Oh I am so there! Finally something appropriate.. =D

I can’t wait for another halloween show. The one last year was great, and this one sounds really good too. I like when NPR does halloween shows and On Point does some of the best shows in general, so this should be good

Gremlins, and Reen. Reen are an evolved rat that walk on their hind-feet from the “Magician’s Apprentice” children’s series. Intelligent rats conniving against us from their subterranean cities….. ew.

I think phobias are a bit different from monsters we think of. I used to have a spider phobia. I wouldn’t imagine them; I’d go berserk if I saw one on me.
But there was the crawl space under a new addition built to the house I grew up in, with a basement window remaining from the original foundation. That window we used to pummel the opposing team with cardboard boxes and attack and so on. But in the dark, when going to fetch the laundry from the dryer, there were white clouds of amazing terrorizing potential that would float out of there.
Also, there are similar UFOs that I’ve seen out my third floor window, about the size of say six pillows, and quite aggressive. They come right up to me, the window where I am. I shudder. They gracefully go elsewhere. Haven’t seen that in decades, but it happened more than once.

Scared from childhood…Army Ants…the movie from way back, never forgot and still shiver…realistic…not absurd.

The monster that scares me the most, is the ‘pitchforks-and-torches’ mob ala Bride of Frankenstein… which is what horror always is imho. Its a fantasy manifestation of our cultural, ethnic, and sexual fears. Vampires and zombies are blatant masks for both forbidden sexuality and the people we fear.

Alien was directed by Ridley Scott not James Cameron.

Even at 34, it’s still the dark that gets me.. When I wasa kid, I had huge fear of ghosts and the dead in general..

‘Hungry Ghost’ movies like The Ring and Grudge set this fear off like a bomb.

and when it’s dark.. I just know they’re out there.. =P

In “The Ring”, there was the terrifying insane child. The one who hates her parents enough to get into their minds and drive them to madness and suicide. Something about the evil child — especially for parents — is a horror. My husband had to come with me to brush my teeth following that movie.

Tom –

Great show! But the 1979 “Alien” was directed by Ridley Scott. The sequel, “Aliens,” was directed by James Cameron.

Forget Horror Movies! Scariest thing to watch ever: Unsolved Mysteries……fear of the unknown!

Real life is scarier than any imagined monster or phantasm, that is why we can take such delight in these stories and movies.

FRANKENSTEIN is so scary because we created him. Born in a lab, mocked and degraded by a crowd. I feel revulsion for The Monster, but also some sort of collective guilt for torturing him. Truly frightening. And, isn’t that what we do with celebrities– create them, hound them, tear them down? No wonder Michael Jackson was obsessed with monsters.

Great show. Just want to mention that the original “Alien” (1979) movie, the one that started it all, was made by Ridley Scott not James Cameron’s “Aliens” (1986).

There are some Chinese statues at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts (brought back in the 1800s I suppose) that scared me out of my wits when I was about 10. Ditto from the shrunken heads at some museum. Ditto for the very tame drawing of a wolf on the cover of Peter and the Wolf. I obliterated it with a sharp pen, digging its head OUT. Ditto for the drawing of Beowulf in my college text. I couldn’t look at the page, let alone read it, till the monster was OUT. Visuals are awesome.

Reavers! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reaver_(Firefly)

I think it’s the sound they make that freaks me out so much.

As a child I had recurring dreams about the Wicked Witch.

Thanks for catching the James Cameron / Ridley Scott mistake. It was a producer’s error.

Babysitting, uh-uh. Am I the only child who did it in reverse? “Oh, Mother, I can’t go down to the basement to get the laundry, there is a ghosty thing that comes after me.”

Alien had a different mood from its sequel, and scared me much more. Alien, as I recall it, was more about being alone and facing a nightmare. The grown alien got people when they went off by themselves, and Ripley ends up alone with her cat in the hibernation unit.
Aliens was more about facing the horror with others — a lot of the interplay between the marine squad mates, Ripley fighting for the family unit she had formed with the love interest and the kid. The first alien was chilling because it was so lonely — no one hearing you scream, etc.

Monsters are us (from our unconscious, wishes, fantasies) and God (Wednesday, October 28, 2009 Religion, Morality and Youth) is from us (from our unconscious, wishes, fantasies). When are we going to get that we create these images and phantasms? They are from the inside and not ‘out there.’

Cassius:
“The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,
But in ourselves, that we are underlings.”
Julius Caesar (I, ii, 140-141) – Shakespeare.

Glad to hear the conversation got to “real people” monsters for this is the only monster that truly haunts me. Angry white males … a stereotype maybe, but still, the one that can make my stomach flip.

The rise of shows such as Supernatural and True Blood are examples of the interest in monsters. These shows allow the writes and the audience to explore and darker aspects of the an individuals psyche and to express our own demons and potential ways of dealing with them.

Hi Tom,
My biggest monster fear is of humans! If I walk through the woods I am afraid of being attacked by some ‘crazy person’!
I’ve always chocked up ‘monster’ creatures under the bed, vampires etc. to the imagination…but PEOPLE can be such monsters!!It’s in the news every day. (like the rape in CA. or the guy who stabbed his Dr. earlier this week.

I love vampire movies and grew up in England watching all those fabulous Hammer productions. I’m not afraid of too many horror flicks, and “The Blair Witch Project” just gave me a headache, with all that silly camera wobble! The thing that really scares me is the human monster, they look like you and I until they do something sickening. That is the scary part of them, humans have so many nightmares, some people choose to make them real. Those are the real monsters.
Funny thing about vampires is even though they are not supposedly real, where do all the legends come from? Every culture has one!

I cast my vote for Norman Bates from Psycho (Anthony Perkins).

He was without a doubt one of the first truly frightening characters how seem a bit eccentric or are masking some deep psychological problems.

I am sure the first time anyone has seen Psycho they wont get into a shower for days.

the other monster is Chucky the doll. It’s a real B or even a C movie but as a scary character he is brilliant plays into all of our childhood fears.

Monsters are so needed in this world as part of our aesthetic. Monsters as stimulants for thrill, monsters as ways to understand two disparate thoughts in
coexistence, monsters to destroy and make over our sensibilities, monsters within, monsters without, monsters that lead us to the sublime…

Children more understand the need for monsters than adults often do. Although it may be difficult to get a child to articulate nuance, they have an innate sense of how monsters are complex in our psyches.

Monsters from childhood led me to my vocation.

When I was a very small boy, around the age of four, I remember I had had my first memorable nightmare: grotesque monsters appearing in patterns on my bedroom curtains. Around the same time, my uncle would tell the children of the family about Zookie, the monster who lived in the attic, and who couldn’t come out because light would hurt his eyes and blind him. Working along side these monsters was the urban legend my young cousin was spreading around to scare the children about a monster who was half human and who had no arms and legs; this “half-human” monster also ate little children. I consider this monster story to be particularly cruel, as every person I saw for about a year after who was physically disabled I believed to be one of those “half-human,” child-eating monsters.

At age four and a half, we moved to a new house and I got my own room. I remember that room well; it was on the second floor, just at the top of the stairs. My very own window, which faced the back yard, could afford a view into the backyards and homes of other people. Directly across from me, at the back of a neighbor’s house, was a window to a bedroom, a room of a little girl; the little girl was about five years older than I. She was grotesque to me; I had never seen a person with such a distorted face. I remember thinking, “maybe she is a monster?!?”

She had Downs Syndrome which, back then, people called people with Downs Syndrome “Mongoloids.” This sounded pretty scary to me. I never asked my parents about her; I guess it was a combination of shyness and being afraid. Lisa was her name, and she never came out of her house but constantly looked outside from a bay window. The neighborhood kids would point to her strange looking face, her webbed fingers, her dwarf-like body and chant “Lisa’s a monster, Lisa’s a monster…” I didn’t like what they were saying, but I was only five. Lisa’s room faced my room, and I remember she would look at me from her window. I was at once afraid and compelled to look at her, to connect through eye contact. She looked sad and lonely I thought. I never met Lisa but never forgot her.

Later, in early teenage years, I felt a similar empathy in seeing children like Lisa. I no longer felt fear or had the cruel misconception that they were monsters, but I also saw how shunned they were and subject to ridicule. I could not say why I thought that was wrong, but I knew it was.

When I was 16 I decided to volunteer at a summer camp for children with developmental disabilities. I don’t know, maybe it was a way to fully end the controversy and misunderstanding in my mind that I saw foisted on people like Lisa; maybe it was some kind of atonement for feeling I hadn’t done enough to bring forth honor and dignity toward Lisa, I can’t say for sure. I do know that beauty comes in all forms for all sorts of reasons.

I worked in an institution for what was known as “the mentally retarded” back then when I was in college, and I worked for people with autism all through my early-mid twenties.

Maybe at least some monsters are simply those creatures we either don’t know, don’t understand, or don’t see ourselves in…

It’s fascinating how much the life of Barack Obama mirrors the horror cult classic film trilogy The Omen, parts 1,2, and 3. Only Damien Thorn (who was the son of lucifer in The Omen) had a much frendlier demeanor than Barack Obama.

The Wolf of Nothingness from the Never Ending Story movie. I was sooo terrified of that thing as a child! And still hate thinking about it.

The return of the conservative troll!!…

Just when you thought it was safe to read non-politically motivated comments… it attacks like the living dead, zombie like and after the blood of anyone who dares to dissent from their ideology.

My first thought on hearing this hour’s topic: ‘Monsters are BORING. Good, I’ll be able to turn the radio OFF and pay my bills.’

WRONG!!!

HOW DO YOU DO IT, Tom and Tom’s EXTRAORDINARY staff???!!! Five days a week, I hope for FOREVER!!!! What a FASCINATING and intellectually stimulating this hour wound up to be!!!

I’m getting greedy now: Can your BRILLIANT guest come back again to address ONE of these issues in even greater detail…Beowulf, for instance; or, maybe a bestiary of medieval monsters????

Through the ages, monsters in literature and later in movies were portrayed as something to fear but also something misunderstood, something mistreated, and something to pity, and they were ultimately transformed into “someone.” I see this as a more complete sense of monsters in our consciousness. In an earlier comment, I described the perspective of a little boy’s view of a monster in a classic sense. The old view of monsters had many elements.

Many of today’s movies (with a few exceptions) that depict psychopathic killers and pure abominations of human kind by reducing them to their lowest common denominator, portray them as only something to fear and something to triumph over. This aspect of the monsters within a horror film/book will probably always be with us, and it serves a need.

In some respects I think many of the antiheros in comic books and on screen serve the modern purpose of the old view of monsters. The difference is that those characters are already pitched to the reader/viewer as “someone” and someone to show empathy for. With the antihero, too, they are presented as having redeeming qualities up front; the reader/viewer doesn’t have to think about what could be of value…

It follows from Brett’s remarks that a child, one who is pretty sheltered, would have quite a stable of monsters to stand in for things he or she does not yet have the training to confront, but vague suspicions of their presence. Along the way, one learns to take on board what the various monsters represent, to confront them with resilience, as he explained about disabled people being different and scary to him as a child, then people he understood and understood their needs much better for having experienced that shift.
The last vestiges of these kinds of horror, besides outlasting childhood in horror movies and so on, would be the forms of discrimination and prejudice we build into our lives, right? I should be looking for a giant spider or moonlike pillow at my door tonight to exorcise my remnants.