Four Questions with Ben Monroe

It’s always a special day at Tamika Talks Terror when a writer I know and admire stops by to share some spooky tales.

Today, author Ben Monroe pays us a visit ahead of the launch of his novel, The Seething.

Tamika Thompson: What is horror? 

Ben Monroe: That’s a big question right there. Lovecraft once wrote that “the oldest and strongest form of fear is fear of the unknown.” While Barker noted many years later, “There’s no delight the equal of dread.”

As a style or genre, Horror is attempting to create a sense of unease in the person experiencing the story. I think it’s awfully interesting to think about how “horror” is the only genre of fiction that’s named for an emotional state. You feel horror, you don’t feel Fantasy, or Science Fiction. Arguably Romance is probably pretty close, but I’ve not read broadly enough in that genre to really have anything much worthwhile to say about it.

It’s also a way for the storyteller to work through their own worries and anxieties. We can muddle through our stuff on the page, and maybe create some clarity of thought for ourselves.

Going back to Lovecraft and Barker for a moment, I guess one thing I often wonder about is why some people (myself included) take pleasure in the horror genre. Why do we delight in dread? I think it has something to do with being able to experience fear in a safe space. The build up of tension as the story gets progressively worse, and then the release at a climactic moment. How often do you read a scary story, or watch a scary film, and find yourself holding your breath as the Bad Thing is happening, and then let it out in a gasp, or slow exhale once it’s over.

Psychologists would probably have lots to say about that.

I also personally prefer to think of Horror in storytelling terms as more of a style than a genre. My favorite horror stories are the types where the horror is layered on top of something else. Most notably stories of relatable people having relatable lives and then things go off the rails.

Thompson: What is the spookiest experience you've ever had?

Monroe: I wish I could tell you stories of ghosts haunting the attic of my childhood home. Or goblins stalking me at summer campouts. But honestly, I don’t feel I’ve ever experienced anything really “spooky” at all. That being said, I was a nervous, anxious child, and often felt like something bad was about to happen. I think that’s one of the reasons I started reading a lot of horror as a teenager (though I’d read plenty of it when I was younger). Keeping the monsters on the page, or on the screen was a way for me to flush them out of my head.

That being said, one of the more unsettling moments related to films and books, was when I went with a bunch of friends to see the film Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer at a little arthouse theater in Berkeley, CA around 1989 or so. Though I should clarify that I had planned to see the film with a bunch of friends, but none of those jerks actually showed up.

So, I’m sitting in this little smelly theater in downtown Berkeley all by myself. There was absolutely nobody else in the room while I was watching it. And that was a hell of a movie to be watching all alone in a dark, musty theater. The movie freaked me out. Then the film ends, and I leave the theater almost at midnight, and it’s started raining while I was viewing it. And since the guy who had offered me a ride home didn’t show, I had to take the bus home. 

I ended up so freaked out by all that, that when the bus got there, I headed straight to the back and sat in the corner, specifically to make sure nobody was sitting behind me.

Thompson: What is the scariest book you've read and what about it frightened you?

Monroe: I’ve read so many horror books over the years, but the one that’s probably freaked me out the most (and I’ve only read it twice!) was Stephen King’s Pet Sematary. The first time I read it was probably right around the time it came out, in the mid 80s. Everything about it was just creepy. The gore was shocking, of course. Then there was the way the wendigo spirit infests the townsfolk, even if not directly. All the stuff with the horrible ghostly sister, the possessed dead kids, etc. It really just set me on edge.

Flash forward to a few years ago, and I read it again as an adult, with kids of my own. And holy moly did that hit me in a whole different way. The generational trauma, and how the dad’s in-laws try to control the family. All the grief the family goes through when Gage gets killed by the truck. And then the dad has that choice to make knowing it’ll probably make things worse.

Pet Sematary is also one of the sorts of horror stories I mentioned up above: a story about regular people having a fairly normal life, but with some relatable difficulties, and then the horror sneaks in. Like “Okay, you’ve got a new job, in a new town, and your in-laws hate you, and your wife’s dealing with some unresolved trauma about her dead sister, and your son just died in a tragic accident. Now here comes the wendigo to make things worse.”

Thompson: What inspired you to write The Seething? 

Monroe: A few years ago, I was hiking on a trail around a lake in the East Bay hills.

We were in the middle of a pretty bad couple of years of drought, and I noticed that the little fishing piers were flat on the dry lake bed. They were designed to rise and fall with the level of the lake, but the water had fallen so low that they were just lying flat on dry mud.

I have no idea why this thought hit me, but suddenly I found myself thinking about this old issue of the Swamp Thing comic. Where an old town full of vampires had been flooded by a bursting dam, and now the vampires had become completely aquatic and even grosser than before. And then I got to thinking that if there were a monster in that lake, it was sure a lot closer to the surface because of the drought.

That thought stuck with me for a while, and eventually I decided to write about it and see where it would go.

When I started writing it, I was also thinking about where I was in my life at the time, the sorts of things my kids (newly-minted teenagers) were dealing with, as well as thinking about my own experiences as a teenager.

So, I hope I got a little bit of my love of “regular people dealing with regular problems… and then the horror starts” in there.

Ben Monroe has spent most of his life in Northern California, where he lives in the East Bay Area with his wife and two children. He is the author of In the Belly of the Beast and Other Tales of Cthulhu Wars, The Seething (coming in 2023 from Brigids Gate Press), the graphic novel Planet Apocalypse, and short stories in several anthologies. You can find more information about him and his work at www.benmonroe.com.