Meet the Horror Bloggers: Lightning Bug’s Lair
Many fans of horror, amateur and professional alike, have devoted
themselves to blogging about the thrills, chills, and no-frills side of the genre as seen in cinema and print. In this ongoing series that highlights the writers behind the blogs, we meet the unique personalities and talents that make the online horror scene so engaging. Up close and personal.
In this installment, T.L. Bugg of the Lightning Bug’s Lair reveals his initial distaste for the fear, his passion for a guy named Bela, and a rich background in horror.
As Bill Cosby once said back when he did standup and was funny, “I started out as a child.” like Mr. Cosby, I also started out as a youngster and a rather fearful one at that. While I was obsessed with images from the Universal horror films of the 1930’s and 40’s, I could not be coerced by anyone to see a modern horror film. I recall one afternoon when a next door neighbor recounted to me the story of C.H.U.D. It
was enough to trouble my sleep for at least a week.
My parents fondly recall when they tried to show me the Disney approved horror film, Something Wicked This Way Comes. I got about five minutes into the film, the kids saw their own heads getting cut off, and I was done. I have not ever attempted to see that movie since. The last early memory of my yellow steak was when Hellraiser came out on videotape. My folks called me in to see the part where Frank’s body rises from the floor and reconstitutes. It took me some time to recover from that as well.
At the same time that I avoided horror in Technicolor, Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff were both great favorites of mine, and each year for Halloween I would request to be a
vampire. More than being a bloodsucker, I wanted to be like Bela, or Dracula, the two almost inseparable in my young mind. He was intimidating with only a stare, suave yet dangerous, evil but sophisticated about it. It was around this same age that I discovered old time radio due to my love of Abbot and Costello films. (It surely did not hurt that they crossed over with the Universal monsters a few times.) While my tastes ran mostly toward the comedic programs of Fibber McGee and Molly, and Burns & Allen, there were quite a few nights where I clutched my Walkman to my chest in the darkness of my bedroom and listened intently to the horrors of the Inner Sanctum or (Shock Theater).
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