instead I spent my entire teenage years watching every horror movie I could get my hands on and coveting the ones in the video store that I was too young to rent.

Oh, me too! I was forbidden from watching Poltergeist (because of the tendency to have nightmares) and I became the sneakiest little sneak that ever did sneak just to try to see parts of it. And as a kid it was really scary and intense.

And, I typically had scary dreams about the shit I imagined, rather than the stuff I *saw* -- and I loved to be scared.