Horror stories

Thanks for the reply Shadar.  So I guess you know what a KWM2 and a 30L1 are. I rebuilt my DAd’s KMW2 in 1994 and I have an advanced lic, but I have not fired it up in years.  Cell phones and the internet devastated amateur radio.  

In turns of horror, it was always more fun to tell stories where you were not as secure as usual like backpacking the Sierras or sleeping on the beach when Zodiac was out and about.

Was told by a colleague that had probably worked at one of the sites for a super high powered troposcatter site.   A sandwich or other food item could be thrown up into the antenna beam and it would explode!   Possibly similar results to some one testing out their brand new heat vision....

I grew up camping a LOT... with parents, Scouts, friends, plus summer camp, etc.  So telling scary stories around the fire in the deep dark woods in the night was a feature of my growing up, starting from when I was thankfully too young to understand everything. As I got older, it was my turn to do the telling.

This was before we even had transistor AM radios to take with us into the wild. So the only entertainment was telling stories and singing if we were lucky enough to have someone in the party who had a guitar. 

So the process of scaring the crap out of younger kids was an art form, and I'm sure many of them went on to become horror genre enthusiasts. There is nothing like being cared shitless, with every sense and hormone in high gear, adrenaline flowing, hackles rising, when you know you are (maybe! probably!) completely safe. 

In my view, if you can't freak out the reader, if you get their hackles up, it isn't really horror. 

Although I admit, kids are less less sensitive to horror stories these days. My grandkids are basically immune to it, and find it amusing but not actually scary. Too bad. They are missing out on a truly powerful primal instinct that you'd normally only feel just before the bear eats you. 

Shadar

Horror work shop!

I think that will get a lot of support.  Here is an old joke maybe even old enough to be new again.  

Two buddies out in the wild around their campfire spot a bear coming towards them.  One of them frantically starts putting on his tennis shoes.  The other guy says “you really think those will help you out run a bear?”  His buddy answers “No,but all I need to do is out run YOU!”

ace191 wrote: I think that will get a lot of support.  Here is an old joke maybe even old enough to be new again.  

Two buddies out in the wild around their campfire spot a bear coming towards them.  One of them frantically starts putting on his tennis shoes.  The other guy says “you really think those will help you out run a bear?”  His buddy answers “No,but all I need to do is out run YOU!”

Yup, that's a classic. And also kinda a real thing for those who grew up in bear country, where this was regarded as sage advice.

I remember my father throwing aluminum lawn chairs at bears in our campsite. They were tearing open our food cooler and pulling the partially opened windows out of our car to get at the food inside.  

I had my shoes on.

But the chairs worked just fine. 

It's only horror if the bear eats someone. Or you see eyes in the bushes, reflecting the firelight, and are at risk of almost seeing a bear. Great for raising hackles and telling that old joke until a deer or a dog walks out of the bushes. 

Shadar 

When we were backpacking, 1 guy was designated to carry the bear bait The idea was that he would rip it open and drop it as we all backed away.  The one time we actually had to drop the bait, it worked and we got away!

ace191 wrote: When we were backpacking, 1 guy was designated to carry the bear bait The idea was that he would rip it open and drop it as we all backed away.  The one time we actually had to drop the bait, it worked and we got away!

Cool.. which I guess is why we're still enjoying you here on SWM. <grin>

Now, is the bear bait different for grizzlies versus black bears? And does the fastest runner get to carry the bait? Or the slowest?

In some places in North America (at least), these are important questions. I just learned today that we had a bear in our neighborhood recently. That might explain why my three Labs were freaking out over something in the dark a few nights ago.

Sheesh... it's bad enough to have to carry dog treats. Now I need bear treats too.

Shadar 

My distant memmory thinks it was a box of nabisco crackers, wheat thins I think.  

I write a lot of horror stories, but they are all for writing contests, so they are usually capped at 1,500 to 2,000 words. Only one of them has been superwomanish. The prompt for the contest was "doppelgänger." This story actually managed to win the contest.

www.writing.com/main/view_item/item_id/2206002-Doppelgnger

Buffy the Vampire Slayer already exsits and did a pretty good job of extracting both horror and some decent black comedy out of a "super femme collides with horror tropes" pretty well.

HikerAngel wrote: I write a lot of horror stories, but they are all for writing contests, so they are usually capped at 1,500 to 2,000 words. Only one of them has been superwomanish. The prompt for the contest was "doppelgänger." This story actually managed to win the contest.

www.writing.com/main/view_item/item_id/2206002-Doppelgnger

Nice story... the intersection of horror and superhuman characters is an interesting one, especially if it involves some hard SciFi. Or spaceships, etc. I'm not so fond of the vampiric twists on this, however.

But as I'm learning from reading your stories, HikerAngel, it can work in a variety of settings.  I look forward to reading more of your short stories that bridge the genres of superhuman and horror. 

And, of course, ancient, evil Nazi scientists from the mid-20th century spreading their evil science using the resources of the the 21st century always works. For me anyway. A perfect villain who needs no excuse. 

Shadar

shadar wrote: And, of course, ancient, evil Nazi scientists from the mid-20th century spreading their evil science using the resources of the the 21st century always works. For me anyway. A perfect villain who needs no excuse.

Danke sehr!

And the Nazi stuff gives me a chance to practice my four-year-old level German!

A few people thought that a sequel might be fun. I just wrote one, for another horror contest entry!

www.writing.com/main/view_item/item_id/2208259-Doppelgnger-2

I've been thinking about another superheroine horror story where the superheroine makes a mistake and gets someone killed. Rather than come clean about it, she hides it, and it comes back to haunt her... in every meaning of the word.

I'm also thinking about turning Doppelgänger into a full series of stories after some encouragement after posting it on Booksie. One reader thinks the story could be the basis of a novel-length work where Louisa shows her "sister" how to be more human over the course of the story. That definitely has me thinking too... Louisa is so snarky and fun to write that I wouldn't mind living in her shoes for a bit as she tries to turn her evil Nazi clone self into a proper superheroine.

I love that first idea!  A ghost haunting a superheroine is one of the only situations she’d be powerless to stop. 

Okay, here they are:

The Haunted Hero

...and...

Doppelgänger 3

I should probably just post these stories over here. If I package them up into one submission, they're probably long enough to be a worthwhile read now...

Doppelgänger 4

Another appropriately themed horror story. This one's called Apex Predator...

www.writing.com/main/view_item/item_id/2210532-Apex-Predator

I'm reading Stephen King's Misery right now and writing a bunch of superwomen stories. I suppose this is what happens when the two intersect...