastic Tales Of Terror, Drive In Creature Feature with Charles Day, the Bram Stoker Award®-nominated non-fiction anthology Where Nightmares Come From: The Art Of Storytelling In The Horror Genre Tales of the Lost series, Attack From The ‘80s and many more.

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Links / More info 

​Facebook:
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Tales Of The Lost Volume Anthology series Facebook page

Amazon Author page:
Eugene Johnson 


Tales Of The Lost Volume 2
Amazon link
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Edited by Bram Stoker Award Winner Eugene Johnson and Steve Dillon 


We lose many things during our time in this universe. From the moment we are born we start losing time, and loss becomes a part of our life from the beginning. We lose friends (both imaginary and real), loved ones, pets, and family. We gain stuff and lose stuff, from our socks to our money. We can lose our hope, sanity, passions, our mind, and perhaps even our soul! In the end when death finds us, we end up losing everything... Don't we?


Loss is part of who we are. We can't escape it. We learn from it, grow from it, and so much more. Some of the greatest stories ever forged come from loss. Within this book is some of those stories.


Featuring stories and poetry by an amazing lineup including: 
Tim Waggoner * Lisa Morton * Neil Gaiman * Joe Hill * Heather Graham *  Christopher Golden * Tim Lebbon *  Christina Sng * Vince Liaguno * John Palisano * Kaaron Warren * Chris Mason * Greg Chapman * Tracy Cross * Stephanie W. Wytovich * Alexis Kirkpatrick * Ben Monroe * Lucy A. Snyder and Matthew R. Davis.


Edited by Bram Stoker Award Winner Eugene Johnson and Shirley Jackson award nominated author Steve Dillon. Coming in 2020 from Plaid Dragon Publishing in association with Things in The Well. With cover art by the brilliant Francois Vaillancourt, and interior art by the amazing Luke Spooner. 


Money raised by the anthology will go to benefit the Save the Children Coronavirus response. 


"Tales of the Lost 2 could be called "Tales of the Dark Heart!" From a coming home story that ends in a not-so-typical cemetery scene to a couple of ultimate sacrifices driven by love, this is a book filled with stories to tear at your heart while making you shiver. There are macabre jack-in-the-boxes and soul-stealing virtual reality games and an apocalypse vision of a mother's love the likes of which I've never read before. These are stories of love and longing and selfless giving and aching loss ... with frequent visits from the monstrous things that inhabit the night. This is a volume of horrific heart and chilling beauty."


- John Everson, Bram Stoker Award-winning author of Covenant and Voodoo Heart


"Comprising unnerving tales of loss from horror's best-loved writers, LOST 2 is haunting, uncanny, and deeply disquieting. Prepare to lose sleep while reading this one." - Lee Murray, award-winning author of INTO THE ASHES.


Copyright Plaid Dragon Publishing © 2020 
Published by Plaid Dragon Publishing in association with Things in The Well.

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