Everybody Scream! — In This Post of Halloween

I honestly don’t like being scared. I don’t know why I torture myself. For the most part, I’ve gotten better about it, but when I was a kid it was just the worst. For some reason, when I was younger, nothing in the world scared me more than aliens–and so of course I had an obsession with reading about them, and watching movies about them, and so on and so forth.

I even had this creepy alien figurehead that hung somewhere above my bed (why, oh why?) to torment my dreams. Whether it was aliens or, later on, weird creatures like the chupacabra (there were no goats anywhere near where I lived, so why this creature terrified me I will never know), I always indulged in reading about all of these creepy things and only regretting it later when I had to try to sleep.

I’ve since learned my lesson. I know my limits, now.

But on Halloween, I just can’t resist the temptation to indulge in a little scary media. Halloween is one half of some kind of agreement that’s only completed by me putting myself through some kind of ritual by fire and passing through on the other side alive but forever scarred. Without going through it, I can’t safely pass through and into Thanksgiving, where all of the delicious food is.

Last year, I think I gave my attention to the game Amnesia: The Dark Descent. My experience with that game can best be summed up with this video:

It was NOT a good time. And yet it was oh so right. For me, scary video games are probably the pinnacle of horror entertainment. I love a scary book as much as the next person (as evidence by my last book review post), and scary movies are fine, but scream-for-scream, nothing gives as much value as a well done game.

The interactivity makes it a kind of torture. If a movie scares you too much, it doesn’t care, it’s going to just keep going on without you and in around two hours it’ll all be over. A game, on the other hand, requires a sheer effort of will to push yourself further towards the end. You have that knowledge in the back of your head that you’re terrified and it’s you that’s causing that terror. You have to walk down that hall, you have to open that door and just hope there’s nothing scary behind it.

I’m still not entirely sure what I’ll be putting myself through this year! I’ve already read a couple of horror novels, but I’m feeling the need for something more. Maybe I’ll dig out a game to play.

Or maybe I’ll just hide under a blanket until the season passes and hope that Thanksgiving is on the other side, waiting with a comforting glass of apple cider and a piece of pumpkin pie.

That sounds nice.