“The 3 types of terror: The Gross-out: the sight of a severed head tumbling down a flight of stairs, it’s when the lights go out and something green and slimy splatters against your arm.

The Horror: the unnatural, spiders the size of bears, the dead waking up and walking around, it’s when the lights go out and something with claws grabs you by the arm.

And the last and worse one: Terror, when you come home and notice everything you own had been taken away and replaced by an exact substitute. It’s when the lights go out and you feel something behind you, you hear it, you feel its breath against your ear, but when you turn around, there’s nothing there…”

There aren’t too many people in this world who are as good at sending those bone-tingling chills down our spines as Stephen King. He holds us in suspense only to scare us out of our wits. And we love him for it.

Halloween is one of those days where we love nothing more than to get spooked. We go visit haunted houses and we watch plenty of scary movies. Stephen King fits perfectly into this “holiday,” as several of his novels have been adapted as feature-length productions. We feared the rabid dog in Cujo and we faced our greatest fears in It. They say that our imagination is the most frightening thing in the world and that’s why the highest level of terror described above involves almost nothing at all.

I’m more of a fan of psychological thrillers, like those written by Michael Crichton, but there’s no denying that Stephen King is utterly fantastic at what he does. He even has a great sense of humor about what he does for living:

“People want to know why I do this, why I write such gross stuff. I like to tell them I have the heart of a small boy… and I keep it in a jar on my desk.”

Happy Halloween, everyone! Stay safe out there. 🙂