My 4-Year-Old Daughter Has Always Loved Spooky Season. And Not Just Because I Write Horror Novels (Exclusive)

A thin moon leered over a field of whispering corn as we boarded the old tractor. No sooner had we settled against the wooden slats than the vicious revving of a chainsaw cut through the night. My daughter’s eyes widened. “What’s that?” she asked. Several other passengers looked our way. Oh no, I thought. We need to get off right now! What were we thinking? There are adults who find these things too scary! In submitting to my 4-year-old’s enthusiastic appeals to experience a haunted hayride I feared my husband and I had made a terrible mistake. 

One couldn’t fault me for indulging my daughter. Whenever someone who’s acquainted with me discovers her love for all things spooky, their reaction is usually the same: “Well, that’s hardly surprising, considering what you write.”

“What I write” is gothic mystery and horror novels, the latest of which, How to Fake a Haunting, takes place in Newport, R.I. and deals with a woman who decides that the best way to be rid of her alcoholic but well-connected husband is to stage a haunting so realistic, it will drive him away. “It must be a family affair,” “Did you read her nothing but ghost stories?” and, “Even if she likes scary things, I bet she gets nightmares,” are all other common responses to my daughter’s interest in the supernatural. I’m here to tell you that the connection between my work and her inclinations is not as direct as you might think. 

My daughter has always loved books and not just spooky ones. One of the earliest photos I have of her, taken 13 days after she was born (and a month into the pandemic), is of her peering into the pages of a board book. As the long days of lockdown wore on, we made our way through Little Golden books and Newbery-Award and Caldecott Medal-winners, Sandra Boynton and Jan Brett, Goodnight Moon and The Story of Ferdinand, books about Halloween and Christmas, princesses, and villains. 

But, as 2020 turned to 2021, and 2021 to 2022, our trips to the library to stock up on Halloween titles came not in October but September, and then in August. Our home library became less Angelina and more Vampirina. The bat stuffed animals and Calico Critters “Spooky Surprise House” playset stayed out all year. Egg carton witches on popsicle stick brooms littered the craft table no matter the season. 

My daughter’s requests to accompany me on writing research trips—cemeteries, old mills, houses associated with Edgar Allan Poe and H.P. Lovecraft — became more persistent, too. She marveled at hearing how the young woman buried behind Exeter’s Chestnut Hill Baptist Church is rumored to be a vampire (but was really the victim of a terrible illness) and delighted in scrolling through my photos of Sleepy Hollow’s Headless Horseman-themed, well, everything. “Tell me a scary story about it,” was her constant refrain, no matter where we were … lighthouses, slivers of forest, the abandoned elementary school on the outskirts of town. 

So when she pushed to visit a haunted hayride, it didn’t seem unreasonable or surprising. As someone rarely affected by horror movie jump scares or “haunted” tourist attractions, my memory of Rhode Island’s Scary Acres scare-factor was hazy at best. So we purchased tickets, arrived at the farm on a chilly fall evening, and amplified our excitement with an assortment of Halloween treats consumed along the way.

Only after we boarded the tractor — and the roar of that chainsaw sliced through my thoughts — did I consider we might be in trouble. Professional actors in SFX makeup were a long way from going with a “Halfway to Halloween”-themed birthday party for toddlers. As my daughter’s face paled, and a man in a clown mask stalked the aisles, panic seized my limbs. The clown approached. He bent ominously over my daughter. She lifted her head and stared deep into the eye sockets of his mask. 

The transformation into an enthusiast of the eerie had occurred so gradually, even I wasn’t certain when it had happened. Looking back, I realize that what my daughter was first drawn to wasn’t ghosts or scary plotlines or creepy illustrations; it was stakes (and no, not the kind that kill vampires; at least, not right away). She adored The Barnabus Project by Devin and Terry Fan, in which a group of misfit creatures attempt to escape the laboratory in which they were created, and a staple from my own childhood, Care Bear Cousins: Keep on Caring, detailing the rescue of a young boy from the clutches of an evil book by the titular bears (and a host of other animal friends). Stories in which mystery and suspense and fear — stories replete with the trappings of the supernatural — were vehicles for lessons, for learning, for slices of life. 

In short, she was uninterested in reward without risk, comfort without danger; she wanted stories that left her a little bit breathless, a little uncertain of whether everything would turn out okay. Sure, there are fairytales, and we read those in droves as well. But with entire bookstores dedicated to spooky, offbeat, and spine-tingling tales, we were only too happy to expand our TBR to include Millie Fleur Saves the Night (Christy Mandin), The Skull (Jon Klassen) and Alfred’s Book of Monsters (Sam Streed). 

The horror genre is often accused of lacking depth, of losing meaning through its monsters. But I couldn’t disagree more. I believe it’s only through horror that we can best confront our own challenges, expose our insecurities, examine our wishes and fears. My daughter, in all her wisdom and childhood intuition, figured this out right away. She’s applied it, too, using the vehicle of the spooky story to work through issues on the playground, confrontations with playmates, dichotomies between situations and her emotions. Like Stephen King, she knows that we make up horrors to help us cope with real ones. It’s a knowledge I hope she retains, through elementary, middle, high school and beyond. 

On that crisp autumn night, when my daughter returned that deranged clown’s stare with one of courage, interest, and even a little amusement, I knew she’d be okay. That she’d enjoy herself. That she’d shudder a little, smile, and we’d go off to enjoy our fun, frightening adventure, content in the knowledge of the journey we traveled to get here.   

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So for those friends and family members, readers, and acquaintances who ask with real curiosity, “What did you do to make your daughter enjoy scary stories, scary things?” my answer is that, first and foremost, I fostered her love of all stories, not just the spooky ones. Through her love of reading, she developed her love of the unknown, of the dark. 

And in doing so, she’s become the brightest person I know. 

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How to Fake a Haunting is available now, wherever books are sold.