Black Queer Horror Nerd #8 // The Horror Guncle

Due to unforeseen circumstances in March, I’ve been spending more time with the family, which means my two younger nieces have had more time with their uncle Mark. Out of my four nieces, Star (who is fifteen and my third-born niece) has had a taste for horror since she was five. Her mom caught her watching episodes of the original The Twilight Zone, and she even recounted an episode of The Walking Dead to me in its gory entirety while I clutched my invisible pearls. At first, I worried about Star being so young and consuming such content. When I was that age, I was terrified of everything horror—it’s wild because now I devour horror like Tony Montana with a pound of cocaine. But her mom said it was okay despite my reservations about the hardcore stuff.

Denying Our Love of Horror

Nevertheless, I still monitored from afar what Star was watching, waiting for the perfect time to introduce her to stuff like Buffy the Vampire Slayer and possibly Teen Wolf; things of the teen variety when she became of age. Then she started declaring to me that she didn’t like horror because it scared her. She didn’t understand why I was so into it, chastising my horror tee collection and my growing NECA horror collection in the process.

After the shock of that audacity wore off, I challenged her about The Walking Dead and The Twilight Zone, and she came back with the claim that she was just watching what her parents were watching at the time, and that was all it was. Unbeknownst to her, I knew she was lying because I remembered her mom walking in on her watching those shows. So I played it cool and didn’t push back, because I lived this game at her age. I denied my love of horror at first because I personally didn’t like being frightened by others, or rather, being put in a situation I couldn’t control.

The Curious Horror Fan

For example, while growing up, my cousins Tori and Draper were horror fiends, and they knew that they could terrify me on a good Friday night by putting on any horror movie without my knowledge and locking me in the room once I realized what was up. They did this constantly with Freddy Krueger, my former nemesis-turned-horror fave. I couldn’t turn off the TV because I was too paralyzed by fright.

But once my parents bought a TV for my bedroom, I had control of the remote. So, while other folks my age were possibly sneaking peeks at Skinemax, I was watching horror with my finger firmly planted on the “Previous” button, not to hide my activities from my folks, but because if something got too scary, I could always return to the world of Nick-At-Nite or BET/MTV. In short, I controlled my fear and didn’t want anyone else serving me something that I wasn’t ready to ingest.

Highly Intrigued

This is what I noticed with Star. She was scared, yes, but she was highly intrigued.

My two older nieces are not horror fans and don’t care to be. They don’t ask me questions about certain horror movie villains. Star did. They don’t ask me about what my first horror film was. Star did. If I said I was gonna go to see a horror movie in the theater, they demanded that I not ask them to go. However… Star wanted to go.

So I knew where this was headed. However, Star still managed to surprise me when I wasn’t around.

While working from home one day, Star asked if she could hang, and I said, “Sure,” and asked her to put on something for us to watch. I did not expect her to fire up Are You Afraid of the Dark. Not the latest iterations of the show, but the OG classic. I was shook, but still said, “Oh, I thought you didn’t do horror?” She replied that she watches “some things.”

Those “some things” turned out to be the entire Are You Afraid of the Dark? series, Goosebumps, IT Chapters One AND Two, Hocus Pocus, The Nightmare Before Christmas, and Monster High (which was how I got involved with that franchise, which you can read here), and was a diehard Five Nights at Freddy’s fan. Next thing I know, her mom was showing her The Vampire Diaries and its spinoff, The Originals (they haven’t had time to start Legacies yet), Roswell, and the original Buffy the Vampire Slayer movie and The Lost Boys. Those last two still sting, because I was supposed to be there for that, but I digress.

A New Horror Fan

So she revealed to me that she has truly grown into a Gen Z horror fan. And I couldn’t be prouder.

Now she wants in on the hardcore stuff, and with her mother’s blessing, who am I to disappoint?

And that’s another story for another time.

Do you have any budding horror kids in your family?