I saw Halloween (1978) on broadcast
TV when I was too young. This is how any number of sordid tales begin. Haddonfield,
IL looked a lot like where I lived in Indiana, so it wasn’t hard to imagine
terror just outside my house. Completely reasonable to feel tense at an
unexplained noise. I can’t say I was a horror fan then (I also had a
semi-recurring dream of being eaten by a lion). I still startle easy, but I’ve
come around on horror movies. Now, instead of feeling scared by the original Halloween,
I recognize and marvel at how effective it still is at evoking feelings of
dread and watch it at least once a year. It is the simplest of stories, sure, but
a love song doesn’t need to be penned by Shakespeare to make you cry.
The titles for the poems in There’s Nothing Out There come from an old website: The Horror Film Compendium. For more than a few years now I’ve stuck
with the prose poem form and that’s the case here, too. I’m grateful to Gina
and J† at Cul-de-sac of Blood for having first published a number of these pieces. And to
JJ for the chompers and this text: “bless the horror movies we saw too young.”
Nate Logan is the author of Wrong Horse
(Moria Books, 2024) and Inside the Golden Days of Missing You (Magic Helicopter
Press, 2019). He’s editor of the literary magazine Buffalo buffalo Buffalo
buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo
