Something In The Way: Serial Killers on Sunday
A Sunday morning essay about serial killer fascination and how it drifts back into view, now and then.
A new book on serial killers. This one linking the mindset of this subset to the environmental impacts in the Pacific Northwest in the 70s and 80s. Was the toxic levels of copper, lead, and arsenic partly to blame for ‘manufacturing’ psychopaths that went on calculated killing sprees?
Absolute Horror: Darkness Imprisoning Me
I like dark stories. I like seeing pain. I like hurt, tragedy, brutality — I am a horror fiend, sure. But the darkest, best, saddest, most horrible, terrifying, and, even sometimes thrilling horror is the true-life story of a serial killer’s motivations, or the acrimony of divorce getting really ugly, or the pettiness of family or neighbour squab…
I cannot remember when I first became super-interested in the worlds of serial killers, their destruction, their psychopathic vindictiveness and terrifying menace? But it’s been 30 years at least. And the Fred and Rose West “House of Horrors” story was a big one. That and Jeff Dahmer occupied my mind around the same time. Ted Bundy and the Green River Killer and John Wayne Gacy are other obvious ones.
Stephen King basically took the BTK serial killer as the blueprint for his effective novella, A Good Marriage. And there are so many other examples. All fetishised and flogged by Hollywood. A huge influence on horror films — Ed Gein being the latest example, if you believe only the Netflix series; Ed Gein was already the subject of so many documentaries and written about in volumes. Netflix paraded him around instead as if a fluffy, stuffed animal they won at a show. Threw the dart and popped the balloon. Took home Ed Gein and made a fictional series about him.
Those sorts of shows have slowed me down — although I watched the Gein and promptly wished I hadn’t. Not because of a sympathy for victims, or any concerns of what the acceptance of such material as common entertainment is doing, or has already done, just for the garishness of it. It was gross, and beyond parody-level, and therefore poorly, um, executed.
The Rape-Revenge Subgenre and The Terrible Mirror It Holds
CONTENT WARNING: I’m writing here about horror, and in particular the rape-revenge films of the 70s and 80s and the influence of those on other writers and filmmakers. I’m looking at it as an influence on some of my own writing and thinking, and as an ugly mirror being held up to society. Please take care when reading this, if you do — that extends of c…
So I’ll probably read the new book, because it sounds interesting, compelling, well researched, well written, and something draws me to it.
What is it though that draws so many of us to this version of the macabre? Is it just that we can never imagine ourselves ever doing it so we read and research and view the versions on record, as if, somehow a reminder to never do it is sewn into the hem of such items?
Human beings are capable of such extreme violence towards one another, and things. We are able to hurt on such profound levels. And then there’s psychopathy. And then there’s serial killer territory. Which is monster territory. It is beyond the extreme violence humans can perform. It is beyond the hurt. It is a terrifying monster show. And it is weirdly titillating for some to read about and view. As well as a reminder to not do it. I reckon.
The Truth Is Out There
When I was a kid, I spent quite a bit of time thinking I might have been kidnapped. My parents, obviously, were spies, special agents. And having a family and mundane jobs in a tiny town in middle New Zealand was deep cover only. They were gathering information, and playing a very long game.
The idea that there’s something in the water. Or the air. Or just something in the way of these people. Something enabling. Something blocked, or blocking. Well that’s something else to read about now too. Isn’t it.
