Four Questions with Kelly Florence and Meg Hafdahl

The co-authors stopping by today have slept in Lizzie Borden’s bedroom and visited the grave of the actress who created Vampira. Kelly Florence and Meg Hafdahl’s latest work, Travels for Terror: Strange and Spooky Spots Across America, shares their adventures in these and other terrifying locations.

Tamika Thompson: What is horror?

Kelly Florence and Meg Hafdahl: Naturally, this answer would be different for everyone. For us, horror is an opportunity for empathy. It is the worst of humanity reflected back to us in many different forms, whether through monster, killer, psyche, whatever. Then we watch as a character succumbs to these worst instincts or they fight through them, kick and scream and fight and come out with scars, whether physical or emotional. We don’t think you can watch or read a well-constructed horror without putting yourself in that character’s place and that is where fiction, particularly a high-charged and intense piece like horror, creates an empathetic consumer.

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

Florence and Hafdahl: There are two that come to mind, both in hotel rooms! We wrote about one of them in our upcoming book Travels of Terror. Kelly saw a figure in our room where we were staying in Portland, Oregon and when she sat up to alert Meg, the man disappeared. Years previously, while staying in Los Angeles, some people prank called our room then proceeded to knock on the door to scare us. Whether it’s supernatural or scary people in real life, both experiences were terrifying.

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

Florence and Hafdahl: This is tough because there are so many excellent horror books in the world and so many different kinds of “frightening.” For Meg, the short story by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, The Yellow Wallpaper, has always stuck in her mind; that ending haunts her to this day, as well as The Only Good Indians by Stephen Graham Jones and Books of Blood by Clive Barker. For Kelly, reading The Amityville Horror by Jay Anson in junior high caused a lot of sleepless nights!

Thompson: In your latest venture, Travels for Terror: Strange and Spooky Spots Across America, the two of you travel to some of the spookiest places in the U.S.  What is a favorite memory from your travels for this book?

Florence and Hafdahl: There are so many, but for Meg, sleeping in the same bedroom that Lizzie Borden slept in was such a surreal experience! Since childhood she’d read about Lizzie, so that strange sense of staring at the same ceiling as she drifted off to sleep will stick with her for life!

For Kelly, visiting Maila Nurmi’s (Vampira) resting place at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery was a magical and beautiful experience. She was, and is still, so loved by the horror community and we felt honored to lay flowers at her tombstone.

Kelly Florence teaches communication at Lake Superior College in Duluth, MN and is the creator of the Be a Better Communicator podcast. She received her BA in theatre from the University of Minnesota-Duluth and her MA in communicating arts from the University of Wisconsin-Superior. She has written, directed, produced, choreographed, and stage managed for dozens of productions in Minnesota including Carrie: The Musical through Rubber Chicken Theatre and Treasure Island for Wise Fool Theater. She is passionate about female representation in all media and particularly the horror genre. She is the co-author of The Science of Monsters, The Science of Women in Horror, The Science of Stephen King, The Science of Serial Killers, and The Science of Witchcraft with Meg Hafdahl. They co-host the Horror Rewind podcast and write and produce horror projects together. Kelly is repped by Stacey Kondla (Literary Agent) at The Rights Factory and Karmen Wells (TV/Film Agent) at The Rights Factory.

Author, screenwriter, producer, speaker, and podcaster, Meg Hafdahl is a fan and creator of horror. Her popular novel series starting with Her Dark Inheritance was published by indie press Inklings Publishing, as well as three collections of her short stories. Her work has been produced for audio performance by The Wicked Library and The Lift. She is the co-author of the Science of Horror book series including the Bram Stoker Award nominated The Science of Women in Horror. The most recent installment is the upcoming The Science of Alfred Hitchcock coming this October 2024. She is also the co-author of Travels of Terror: Strange and Spooky Spots Across America, releasing this August.