Why was I so obsessed with horror as a young child?

I remember watching my first horror movie when I was somewhere between 7 and 8 years old; it was very late and I just stumbled upon a movie called "The Grudge". While I covered my eyes for most of the scary moments, I could not help but watch. I was hooked! I am almost certain my mom was asleep during the time I watched it, so it was no fault of her parenting that I ended up watching a very scary movie late at night, I was just a sneaky and curious kid.

After movie ended, it left an impression on me and I craved more. At this point I think it was close to midnight but I decided to go through channels and find something else to watch; funny thing, though, I came across a channel that just started to play the same exact movie (I think it may have been a Japanese version but this happened about 20 years ago, so I cannot recall the exact details) right when I clicked on it and that seriously spooked me. This made me think that the grudge was out to get me and it sent me into weeks of night terrors and feeling scared while I was alone.

Although, the experience seems like an unpleasant one, I kept craving that scared feeling.

Later, maybe when I was 8 or 9, I watched "The Ring" and, as stated previously, I covered my eyes during many parts because I was too scared to look at all the terrifying parts. In the famous scene where Samara comes out of the TV in Noah's place and gets real close to him, yeah, I did not see what exactly happened during that part until I was much older because I covered my eyes every time that part came on.

Thinking back, my obsession did not start with those movies - they did solidify it, though.

Between ages of 4 and 9, I hung out with my neighbor friends nearly every day. One day we were friends and another, we were worst enemies. But one thing that we all had in common was, we all loved to get spooked and scared. My neighbor (on and off again best friend) would tell us all scary stories, which most of them were made up, but I believed them and asked for more every day. I was fixated on feeling spooked. We would scare each other with scary stories, pretending that we were seeing ghosts, random screams to get everyone running away from whatever we made up - we even convinced ourselves that there were dead people's hands coming out of dirt by this tree in our playground area. We went as far as trying to communicate with spirits and performing "rituals" with candles in front of mirrors or playing with make-shift Ouija boards. We went far with it and it was quite exciting to be honest. Looking back, I do not regret any of it because it was all so exciting and I still remember certain stories to this day.

As years went on, I started to experience strange things happening which I still cannot explain them to this day. It was not the fact that we did all those "rituals" and tried contacting spirits through, what we thought, legit methods. Maybe it was. However, I lived in a building that was almost 50 years old and people have died in it. In fact, before me and my mom moved into our 4th floor apartment, our family was taking care of a very sick lady. She ended up passing away in the apartment and it was left to us to take care of it, since she had no family in town or at all - I did not know much about her.

After we moved into that apartment it took little bit of time before things started to happen. To clarify, I lived in the same building since I was born, but on the 5th floor with my grand parents, their son (my godfather) and my mom. At age 6 (the age we moved to that apartment) was the time that my mom got into a 7 year long relationship with a very terrible person which was most likely the reason why we also had to move out of my grand parents apartment. Additionally, I do believe that paranormal things happened to me because of our home situation (which progressively got worse with time), since evil spirits and/or demons thrive in negative environments.

First thing that I recall happening was around the time I was 7. I remember quite clearly my mom asking me to go into the kitchen to grab something for her because she was not feeling well and when I did, I was compelled to rise the blinds on the kitchen window. When I did, I saw two child sized hand prints, left from the inside of the window. As you can imagine, my heart dropped because they were significantly smaller than mine. We had no small children over in a near past, and I never noticed them before. My mind went into analyzing mode and tried to think of a logical explanation but I could not - my mom was not in the kitchen for the past day or so, she is also a clean freak and cleaned windows on a very regular basis, so there was no chance she missed wiping off 2 hand prints. It was very unsettling and I told my mom but she was quite unfazed by this event, even when I tried showing it to her.

Next thing that I still tell to my friends as my most unexplained, possibly paranormal event, happened when I was somewhere between 8 and 10 years old. That day I was playing outside by myself, sun was shinning, and the only other person home was my grandmother in her own apartment on 5th floor. She called me up from the window to come and eat and I went to my building's door, entered a code to open it, and started to go up the stairs. As I was walking up the stairs, at this time located on 1.5 floor, I heard footsteps on higher floor. I paused but it was silent, so I thought maybe I heard it wrong. As I proceeded to take steps I heard steps above, as if someone on higher floor was mimicking me. I actually thought someone was just messing with me so I sped up my steps and they did too! I looked through the railings to see if someone will peak through to give away who they were but it was silent and I saw nothing. As I started to take double steps and hurry up, I heard them doing it too (I was on 2.5-ish floor at this point) and then I heard a door opening; I recognized the sound of the door opening as my own apartment's door (I spent a lot of time in stairwell growing up and recognized most doors by their sound as they opened). While that was happening I leaned in to look through the railings again, since I was very confused with what I was experiencing and curious to see who it was, and saw a bright light coming out of the middle apartment on the 4th floor (my apartment!). I was too far away to get a full view but once I realized what was happening I ran straight to my apartment and tried to open the doors, however, it was locked. I rang the bell and then knocked but all I heard was my cat jumping off a counter and running to the door on the other side. I had a weird feeling lingering in my stomach and then ran to my grandmas. When she answered I asked her if she was just at my apartment (which made no sense then and makes no sense now), but she confirmed she was just in the apartment waiting for me to come up. I asked her if she could come down with me and open the doors to check if someone was home; although confused, she grabbed the spare key and came down with me. After she opened the doors, it was extremely bright in the apartment but no one was there other than my cat. To this day I still have no explanation for what happened then.

During my childhood I was a very active sleep talker and sleep walker. There were times I woke up my mom and her boyfriend screaming at the top of my lungs with no recollection of doing so in the morning. One time I found my pillow and blanket on the toilet because I carried it there while sleep walking. Many times my mom had to bring me to bed because I was walking around the apartment or trying to go through the door into the stairwell. Most memorable sleep walk was when my mom caught me just in time after opening our living room/bedroom window - I think I could have jumped out that night if she did not stop me. I would have full conversations while sleep walking and have asked my mom to throw out my favorite magnet out the window. When I woke up I was devastated and could not wrap my head around the idea of me asking her to do this.

There were a lot more experiences that I had which I link to my unexplained and/or paranormal events, but maybe I will get more into it another time, besides there is a lot to cover anyways.

To add a little more support to the extent I was obsessed with ghost, horror movies, and in general - feeling scared or spooked, I used to look up scary ghosts pictures and videos online. If you ask me, I have seen it all. I am almost 26 years old and I still do watch ghost hunting videos on YouTube, I still search for great horror movies to watch but not a lot of them catch my eye; the movie needs to be pretty extraordinary for me to be captivated. I have seen my interest go from paranormal horror movies to psychological horror movies; as we grow up, we understand a whole lot more, so naturally, our interests in different genres change and evolve.

After reading all this you may wonder why I was not more freaked out or why I am still into horror, paranormal, etc... Not all experiences that I had were pleasant or comfortable to experience but I do believe it has always been a distraction for me.

What I mean is, going through real life struggles and pain was quite hard for me as a child; I developed a dismissive avoidant attachment style due to traumatic experiences and possibly how I was raised and my emotions handled prior to trauma. Horror, world of paranormal, scary stories, and ghosts all gave me comfort in feeling scared because it was a stronger emotion to distract me from sadness. It was always a coping mechanism or maybe I was born more in tune with the spirit world, or both.

As I draw a conclusion after I went over what I discussed in this article I do recall that most times when I sought out horror, life was just a bit too hard to handle for me as a child. To this day, horror is my comfort and I am okay with that.

Writing this "horror obsession mystery" piece has given me clarity in my own unknown because when I started typing, I had no idea where this will lead me to and I for certain did not have an answer to my own title.

To my readers: if you want to explore more of why you had or have certain interests or obsessions, I suggest trying this method and simply writing about where it began and experiences that followed. I think it can be a very eye opening experience and bring awareness to our feelings, interests, and even how we cope with life.

Thank you for your interest to read my writing and if you wish to check out my other work, follow the link to my profile: https://shopping-feedback.today/authors/dovile-miliauskaite%3C/a%3E%3C/p%3E%3Cp class="css-14azzlx-P e1ccqnho0">See you in the next story! :)