Origins of My Thrill Addiction

16 Scary Songs (to Hear in the Dark)

My parents forbade horror films. In their weekly Bible study group, they’d discuss the morality of Beetlejuice or Batman, then return home and deliver the bad news. I’d sleep over at my best friend Kevin’s house, and we’d convince his parents to drive us to Reruns Video to rent The Blob or The Boogey Man.

A major cultural milestone for me was Stephen King’s IT, a two-part television event in 1990, later released on VHS. The mini-series made big headlines, warning parents not to be fooled by the clown in the adverts. IT was nightmare-inducing, even for adult viewers. Naturally, my friends and I were desperate to see what the panic was about. I will never forget the night we stayed up past midnight at Kevin’s and watched the opening scene:

It’s a rainy afternoon on a quiet suburban street. Little Georgie Denbrough, dressed in his yellow raincoat and hat, is out playing in puddles. He places his paper boat, nicknamed the SS Georgie, on the wet concrete and it moves downstream. The boat picks up speed and the boy runs after it, away from his house. The SS Georgie careens into a storm drain. The boy peers down the drain, and up pops a white face with a red nose. Pennywise the Dancing Clown, who eventually convinces Georgie to come inside.

That’s the end of Georgie. And that’s how the horror of IT begins. I was nine, only a few years older than the fictional boy. I’ve never looked down a storm drain since.