A Quiet Companion

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Jet Lupin

I grew up an indoor kid. I may have said this before, but stick with me. I wasn’t allowed to join any after-school activities like teams or clubs; I wasn’t allowed to visit the few friends I’d made, despite that first hurdle (with the rare exception of playing warden to my younger brothers) or even my cousins who lived in the same city. Up until I was about 14, I wasn’t allowed to go farther than the few squares of sidewalk in front of the house without supervision.

Having no friends, not really able to develop any outdoor hobbies or interests, I leaned heavily on reading for escapism. Gaming would join in later, but reading was something I was into before gaming was even really a thing. I read voraciously, whatever I could get my hands on. Sci-fi, the odd fantasy, even a few romance novels I found in a cardboard box in my grandmother’s living room one summer and then never saw again. I craved the stimulation because it gave me something when I had nothing. Over time, my interests refined to being 99% sci-fi before I was actually free to go out and expand my horizons. I lacked balance then, but when you were suppressed to the level that I was, some things fall by the wayside. But you always come back to old comforts.

When I rediscovered my reading roots, I started on romance, something that had been off-limits before and after finding that treasure cache. But now I was spending my own money, doing what I wanted. I stayed in that genre for a piece, and around the same time, I started getting into horror.

As a child, the horror genre was also off-limits, and reasonably so. I couldn’t watch it; my little brain didn’t even realize people wrote books about it save for something like Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, but that didn’t stop my cousin, who was only a year older than me, from using his infrequent visits to the house to regale me with retellings of the movies he’d been allowed to watch: American Werewolf in London, Nightmare on Elm Street, Friday the 13th. When I watched these movies later, I felt like I’d already seen them from the enthusiasm he put into his stories. I’m not sure why he wanted to tell me; I never asked, and I never flinched (mostly), so I’m not sure what he got out of it other than the need to share. He was an only child, and I never heard him talk of friends, so that might have had something to do with it.

Once I started watching horror and paranormal fiction on my own, I developed a hunger that wouldn’t stop. It started with a few movies here and there, then gritting my way through games like Dead Space (if you know, you know) in 20-minute spurts, to reading several books a year, having a gaming backlog be 50% horror games, and watching several movies a week. If I need something for background noise to work to, I will opt for horror over comedies or romances. Horror tropes tend to be more unpredictable to me, they take more risks, throwing the baby out with the bathwater and doing something totally unpredictable. And I don’t mean the high-budget, high-art pieces. I mean the gritty, low-budget ventures with nothing to lose. Yes, half the time they miss, but when they hit, it’s amazing.

Reading horror took me longer to start than it did watching it. One of my ugly habits is comparing what I read to what I can do. And while this might help foster growth, sometimes it can stunt it. I was afraid of that happening, since it was so outside of my wheelhouse. I couldn’t conceive of where to even start. It intimidated me to no end. Eventually I grew out of that, and my only regret is not starting sooner.

I’ve had so many recent favorites that inspired me to take the plunge and try writing something in the horror vein for myself, that I wanted to share them and some of my all-time favs with you.

I promise not to spoil anything.

Movies

I’ll name a couple off the top of my head. More thorough descriptions are in my Letterboxd

  • When Evil Lurks (2023)
  • Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones(2014) (this is movie #5 in the series)
  • Skinamarink (2023)
  • Bring Her Back (2025)

Books

I have been proselytizing about these books for months. If you’ve met me in person, I’ve probably mentioned these to you. So why haven’t you read them yet? (The Amazon links are affiliate links. Or you can try your luck on thriftbooks.com)

Games

Podcasts/Youtube Channels

Not a lot here, but I still enjoy them pretty well.

Tell me, have you played/read/watched/listened to any of these?

If so, what were your thoughts? If not, which seem the most appealing?

Not a fan of horror at all? If you don’t mind sharing, leave your why in the comments.

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