Be Scared of Everything: Horror Essays

Literary Nonfiction. Film. Music. Horror. Slinging ectoplasm, tombstones, and chainsaws with aplomb, BE SCARED OF EVERYTHING is a frighteningly smart celebration of horror culture that will appeal to both horror aficionados and casual fans. Combining pop culture criticism and narrative memoir, Counter's essays consider and deconstruct film, TV, video games, true crime, and his own horrific encounters to find importance in the occult, pathos in Ouija boards, poetry in madness, and beauty in annihilation.

Comprehensive in scope, these essays examine popular horror media including Silent Hill, Hannibal, Hereditary, Alien, Jaws, The X-Files, The Terror, The Southern Reach Trilogy, Interview with the Vampire, Misery, Gerald's Game, The Sixth Sense, Scream, Halloween, The Blair Witch Project, The Babadook, the works of H.P. Lovecraft, Slenderman stories, alongside topics like nuclear physics, cannibalism, blood, Metallica, ritual magic, nightmares, and animatronic haunted houses. This is a book that shows us everything is terrifying–from Pokemon to PTSD–and that horror can be just as honest, vulnerable, and funny as it is scary.

"BE SCARED OF EVERYTHING is a command directed at everyone: punks, normies, horror film fans, UFO abductees, telemarketers, pet necromancers, you, no one will leave this book in their current form who permits the devious, curious, always-illuminating Peter Counter over their mental threshold."–Meredith Graves

"Peter Counter's writing on horror is thoughtful, lively, and strangely touching. From classic movie monsters, to personal demons, to a genuinely surprising (and funny) analysis of Frasier, BE SCARED OF EVERYTHING faces horror's thrills, problems and paradoxes, with shades of Noel Carroll, Eugene Thacker, and Stephen King circa Danse Macabre."–John Semley

"BE SCARED OF EVERYTHING is a heady mix of memoir and critical essays. Discerning, unafraid to examine larger questions without easy answers, the collection is also warm and entertaining."–Paul Tremblay