Darkness is something I've been thinking a lot about recently. Between the premiere of American Horror Story's sixth season and the fact that I bought the second film in The Conjuring series of films and am viewing it as I write this, I have voluntarily surrounded myself in things that are considered by many to be "scary" this week. Up until I was about 16, I was horrified of anything scary, whether it was movies or TV shows or just urban legends such as Bloody Mary. These things gave me an unsettling fear of the dark that I still have, to an extent, to this day. When I was in the fourth grade, I was told the story of Bloody Mary and had to sleep with the light on in the bathroom. My fear has settled to an extent, I can actually go to the bathroom at night so long as I don't look out the window or into the mirror. Now I search for things that make my heart pound and give that exhilaration of being scared. My fear of the paranormal has somewhat settled, but one thing that has stayed constant throughout all of these years and that is the fear of being outside in the night.
I'm not talking about being at a bonfire with a lot of my friends where there's loud music and tons of laughs and having a good time. I'm talking about the walks that feel like they last an eternity as I exit my car and enter my house or if I'm making sure something doesn't happen to my friends because they too are also too freaked out by the darkness of the outside world. It's not that I'm worried a werewolf or a vampire are going to come running out of the darkness and into the light to get me, I'm more worried about more attainable things such as crazy people like the clowns in North Carolina who are terrifying a whole neighborhood. It's not the darkness that is brought upon by the supernatural that scares me, it is the darkness that exists in some people that terrifies me.
It isn't scary movies or scary television shows like Bates Motel and American Horror Story that scare me because those are so deeply grounded in fiction that it is hard for me to be frightened by them. I'm speaking of the news stories that I hear such as the one about the clowns or when I get an AMBER Alert notification on my phone or whenever I get a notification from a local news app that a prisoner has escaped and I can't physically or mentally make myself relax until I get the second notification saying that he or she has been captured again. It's not the darkness that is portrayed, it is the darkness that has been shown to me, even if not in person. That kind of darkness doesn't make my heart race. To be frank, it actually does quite the opposite. It makes my heart sink into my stomach.
