What keeps you awake at night?

What keeps you from sleeping at night? When was the last time the boogieman kept you awake?

Last week I was hit by the flu. I was beat down and left for dead; nothing more than a miserably heap of pink bathrobe and used tissues, permanently stuck to the couch. I was too out of it to even write, so I did what any self-respecting pile of mucus would do; I ate soup, I slept, and I watched a lot of TV.   

I started off my binge with Night of the Living Dead and continued it with Dawn of the Dead, Day of the Dead, and How to Train Your Dragon (yeah, I know it doesn't really fit). After a few movies I moved onto a number of TV shows and eventually landed on American Horror Story. It got me thinking about times that I have really been terrified by something I watched or read.

When I was a kid, Fire in the Sky kept me up for weeks. It made me physically ill and impacted my ability to watch scary movies for years to come. Thereafter, every time I watched a scary movie, particularly with aliens, my stomach would drop out and I would succumb to nausea that would keep me up all night long. That, my friends, is fear.

It took me years to get over the experience and conquer my association of horror with nausea. Once I got over it, I found that I was left with a very strong stomach and a tolerance, even a love, for the gory and horrific. As an adult I find that I read or watch on with fascination, rarely experiencing the terror I knew as a child. Demons and monsters frequently make it into my dreams, but they provide a sense of adventure and never do I wake up in a sweat trying to escape. A few weeks ago I dreamed I had survived a zombie horde only to realize I had forgotten a ring in a hotel room. Clearly we had to go back for it. When I woke there was no sense of panic or fear, just curiosity that I (of all people) would go back for a ring.

I am now going to take this opportunity to share with you the monsters that have managed to break through and remind me of my childhood fears.

28 Days Later - I don't care what the zombie purists say, they were mother fucking zombies and scared the crap out of me. A friend and I set up my laptop and watched it one weekend in my college dorm room. Fast zombies. What the hell?! My roommate was out of town for the weekend and there was no way I was sleeping alone with fast zombies flashing in my head. I moved my pillow and sleeping bag down the hall for the rest of the weekend.

The Ring - On Halloween in a sold-out theater filled with jumpy pumped up teenagers. The tension was palpable. I had never before had such an intense movie-going experience. At every twist and turn the collective jumped and screamed. I went home that night on edge and seeing monsters in every corner, only to find that the blanket on my bed proudly displayed an image of a tree with a ring of a moon above it. That blanket lived in my closet for weeks.

The Exorcism of Emily Rose - I think that was the movie. The movie itself does not matter, it was what followed that left a lasting impression. My boyfriend at the time was a complete pansy; jumpy and easily spooked. He made me stay over after the movie and not because he was trying to get lucky; he was legitimately too freaked to sleep alone. By the end of the night he had twitched, started and cried out so many times, that I thought he would have to be exorcised.

Rising Tide - I know what you are thinking. What a shameless plug for your own book. But seriously, I have never been more freaked out than I was from writing Chapter 9. The setting was perfect: alone in a hotel room during a thunderstorm (tornado alarms even blared that night). And when you write horror, your mind twists up and wanders down all the dark and dirty corridors of your imagination. Only a fraction of the monsters you create make it into words on a page, the rest plague the darkness behind your eyelids. If you are looking for a truly good scare and are bored with the movies and books available, try writing. It's a guaranteed sleepless night. It took me more than two hours of Storage Wars to get the demons calmed down enough for me to sleep.

Just a few of my most memorable spooks. So, what has kept you awake lately?