I don’t remember how old I was the first time I had a nightmare. Who even does? I just remember waking up too scared to go back to sleep. I was already having pattern nightmares long before I ever watched my first movie with Fred Krueger inflicting that suffering on others. Needless to say those movies changed me as a person.
I can’t really pin point the exact moment I got into horror as a person. I just always watched horror as a kid. I have ample fond memories of going to the local video rental shop and browsing the horror section every time. I would always grab a movie based entirely on the cover art. I tried not to read about the movies before watching them. I always wanted to go in completely in the dark.
Darkness is what life is. We live our lives in the dark. From the moment we are born there is dark cloud of death looming over our heads waiting to rain down on us when our time is up. I learned this lesson at the age of 5.
I had a cousin who liked to chase me with spiders. He discovered I was terrified of the vile critters and since he wasn’t he would pick them up and hold them out to me. I hated him. I wanted nothing more than for him to just be out of my life. One day he was climbing a tree. Nobody knows why he had the jump rope with him. Perhaps he was planning on swinging from the branches like the old tree swing we were all too familiar with at grandmas house? Either way he slipped, fell and that rope wrapped around his tiny, inexperienced kneck. He died in a single instant. I never wished for that. This really traumatized my 5 -year-old brain. I had wished he was dead and now, he was. This broke me.
I became obsessed with death. I couldn’t get enough scary movies. I was as young as 7 renting A Nightmare on Elm Street, Halloween, Friday the 13th, and oh so many other terrifying tales of death and despair. Death became a companion to my imagination. Then the nightmares returned.
I talk about my dreams often. To be honest none of the horror movies I ever watched directly gave me nightmares. Often they were oddly comfort movies. I would watch a horrifying movie with murder and scares then sleep soundly with wonderful dreams of exploring the universe. My nightmares came from elsewhere.
I don’t talk about the abusive father I knew as a child. Mostly because by age 12 he had converted to Christianity and had a life altering transformation into this whole other man. A kinder, gentler man by most accounts. The days of hiding in my bed under the covers listening to him beat mom waiting for his belt or fist to find my behind were over. But those memories that fear of my father stuck with me.
The first time I watched a Nightmare movie I was in Kindergarten. I watched A Nightmare on Elm Street 4 with my very dad one day when it came on whichever movie channel was offering a free weekend preview that month. My dad loved to scare us as kids. He took pleasure in pranking us, as well as the aforementioned violence he inflicted on our tiny lives. What he especially took pleasure in was showing us the most frightening films he could find and watch us cower in fear as the horrors of the motion picture proceeded to scare our tiny psyches.
While dad’s abuse did include a physical component, he wasn’t often that violent those were extremely rare occasions. Rather his abuse was phycological and emotional. He used to call me fat kid, lazy, stupid, clumsy and other choice words I’ll refrain from using here. The worst two things he called me stand out in my mind. First was the harsh usage of the word faggot. I used to play dress up with my sisters. I would play with their dolls and hang out with their little girl friends regularly. He decided I was a faggot at an early age and was quick to point out how I had better not be one when I grew up.
The second word he used to call me didn’t hurt as much but was still awful. I was really into rap music. I liked to watch TV shows like Family Matters and the Fresh Prince of Bel Air. He called me a wigger for being too friendly to the blacks. He threw away my Michael Jackson tape and called it sickening I was into that trash. He had a word for Michael I dare not type here in 2023.
I lived in the shadows of my dads reign of terror. Afraid to tell him I got an F on a test or that I had detention, yet again. I knew I was coming home to either a verbal flogging or the back of his belt across my bare ass. So I threw myself into my virtual world. I sank into my toys, my video games, my comic books and above all my horror movies. These things provided me an escape from the daily torments I faced.
That day I discovered the world of Freddy Krueger’s nightmare world I found my escape. I would often day dream I was a dream warrior fighting the vile serial killer with my own special dream powers. As I grew older and life continued to throw ever increasingly horrific traumas my way those day dreams gradually shifted. By the time I was 12 I was no longer imaging myself as the hero defeating the evil Krueger. I was pretending I was him and imaging all the horrifying ways I would get my own revenge on the kids I blamed for my troubles.
To say I was bullied would be an understatement. I was regularly beaten up and abused by the rubbish pieces of garbage that called themselves my classmates to the point my dad’s response was not to inform the school they needed to do better. Instead he taught me how to fight back and told me to stand up for myself. I won’t get into the details here, that’s another story for another day. Needless to say I went from being bullied to being the bully. I became the very monster I had grown to hate.
Those horror movies now offered me more than an escape. They gave me tools to plot ways I could inflict harm on my fellow students. When I turned 18 the first thing I did with my paycheck from my after school job was bought the entire Elm Street franchise on VHS in one big classic boxed set. Finally I could revisit my best friend, Freddy Krueger, any time I wanted.
As I grew up those movies became comfort food for my soul. The ways Krueger would torment his victims gave me pleasure. The bloody kills gave me satisfaction I can’t describe. I wanted nothing more than to escape into that nightmare world as often as I could. Then in 2003 something happened that changed it all.
New Line Cinema had acquired the rights to use Jason Vorhees, antagonist from the rival Friday the 13th horror franchise. This culminated in the release of a film fans had been dying to see for 20 years. Freddy vs. Jason. This movie provided me with a form of catharsis. Freddy was done. His deed were in the past. The franchise came to an end. This, in turn, was bittersweet for me. While I enjoyed the film for the burst of nostalgia it shot into my heart, I grew to despise it for ending the franchise I had become so fond of. As an adult I now know all things come to an end. Everything must die. Even our favorite media franchises and movie characters.
I have since gotten to a point where I can analyze horror from a more adult perspective. I see it as more than escapism. It’s a reflection of the harsh reality we all face from the moment the sperm forces itself into the egg. Death is inevitable.
Yesterday was Trans Day of Remembrance. As a trans person I can assure you I have all too many accounts of friends I have lost to violence either at the hands of others or, more sadly, their own. I sit here now reflecting on the lives we’ve lost and I wonder, why me? Why has life allowed my trouble heart to keep pumping blood into my broken body while others have stopped? What does this life have in store for me? What is my purpose in this life?
To tell stories is the answer. I can tell my own stories in hopes others can learn from my own troubles. I also tell stories my brain fabricates in hopes those stories help me make sense out of this twisted world we live in. Looking back on my life I probably wouldn’t have survived as long as I have if I hadn’t found comfort in those horror movies, especially the ones set in the nightmare world. My life is a nightmare I can’t wake up from. All I can do is summon my own dream powers and fight the evils that life throws at me with an ever stronger will.
Stephanie Bri 