Why We Crave Horror Movies

It was the summer of 1983; I was reading my first Horror novel by Jay Anson "The Amityville Horror", it was the scariest thing I had ever picked up. Despite the late hours I continued to read into the early morning hours until my eyes burned for relief. Whenever I got up to use the rest room I would stand on the end of my bed lean over and open the door and jump so not to be grabbed by monsters that might be laying in wait under my bed. This started a long love affair for horror stories.

For instance Stephen King is known as the master of horror; I have read all his older novels. Watched a few of his movies and discovered the movies are 'B' rated compared to the books. His newer work is a little more farfetched for me more like Sci-Fi, but he was the cause for my thirst in horror and mystery. A case in point when summer was over, I started looking for Stephen King books on the shelves at school and discovered that they did not allow books of this nature. So I started going to the public library to check out my books.

Over the years I have become a very novice reader enjoying different authors; Here are a few examples of the different authors I enjoy Dean Koontz, Ann Rice, John Grisham and James Patterson. Each one holds something different in their own way and style of writing, but together they all have the same thing in common they know how to start a story by holding my attention, and I give any author kudos if they can do that. An example of how I choose a book, I will start by reading the first few paragraphs of the first chapter and if I can't put the book down then I am hooked and have a new one for my library.

To illustrate I have watched movies after reading the book and have been very dissatisfied with the results. When reading a novel I can use my own imagination to follow the story as the author describes each scene, and when the movie is made the author does not make the scene according to what I see, feel, and think as I read the story. This makes the movie a 'B' rated movie to me and one reason why I will not watch the movie after reading a book. However, if I catch the movie before the book comes out I am able to enjoy it more, after watching movie first; I like to read the book to compare the two.

Last year when the book, 'Shutter Island' reached the book stores I purchased it immediately. While I was in the middle of reading it the audio book was released, so I decided to download it to my MP3 player. I located my place in the book and picked up there on my MP3 player so while following along in my book I listened to the audio. To my surprise the two were very different, not much that you would say they wrote two different books. Although enough you could tell the reader was not reading from the same book you were. As I followed along listening, the reader was adding parts that were not in my book, now these pieces could have been in the original books