A Vermont author and a former child star of “Poltergeist” say parents shouldn’t keep kids away from scary stories this Halloween. A good fright, they say, can help children learn to handle fear.
“Fear is not always necessarily a bad thing if you can learn how to handle it, how to channel it,” said Dustin Warburton, a Vermont author who has written horror for adults and children for about 20 years.
Warburton and Oliver Robins, who played Robbie Freeling in the 1982 horror film, are releasing a new children’s book about movie monsters Nov. 27. It’s the second book in their “Sunset Scares” series.
Robins said horror helped him as a kid. Growing up in the early 1980s, he said he had nightmares about nuclear war. Scary movies were a break from that.
“Ghosts in your house is kind of minimal,” Robins said. “It was a way to be afraid without being afraid.”
He said scary stories also give kids a way to think about hard subjects.
“What is death? What is the afterlife? Who are the bad people in the world?” Robins said. “Horror allows you to convey that to children in a way that’s not so visceral.”
What the research says
Catherine Lester studies horror made for children. She’s an associate professor of film and television at the University of Birmingham in England and author of “Horror Films for Children.”
In an email to the Valley News, she said that kids like being scared for many of the same reasons adults do. They’re curious about dark subjects and can explore them somewhere safe, often with friends or family.
“For kids in particular, sharing scary stories with each other or with trusted adults can form as a sort of social bonding exercise,” Lester said.
She said part of the fun is that scary stories can feel off-limits. Watching something meant for older audiences, she said, lets kids feel “grown-up.”
Lester said many adults still assume children and horror don’t belong together.
“We tend to see children as inherently innocent and vulnerable, and horror as inherently corrupting, neither of which are accurate,” she said.
She said filmmakers who make horror for kids often mix in comedy and fantasy. That helps keep their movies from getting an R rating, so children can actually see them.
Lester said horror made for kids is different in another way: it’s told from a child’s point of view. It deals with things kids face, like growing up and trouble with parents or friends. In adult horror, she said, the villain is often a creepy child. In children’s horror, it’s more likely to be a monstrous adult.
She pointed to the animated movie “ParaNorman,” about a boy who can see and talk to ghosts. In adult films, she said, a child with powers like that is usually treated as dangerous. In “ParaNorman,” his gift ends up saving people.
Misunderstood monsters
Many children’s horror stories make their monsters sympathetic, and “Sunset Scares” does too. Lester said kids relate to monsters who don’t fit in.
“They are still learning how the world works, and may struggle to articulate themselves or make themselves heard by adults,” she said. “For this reason they can relate to monsters who are ostracised or get things wrong.”
She said that’s why Frankenstein’s monster shows up so often in children’s media. Child audiences were fascinated by Boris Karloff’s performance in the 1931 film, she said. She described the monster as someone who means well, makes mistakes and is rejected by the man who created him.
“Kids can sympathize with that,” Lester said.
The first “Sunset Scares” book followed three famous movie monsters living in a retirement home.
“It’s like the one guy’s chainsaw doesn’t start, the other guy is missing an arm, the other one’s blade is dull,” Warburton said. “It’s almost like a representation of what happens to us when we get older, you know, go to nursing homes, and you’re kind of just forgotten about.”
The new book is an origin story for one of those monsters, Slasher. As a young monster, he can’t scare anyone, and the other monsters make fun of him. Then a witch helps him see that what makes him different is his strength.
“That’s your magic, and that’s where your power is,” Robins said.
Robins said that message is personal. He said he was small for his age and bullied in elementary school.
“I was beat up every day as a kid,” he said. “I made myself bigger than I really was, and I channeled that later when I was acting.”
How scary is too scary?
The PG-13 rating was created in 1984, after parents complained about scary and violent scenes in PG-rated films like “Gremlins” and “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.” “Poltergeist” was also rated PG. Lester said “Gremlins” was the tipping point.
“I think movies like Gremlins actually ended up troubling adults far more than actual kids,” Lester said.
She said there’s no single line for what’s too scary, because every child is different. Her advice to parents is to look into a movie first, tell kids ahead of time about scary parts and let them decide whether to watch.
“They may decide to back out, which is fine, but they may surprise you,” she said. “Many kids are capable of handling more than we expect.”
From the screen to the page
Warburton and Robins met about nine years ago at Chiller Theatre, a horror convention in New Jersey. Warburton writes from Vermont and Robins from the West Coast. They talk by phone almost every day, Warburton said. The illustrator is Jared Gagnon.
Robins said Steven Spielberg, who produced “Poltergeist,” gave him a Super 8 camera on set. He said that’s what made him want to direct. He later went to film school at the University of Southern California.
He said watching kids hear “Sunset Scares” at a bookstore reading reminded him why he tells stories.
“Their eyes lit up,” Robins said. “And I said to myself, ‘This is why I want to make movies. This is why I want to write books for children.’”
The two aren’t touring this year. They’re writing more origin stories, with the goal of turning the series into a movie. Robins said his dream is a claymation film.
“Childhood is magical, and hope and belief and anything is possible,” Robins said. “Those are the things that I want to convey through my storytelling.”
