SCARY MOVIES 1 - The Ones That Terrified Us as Kids! + A GIVEAWAY

With Halloween on the way, the Here Be Magic gang got talking about horror movies - both the fun and the frightening. Of course we had to share, so we've come up with a four-part "Scary Movies" series for October. Welcome to our first installment!

And since it's not Halloween without treats, be sure to enter our month-long giveaway at the end of this post!

LINDA - "I didn’t get to watch scary movies at home when I was young, but when my family would go to my grandparents’ house, on Saturday afternoons, a local TV station would show those old-timey black and white movies from the 50s. My first horror movie was “Dracula” with Bela Lugosi, and it terrified me. I even remember it to this day, especially the scene where the camera moved into a close-up of his mesmerizing eyes." 

~ Linda Mooney, lindamooney.com

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DANI - "When you're little, a movie doesn't have to be from the horror genre to scare the bejeebers out of you. My husband was traumatized by the Wicked Witch in "The Wizard of Oz" when he was three! 

As for me, I had nightmares for years from the disembodied face in the magic mirror in Disney's "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs". To this day, I have an aversion to masks. 

When I was eight or nine, TV airings of old movies like Invaders from Mars (1953) and Plan 9 From Outer Space (1959) scared me silly!" 

~ Dani Harper, daniharper.com

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MAUREEN - “I can't remember anything about the movie but "This House Possessed" always comes up in my memory as one that scared me. That, and the move, "Magic". I used to want a ventriloquist doll until that - now I'm freaked out by them!” 

~ Maureen Bonatch, www.maureenbonatch.com 

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ANGELA – “I was the youngest child with three older brothers, so I received an early education in horror movies at a ridiculously young age. The brother I was closest to was 18 years older than me, and he had his own place. Some weekends, I would spend the night with him, and we would rent and watch movies. He loved zombie movies, but they terrified me. The original “Dawn of the Dead” traumatized me to no end. 

"There was one movie called “Mortuary” (1983) that I could not finish.  I started crying, made him turn it off, and begged him to let me sleep on the floor of his room. All I remember is a creepy dude in a black robe with a zombie-like white face kept popping out of the dark and killing people in horrifying ways. 

"While I’ve gotten over my fear of zombie movies, my brother still teases me about that one movie that terrified me. “What was it called?” he always asks. “Mortuary,” I grumble. While I’m sure if I watched it today I would probably laugh at how utterly cheesy it is, but that terrified 10-year-old girl who still lives inside me won’t allow me to watch it. Nope. Not gonna happen.” 

~ Angela Campbell, www.angelacampbellonline.com

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JODY - "I don’t remember many scary movies from when I was small but I remember as a young teenager SOMEHOW stumbling across a movie called INCUBUS – probably thanks to one of my fancy friends who had cable TV. It horrified me! Was pretty much sexual violence against women from beginning to end with this sort of sick perverse overlay of horror and one of those creepy open endings. DO NOT RECOMMEND." 

~ Jody Wallace, jodywallace.com 

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CINDY - "The song Pink Elephants on Parade from Dumbo scared the crap out of me as a little kid!" 

~ Cindy Spencer Pape, www.cindyspencerpape.com

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NICOLE - "Okay, this was a TV show, not a movie. The science fiction show Space 1999 used to scare me as a kid. If something really tense was happening, I couldn't bear to watch so I'd run down the hallway. But then I had to find out what happened so I'd run back. 

"The funny thing is, one of my kids does a similar thing. If she reaches a tense part of a book, she gets up to pace." 

~ Nicole Luiken, nicoleluiken.com 

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SHAWNA - "Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (the Gene Wilder version) thoroughly freaked me out when I was about 5. My aunt who was babysitting had to turn it off after the little girl blew up like a blueberry balloon and floated off, so I never did see all the kids getting restored at the end. 

"I was 21 before my then-husband got me to sit down and watch it through, and at that point I thoroughly enjoyed it." 

~ Shawna Reppert, www.shawna-reppert.com

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UPDATE - The contest is over and we have WINNERS! 

1. BEVERLY wins an ebook from Jody Wallace - Catalyst: Cat Ship (Obsidian Rim Book 8) 

2. LOUISE wins her choice of one ebook from Dani Harper

3. GLENDA wins a deluxe canvas tote bag from Dani Harper

4. SHERRY wins her choice of one ebook from Linda Mooney

5. MARTHA wins her choice of one Audiobook from Linda Mooney

6. ANNE wins the grand prize, a $35 Amazon Gift eCard from all the authors at HERE BE MAGIC

We have the contact information for everyone and winners will receive emails within the first week of November.

THANK YOU to everyone who stopped by our Scary Movie blogs. We had a lot of fun putting them together!

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