In the autumn of 1982, when I was ten years old, we moved from the village of Kinloss to the nearby town of Forres. Kinloss was only a few miles away from Forres, and both were located in the relatively remote Scottish region of Morayshire. For my tenth Chrismas my parents bought me a book called 'The Encyclopaedia of Horror'. This exciting tome contained chapters (with pictures!) on such things as 'Evil Monsers', 'The Frankenstein Saga', 'Vampires and Werewolves' and others too. I was particularly enamoured with a chapter on the living dead. A mixture of historical fact, as well as film and literary sources, this well written book (aimed at adults rather than children) was to prove somewhat influential in my life.
I remember flicking through the book on Christmas Day, and coming across a small chapter at the end called 'Catalogue -Comics'.
This was the most excitng thing I had seen in my life. Horror comics? I hadn't realised that such a thing could even exist! Even more exciting were two pages reproducing the covers of these comics. The front and end papers of the book even printed two full colour reproductions from the comics theselves (see the first and last photograph for this post).
I remember reading this small chapter constantly over those dead days between Christmas and the New Year of 1982. The history of these comics were fascinating too, and to my delight I leart that these comics were so frightening that they atually banned in the 1950s! I couldn't even begin to imagne what they were like. I scoured the words for as much information as possible about the stories, of criminal baseball stars who were disembowelled and their intestines used for playing a game of revenge, of corpses risen from the dead seeking victims, of 'bald headed moon maniacs', hungry werewolves, carnivorous space monsters and monstrous ghosts.
I remember sittng in my room of our house in foress, still dark at 9:30am, and reading and re-reading the chapter, whilst listening to the cassette of Adam Ant's 'Friend or Foe' album, another Christma present. The closing instrumental 'A Man called Marco' seems imbued with that time. The fnal handclaps at the end of the song once coinciding perfectly with the streetlamps lining the lane at the top of the garden switching themselves off.
It was the covers themselves that fasinated me the most. They promised a world of mystery, of graveyards where the tombs were always crooked, the sky always blood-sunset red. The reproductions themselves were tiny, and this led to even greater scrutiny on my part as I tried to devour every last detail of them... 'It's Tom's leg, but he was executed last night!' shouted one character on a cover of a comic called 'Dark Mysteries' ('Thrilling Taes of Horror and Suspense'). It showed four manacled prisoners overseen by a prison guard armed with a whip, all reeling in horror from a dismembered leg that had appeared in a corridor. 'Strange Mysteries' showed an unfortunate woman, also in a jail cell, confronted with a Bela Lugosi style Dracula rising from the earth. 'Out of the Night' showed a man with a surprised expression playing a flute outside a graveyard. Two wispy monsters rose from the graves, one saying 'The music of the dead calls us - we rise at your command!'. This would no doubt end in disaster I wisely thought, and solemnly promised myself I would play no kind of wind instruments near any graveyards.
In stark contrast to the comics I had previously read, these seemed to imply that everday places -perhaps even Forres- could be as mysterious as these covers. They also fed into my interest with the urban landscape as a source of fascination - a world of street lamps and pouring gutters and city graveyards. Places I could relate too.
Having no chance of actually reading these comics, my mind roamed wild as I tried to imaine what their stories might actually be like. I would daydream of finding some in second hand shops, and of course tred to draw my own horror comic strips. The one attempt I reember was about a boy whp was attacked by a possessed rope swing. Whilst recovering in bed, his nurse became possessed by the same evil force too! I, of course, finished none of these attempts. Probably just as well really.
But something had been set in motion though. I think part of the reason that these comics so fascnated me was their very forbidden-ness - comics actally banned, as well as the fact that they were so old -The 1950s! That was thirty years before - three times my age!
Even now, lookng at the covers of these comcs can take me back to my small room in Drumduan Park in Forres, the light fading on snowy winter days, and as the afternon darkened to evening, glancing up from the Encyclopaedia of Horror to the black woods glaring down at me from Cluny Hill.
The all absorbing state of fascination so easily achieved in childhood is hard to come by as an adult, but here are times when flicking through an old horror comic I come across a certain panel, perhaps showing a monstrous and distorted dead tree below a bloated moon, or a desolate city street lit by a single crooked lamp, that the same fascination sweeps all too briefly across me. Not quite as strong as then perhaps, but there is a certain romance in old horror comics, can't quite rest easily in the grave.
