When I was 5 or 6, I went through a brief superhero period. Inspired by the TV series Batman, I clothes-pinned a bath towel to my neck, donned a red baseball cap (for some reason that eludes me now) and “flew” around our cottage on the shores of Connecticut’s Lake Alexander, looking for good to do. That Christmas, I got a generic superhero costume, which consisted of a plastic face mask/cowl and a plastic cape, an ensemble to which I added a pair of red mittens. At some point thereafter, maybe during the long winter, I lost the mask and the mittens but I kept the cape for some time and, when said cape wore out (as capes will through overuse) replaced it. You still see me wearing one cape or another in family pictures. By then, Batman was off the air and our family had moved to our own house in a less populated rural area. Lots of trees and shadows, nobody around and lots of time for brooding. In a cape, of course.

I hadn’t yet found horror but there was something latent there, no doubt part of my Polish bloodline. A couple of years later, I discovered issue 84 of Famous Monsters of Filmland on the racks of Dowe’s Stationery Store – a creaky old (at that point just over a century) stationers on Main Street in Danielson, Connecticut. That was the spark that started my fire. Famous Monsters carried me from late night broadcasts of Classic Horror and Simon’s Sanctorum to a lifelong obsession with all things monsterish, right up to the present day, in which I pitch my horror screenplays to companies like Lionsgate, Fox Atomic and Fangoria, and I dress my children up as ghouls. My Mother, who visited us over the past week, just shakes her head.

I don’t know if my kids will like monsters as much as I do and it’s okay if they don’t, but they see so many of them in their own home that they’re not scared by them. Fangs, talons and neck bolts don’t throw them. I would never show my kids anything too rough but they’ve seen a few Universal monster rallies and Val Lewton chillers. At The Descanso Gardens “Pumpkinpalooza” this past weekend, an older kid in a nicely detailed werewolf costume scared some of the littler children to tears but my 2-year-old daughter (in her faerie wings) wasn’t at all fazed and may even have said hello. At night, if you go into her room to check on her and she’s still awake, Vayda is likely to poke her head out of the covers and say “Boo!” Saying “Boo!” to my son Victor makes him laugh. We like to keep the fear up in this family, as a way of readying our kids to face the world. They will grow up with the understanding that a black cape is good for dodging angry mobs and, if necessary, taking wing across the night sky. Plus, a black cape goes with everything, we’ve found.

Monsters have a place in our home and in our hearts. Tomorrow is Halloween. Treat the monsters who come calling like you’d treat your own and we’ll all get through this horrorshow we call life.