Mike DelGaudio

And in hindsight, that was maybe not the best follow-up to Faces of Death.

And that was kind of it for me, at least for a while.

Visual horror just didn't sit right.

It felt imposed, like I was being shown something I couldn't unsee.

Yeah, well, seeing those horror movies as a young and naive pup was its kind of own version of psychological trauma.

But around that same time, I found Stephen King.

It started with Christine.

It was a Christmas gift in hardback when it first came out.

And then I just sort of kept going, book after book after book.

And that was a completely different experience.

Because with those stories, the horror wasn't being shown to me.

It was happening in my head.

I was building it.

I was filling in the blanks, making it as intense or as restrained as I could handle.

Sometimes, if I didn't understand what I was reading, I could just keep going.

I could elide over the parts that I had to, or really visualize the parts that I really wanted to sit with.

And I think that's what stuck.

The idea that the most effective horror, for me anyway, isn't something I was shown.

It's something I participate in.

It's something I bring with me.