10 Creepy Facts About Horror Authors – Listverse
The pages of horror novels are filled with creepy and gory descriptions of ghosts and monsters. But while for many horror authors this creepiness belongs strictly to the page, for others real life can be just as scary as their terrifying fictional stories. While neither blood-sucking vampires nor flesh-eating zombies appear on this list of creepy facts about horror authors, ghosts and witches certainly do.
Related: Ten famous writers who mysteriously disappeared
10 Susan Hill believes in ghosts
Even though I’ve never seen a ghost, The woman in black (1983) author Susan Hill believes so. In a 2019 interview, Hill said that “enough people I know have been in a place that exudes a sense of evil and have felt the urge to get rid of it immediately.” She also points to dogs that are apparently startled by invisible presences and asks, “Why would an animal make that up?”
Although he believes in the supernatural, Hill does not think every reported sighting of a ghost is true. “She believes that 99 percent of it ghostly manifestations have a material explanation, but the remaining one percent cannot be accounted for in any rational way,” reports the Telegraph. Although this remaining one percent remains scientifically unconfirmed, Hill wrote in 2016 that “the existence of ghosts could yet be proven by quantum physics.”[1]
9 Stephen King is afraid of the number 13
Over the years, Stephen King has scared countless people with his horror novels, which are full of vampires, ghosts and supernatural cars. But what really scares King himself is the number 13. In 1984 New York Times article King wrote about his phobia of numbers, known as triskaidekaphobia. He pointed out that 1984 was a particularly unlucky year because there were three Fridays the 13th, the maximum number a year can have.
“I always take the last two steps on my back stairs as one step, making twelve from thirteen,” King continues. “When I’m reading, I don’t stop at page 94, page 193, page 382, et al. – the numbers of these numbers add up to 13.” Although he admits that this behavior is neurotic, he prefers to be safe. This phobia later worked its way into King’s writing. His short story from 1999 1408 is about a haunted hotel room on the 13th floor (although listed as the 14th floor), and when the room number digits are added together (1+4+0+8), they equal unlucky number 13.[2]
8 Algernon Blackwood was a member of the Ghost Club
Algernon Blackwood is best remembered for his 1907 novella The Willows, which is about two men who take a boat trip on the Danube and encounter alien entities. Blackwood’s interest in the supernatural extended far beyond his literary output, however, as he explored various forms of mysticism and the occult throughout his life.
He explored Kabbalah, a form of Jewish mysticism, and Theosophy, a religion that believed in reincarnation and karma. He also looked for the supernatural in non-religious forms. He was a member of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, an organization dedicated to magic. He also joined The Ghost Club, a group that investigated paranormal activities and counted among its ranks writers such as WB Yeats, Arthur Conan Doyle and Charles Dickens (who remained unconvinced of the existence of ghosts).[3]
8 Anne Rice believed she was living in a haunted house
interview with the vampire (1976) author Anne Rice didn’t really believe in vampires, but she did believe in ghosts. Rice’s literary career allowed her to purchase a few mansions in her hometown of New Orleans, and she believed one of them was haunted. Rice told NPR that her Rosegate Mansion, an opulent antebellum-style home at 1239 First Street, “is stuffed with legends. There are ghosts in there.”
She went on to say, “I don’t see them, but other people have seen them.” The ghost of Pamela Starr Clapp, who lived in the mansion for most of her life before dying there in 1934, is said to haunt the grand house. She is also not the only one who is said to have died on the property: a man is said to have shot himself on the stairs.[4]
6 Edgar Allan Poe died mysteriously
To this day, the exact cause of Edgar Allan Poe’s death remains a mystery, one that matches the author’s own macabre stories. The story begins on September 27, 1849, when he left Virginia for Philadelphia. But he never arrived and was instead found six days later in Baltimore in a disheveled state and wearing dirty clothes that were not his. In a letter asking for help to one of Poe’s friends, the man who found him said he was “rather worse for wear” and “in great distress.” His friend then described him as ‘haggard, not to say bloated and unwashed, his hair unkempt and his whole body disgusting.”
Poe spent the next few days in the hospital having hallucinations and calling an unknown person named Reynolds before dying on October 7. Doctors couldn’t figure out what was wrong with him. Since then, many theories have been put forward to explain his bizarre final days and death, including a brain tumor, murder, rabies and cooping – a form of voter fraud in which victims were kidnapped and forced to vote for a particular candidate by being beaten and /or beaten. or drunk on alcohol.[5]
5 MR James wrote about his own paranormal experiences
MR James was a master of the ghost story, and it is thought that his fascination with the paranormal may have stemmed from an incident in his youth. ‘A Vignette’ was the last story he wrote before his death. It was probably autobiographical in nature, had a confessional tone and suited the setting of his childhood home, the Livermere Rectory, which was on the edge of a supposedly haunted forest.
The narrator remembers that he was a young boy see something through a hole in the gate to the garden. He takes a closer look and sees a “malevolent” face staring back at him through the hole, but says it is “not monstrous, not pale, fleshless, ghostly.” It is previously described as ‘pink’ and ‘the whites of the eyes surrounding the pupil’ were visible. He flees in panic and, when he looks back, sees ‘a draped shape scurrying away between the trees’.[6]
4 HP Lovecraft was afraid of large enclosed spaces
Not long before his death, Cthulhu Mythos creator HP Lovecraft wrote about his fears in a letter to Harry O. Fischer. “I know what claustrophobia and agoraphobia are, but I have neither. However, I have a cross between the two – in the form of a distinct fear of very large enclosed spaces,” he explained. This phobia, the name of which he did not know, is called kenophobia.
Lovecraft then gave a few examples of his fear: “The dark carriage room of a stable – the shadowy interior of an abandoned gas house – an empty meeting room or theater hall – a large cave.” He also reflected on why these spaces frightened him, attributing this to the “black abysses of my childhood nightmares.” This lifelong fear influenced many of his horror stories. Incidentally and hilariously, Lovecraft signed this letter “Grandpa Cthulhu.”[7]
3 Shirley Jackson Claimed to Be a Witch (and Had a Creepy Sleepwalking Experience)
Rumors that Shirley Jackson was a witch started with the author’s biography of her first novel, The way through the wall (1948), which claimed that she was ‘perhaps the only contemporary writer who is also a writer practicing witch.” Although written in jest, this statement took on a life of its own, one that Jackson often encouraged. In an author profile for the Associated Press, WG Rogers wrote: “Miss Jackson writes not with a pen, but with a broomstick.” She also jokingly said that she had bewitched publisher Alfred Knopf and rivals on the Brooklyn Dodgers baseball team.
In addition to encouraging the rumors, Jackson also had hundreds of books on witchcraft in her home library, and in 1956 she even published a book on the Salem witch trials. But her interest in witches never actually extended beyond the scientific and literary.
While black magic may not have been part of her real life, she did have a scary sleepwalking experience while writing it The Ghost of Hill House (1959). In an essay Go with me (1968), she writes that she woke up one night and saw the words “DEAD DEAD” written on a piece of paper in her own handwriting. She notes that the note motivated her to “write the book while awake, which I went to work and did.”[8]
2 Peter Watts contracted a flesh-eating disease
Although usually categorized as a science fiction writer, many of Peter Watts’ stories contain a strong horror element. For example, Blind sight (2006), his best-known novel, is actually a haunted house story set in space, and it even features a vampire as a character. In 2011, Watts contracted a grim illness called necrotizing fasciitis, commonly known as flesh-eating disease. In a blog post, he wrote that he nearly died from the disease and that “a crater the approximate size and shape of Australia was cut out of my right calf.”
Despite his extended stay in hospital, Watts still managed to find humor in the bloody situation. “If there was ever a disease fit for a science fiction writer, it would have to be a flesh-eating disease. This fucker spread all over my leg as fast as a Star Trek space sickness in time-lapse.” For those with strong stomachs, progress photos of his infected leg can be seen his blog.[9]
1 Mary Shelley Kept Her Husband’s Calcified Heart (and Probably Had Sex in a Graveyard)
When poet Percy Bysshe Shelley died in a storm at sea in 1822, his wife decided Frankenstein (1818) author Mary Shelley, kept an unusual memento for him. His remains were cremated, but strangely his heart was not reduced to ashes. Doctors have suggested that this may have been because it had calcified due to a tuberculosis infection. Whatever the reason, the charred heart was torn out and eventually given to his grieving widow.
Shelley held her late husband’s heart for the rest of her life. After her death, the couple’s son, Percy Florence Shelley, cleared out her desk and found his father’s heart wrapped in one of his last poems, “Adonais” (1821), which laments the untimely death of John Keats. Percy Florence requested that upon his death the heart be buried in the family vault, where it rests to this day.
It’s also rumored that Mary and Percy’s relationship got off to a rather macabre start. Mary’s mother, women’s rights advocate Mary Wollstonecraft, died shortly after her daughter’s birth. Growing up, Mary spent a lot of time at her mother’s gravestone in Saint Pancras cemetery and often took Percy there when they courted each other. Scholars therefore believe that it is very likely that Mary lost her virginity to Percy at her mother’s grave.[10]