Alright! The Halloween story contest continues, and so does my posting of sources of inspiration / incessant pestering.

So far I've put up stuff from Hellboy, Lovecraft and Poe, and my plan was to continue in that vein. But I think that three classic horror authors in a row would be a bit too much. What are we, fancy? Instead, let's take a break to laugh at my expense.

I didn't watch a lot of scary movies growing up, but the few I saw were enough to provide a reliable font of terror into adolescence. One is Critters, which a cruel babysitter watched on our local UHF station while taking care of me, and which I still think is probably a sort-of-legitimately frightening movie (though I haven't watched it since). The other one involves Garfield.

I thought for a long time that it was the Garfield Halloween special that had freaked me out, but the internet insists that I'm wrong. Having googled around a bit, things have become clearer. That (Emmy award winning!) special had a scary old man and some decent ghosts, but it wasn't the sort of thing that'd really traumatize a little kid. It turns out that I was thinking of the TV adaptation of Garfield: His 9 Lives, a collection of Garfield-inspired short stories that seems to have been the high point of literary pretension related to the Garfield phenomenon.

Some of the stories are comic, but this one is actually sorta spooky, and downright terrifying by when judged by the sensibilities of an eight year-old. I still don't do well with things-transforming-into-other-things.

So yeah, ha ha, that little kid's Garfield-related horror is very funny. Easy to say if you didn't see the TV special! But think back and consider your childhood reaction to... The Secret of NIMH!

Not so brave now, are you, tough guy?