Being scared is a natural part of life. But it’s never been my favorite part. Which may sound odd considering my chosen form of storytelling. But like the subject matter itself, I’m full of contradictions. I don’t enjoy the sensation of fear, but I can’t stay away from horror.

I’ve always been drawn to the most dramatic forms of storytelling — the ones that demand a visceral reaction. I want stories to make me feel something. And fear is one of the most potent, addictive emotions we have. It can send you running for cover or it can transform you into the very thing you thought was waiting in the dark. Either way, you come back for more.

My entry into horror wasn’t the usual one. I came of age after the great franchises of the 1980s — A Nightmare on Elm Street, Friday the 13th. By then, Freddy Krueger and Jason Voorhees had become less monsters than mascots. They were still classics, sure, but for a kid catching them late, they were more punchline than nightmare fuel.

My true entry point was stranger but still of that era: Ghostbusters. It’s a comedy first, yes — but it also contains one of the most terrifying sequences in horror cinema. A moment that seared itself into me: when the Terror Dog Zuul takes Dana Barrett.

The kitchen door warping under its claws. The guttural growl. That blinding crack of light around the frame. It’s the kind of sequence that teaches you dread. When the door slides open and Zuul raises her head — glowing red eyes, cavernous fangs, that half-snarl, half-roar with a hiss underneath — somehow worse than the thought of being torn apart by her claws. 

And then Sigourney Weaver sells it. Her body language radiates quiet dread until she unleashes a scream that belongs on any Scream Queen highlight reel.

That scene is why I write horror. Not for the jump scare, but for the dread that builds until there’s no escape. Jump scares are fine — they make you flinch. But dread? Dread carves itself onto your soul. It lingers.

Plenty of stories since have built on that same principle. Stephen King’s It gave us Pennywise, but what really unsettles isn’t the description of him — it’s the silences in between. The long stretches where the horror waits in the margins. The way King weaves in the ordinary cruelties of small-town life, the things more terrifying than any clown in a storm drain. Shirley Jackson did it, too — The Haunting of Hill House terrifies not because a door shuts by itself, but because the characters can’t trust their own perceptions. Fear becomes interior. Psychological. Unshakable.

That’s what I chase as a writer. Horror isn’t just about scaring people — it’s about creating a mirror that shows us what we’d rather not see. It’s about letting dread creep in the peripherals until its demonic claws burst from your comfy chair and drag you into a place you once considered safe.

And for me, that’s the most haunting contradiction of all: I don’t like being scared. But I love horror.