Tara Laskowski's Blog

Deborah Lacy’s short stories have appeared in Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, Fault Lines, Shhhh…Murder! , Mystery Weekly Magazine, Murder Most International, and the Anthony Award Winning Anthology Blood on the Bayou  She is the editor of the new short story anthology, The Most Dangerous Games, which includes stories from Heather Graham, JD Allen, Alan Orloff, K.C. Selby, P.M. Raymond, and others.

Do dangerous games scare her? Or is it some other sinister thing that brings terror into her heart? Like drinking a coke, perhaps??? Read on to find out…

What is your favorite urban legend?

The song “Love Rollercoaster” by the Ohio Players has a terrible scream in the middle. The urban legend surrounding the song says the cover model was murdered while the song was being recorded.

When I hear that song, even if I don’t hear the scream, I feel the scream inside of me. It sounds and feels like someone is in terrible pain. Different versions of the legend say different things. In one version, the cover model interrupted recording so the manger stabbed her, and the band keep playing. In another, she was burned from the boiling honey poured all over her during the album photo shoot, and it killed her. The one I heard most often was that she was covered in hot honey while lying on a table. The shoot took so long that the honey hardened. When she finally tried to get up, her skin was ripped off her body, killing her.

Never mind sound studios are soundproof by design. Never mind album cover photo shoots didn’t happen while songs are recorded. Never mind that model is still very much alive. The scream sounds real, and the stories were repeated and repeated.

“She was burned from the boiling honey poured all over her during the album photo shoot, and it killed her.”

Do you enjoy scaring other people?

I enjoy scaring other people with my writing, but not in person. If you pick up a short story or a book in a particular genre, you’ve agreed you’d like to be frightened. But in real life, there are enough real things to be frightened of, so I don’t try to scare people.

My 12-year-old next-door neighbor kid has a completely different philosophy.

What’s your favorite horror movie or television series?

Stranger Things. I’m excited about the upcoming last season—November 26, 2025. Here’s the teaser for season 5. Happy Thanksgiving.

What is your favorite monster/villain?

I’m going to pick two because it’s a tie between the Weeping Angels in Dr. Who and Cersei Lannister from Game of Thrones.

The Weeping Angels are monsters that look like marble statues that can only move or get close to you when you blink. But as soon as someone tells you, “Don’t Blink” it’s all you want to do. It’s nefarious because blinking is involuntary, but you can only save yourself if you can harness control. The whole concept is diabolical.

Cersei Lannister is another of my favorite villains. She’s truly evil, but as you get to know her family, and see what other people in power did to her, you realize how easy it was for her to become evil. Throw in some ambition, and the position of women in royalty, and you get the toxic cocktail that is Cersei.

What’s creepier: clowns, dolls, or wax figures?

Clowns. They are so creepy. I don’t understand why people think they’re fun. Wax figures run a close second, but they don’t move. The clowns move.

What’s the scariest place you’ve ever been?

To a gas station in a remote area South Africa. I had been on safari and the airport was three hours away. I took the recommendation of the safari leader for an airport taxi. He said this guy was his friend, and reliable.

I’d been told there would be others traveling with me, but that day I was alone.

We drove and drove through the African savanna. Miles and miles of nothing but dry grass and road. Occasionally we’d see a house. Then on the horizon there was a solo gas station.

We stopped.

The driver told me that I had to get out and purchase a Coke in the store next to the gas station. The “store” looked like a shed from a 1890s ghost town. There were no windows that I could see.  

I told him I didn’t want a Coke. He told me to go buy one anyway and then just stared at me, waiting for me to get out.

I didn’t want to get out of the car. I didn’t want to go into that shed. I didn’t want to be in the middle of nowhere in a foreign country.

My phone said, “No service.”

Then he said it again, “Go get a Coke.”

So, I slid my passport into my jacket pocket. Grabbed my purse. And got out of the car. I held my breath waiting for him to take off without me.

I walked into the shed. The door squeaked. The floor was dirt. One man sat inside, behind a little table. He had a lamp next to him, but sunlight seeping between the boards in the roof turned out to be a stronger source of light.

He told me to shut the door, that I was letting flies inside. This was true. And the flies were bigger than I had ever seen before. But the flies didn’t scare me.

He asked me if I wanted a Coke. I hesitated and said, “Sure. How much?”

“No charge,” he said. He reached down and opened a cooler. He pulled out a can and pulled open the pop top. He handed it to me. Despite the cooler, the can was warm.

I took the can and held it. There was no way I was going to take even the smallest sip from than Coke. We looked at one another for what seemed like forever. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to see what was going on outside.

Then he looked at me and said, “You can go now.”

I got out of there and back to the car quickly. I put the can in the beverage holder in the back seat and didn’t touch it again.

We arrived at the airport thirty minutes before my international flight. I rushed through security and ran to my gate. I’ve never been so grateful to get on a flight.

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Curtis Smith has published over 125 stories and essays, and his work has been cited by or included in The Best American Short Stories, The Best American Mystery Stories, The Best American Spiritual Writing, The Best Small Fictions, The Best Microfictions, and the Norton anthology New Micro. He’s worked with indie publishers to put out five story collections, two essay collections, seven novels, and one book of creative nonfiction. His 2020 novel The Magpie’s Return was named one of Kirkus’s best indies of 2020, and his 2023 novel The Lost and the Blind was a finalist for Foreword Reviews’ Best Indie of the year. His latest novel, Deaf Heaven, came out in May 2025.

But what strikes fear in his heart? Read on to find out…

What is your greatest fear?

If I’m being honest, my greatest fear isn’t some evil force from the outside world—it’s the inner worry that someday I’ll stop being productive—and in turn, stop being self-sufficient—and all this will domino into becoming a burden to those I love. And unlike the thousands of frivolous fears I’ve entertained over the years, there’s a decent chance this one is waiting for me somewhere down the road. My only reassurance lies in the fact that today is not that day.

What is your earliest childhood memory of fear?

I was four or so when I got lost in the neighborhood supermarket. My mother doesn’t remember this—and perhaps it was nothing more than her turning at the aisle’s end while I considered a cereal box’s cartoon figures. But when I looked around and found myself alone, the world opened up and swallowed me. I still remember how tall the shelves were and how small I felt. I think all of us carry cornerstones of fear—and I’m sure every moment of panic in my life contains a bit of that long-ago afternoon.

“I was four or so when I got lost in the neighborhood supermarket. …When I looked around and found myself alone, the world opened up and swallowed me. I still remember how tall the shelves were and how small I felt.”

What is the scariest thing you remember from childhood?

There were a number of books that frightened me—not the text so much as the images. And of course, the more they scared me, the more I returned to them. One was from a Ripley’s Believe it Not (bought at my elementary school’s book fair—thanks, Scholastic!). Those pages were filled with pen-and-ink renderings of oddities—and this one was about a woman from some royal European family who was afraid of the dark and refused to sleep at night. I can still see the picture of her holding a candle, her eyes wide. Another was from a little booklet about Abraham Lincoln I bought on a family trip to Washington, D.C. Near the end was a photograph of the four hanged conspirators—one a woman—all with hoods over their heads. I was probably nine or so, and for a year, maybe two, I couldn’t lie down to go to sleep without those images looking down from the foot of my bed.

What is your weirdest fear?

As a child, I loved driving over the suspension bridges that separated Philadelphia from New Jersey. The view, the cables and the towers—I thought they were the coolest part of the trip. Then somewhere along the line that changed. I began to see not the bridge but the emptiness all around. It’s not all bridges—just suspension bridges. There’s something about their hump, the rising up and then angling down. I began to feel like there was a kind of horrible gravity at play that was pulling my car, and that a plunge into the river was waiting in the next stretch. What frightened me most wasn’t hitting the water but those moments of falling and their terrible knowledge. I’m better now, but I’m still not a fan, and when I cross, I pray for light winds, and I breath deep and keep my eyes straight ahead and my hands tight on the wheel.

What person living today terrifies you the most and why?

I can’t say our current president terrifies me on a personal level, but I am taken back by the tides he’s brought to the surface. My generation was given such wonderful gifts, and I always believed we’d use them to bend the arc of history toward a more civil and empathetic future, but that hasn’t been the case. When folks laughed at or brushed off his mocking of a disabled person, I knew he’d tapped into some dark tide that I’d believed had been relegated to the fringes. I think fear is one of the main motivators of my writing. Many of my novels have a subplot of some authoritarian or pseudo-religious uprising in society or politics. Unfortunately, a good number of things I’ve written about have come to pass—perhaps in a less violent manner, but they exist nonetheless.

What is your greatest fear as a writer?

That there might come a day when I no longer want to—or am unable—to write.

Do you have a recurring nightmare?

It’s not a nightmare in the wake-up-screaming way so much as it is disturbing, but I’ve had many dreams where I’m doing some project around the house and I discover a hidden room. (That’s the vibe I was going for in my pic, and while it’s not a hidden room, a basement can have its own creepy vibe. Just ask Fortunato.) I’ve read this is supposed to represent finding some new direction or possibilities in one’s life, but all the secret rooms I’ve stumbled into are straight out of the Dr. Caligari, full of shadows and crooked lines and dust and broken items. Nothing about these spaces speaks to me about possibilities—only menace.

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Amy Mason Doan is the bestselling author of the just-released novel The California Dreamers, as well as Lady Sunshine, The Summer List and Summer Hours. Before turning to fiction, Amy worked as a reporter and editor for The Oregonian, San Francisco Chronicle, Wired, Forbes, and other publications, where she interviewed everyone from beer-brewing monks to billionaire CEOs. Amy has an M.A. in Journalism from Stanford University and a B.A. in English from U.C. Berkeley. Amy grew up in Danville, California, and now lives in Portland, Oregon, with her family.

But what terrifies her to bits? Read on to find out…

Is there any fear you’ve overcome in your life?

Public speaking. I’ve quit jobs because they wanted me to do it, but I’ll stand up in front of crowds now to promote my books. As a midlist author, it’s important. I underwent hypnotherapy to get up the guts for my book launch before my first novel came out in 2018.

And now people say, “You’re such an extrovert! You’re a natural up there!” etc.

I. Am. Not.

I just know how to fake ease quite well now. I’m proud of my courage, and there are nice moments—especially when I’m done. But it’ll never be fun for me.

What are your phobias?

Veins! Omg, veins.

This girl in seventh grade knew I didn’t like wrist veins. I’d made the mistake of telling her they bugged me. So one day in our English class she decided it’d be hilarious if she pantomimed digging hers out with a pencil across the room from me. I nearly fainted.

Unfortunately, I have “difficult” veins for phlebotomists, whatever that means. They aren’t visible, and it can be hard to get an IV going with me. Once my mom was sitting with me as I got prepped for a knee surgery in San Francisco (skiing injury in Tahoe!).

And the nurse said, “Oh, you’re a tough one. And she kept poking and poking me, and I was bleeding quite a lot from one arm that had a lot of failed attempts.

My mom, who also hates veins, got so woozy at the sight she had to put her head between her knees. All the doctors and nurses rushed to help her, ignoring me as I bled out…

Kidding. I was fine. But my mom and I still laugh about that day.

“The nurse said, “Oh, you’re a tough one. And she kept poking and poking me, and I was bleeding quite a lot from one arm that had a lot of failed attempts.”

Have you ever had any paranormal experiences?

Both of my dear grandmothers died on the same day within a few hours of each other. They’d had long, healthy, rich lives and died of natural causes—both at 92. So that was a little freaky the day it happened, and of course it was sad. But eventually my extended family and I came to make jokes about how they were “baking pies together” in the afterlife, because they were both excellent bakers, especially of piecrust.

My dad’s mom’s name was Johnnye and my mom’s mom was Alice. And a few months after it happened, I was walking down the baking aisle in a grocery store in Portland looking for flaked coconut, and I saw the names Alice and Johnny out of the corner of my eye. These boxes were right next to each other—Jiffy Cornbread Mix, turned to the side so you could see the recipe for Johnny Cakes. And a special Alice-in-Wonderland movie tie-in cake mix. And the Alice one wasn’t in the right place! I guess someone had changed their mind and lazily mis-shelved it! It belonged across the aisle. What are the chances?

Eerie, right? But also kinda sweet. I decided my grandmas were having a little fun with me. 

What scares you most about the writing process?

That I’ll be forced to publish a book I don’t like. And there are SO MANY months—even years—of not-liking before the liking stage begins. That whole, scary, grinding process where the document in Scrivener (or Word, or whatever you use) has only the most tenuous connection with the beautiful story you want it to become. It’s the only way to get there, of course. So far it hasn’t happened. I know none of my four books is perfect, but I’m proud of each one.

What is your greatest fear as a writer?

That I’ll finish an amazing manuscript and realize someone else just published the same plot. Now that I’m on novel five, I realize this is a predictable stage in my writing process and it only means I’ve grown to love the darn thing—otherwise I wouldn’t be terrified of it not becoming a published book. My author friends have said they develop the same paranoia when the book’s getting good.

What’s your favorite horror movie or television series?

I watched this movie called Ghost Story when I was in my early teens. I was at a slumber party and it freaked all of us out. It was about these four old men who had committed manslaughter back when they were in college, and the girl they’d killed kept haunting them. All of them had been in love with her. They’d stuffed her in the trunk of their car and pushed it into a lake or river. She haunted them with wet hair, her clothes dripping, like she’d just emerged from the water. So creepy.

Fred Astaire played one of the men.

What is your weirdest fear?

Fred Astaire. See above.

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I’m thrilled to feature one of my favorite people and writers today on What Scares You. Gary Fincke, or Dr. Fincke, as I’ve called him most, was one of my writing professors at Susquehanna University and solidly one of the reasons I’m still a writer today. He’s not only an excellent writer but a fabulous teacher as well, one of the good ones who is concerned about figuring out what a student is trying to do and help them get there.

Dr. Fincke has published twelve collections of stories, including Sorry I Worried You, winner of the Flannery O’Connor Prize and The Killer’s Dog, winner of the Elixir Press Fiction Prize. His stories have appeared in such journals as The Missouri Review, The Kenyon Review, Black Warrior Review, CrazyHorse, The Idaho Review, and Cimarron Review. His most recent flash collection is The History of the Baker’s Dozen (Pelekinesis 2024). His newest book is For Now, We Have Been Spared, a collection of poetry published in March by Slant Books. He is the Emeritus Charles Degenstein Professor of English and Creative Writing at Susquehanna University, where he founded and then directed the Writers Institute and the nationally recognized undergraduate creative writing major for more than two decades.

And now? Let’s find out what scares him…

What is your earliest childhood memory of fear?

My earliest memory of fear is being afraid of rain falling on my bare head. There, that identifies me as born squeamish. I was four and walking with my mother when it started to rain. I still had a toddler’s lisp, so I insisted “I’ll fry” if my head got wet. My mother walked me into the A&P and coaxed a cardboard box from the manager. I wore it all the way to my grandmother’s house, square-headed as a primitive robot. My kindly grandmother set the box aside and patted my head. My aunt, who also lived there, looked at me as if she had work to do to make a man out of me.

My earliest “earned fear” arrived when I was five and playing a few blocks from home with a girl who lived in a house near the railroad tracks. Three older boys, maybe ten or eleven, emerged from where a creek ran on the other side of the tracks, then crossed and stood us against the back door of a house and terrorized us by firing BB guns over our head. The girl cried. I did my manly best by not saying a word. Not then. Not ever. But we never played together again.

What is your dumbest fear?

More confessions from childhood. I was seven, and my aunt, the one who used the word pantywaist on me when I showed any signs of regressing back to being afraid of getting my hair wet, told me a story about ants crawling up a friend’s nose while she fell asleep on a backyard sunbathing blanket. The ants, she said, made an ant hill in her head. You’d think a bright 2nd grader with all As on his report card could distinguish between fact and fiction, but all that summer I worried about ants invading me. Every tickle caused by tiny insect feet made me brush myself off with the sort of fury required for a swarm of bees. Thirty years later, I wrote a poem about it that was eventually selected to become a poster for a series produced by Penn State. Even better, that incident and a character based on my aunt became the opening scene of a story called “Rip His Head Off” that helped the story collection Sorry I Worried You win the Flannery O’Connor Prize.

“My aunt told me a story about ants crawling up a friend’s nose while she fell asleep on a backyard sunbathing blanket.”

What are your phobias? 

I’m absolutely phobic about heights. The third step on a ladder is my limit. I’ve never reached the top of the playground monkey bars. I once froze on the staircase that leads up to the exit from Mammoth Cave, convinced another step would somehow cause me to pitch over the railing. My wife coaxed me onward and upward in a tone reminiscent of my aunt’s. Years later, in a more resigned tone, she said, “Please don’t stop” when I panicked driving up the cliffside road to Los Alamos, the car as safe as I could make it by downshifting to second gear, a sort of funereal line of cars behind me.

The only time my phobia seemed like sanity was when my friend the writer Robert Boswell drove us up a narrow, no-guardrail road to reach the waterfall above Telluride. I could not see even an inch of road when I looked out the window of his jeep. I chanted to myself, “He brings his children up here,” as if that made it safe. To my eternal gratitude, he later said, “You’re not the worst,” which, it turned out, was a friend of his who had beaten me for that prize by literally curling up on the floor.

Who is your favorite monster/villain?

Dr. Strangelove. I was a senior in high school when I saw that movie, less than a year removed from living through the Cuban Missile Crisis, especially that DEFCON 2 weekend that began when our Problems of Democracy teacher inadvertently said “Goodbye” at the end of Friday’s afternoon class. (I put that scene in a story called “The Selfishness of Bravery.”

I grew up with nuclear attack drills, not the ridiculous crouch-under-your-desk ones you can watch on YouTube, but ones that seemed more serious because in grade school we walked downstairs to the school basement, faced the wall, and held that position for maybe thirty seconds. I always looked to see if everyone was doing it, and sure enough, until junior high began, everybody did. I’ve watched Dr. Strangelove lately, and it’s even more unsettling because the satire now seems mild. Or even missing, as if 2025’s reality had dimmed all of the exaggerations, especially the Nazi salutes and hallucinatory conspiracy theories.

What is your greatest fear? Do you have a recurring nightmare? What was your worst nightmare ever?

I put all these questions together because there’s a connection, at least to me. The recurring one, since childhood and maybe once or twice or more a year ever since, is “Falling Up.” I rise in the dream until I am about to disappear, and I often wake up crying out.  Ask my wife how that sounds. Basically, it’s as if, rather than falling and being injured or killed, I fall up and vanish, which, if it isn’t my greatest fear, it’s gaining fast as I close in on eighty years of age. How do I deal with it? Self-deprecation comes in handy. Here’s where my aunt looks over my shoulder and whispers “pantywaist.” And that fear of vanishing has kept me writing and teaching well past (nine years now) when I retired.

And the worst of those nightmares? In that one, I was driving along the Susquehanna River shortly after taking my job at the university, and the car went out of control, through the guardrail and flew up rather than plunge into the water. Regardless, I was about to die/vanish, and this time I uttered a full-throated scream. I remember it more clearly than the others because I was living temporarily in a spare room of the department chair’s house, and I was sure that he and his wife and his two teenaged daughters heard me. (I wrote a poem about that, too) I’ve traveled that section of road a thousand times since, and when I am a passenger I always, as the car approaches that spot, feel anxious.

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P.M. Raymond is an award-winning author from New Orleans, Louisiana who “knows a thing or two about good gumbo, grits, and café au lait.” Her short story, “Double Dutch Dare,” will be in the upcoming anthology The Most Dangerous Games (Level Best Books), edited by Deborah Lacy. She’s also got a short story collection, Things Are As They Should Be, publishing in 2026 from Uncomfortably Dark Horror. She is a 2025 Killer Shorts Screenplay and Horror2Comic Semifinalist, the Sisters in Crime 2024 Eleanor Taylor Bland Award Winner, and 2024 Claymore Award Finalist. Her work has appeared in Punk Noir, Flash Fiction Magazine, and Dark Yonder, among others.

But what scares her? Read on to find out…

What is the scariest thing you remember from childhood?

I remember distinctly when I was young that commercials for horror movies of the time didn’t hold back! The commercials were terrifying. I particularly remember Phantasm, It’s Alive, and Last House on the Left. Specific snippets from these films live rent-free in my head. But the movie that truly scared me, the one I still haven’t watched in full to this day, is The Exorcist.

What are your phobias?

I don’t have any real phobias, but I do have a laundry list of things I dislike! However, I wrote a story about AIBOHPHOBIA, a fear of palindromes, for Flash Fiction Magazine in 2022. If you look closely at the phobia’s name you can see it is a palindrome of the word “phobia.” It’s a very twisty story.  

What is your favorite urban legend (or one that’s really stuck with you/freaked you out)?

The Rougarou! The legend traveled from France (where it is called a ‘loup-garou’) to the southern part of Louisiana. This Cajun folklore bad boy prowls the swamps and bayous at night seeking out misbehaving children. Or so the legend goes. The Rougarou is similar to a lycanthrope but not exactly. Although its French name translates to “werewolf” and can transform under a full moon, the Rougarou is more like a humanoid creature with the head of a wolf or dog but the body of a man.

The myth is meant to inspire fear and obedience. Aside from naughty children, one of the Rougarou’s other favorite meals is a Catholic who doesn’t observe Lent properly. Its origin is rooted in Catholicism. This werewolf hybrid suffers no fools!

What intrigues me about the Rougarou is the other ways it is said to shapeshift. It can transform into any white animal like a dog, a rabbit, or a bird. The Rougarou is also spoken of as a curse, something that an individual can be doomed to become. One legend involves an unlucky person bitten by a Rougarou. The unlucky soul will turn into a Rougarou every night for 100 nights until the curse is lifted. It is also said that the creature will knock at your door but can’t enter if there are thirteen stones or coins lining the threshold. There is so much to this Louisiana legend that I am still discovering. The Rougarou and all its incarnations have definitely stuck with me.

Is there anything you are terrified of eating?

This will sound unreal but…I have a fear of eating something that I’m never likely to eat—a live octopus. Hear me out. San-nakji is a Korean dish of raw, cut-up small octopus served while still moving. Sesame oil and maybe some sesame seeds are sprinkled on the tentacles and then—down the hatch. I guess the oil helps the octopus to go down easier, but that doesn’t mitigate the choking hazard. The squiggling tentacles can act like suction cups and stick to your throat and basically choke and probably suffocate you all at once. Not a pleasant way to go. Choking on any food is a VERY big fear of mine, so I would also include marshmallows on this list!

“The squiggling tentacles can act like suction cups and stick to your throat and basically choke and probably suffocate you all at once.”

People often say death is their greatest fear. What are your feelings about death/dying?

As a native New Orleanian, funeral dirges and second-line jazz funeral processions are part of the culture. Celebrating the life that was lived with fanfare and exuberance is the norm. Because there is a zest for life infused into death, I don’t think too intently about my mortality.

What’s something you’ll never do because you’re too scared?

Skydiving! I could never! I’m too much of a control freak to let gravity take the wheel. And I’m afraid of heights so jumping out of a plane and plummeting to earth is simply not for me.

Which evil, murderous persona most matches your personality and why: slow-walking psychotic serial killer; vampire stalking victims in the wee hours of the night; rich megalomaniac with grand plans to take over the world; centuries-old demon witch looking for revenge; or Hyde-like, fueled with rage and no impulse control?

The personas are all great, and I see a little bit of myself in each of them. However, I would say “centuries-old demon witch looking for revenge” is the closest to my heart! Revenge is a core theme in my upcoming interconnected short story collection, Things Are as They Should Be: And Other Words to Die For, from Uncomfortably Dark Horror in 2026. Revenge is also one of the best emotions to play with and have fun with when it comes to unintended consequences. The fantasy is that revenge is sweet and cathartic but in reality, there are downstream ramifications that my crime noir and horror works give me an opportunity to explore.

What’s the scariest thing you’ve ever written?

I don’t usually get scared by what I write but I do make myself uncomfortable on many occasions. One story in particular, “Gotcha”, is the story that readers have most often expressed unease or said it outright scared them.  

What’s your favorite horror movie or television series?

Such an unfair question for a horror writer! I love it all! My tastes evolve as new projects release so my favorite changes. Although I could go with the more well known movies that I grew up with like The Shining, American Werewolf in London, or new fare like Get Out or Hereditary, let me leave you with these lesser known films that are brilliant and span time from the 1980s to today—The Changeling (an underrated gem staring George C. Scott), His House (a 2020 release from Remi Weekes of a Sudanese couple feeling the war), and Eve’s Bayou (set in 1960s Louisiana, it takes a measured approach to voodoo and hoodoo, and I wrote an article about it for DreadCentral.com).

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As 2024 comes to a wrap (How did that happen?), I got to catch up with an old friend with a brand new book. Daniel DiFranco is a writer/musician/teacher from Philadelphia. He is the author of two novels, Panic Years (Tailwinds Press, 2018) and the hot-off-the-presses Devil on My Trail (Unsolicited Press, 2024). His short stories can be found in Smokelong Quarterly, Monkeybicycle, Fractured Lit, and others.

But what makes his teeth chatter in the dead middle of the night? Read on to find out…

What is your greatest fear?

Having my leg fall asleep when I need to run, like from a fire or murderer.

What are your phobias?

I’m not in love with heights, particularly when presented with megalophobia [a type of anxiety disorder in which a person experiences intense fear of large objects.] I don’t know if I’d call it “fear” so much as it producing a fight or flight response, which I don’t usually enjoy.

Do you have a recurring nightmare? What was your worst nightmare ever?

YES! The recurring one is my worst nightmare! I’m getting chills even thinking about it. It’s always my grandparent’s house, but it’s not. You know how dreams are weird with that. It becomes cavernous and labyrinthine. There’s a top floor and everyone knows it’s haunted, but they just stay out of it. For some reason, I’m always forced to go up there for something. Maann, I’m getting weirded out writing this. There’s a lady in white that emerges (my heart is literally racing right now) and I don’t think terror is a strong enough word to describe what it invokes in me. I don’t know who she is or what she wants because I always wake up in a panicked dread when she comes near me. If anyone reading this is a dream analyst, please help. Though, the first movie I saw in a theater was Ghostbusters, and I cried and screamed at the opening scene in the library. God, this lifelong nightmare can’t be because of something as stupid as that, could it?

What scares you most about the writing process?

The part where you edit and rewrite and edit and rewrite and then your piece gets published and you’re mortified at how bad your own writing is. I’m always editing—even pieces that have been published. There’s a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde thing going on. There’s a version of me that is really fucking great and can see through all superfluous and bad choices. I just want to know where that guy is hiding. He’s in there, lurking. Waiting to pounce and humble me.

What is your greatest fear as a writer?

Public mockery when people find out I’m really just three possums in a trench coat trying to understand the human condition through writing.

What’s your favorite horror movie or television series?

Does The X-Files count? I do not enjoy the sensation of being frightened in real time. I can read a book, but movies? Forget it. I’m a wimp—especially when it comes to gross out horror and jump scares. My wife, Ellie, can’t get enough, and I hide behind her when we go to haunted houses.  

What is your favorite monster/villain?

I’m a sucker for vampires. Always have been. I think I can trace it back to reading with my aunt as little kid. We read one of those choose your own adventure books called Vampire Express. There was a time in my life where all I read was vampire books, but we won’t talk about that here. In fact, forget I mentioned it.

People often say death is their greatest fear. What are your feelings about death/dying?

I wouldn’t say I’m looking forward to it, but I know it is a thing that must be done. I hope it’s not too painful and that it happens a long time from now. My dream is taking a long, awe-filled trip somewhere with my wife, and when the trip is over and we’re flying home, we drift off to sleep and never wake up. If that doesn’t happen, I’ve long maintained that I want someone to shove a bunch of willow tree seeds down my throat and bury me feet first, standing up. I want a tree to grow out of me. I want kids to say it is haunted. Technologies are catching up to my dream, and I most likely will prepare for a green burial after my organs, what’s left and can be useful, have been harvested.

“I want someone to shove a bunch of willow tree seeds down my throat and bury me feet first, standing up. I want a tree to grow out of me. I want kids to say it is haunted.”

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What’s creepier: clowns, dolls, or wax figures?

100% dolls. But also clowns. Wax figures are pretty creepy too. You know what? Keep all that stuff away from me, please.

Which evil, murderous persona most matches your personality and why: slow-walking psychotic serial killer; vampire stalking victims in the wee hours of the night; rich megalomaniac with grand plans to take over the world; centuries-old demon witch looking for revenge; or Hyde-like, fueled with rage and no impulse control?

The vampire. I like to lurk (in a totally benign way). Aren’t all writers really just lurkers and wallflowers to some degree? I spent most of my 20s and 30s working in bars or playing gigs—being around people, but not really hanging with them. Being the last one when the doors are locked. In a weird way I felt more connected because I was interacting with so many different types of people. But I also remember being lonelier too. So yeah, absolute vampire.

The post What Scares You, Daniel DiFranco? appeared first on Tara Laskowski.

Polly Campbell is the author of You, Recharged: How to Beat Fatigue (Mostly), Amp Up Your Energy (Usually), and Enjoy Life Again, (Always), and three other books. We first met when she invited me to be a guest on her podcast Simply Write w/Polly, where she gives practical, inspirational, and real advice for writers and creators. Find her at simplywrite.substack.com, on Instagram @PollyLCampbell, and at https://pollycampbell.com.

And find out what terrifies her right here…

What is your greatest fear?

Easy. My child going missing. Like just having her out there in the world, without knowing where, or who she is with, or if she’s OK. Nightmare.

What is your weirdest fear?

Oh well, it’s that age old classic movie The Wizard of Oz. I mean, doesn’t this family favorite freak everyone out? Yeah. I really do not like that movie, not the actors dressed up like characters, nor the green melting witch, nor the flying monkeys, nor Munchkins. The whole thing is very creepy. I didn’t show it to my daughter because I refuse to watch it with her.

What is your favorite urban legend?

Totally the story of Bloody Mary. But is it a legend or truth? The story where you can repeat the name Bloody Mary in the bathroom mirror and conjure the ghost of the woman. Oh yeah. Heard about her as a child, and it sticks with me today.

Do you have a recurring nightmare?

Yes. There is a big creature energy, traipsing across the lower hills toward me. Looks like an angry Bigfoot, and it has been showing up in my dreams since I was a young child. I could always see him coming, down from the mountain, over the hill, across the river until he hit the field, and then found me wherever I was in a bed, or a shopping cart, college dorm room, car, even my first apartment. He would always find me and scoop me up and take me away, but we never got to an end. He just separated me from my life. This creature dream has followed me, but now I’m less afraid, because while it gets me every time, I’m never injured and I always wake up at home. Also, he is pink. But a very menacing pink.

“Looks like an angry Bigfoot, and it has been showing up in my dreams since I was a young child. I could always see him coming, down from the mountain…He would always find me and scoop me up and take me away. Also, he is pink. But a very menacing pink.”

Have you ever had any paranormal experiences or premonitions?

Once when we were touring the Portland Underground, tunnels used historically to capture and hold—Shanghai—men and women who would then be drugged, carried aboard ships and used as unpaid labor aboard, I felt cold air blow by me and a very strong scent. I didn’t know what it was but the word horehound kept jumping into my mind. I asked the guide about it later, asked her if she knew what it was, and she did. She told me, based on records, one of the young women who had died while held in the tunnel prison used to love horehound treats brought by her captors. A fact the guide hadn’t shared on tour. The story gave me chills and huge empathy for this young girl who was held. But also, totally fascinated me.

What scares you most about the writing process?

Hitting send on a manuscript or article.  My breath catches every time.

What is your greatest fear as a writer?

That I’ll never be able to do it. That I will empty of ideas or the ability to write them. Yet still I will be compelled to sit down each day to write, and have nothing. To sit down ready to work and not have anything to work with. Ever.

What’s your favorite horror movie or television series?

I’m more of a crime or suspense series type. The series Ozark was one of my all-time favorites. Though I did love the movie Barbarian.

What’s the scariest place you’ve ever been?

I was a teenager on a cranky old interstate bus, more like a brightly colored school bus, on a narrow mountain pass in Colombia when the drug trade was at its peak and Americans were not popular. The last thing I was told when I got on was to keep my head down and not do anything to draw attention. The bus was stopped in the middle of the night by military rebels. We were ordered to get off and stand in a line alongside the road while they went through our papers and passports. I stuffed my passport into the seat before I got off so I couldn’t be identified or my passport stolen. As the militants came down the line, the bus driver started yelling at these men, who were all holding guns. Just started looking at his watch and screaming in Spanish, words that I could not understand. The soldiers stopped abruptly halfway down the line of passengers, turned off their flashlights and let everyone back onto the bus.

I just remember feeling very young and vulnerable and isolated and female and it was very scary.

What’s creepier: clowns, dolls, or wax figures?

Oh clowns. No doubt. They can get away with all kinds of shit.

The post What Scares You, Polly Campbell? appeared first on Tara Laskowski.

C. Matthew Smith is author of the novel Twentymile, as well as short stories that have appeared online and in magazines and anthologies such as Mystery Weekly and Mickey Finn: 21st Century Noir. His second novel is due out late 2025. He lives with his family in Newnan, Georgia, and from what I hear, they KNOW how to do Halloween right.

But what scares him? Let’s find out.

What is your greatest fear?

Hands down, my greatest fear is heights. I don’t consider it irrational by any stretch–you fall from a significant height, and you either die or wish you had. But what my brain considers a significant height is admittedly pathetic. You get me above say eight to ten feet, and my mind starts spinning. You get me way up, and all I can think about is how I’m getting down. Eiffel Tower? Empire State Building? I’ve done them because my family wanted to do them. I didn’t enjoy them for a second, and I wasn’t up there any longer than I had to be. 

What is the scariest thing you remember from childhood?

This will date me, but I have a vivid memory of watching a TV commercial for Stanley Kubrik’s The Shining. That movie was released in 1980, so I would have been five at the time. The ad included a clip of Jack chasing Danny through the snowy shrubbery maze with the axe. Seeing a child roughly my own age depicted in such danger absolutely terrified me. Maybe my mind has pasted this on over the years, but I also have a vague recollection of my parents realizing what I had just seen and the trouble it was about to cause them getting me to sleep.

Have you ever had any paranormal experiences or premonitions? How did you deal with it?

We live in a house built in 1894, and naturally a number of people have died in it. I’m a pretty rational guy, but we’ve had a number of experiences in the house that defy explanation and make it hard for me to be too much of a skeptic when it comes to the notion of ghosts. It started with this scent showing up now and then around the house—an old timey floral scent befitting a perfume. I smelled it. My wife, Cindy, smelled it. It’s not a scent you’d encounter in nature. It couldn’t have just drifted in on a breeze. In addition, Cindy and I both have experienced what feels like a hand pressing down on our chests when we slept in one particular room. It was unlike any sleep paralysis I’d ever experienced. Most concerning is that every now and then something in the house will disappear and later appear in a spot you know you searched but that you also know you hadn’t left the item. For example, this Fitbit charging cord went missing a few years back. We looked everywhere. We eventually threw up our hands and went to Best Buy to get a new one. When we came back in the house, the damn cord was draped across a chair in the living room. No way all four of us would have missed that just lying there. So I guess whatever ghost we have is a prankster.

“Every now and then something in the house will disappear and later appear in a spot you know you searched but that you also know you hadn’t left the item…So I guess whatever ghost we have is a prankster.”

Is there any fear you’ve overcome in your life? How has that changed you?

After the birth of our son, Everett, I developed a fear of flying. This was particularly inconvenient since I am an attorney and my work at the time required me to fly all over the country. My theory is that I now had someone depending on me, and my brain translated that into THIS PLANE COULD GO DOWN AND YOU’RE GOING TO LEAVE YOUR YOUNG KID FATHERLESS. It wasn’t that I couldn’t fly; I did all the time. I just hated every minute of it, and even mild turbulence had me gripping the armrests in an effort to keep the plane in the air. (You may think that’s stupid, but the plane never went down, so really, who’s to say?) Overseas trips were a particular kind of gnarly—I was probably the only passenger looking at the interactive map on the seat console checking for the nearest land masses in case the plane needed to divert for an emergency landing.

A few years ago, though, when it seemed to be at its worst and we were preparing for a family vacation in Italy, I came upon this website called fearofflying.com, which I think was created by a guy who’s both a pilot and a therapist. It was filled with reassuring data and facts. Some of it I already knew intellectually, like how much more dangerous my morning commute is statistically than any flight I could take. But it also taught me that no plane has ever gone down because of turbulence. It’s just bumps in the road. I’m a pretty analytical guy most of the time, and somehow what this website armed me with really took that fear down several notches. I won’t say it’s totally gone—I still try to meditate through takeoff and the first few minutes of ascent. But I’m not in mortal fear the whole time anymore.

What scares you most about the writing process?

I don’t plot my novels or stories. I’ve tried. I just can’t. My stories generally start with an idea, some small spark, and from there it’s just me playing with this idea whose shape I really can’t see until near the end of the writing process. As a consequence, I have no idea where it’s really going or how it’s going to end. With a novel, if I get to 20,000 words, I figure the story has legs, I should stick with it. But the end is waaaay in the distance, I can’t see it, and that brings with it a particular fear. I’m terrified that I’ll have spent all this time on this story but never get it across the finish line. That somehow I’ll stall out and reach a point where I don’t know how to move it forward to completion. 

What’s the scariest thing you’ve ever written?

My first novel, Twentymile, features a badass special agent with the National Park Service’s Investigative Services Branch. She’s smart, dogged, and capable. But I gave her my fear of heights and then put her in a couple of different situations in the novel where she has no choice but to confront it. I tried to infuse those moments with some of the fear I experience, and for me those scenes were rather intense to write. I hope that comes across on the page for the reader.

Is there anything you are terrified of eating? Why?

I have a pretty adventurous palate and will try most anything. The one exception that I can think of is fugu, the Japanese blowfish delicacy that, if not prepared exactly right, can poison and kill you. I’m good. I’ll stick with sashimi.

What’s the scariest place you’ve ever been?

It’s not exactly frightening, but the catacombs in Paris are definitely creepy. You walk forever under the city, surrounded by the bones of the dead.

What’s something you’ll never do because you’re too scared?

I rock climbed one time, at the urging of a couple of guys I worked with one summer in Montana. They were psychology grad students, and they called it “immersion therapy” for my fear of heights. It didn’t work. But they fed me margaritas afterward.

What is your greatest fear as a writer?

I fear what I think most writers fear: not finding a good home for the story I’ve written. Many may not admit this. The writing should be its own reward, and it truly is. But don’t we write stories to be read by others?

The post What Scares You, C. Matthew Smith? appeared first on Tara Laskowski.

Heather Daughrity loves all things macabre, dark, autumnal, supernatural, and horrific. She writes horror—the quiet, creeping, psychological kind, full of moaning wind, shifting shadows, and psychological pain. When she’s not writing, she works as a freelance editor, helping authors make their stories the best they can be.

Heather’s solo works include Knock Knock, Tales My Grandmother Told Me, and Echoes of the Dead. Her short stories have been featured in several anthologies, and she is the curating editor of the House of Haunts and Hospital of Haunts anthologies.

Heather loves digging in the dirt, hiking in the woods, whipping up delicious desserts in the kitchen, and generally soaking up all the weird and wild beauty of the world. She lives in Oklahoma with her husband, author and publisher Joshua Loyd Fox, where together they spend their days reading, writing, and being blissfully bookish.

But what scares her? Let’s find out!

What is the scariest thing you remember from childhood?

When I was around 10 or 11, my mom—a very religious woman—became obsessed with the idea of spiritual warfare.  So, on Sunday nights, a group of maybe 10 or 12 of us would go walking through the church buildings in the dark after nearly everyone had left, with the adults calling out any evil spirits that might be lurking about and casting them out in God’s name. There were definitely some creepy, anxiety-inducing moments during those dark hours. People claimed to see things or feel things, and I certainly had some washes of prickling trepidation upon walking into certain rooms. 

Now—was there anything actually there or was I an impressionable kid caught up in a sort of small-scale mass hysteria built on eerie suggestion and spooky atmosphere? I don’t know.  But I can still feel the goosebumps breaking out on my arms and the tears which would spring inexplicably to my eyes upon entering specific spaces.

What is your weirdest fear?

I have an immense fear of anything covering my face. Well, covering both my nose and mouth. If one is covered but the other is not, I’m fine, but having them both covered sends me into a panic. I can remember being very young and getting sweaters stuck on my head trying to get dressed or undressed by myself and feeling trapped and unable to breathe. I would freak out. I sometimes question if I am afraid of this now because of those moments, or was I freaking out then because I was already afraid of it?

In a related note: the COVID quarantine was HARD for me. Wearing a face mask that covered both my nose and mouth felt like I was constantly on the verge of suffocating. I DID wear one when I went out to places that required it, but I avoided going anywhere unless absolutely necessary because of this fear. And even when I was out, I would have to occasionally pull the mask away and take in a great gasping gulp of fresh air.

“I have an immense fear of anything covering both my nose and mouth. Having them both covered sends me into a panic.”

Do you have a recurring nightmare?

Sort of, and this is related to the fear described above. A few times a year I will have nightmares that my husband has to physically wake me up from. I will thrash about and mumble and groan in my sleep. The dreams are different, but always involve me either not being able to breathe or not being able to speak to someone (and what I’m trying to say is always life-or-death important, like “Don’t open that door, there’s poisonous gas out there!”). After several years of doing this, I realized that I only have these dreams when either I’ve fallen asleep on my stomach (so that in my sleep I end up with my face in the pillow) or the blankets have somehow gotten bunched up around my face and covered my mouth and nose.

So, to reiterate: even in my sleep, I do NOT like having my mouth and nose covered.

What’s something that most people are afraid of that you are not?

Bugs. Spiders. I was creeped out by them as a little girl, for sure, but after years of gardening, I’ve come to love most and at least tolerate others. It IS amusing to me when a big, strong man freaks out over a spider and I’m up with my face inches away from it going, “Look at this beauty!”

What’s creepier: clowns, dolls, or wax figures?

Well, not dolls. I’m pretty sure I could kick a doll across the room. Wax figures are meh, I mean just the whole Uncanny Valley thing makes them creepy, right? But clowns—clowns are the most truly horrifying because that’s a real person and unfortunately, we all know that the true horror in the world comes from what real people do to each other.

What’s your favorite horror movie or television series?

I LOVED Penny Dreadful. I grew up on those old-school Victorian Gothic monsters, and that show brings them all together in such a wonderful way. Each time a new (old) character was introduced, I would be absolutely giddy.

What’s the scariest book you’ve ever read? Is there a particular scene that really haunts you still?

This is a tie. For supernatural horror, Adam Nevill’s No One Gets Out Alive. That book is like six horror stories rolled into one. Just when you think you’ve escaped one danger, another one shows up. For man vs. man horror, Dean Koontz’s Intensity gave me actual nightmares. I wanted to DNF so many times, but something in me had to keep reading, to see how it ended, because I knew all the possible scenarios that were running through my mind were going to continue to haunt me if I didn’t get some closure.

People often say death is their greatest fear. What are your feelings about death/dying?

I have no fears about death and dying. Now, I certainly don’t want to go out in a painful way—whether that be a long, drawn-out illness or a violent car crash, but death itself doesn’t bother me. I’ve always had a sort of “it’s all part of the circle of life” mindset when it comes to this. Beautiful babies are born, lives are lived, people grow old and die; seasons change—nature is constantly in a cycle of birth, life, death, rebirth—I think it’s beautiful, really, and am just glad to be a part of it.

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Born in Pittsburgh, Keith Donohue is the author of six novels, including The New York Times bestseller The Stolen Child, and Angels of Destruction, Centuries of June, The Boy Who Drew Monsters, The Motion of Puppets, and most recently The Girl in the Bog.  He also edited and wrote the introduction to the Everyman edition of The Complete Novels of Flann O’Brien. His work has been translated into two dozen languages, and he also writes reviews for the Washington Post. A graduate of Duquesne University, he lives in Maryland and works at the National Archives.

What is your greatest fear?

Fear is a tricky business. In some regards, I’m not afraid of anything. I don’t suspect a murderer is hiding behind a tree or giant mutant fascist spiders will one day hatch from the desert and lay waste to the nation. Almost never do I wonder if Norman Bates is hiding behind the shower curtain, and I certainly do not need to check under the bed for the bogeyman or a vampire or dust bunnies with chattering sharp teeth suddenly springing out to gnaw at my toes.

On the other hand, I love a good “jump scare.” Jonesy, the cat in “Alien,” gave me a heart attack. Even worse than the creature bursting from the astronaut’s belly.

Okay, then, what are your phobias?

That’s another matter altogether. I have an irrational fear of falling from great heights. So, bridges, cliff edges, the observation deck of 30 Rock, the Grand Canyon, and other such canyons, accidentally skydiving, the space beneath the railing of an ocean liner or a boat, ladders, roofs, observation decks, tall piers, and so on. It is not the height of the place (I am totally fine on an enclosed airplane or spacecraft) that bothers me. I simply do not want to plunge to my doom.

How do you deal with fear?

Rather poorly, for the most part. I try to confront panic and anxiety by staring into the abyss and telling myself it isn’t real. Or mutter a string of foul curses under my breath. I’ve tried using the mindfulness technique of naming things and saying their colors to take my mind off the perceived threat. It actually works sometimes!

Or I coolly avoid the situation, and if I am with other people, I say you go ahead and climb to the top of the mountain while I turn my back. I don’t want you to fall to your doom, either.

You poor thing. Does your fear of falling come about from some childhood trauma? What is the scariest thing you remember from childhood?

The curious thing about fear of falling is that I never fell. I do not remember some incident that perhaps brought on agoraphobia. In fact, we used to leap off the deck of our backdoor stoop with complete aplomb, despite being high enough to cause sharp pains in the ankles. And I climbed trees like any normal human.

Childhood, itself, is scary. Ghost stories around the campfire. Innocently watching an episode of the Outer Limits or Twilight Zone, and suddenly there’s a doll dancing madly across the screen or a ventriloquist dummy come to life. Puppets are uncanny. The sudden realization of one’s own mortality. The vortex of the bathtub. The first day of school. Responsibilities.

“I would contend that the existential monster is the worst one of all.”

Is there any fear you’ve overcome in your life? How has that changed you?

I used to be afraid of girls, but overcoming that has changed me for the better. At least from my point of view.

Growing up in the 60s, we had a pretty plain American diet, and I was “afraid” of trying certain foods. To impress girls (see sentence above), I would force myself to try new cuisines, and my life is much better for Indian food, sushi, Maryland crabs, and so on.

Now that you’ve asked, I really should try to overcome all my fears. What could go wrong if I try to scale a cliff? How likely is it, after all, that I will trip on my shoelaces at the top of a waterfall?

As a writer, do you have any fears?

You have stabbed at the heart of the matter. Nobody begs us to tell a story, not even the children after a certain age. And yet, something compels us to fill that blank page, and then? Will anyone read it? Will anyone “get” the reason for the story? The only solution to the conundrum is to go to the edge and write and hope and be mindful, I think, of the worthiness of your effort. It is okay to be misunderstood after all these years. The only thing worse than fear is regret.

What’s your favorite horror movie or television series?

Thanks for bringing that up! Stories, books, movies, and television shows are on a different plane. I dig the visceral thrill of a cliffhanger. And even more I adore spoofs of the conventions of the genre. My sister used to turn on Dark Shadows every afternoon following school, and we were into the campy soap opera. And I came of age during the years when the Munsters and (my fav) The Addams Family were in first run or reruns.

Maybe that’s what has informed my own writing, the slightly absurd reaction to the fear impulse and knowing that there’s a hand beneath the puppet, a charlatan behind the curtain in Oz. I loved the cheesy special effects of the skeleton sailors in Sinbad or the stop-motion King Kong atop the Empire State Building. It’s Halloween all the time, actors in masks or sheets, the communal will to join in the glorious sham-fakery of the arts.

What is your favorite monster?

The Great Pumpkin. Never shows up. Some might argue that the Great Pumpkin is not real, but tell that to Linus. I would contend that the existential monster is the worst one of all. You will have to drag me, too, shivering and teeth-chattering, from the pumpkin patch.

There are a lot of contenders for second place. Dr. Praetorius in Bride of Frankenstein with his little people trapped in glass jars, and Elsa Lancaster’s bride is particularly delightful when she hisses at her man. Grendel, the monster from Beowulf, in John Gardner’s novel. The dragon in the “Faerie Queen,” who sprouts more dragons if its head is cut off. As a person of Irish persuasion, I cherish a good banshee. Not to mention a pooka) in Flann O’Brien’s At Swim-Two-Birds or the Jimmy Stewart version in Harvey. Poe has the best fiends, the bricklayer in “A Cask of Amontillado” or the sadist of “The Pit and the Pendulum.” Hard to beat the talented Mr. Ripley or the gathering flocks in Daphne du Maurer’s short story, “The Birds.” Or the monster Walter White becomes in Breaking Bad. Unless one counts the townsfolk in Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery” and any number of beastly people created by the underrated Steven Millhauser.

I am afraid I could go on.

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