You are so right about the whole kids needing monsters. My mum practically forced buffy on me and i was only 7. And that was pretty scary. Hush caused me to go 2 weeks without sleep.. And constant yelping to make sure i hadn't been ... Well.. Hushed. Now all the 'horror' is psychological and kids wont understand. I mean.. I watched hannibal last night.. All 3.. And what was more of a thriller than the horror it was marketed as.. And it also ignited that crazy reaction i have when i feel for the bad guy.. I'm on his side.. Vader, voldemort, red dragon, samara, hannibal... The list goes on.. I'm just naming the ones i know. I always go to the halloween parties as one of them. Mostly samara because i have the long black hair going for me. Anyway. Rant over and i'm pretty sure i had a point in there somewhere but i trailed off and now i can't remember so see ya.

posted by: Tazy on Tue, 10/31 05:24 PM EST

Great podcast. And, I'm actually listening to this one pretty quickly too. Aren't you proud? :D

The essay was wonderful. Kids do need monsters. You are so not wrong about that.

I remember being a kid and reading tons of scary stories. I had a record - you know those old book/record combo's? - that had stories about The Wolfman, Frankenstien, and Dracula on it. I loved listening to that.

I really wished I had saved it so my son could hear it.

I've always let my son have monsters though. When he was 3 my sister helped me put togther a Vampire costume for him to wear. He was so cute - I so wish I had a picture. He was wearing his Christmas tux with this very cool black velvet cape my sister made for him.

We did the makeup and used a little red for fake blood - he was too young for actual fake blood.

He was the only kid dressed in a scary costume at the party. The rest were all dressed so tame. They were afraid of him actually.

He's basically been something scary every year since. I never really thought about not being able to get a scary costume for kids since we usually make something ourselves because it looks so much better.

I do know that one year I had him be the Grim Reaper - he had makeup done up like mine from my blog on TV.com - and the hooded cloak was kid sized so you can find them. I still have it actually.

This year he wore this glow-in-the-dark skull face mask that he's had for several years with a red cloak to a costume party. I think he said he was the only one their dressed scary. He was scaring the little kids. They said, "Mommy, make the scary man go away." (My son is now 6 feet tall).

He loves it. I raised him on scary shows and stories though. Nickelodean played "Are You Afraid Of The Dark" when he was growing up. R.L. Stein writes scary books for kids. I don't really remember having trouble finding scary things for him - but then it wasn't a consious effort on my part. Just something I'm interested in myself.

I don't think they show things like that anymore though - and that hasn't been that long ago. He just turned 15.

I did make him wait to watch "Buffy The Vampire Slayer" though. It's not super scary but sometimes has themes that are a bit too adult for a kid.

I started letting him watch it around season 7. He was in the room during the ep where Chloe hangs herself and he said, "Well that's really disturbing." and went on with what he was doing. It was pretty cute.

He hasn't really been one to have nightmares - except that one time with the face which did make him afraid of the dark - but then I never really had nightmares either.

Kids do need a face for evil though. That and explainations for things. Now we watch "Ghost Hunters" together. We can't wait to watch the live ep that's on the dvr.

We're both wondering how they're going to keep it interesting.

posted by: Charisma69 on Wed, 11/1 11:47 PM EST