When I was a kid, I could always spot the adult sellouts. The ones who stopped liking weird things the second someone called them weird. They traded in late-night creature features for football games, monster magazines for gossip. It wasn’t about growing up, it was about giving in. About believing that being accepted was worth more than being yourself. I didn’t have the words for it then, but I knew it was wrong. The real monsters weren’t the ones in the movies. They were the people who told you to stop loving what made you different.
That’s what I think about when I read something like Salem’s Lot. The evil there doesn’t roar through the front door. It seeps in quietly. It wears a smile. It shakes your hand and tells you that you’ll be safe as long as you play by the rules. Horror movies taught me early that true evil doesn’t always arrive with blood and screaming. Sometimes it comes wearing a tie, shaking your faith in the things you love until you give them up on your own.
As I got older, I started seeing that same quiet horror in the world around me. People using words like “normal” and “patriot” to demand obedience. Leaders smiling on television, saying things like “you’re either with us or against us.” That isn’t unity. That’s control. That’s the same sickness Romero warned us about. The infection isn’t the zombies. It’s the pressure to stop thinking for yourself.
I love horror because it refuses to bow down to that kind of order. It celebrates outsiders, questioners, and dreamers. It says you don’t have to fit in. You don’t have to become one of them. Horror gives permission to keep your weirdness alive, to scream when you’re told to stay quiet, to hold tight to the strange things that make you feel alive.
The scariest thing in life isn’t a vampire at your window or a ghoul in the hallway. It’s waking up one day and realizing you’ve stopped being you.
