You know that kid who begs his parents to stay up and watch scary movies on television? He is fascinated by the frightening and prefers ghost stories to tales of knights and dragons? Well, that was most assuredly not Tyler DeBoard.
On the contrary, I rarely devoted my thoughts to the terrifying during my elementary years. I preferred to remain in my happy bubble, a realm that I had created to be comfortable and pleasant and devoid of fright. I even recall a storyteller spinning tales one day at a special presentation who told me and my naive peers that the house next to our school was haunted. Imagine the fear that filled my gullible heart when I realized that I had friends who lived there! For weeks I refused to set foot into that place.
Halloween was never my favorite time of the year. A holiday built on the idea of fear? Count me out. I would have shunned the celebration altogether if not for the opportunity to create award-winning costumes and eat prodigious amounts of candy corn. I will never forget my fifth grade Halloween, during which parents helped me to craft a television costume from a large TV box, complete with a tin-foil antennae hat and matching remote. In hindsight, the vision of me pigging out on third-rate junk food while dressed as a television was simply foreshadowing to the young adult I have become.
Dressing as a vampire or werewolf, along with many of the other sinister aspects of the end of October, never crossed my mind. Candy and costumes - that was my focus.
However, something changed in middle school. After years of avoiding - and even fleeing - the spooky, I gave in. I recall watching "The Exorcist" with my younger brother - who has always been sturdier of mind than myself - and realizing that I had turned a corner in my lifelong battle with the fearsome. My years in the self-made bubble of protection were irretrievably over.
I began to seek out scary movies. I felt as though I was a social outcast, relegated to eating lunch in a bathroom stall, who was suddenly invited to eat lunch with the popular kids. That is, if the "cool table" was terrifying and led by James Carpenter and George A. Romero.
I love movies of all sorts, but none more than horror movies. From the old school haunted house to the recent revival of found-footage flicks, I am a sucker for being terrified. And I'm certainly not alone, as evidenced by the monumental opening of last weekend's Paranormal Activity 3, which became the biggest October opening in recorded history.
My love of fear also extends past the theater. Last weekend I led a group of my friends to a haunted hayride and forest near Richmond that promised to fill us with fear. These promises came to naught, but it was a learning experience nonetheless. I made a shocking personal discovery in the most unlikely of places - somewhere between the axe-wielding executioner and the demented doctor's latest experiment-gone-awry.
You see, while I may love being scared, I am by no means brave. I can sit through a horrifying movie and thoroughly enjoy it, but I have been known to strategically cover my eyes or ears during the especially unnerving moments of silence where you just know that terror is lurking right around the corner - or behind the door, through the window, or reflected in that mirror vanity that you only opened for two seconds to take some Tylenol.
I'm a sucker for a scare, but generally only in controlled environments. You'll never catch me getting up in the middle of the night to investigate a strange noise in the basement and I will never venture into a dark forest, building or mental asylum unless I'm surrounded by an army of courageous mates, preferably packing heat. Just give me a comfortable theater seat and I will find happiness through fear.
I can't promise that I won't cover my eyes or look away, but I'm not ashamed. I never claimed to be brave.
Tyler's column runs biweekly Wednesdays. He can be reached at t.deboard@cavalierdaily.com.
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