Four Questions with Craig DiLouie

I'm excited that the incomparable Craig DiLouie stopped by Tamika Talks Terror amid the launch of his new book Episode Thirteen.

In our Q&A, he shares a spooky personal tale from his past and the scariest book he's ever read.

Tamika Thompson: What is horror? 

Craig DiLouie: There is sometimes debate about defining horror as a genre because it is an emotion, not an art. However, there is a genre centered around it, and that genre has evolved based on what society finds threatening, artistic innovation, and societal norms. As a member of the Horror Writers Association, I’m proud to be in the community.

As an emotion, horror stems from primal fear of the unknown and fear of being prey. To paraphrase Stephen King, it has three aspects, which are chills, grossouts, and revulsion. Chills: You hear a piano playing in an empty, haunted house. Grossouts: A severed head plunks down the stairs. Revulsion: A giant mosquito loudly buzzes as it searches for human blood. To which I might add “disturbed,” where you uncomfortably realize a dark truth about the human condition and that you aren’t immune to it, which delves into the areas of psychological and cosmic horror.

The real question is why anyone would want to suffer through this, even in fiction! I think the answer is people seek out horror to symbolically face death and win, thereby gaining a short but reassuring sense of importance, a sense of immortality. It’s the same drive that gets people on roller coasters. As a genre, horror also has a strong sense of justice, offering assurance that if you are morally good, you survive.

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

DiLouie: When I was a child, I lived in a rural area of New Jersey, where it wasn’t uncommon to discover you were neighbors with old, spooky, abandoned farmhouses, which were fun to explore. Growing up in the seventies, I spent a lot of time on my own in the real world but also in a world of deep imagination.

One day, a friend and I ventured deep into the woods because we’d heard there were ruins of a house going back to the American Revolution. We found it. We were far from home, the house creepy, the woods thick enough to create premature twilight. We dared each other to go first, and I accepted.

Just when I was about to go in, I believed I heard a wheezing breath inside. Suddenly, I saw myself from outside my body, lunging through the air in a pell-mell, hurdling run, a dark lightning coursing through my body.

My friend said he hadn’t heard it. I had thoroughly spooked myself. Years later, I tried to find the house again but couldn’t locate it. I’d often regret never exploring it.

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

DiLouie: When I was a kid, I read The Amityville Horror and at the time accepted 100% that it was real. That book freaked me out. It was like a kitchen sink of creepiness and horrors.

Lately, one of the scariest horror media I’ve interacted with is Phasmophobia, a ghost-hunting computer game. While writing Episode Thirteen, I played many hours of it with my son to get in the mood for fictional ghost hunting. The game is absolutely immersive and produces this incredible feeling of dread. When writing the novel, I wanted to bottle that feeling, drilling deep to capture a strong sense of fear of the unknown.

Thompson: The main characters in your newly released novel are a husband-and-wife ghost hunting team with their own reality TV show. What do you make of the fascination people have with proving that ghosts exist?

DiLouie: In surveys, roughly half of Americans say they’ve had a paranormal experience. Many claim they’ve been contacted by a deceased loved one, which offers them comfort. So, I think many don’t need proof. They just like to see others sharing their experiences, as it’s something they already believe in or can maybe even directly relate to.

So far, science has never confirmed any paranormal events actually occurred, but that doesn’t stop people from trying.

Using the scientific method and high-tech sensors and recorders, they venture into haunted places and seek to capture paranormal events.

I’ve been personally fascinated by this approach to the paranormal ever since watching the 1973 movie The Legend of Hell House, based on the novel by Richard Matheson. For me, if the paranormal could be scientifically proven, it would be the greatest discovery possibly of all time. If ghosts exist, then that means one possibility about them is people can continue existing after death.

All of this feeds into the motivation of the husband-and-wife team. Matt believes in ghosts and wants to prove there is life after death, which he believes would comfort the world. Clare doesn’t believe in ghosts, but once she sees clear evidence they exist, she becomes obsessed with scientifically characterizing them as an earth-shaking discovery that changes everything we know about physics. Their obsession takes them deeper and deeper into the rabbit hole and things they should run from but ultimately pursue because they can’t live with the idea of not knowing. Both will learn firsthand the terrifying reality of ghosts.

Craig DiLouie is an acclaimed American-Canadian author of literary dark fantasy and other fiction. Formerly a magazine editor and advertising executive, he also works as a journalist and educator covering the North American lighting industry. His fiction has been nominated for major awards, optioned for screen, and published in multiple languages. He is a member of the Imaginative Fiction Writers Association, International Thriller Writers, and the Horror Writers Association. He lives in Calgary, Canada with his two wonderful children.