October is the time of the year to indulge in spooky pursuits. It is a little easier to rent a horror flick instead of a romantic comedy on date night. It’s time to think about Halloween and the requisite costume. You crack a beer and watch the Homecoming bonfire. When you go apple picking, the kids drag you through the haunted corn maze.

Something elusive about the autumn encourages this playful pursuit of fear, something primal. In the modern world, we are no longer concerned with our day-to-day survival but things weren’t always so secure. The changing colors of the leaves heralds the long nights of the lean winter months and stirs something inside us left over from our ancestors. Those ancestors lived in more precarious times, when Lovecraft’s “oldest and strongest fear” - the unknown - was a lurking in the shadows, with long teeth and dark intentions.

At its core, most horror is about reintroducing that uncertainty and breaking down the civilized systems keep our lives comfortable and safe. By watching the monster stalk and kill the co-eds, we remember a tiny bit of that old, clever survival instinct that got us this far. This is why audiences shout at the screen when a character says, “Maybe we should split up.” This is why you hear people working out elaborate plans for surviving a zombie apocalypse over dinner.

I have a hard time pinning down exactly how and when I became preoccupied with horror.

It might have been the summer when people were nervously talking about the panther that was spotted, incongruously, in the Jersey Meadowlands. One overcast afternoon, me and Keith, the kid across the street, spent a couple hours in the confines of his small enclosed porch, passing Alvin Schwartz’s Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark back and forth. The fleshy, surreal illustrations by Stephen Gammell disturbed me in a way that was both repellent and alluring. I still wonder at them, and how they seem like they’d be damp to the touch.

It could have been a hundred other things. The John Bellairs novel, The Figure in the Shadows, that gave a slightly more sinister motivation to my coin collection. The late night viewing of Bela Lugosi’s Dracula on the old black and white cart TV that my parents occasionally rolled into my bedroom, which gave me nightmares for half a week. I recall going to a haunted house with my cousin one Halloween. That night I learned if you put a flashlight against your fingers, they glow red and you can see through them; I also learned that I do not like it when teenagers in masks jump out at me - my father had to carry me, crying, back to the parking lot.

At some point, horror stuck. I became a fan. I discovered Lovecraft in middle school. I obsessed over the X-files. I watched, along with my friends Shawn and George, nearly every horror movie the local video store had for rent. I tracked down old pulp stories, searched for the Necronomicon, gorged on Vertigo comics. Horror was my thing.

If most people indulge themselves in horror during the month of October, I overindulge.

A love of horror is like an addiction. A story (or movie, or game) has a lot of work to do in order to creep me out in the coziness of my own home. And yet, there is something deeply compelling about the adrenaline rush that accompanies a good scare. Like the boy who left home to find out about the shivers, horror hounds are always looking for a new fright. We like to be scared.

Every October, that desire to be frightened goes into overdrive and this year, I’ve decided to share it with you, dear reader. In daily posts for the rest of the month, I will explore my month of horror. I will chronicle every movie, new and old, that I see, tell you of the tales that I read and the songs I listen to. Perhaps we’ll go on a road trip or two, and look for some real life ghosts.

Are you ready for a life of horror?