In Search of Fear….with Dean Bryant.

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“Fear is the main source of superstition, and one of the main sources of cruelty. To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom.”
― Bertrand Russell, Unpopular Essays

Hey guys its been a while! Crazy year and crazy times and I realised I spent alot of this year dealing with fear in my weird new every day pandemic life, so I decided I wanted to get back in the saddle again and have a chinwag with people about fear and what scares people. Lets face it my books show I’m pretty fixated on scares.

So first up on my study of fear is author Dean Bryant whose new book The Stairwell is out on 30 October (SPOOKY) through DarkStroke Books.

What movie/book scared you as a child?

Thanks for having me on your blog! I remember watching The Others as a child and being quite scared! It probably wouldn’t affect me at all anymore, but back then it was really creepy (I still watched it multiple times though!). Also, I used to love the Goosebumps books – they used to scare me but I loved them. I wouldn’t go to sleep until I had read some, then I often couldn’t sleep after reading them!

I loved The Others too good old fashioned simple scares are oftem the best…..only just discovered Goosebumps when my daughter wanted to to watch the Jack Black movie, I’d have loved them when I was little!

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What was your biggest fear as a child?

I used to have recurring nightmares about cats. We didn’t own a cat at the time, but in the dream I would leave my bedroom and there’d be a cat there waiting for me. It would bite me and I’d wake up and could feel the bite in my leg. The first time it was just a normal cat, then the next time I had the dream it was a cat without skin, then a flaming cat, then a robot cat. I was only six or seven years old, so these dreams were quite frightening! I was only scared of the cat in the nightmares though – we had pet cats that I loved. Dogs, however, I was very scared of. As a child I was chased by a huge dog and only just managed to get back home in time. I’ve been very uncomfortable around big dogs since.

Oh no this is terrifying – I love cats, I cant imagine being scared of them but the whole cat without skin/flaming cat/robot would give me some trouble too. 100% with you on the dog thing though, Ive been scared of dogs for as long as I can remember, not even sure why.

Do you like scary movies? Which one is your favourite?

I do, but I’m not sure I could name just one. There are so many – It, Carrie, Room 237, (all Stephen King so far!), Shaun Of The Dead (that’s a horror/comedy if that counts), 28 Days Later, The Blair Witch Project, I could go on and on! I recently watched The Haunting Of Bly Manor on Netflix. It’s not a sequel to the excellent The Haunting Of Hill House, but it’s from the same creators, and it was brilliant. It’s not terribly scary, but well-written, and the characters really demand empathy from the viewer. I watched it all in one weekend.

OMG I’m OBSESSED with Hill House and Bly Manor. Just brilliant story telling and I bawled my eyes out with both in between swearing when I got a scare.

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I am usually most freaked out by ghosts in books and movies . Have you ever had a paranormal experience in real life?

I haven’t had any paranormal experiences, not directly anyway. However, seven years ago, my girlfriend and I were living in Plymouth in South East England whilst she was a university student. We lived with a couple of friends in a huge old building. Being alone there always felt kind of… oppressive. There was a quite unpleasant atmosphere, and most of us who lived there didn’t like being alone in the house. Then, one day, when we went out to get an ice cream, we saw a Plymouth Ghost Tours bus stop right outside our building! We never found out why, but that was the closest I’ve come to a paranormal experience.

Oh I wanna know who the Plymouth Ghost Tour stopped for!!

Has a book ever really scared you?

Yes! I read a lot of horror, and for the most part, though I greatly enjoy them, I don’t get very scared. However, Midnight by Dean Koontz terrified me! It’s perhaps not his most objectively scary book, but there’s a scene involving a boy and his computer. Those of you who have read it know what part I mean. If you haven’t, I’m not going to give you any spoilers, but it’s one of my favourite books of all time and well worth a read. Also, I found Misery by Stephen King particularly frightening. It’s the realism of it. I’m not egotistical enough to imagine that I’ll be famous enough of a writer to one day find myself in the position of the main character in the book, but the plausibility and bleakness of the story is what scared me.

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Can you share with us an example of fear in one of your own novels?

Both of the main characters in my new novel The Stairwell experience mind-bending, violent visions of horrific, unexplainable events. As if that’s not enough, these also begin to bleed into reality. They both witness people they care about being hurt or worse, both in visions and in the real world. It’s the feeling of total helplessness that the characters experience that I think readers will find frightening. Without giving too much away, both characters, though non-believers in the paranormal, experience events that can be described in no other way, than paranormal. Their entire belief systems are laid bare as they are confronted by all manner of dark, violent and disturbing events.

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In real life what is your biggest fear? Do you use that when you write?

I think my biggest fear is losing my memories, or not being able to trust my own mind. This fear plays quite a big part in The Stairwell. Naturally, with what the characters go through, they question their own sanity, and the thought of this is frightening to me. I have lost two grandparents to Alzheimer’s, so I’ve seen first hand the effects of losing memories and confidence in one’s own mind, and it’s terrifying. I’m also scared of crabs! They’re huge, armoured spiders and I’m not sure why more people aren’t frightened of them when in the sea! I couldn’t find a way to fit crabs into the story, however.

Thank you so much Dean! You better put scary crabs in your next book or I’ll never get over it….

Dean Bryant

Author of horror novel The Stairwell

Releasing on 30th October 2020.

Published by Darkstroke.

Pre-order: mybook.to/thestairwell

Web: deanbryant.com

Email: dean@deanbryant.com

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