Thank goodness for the magically protective presence of bedcovers — so long as I keep my legs and feet, my hands and arms and my head covered, I’ll be okay; the monster won’t be able to get me. Yes, even in the dead heat of summer I need those covers or else that terrible creature might get me while I am at my most vulnerable.
Please don’t laugh. I know some of the people reading this feel the same way — although how many of you are willing to admit it?
And before you try to explain it to me, don’t worry; I get it. I can sometimes be a bit irrational when it comes to the ghosties and goblins. When the morning sunlight slowly inches its way into my bedroom, dispelling the shadows and revealing that the space under my bed is 100 percent monster-free, abolishing any physical evidence of the monster I thought was there, I’m still not completely convinced.
That’s because no amount of sunshine or logical reasoning could ever completely remove that monster from my mind.
Why is that?
I would argue it is because, despite the fact I never saw that monster, I still knew he was there. And since I never laid eyes on him, the image that I formed in my mind was far more powerful than anything I could have actually beheld.
Our imaginations do that to us. Good writers know this and draw upon that to make the stories they write even more horrifying — something that leaves an even bigger impression on our psyches. After all, our minds are far more powerful because they have access to our secret terrors and biggest fears. No matter how great a literary work can be, at best, those words help us to draw upon those things inside us that conjure up monsters far more terrifying than the things we actually see, hear, or read.
Writing about the paranormal works the same way. An author researches and then relays stories about frightening, disturbing, and eerie things; often situations and events that aren’t easily explained.
Because subtle gaps are left to be filled, the reader’s mind inserts its own hidden fears, insecurities, and terrors — the proverbial monsters under their own beds — making those words far more effective.
Mark Leslie, captured in this 1979 encounter with Frankenstein’s monster at a Niagara Falls wax museum, was always fascinated with ghosts, monsters, and things that go bump in the night.
Eugene Lefebvre
In a story that was initially published in a small press U.S. magazine called the Darker Woods in 1997, and reprinted in my 2004 short story collection, One Hand Screaming, I explored this very concept.
“From Out of the Night” is a tale about a middle-aged writer of paranormal phenomenon; a man who has built his career on writing about monsters such as Bigfoot, The Loch Ness Monster, UFOs, and ghosts. (Sound familiar? Sometimes, the things writers do end up being an intriguing exercise in foreshadowing.) In any case, John, the main character in my story, is writing his latest book about the paranormal, and speculating on the reasons why people are so drawn to the shadows, to the things that go bump in the night, when he overhears a ruckus upstairs. His wife, Mary, has sent the kids downstairs to hide in the office where John is working hard to complete his book on time for his publisher, because she wants to keep them safe from the creatures that stalk the house when the sun goes down.
The story opens with a bit of writing from the introduction to John’s book:
Although technology dominates our world today, there still exist things that have been with us since we huddled in caves around brightly burning fires and avoided ominous shadows. Strange beings of the night become frighteningly real to us — even as we venture into the twenty-first century. Unknown things are still out there going bump in the night; a night where most of our dreams are nightmares. Scientifically, we have grown out of the dark ages, but our fears will forever remain among other frightened figures, jumping at shadows outside the cave.
And perhaps for good reason.…1
In the story, originally a tale of less than one thousand words, which I wrote the first draft of in the mid-1980s when I was in my mid-teens, I attempted to create a juxtaposition between rational science and paranormal or spiritual belief; imagining a near-future in which science and spirituality diverge even further apart, creating huge gaps between — gaps that are filled with fear and terror of the unknown. After all, the unknown, the things we aren’t able to see, that which we cannot explain, is far more frightening.
Over the years, the tale evolved as I kept re-writing the story. It was eventually published in 1997; but only after some excellent feedback from Editor Stephanie Connolly, who helped me draw out an element I had set up within the characters of John and Mary but hadn’t yet properly formed. The story ended up being (without giving the ending away too much) about the fact that we are the monsters, through the things we choose to believe and the things we choose to ignore as we craft our lives.
Later in the story, learning a bit more about himself and his beloved wife, John composes the closing paragraph for the introduction to his book:
Irritation occurs in the believer’s heart when science or the reason of daylight find rational ways of knocking their beliefs and fears. But, given the fact that proving the non-existence of anything is virtually impossible, fears continue to haunt us. We are pursued from out of the night by dreams of the unknown and visions of the unexplainable — the unreal. Even if, one day, proof is given to us that our fear-created beings do not actually exist, we will probably invent new ones.2
I quite like this story — which has been with me since my teens — and was inspired by an incident that occurred in my home. My own fascination with fear and trying to understand why I ended up spending so much of my time writing stories that embraced the dark corners and that sought to lurk in the shadows is part of the reason; but so is the process and the manner by which the original eight hundred-word story evolved into something a little over two thousand words by the time it got published.
When I was first inspired to commit some words to paper, based upon a single scene that popped into my head, I had no idea the tale would evolve into something I could be truly proud of (thanks to that great editor); but also, no idea that the story would be quite so meta in nature, it being about a middle-aged writer working on books about the paranormal, a path that, thanks to Dundurn, I am quite enjoying.
Spooky Sudbury is another example of how something really great evolved out of a simple interaction; an unpredictable chain-reaction of events that, upon reflection, might have been the inevitable outcome.
My co-author, Jenny Jelen, wrote a bit about the experience in her column in the April 3, 2013, edition of Northern Life, talking about the specific instructions she was given, prior to conducting the interview, to figure out a way to localize the story about a book (Haunted Hamilton) centred on a town five hours away from Sudbury. During that interview, I spoke a bit about how I had always found the woods on the drive up Highway 144 to be a bit creepy; I also touched on the ubiquitous monster under my bed while growing up in Levack. The conversation led to her asking me if I had ever considered writing a similar book involving our hometown.3
We ended up sharing a few stories back and forth, and when Jenny began reciting tale after tale about local legends she had either researched already or had heard about, something clicked.
Why hadn’t I written a book about hauntings and eerie phenomenon in the Sudbury area?
The practical, authorial part of me believed it was necessary to actually visit the places being written about, to personally experience the settings discussed, and meet some of the folks involved. I knew that writing a local book about my old hometown might be challenging. It would involve a great deal of travelling back and forth — easy enough, since my mom still lives in my childhood home in Levack, and there’s always a place for me to stay and a personal reason to visit.
The