As I pull out books from the shelves, starting with Straub's American Fantastic Tales
anthology and then Palahniuk's Haunted
, it's quickly apparent I'll need an energy drink over a glass of wine for this one; I'll be up late tonight, and not solely because it will take a bit of time to reconnect with these old friends. See, before I began I even had to make a round through the house above me under the guise of grabbing my laundry to double check the doors and the windows. Just in case. That's the thing about scary stories, see? They strike those deep-seated fears within all of us that register something as primal as love or joy. That's why we read horror stories, isn't it? To get in touch with that depth again. To wonder. The true scares, the ones that keep us up at night, question the very world around us and maybe even our own experience of it.
The tales that scare me the most are the ones that could be true.
