One thing you didn’t know about me: I can’t tolerate horror movies. I don’t even like the energy of them in my house. I know they’re fictional, but one of the things I’ve learned in the life is that if someone can imagine something, then someone’s probably done it. That opens the door for all manner of terrible acts and all sorts of terrible people to commit them. I’ve probably watched four modern horror films in my life: Halloween (the first one), Nightmare on Elm Street, one from the 1970s or 1980s with a dummy (maybe Child’s Play? Or Magic?), and Jeepers Creepers 2, which I watched by myself in the Cottage alone late one night for no reason that I can fathom. I like bad sci-fi B-movies from the 1950s but those aren’t graphic — they’re more silly and psychological.

That’s it. That’s all. My mind always seems to go to the mothers of the children or teenagers terrorized and killed in the course of horror movies. I take horror movies personally and to heart, even though I know they’re just movies (and not snuff films, which I remember my Boston boyfriend telling me about as we took a walk in the Mews one early spring day.) It seems horror movies don’t bother most people (including K), and for the life of me, I can’t understand that.
But…
True crime is another thing entirely. It makes zero sense that I can manage true crime documentaries — in fact, immerse myself in them, as I did yesterday. These depict actual events that happened to actual people and you know that these kinds of programs try to make you feel the horror that the victims felt. Why do I find that more tolerable? I have no idea.

Yesterday, it remained too cold for anything, so I watched ”The Vanishing at the Cecil Hotel,’ followed by the ‘Night Stalker’ (not the 1970s series, but the Netflix series). It passed the time., It also creeped me out to realize that one of the two Hillside Stranglers lived in Bellingham in the late 70s, and went to what K tells me was known as the ‘Murder Bar’ in that college town, a bar that has hosted the likes of Ted Bundy and the D.C. sniper. What draws serial killers to Bellingham? And to one particular bar? And why did K never take me there when I visited? Those are all thoughts for another day.

I know that many people find serial killers fascinating. I suppose we want to understand their state of mind, the rationale behind such brutal actions. In doing so, we can assess our own minds and (hopefully) reassure ourselves that we are not capable of such acts. It reinforces our belief in the good within us, that we are not monsters. At least most of us aren’t. Creepy.