If you knew me when I was a kid, you wouldn't pick me as a horror fan, or a writer of dark short stories.
When I was really little, everything scared me. I had nightmares about the Giant Mouse of Minsk from An American Tale. (Yes, really, it's kind of embarrassing.) I had nightmares about the pictures in Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark (but then, really, who didn't? That's why they redid the illustrations a few years ago). I had bad dreams triggered by the Disney version of the Legend of Sleepy Hollow. I was afraid of heights. I refused to ride a bike for fear of falling off and hurting myself. I would make my mom fast forward through the Night on Bald Mountain sequence in Fantasia. After reading Old Yeller in 5th grade, I had a period of about 3-4 months where I refused to sit with my back to an open door for fear that a rabid animal would sneak in and bite me. I was afraid of everything.
Everything except vampires. I remember asking my mom at a very young age about Communion; did the fact that we ate Jesus's flesh and drank his blood make us vampires and cannibals? I don't remember her exact response, but I do remember asking not out of fear or concern, just simple curriosity as to classification. I remember carving pumpkins at about 11 years old with a History Channel special about the history of vampire movies on in the background, and it occured to me that I had never been afraid of vampires.
I was afraid of everything except vampires and sharks. And lions. I remember having no problem watching Discovery channel programs where lions were ripping into gazelles, and Shark Week was must-watch TV. I remember watching Jaws for the first time at a neighbor's house at about 11 and wondering what the big deal was and why people thought it was so scary. Maybe it was the simple knowlege that lions and sharks were so far removed from the realm of possibility that it wasn't a concern.
But except for vampires and lions and sharks (oh my!), I was afraid of everything as a kid.
And then somewhere in middle school, a switch got flipped. I became obsessed with the Holocaust. I developed a fascination with pandemics; I watched Outbreak until I could quote the movie verbatim, and I read everything by Robin Cook and other medical thriller authors that I could get my hands on. I watched The Shining at about 14 and, like Jaws, I remember wondering what the big deal was. Night on Bald Mountain had become my favorite sequence from Fantasia.
And yet for some reason, I guess remembering what a big scaredy cat I had been when I was younger, I still steered clear of things that were explicitly labeled as "horror" (with the exception of the afore-mentioned movies).
I discovered fantasy and Young Adult books in college, a lot of which can run very dark. I had friends and roommates who had very dark tastes in music and movies, and so was introduced to horror movies and dark, gritty films - some of which became favorites. By the time I started reading Neil Gaiman, who is often marketed as horror, I found that what a lot of people labeled as "scary" or "Horror" wasn't frightening, but rather, fascinating. "This isn't scary," I often found myself thinking as I read Gaiman and Poe, and later King and Lovecraft, "This is really interesting!"
There is a very fine line between fear and fascination, I think, and that line constantly shifts. I also think that that line is not only different for each of us, but is also different from kid to kid. As a former children's librarian, a lot of the time I had parents asking me what was "appropriate" for their child to read. What one 11-year-old finds scary, a different 8-year-old may not. And at that same time, an 11-year-old who is scared by certain subject matter might be OK with other intense material that her peers are not ready for.
There is an interesting story that Neil Gaiman related in an article I read once. He and his editor were trying to decide whether to market Coraline as a Young Adult or Adult book. The editor took it home and read it to her two daughters (I want to say in about the 8-12 year old range, but I don't remember), with the idea that if they thought it was too scary that it would be marketed as Adult. Many years later, at the premier of Coraline the Musical, the younger of the two daughters (now in her late teens, I think) confessed to Gaiman that she had thought the book was really scary, but she had lied and told her mother she wasn't scared. She had thought if she had admitted she was scared that her mom wouldn't have finished reading the book to them and she never would have known what happened. So Coraline was published as YA, based on a child's lie. I think it's really interesting, though, that her fascination was stronger than her fear.
Fear and fascination: where do you draw the line?