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Well what gives?
What makes your spine tingle and crawl?
What frightens you most? 

When I was a kid, I remember telling ghost stories around the campfire on family trips with my sister Norma.  I also recall hanging out with an older cousin watching scary movies on TBS when I was around nine.  This was scary enough, but on my own, I began reading books like The Omen, and The Exorcist, then catching the movies as well.
I still remember my first though.  That unsettling feeling, in the Night of the Living Dead when the woman gnaws on that arm.  I remember realizing she was no longer human... that's scary.

Here's some of the action I remember:

Halloween (Highlights 98-07)
  Frankenstein 1970 (trailer)    Night of the Living Dead     I selected those few trailers to show the kinds of stuff I watched- even as a little kid.  To me Halloween was not that scary, just bloody.  Although the first Halloween was creepy, and I did enjoy Rob Zombie's version, even if it has been widely criticized.   What's the scariest movie you've seen? Personally, I don't know which one scares me.  I will say John Carpenter's The Thing is my favorite.   I love the tension in that movie, the suspicions- the mystery.    I have seen several.  When it comes to horror I have watched for a long time.  I must say it is easier for me to feel unsteady from reading a scary author than a movie.  My friend Aaron was telling me that picking the "cheap" approach where the villain is campy, and will run the gamut, gutting his fair share of victims, but would ultimately fall to the 'hero vibe' character, was one of the things he strongly disliked about horror films.  Perhaps this is why I prefer Night of the Living Dead to Halloween.   But is either really that scary?  How are movies scarier than terrorism, famine, war, or disease?  They aren't.  My girlfriend is new to my typical Octobers, where I watch as many horror films as I can. Jen asked me how I could watch so many horror films.  My answer was that by watching them, they made my real life seem awesome in comparison.  A little Hell to remind me there can be Heaven on Earth.  My favorite author is Clive Barker- because He can scare me!  The issue is, a good amount of his movies are lame.  Though they are still cooler than the B & C quality films like C.H.U.D and so on.  Stephen King is also far creepier in text- or even audiobook.   I feel language, and the art of speaking, or as expressed in literature have the power to move the reader beyond what they can see.  Why?  Because the images in a film are limited and/or brief, while the mind and imagination have no limits. I wrote a few rather dark and disturbing scenes in Ways of the Stygia Fallen Song.  The main character is a C.S.I.  who visits a few dark murder scenes...  I cannot express how interesting it is to have heard about the impact my writing had a select few, widely different other authors.  One stopped reading the book at around 10% and unjustly compared it to Robocop...  I find this moronic.  Now Robocop is scary.  Violence for the sake of violence anyone?  At least Fallen Song has a deep plot.  I definitely prefer suspenseful, over shooters and slasher flicks. The way I see it, you cannot skirt violence, but you mustn't glamorize.  Violence should seem as ugly as it is, but it is not a focus.  Nightmare on Elm Street was a scarier concept than some of its peers, because Freddy could control the dreams of his victims, and if they died there, it was for real. A Nightmare on Elm Street (Official trailer)   Is this idea as frightening as it was then?  I don't think any of it is.  A lot of what comes out these days seems redundant.  When I wrote The Bitter Ends, my zombie apocalypse short story collection, I tried to get into the psyche of my characters.  I wanted my readers to really feel for my cast.  How else would they keep reading?  I'm going to say this- zombies are boring.  Simply shooting zombies and surviving is 85% of most undead movie plots.  I had to do better than that.   But what scares me is not the same. What Scares You?   I'd love to know. Courtney Love scares Marilyn Mansion .  Did you know that?But this is not about the "Beautiful People " in stardom.  I recently compiled and edited Tales From Darker Places by The Indie Collaboration .  It was fascinating to me what my fellow authors deemed scary.  Because it was supposed to be designed to fall below the Smashwords adults only filter, I dialed my stories down a notch.  They are still considerably dark, and definitely, I find other things scary than my peers do. Buy Buy The blurb, Tales From Darker Places is referred to as chilling.  Please give it a read, it, along with my own short story horror collection  Seven Slices  is free on Lulu.  If you are interested in The Bitter Ends , its available on all e-reader stores for 99 cents...  and I bet I scare you.  Take the risk, read them to find out.  I feel readers live in the best age to find quality reading material, and in several cases they get to pay less than a dollar or read for free what took hundreds of hours of work on the author's part. 
 So why don't people read more?  That's what scares me. Our society is so inconsiderate- too self-absorbed.  People barely care about others out there.  That's scary.  Washington D.C. is scarier... There are a host of critics out there in the horror genre, from comics like Spawn, or the movie, even the soundtrack.  They say this is too much and that is too terrible- it should be banned. Are you kidding me? How are Slayer worse than the injustice going on somewhere outside your door every day of the week?   Horror movies offer bite-sized morsels of fear- which dissipates in most cases by the end of the film.  So then, by default someone like myself might even be more hellish than movies like Elm Street, simply because the written word can dig deep into the pits of the mind.  I can still see that milky eye, staring through the floorboards in Poe's Tell-Tale Heart.  FREE on Lulu  What gets me going?  I see The Rake in Clive Barker's Weaveworld .  The never ending terrors represented within his Books of Blood series...  Scary.   I can go on, indulge me and I will.  I loved The Omen when I was a kid.  That scared the bejesus out of me.  There was The Exorcist.  The short stories of H.P. Lovecraft and Poe were awesome reads.  So many gems were written by Stephen King too.  Good stuff to grow up on.   I've been experimenting with my fears- and looking at different aspects of the horror genre.  I recently did the 2014 downtown Phoenix, AZ Zombie walk with a friend.  While it was fun, and people's costumes made me look like a newb, it was not scary.  Loved the dedicated and hardcore zombie people though.  There's plenty of haunted houses in Phoenix, but I have chosen to skip them and read Dycrasia novels by Seth Lindberg, watch movies, and write the last few Bitter Ends, Other Side of Town stories. Words ignite my fears.  My 2014 Zombie Walk Shirt. Great Cosplay of Silent Hill's PyramidSo what about video games?  Doom?  Silent Hill?  Resident Evil?  Fear?  I feel video games are one of the best expressions of frightful content out there.  There's nothing like walking right into a chainsaw maniac or a cyber demon.  You are even somewhat in charge.    Videogame stories are often well told.  As in Legacy of Kain-Blood Omen...   I love to take myself there, into the skin of my characters and try to imagine how I would react.  While the character's actions might not mirror my own, I feel this gives my stories that extra little bit of terror that might be lacking in some other works.   I'm going to brag and say that a few people have told me they could not sleep after reading The Bitter Ends.  That's exactly what I wanted to accomplish.  I don't even feel guilty.  A little bit of terror never hurt any one.  It lets us feel grateful to be alive, makes us feel alive.  We are only excited by death because we are alive.  I don't know about you, but trick and treating was, and is fun.  Getting to dress up as something scary actually might help a person overcome their fears of the boogie man under their bed.  Halloween is awesomely a pagan holiday, which means it transcends religion.  Kids get to play the reaper, and don hockey masks spattered in blood.  What's not to like? In nearly every novel or story I have written I have explored fear.  My fears are as game as anyone's, more so.  I am not unique.  I just know I love the feeling a chilling story leaves me with- maybe its gratitude? In closing, let's get to the point.  I want to know.  Please post your response in the comments below. Tell me again, What scares you?    Donny Swords