Wait! What was That? by Bea Tifton

 I'm filling in for the lovely and talented Beth Trissel. Please check out her many great books. 

It’s the time of year when television networks and streaming services are loaded with scary movies. Today at lunch some friends and I were talking about some scary movies we liked and some we would never see.

I don’t see slasher movies. In college I finally saw “Nightmare on Elm Street” because, well, I was in college. But I hated it. And I’ve never seen any others. That’s simply not enjoyable to me. 

As I type this blog post I’m watching “Arsenic and Old Lace”, a comedy spoof of scary movies, although Raymond Massey was scary in his own right. I watch it every Halloween.

But the psychological scares? The masters like Hitchcock?  He relied on tapping into things that would sear right into people’s psyches. The edge of your seat scares like “Psycho” or “The Birds”. One can see Hitchcock’s influence on M. Night Shyamalan in the “Gotcha!”  moments of his movies. And it’s fun to see either director make his trademark cameo. (When we’re watching Hitchcock movies, my father and I each try to be the first one to see Hitchcock and whoever spies him first yells out excitedly, “I see him!”)

I had a roommate in college who loved Stephen King so I've seen many of his. He's very gifted, but some of his movies are a bit too dark for me. My parents had never seen "The Shining" although they had toured the Stanley Hotel once on vacation, so we watched it a few months ago and it scared the fool out of us. I've seen it a couple of times and I was still on the edge of my seat.  It's a classic

Why do we like to be scared? Maybe it’s the unknown, the delicious anticipation of what’s going to happen next, even as the hair on our arms stands up and we peer through our fingers. And, ultimately, we know it’s not real, that at the end of the day (or night), we are going to emerge unscathed. Well, apart from a few unsettling dreams, I suppose.

However, if I hear something go bump in the night, I’m definitely not venturing out into a dark yard or down a dank basement clad in nothing but a nightie and high heels. Now that’s just stupid.

Do you like to watch scary movies? Leave a comment below.

Pexels.Com Photo Credits Unless Otherwise Noted

Mikhail Nilov "A Scary Girl in Black Maleficent Costume"
Joonas Kaarlainen "Clouds Under Full Moon"
Wikimedia Commons " Alfred Hitchcock Psycho Trailer"
Zachary DeBottis "Silhouette of a Person"
Pedro Figueras "Car Passing on Road Between Trees"
Nitin Chauhan "Steps and the Door to the Basement"