For me, and for many others, the horror started with a floating vampire boy.
I was at a family sleepover at my Aunt Becky’s house. My cousins and I were in her basement watching the CBS adaptation of Stephen King’s novel ’Salem’s Lot. I was six—the youngest cousin present. There are actually three scenes with a floating vampire boy, but the one that got me was the third. The boy, materializing in the night amid thick white fog, hovers outside his friend’s bedroom window. “Open the window, Mark,” he begs. “Please! Let me in.” Mark, as it happens, is also my name. My little-kid mind could hardly take it. I was shocked, petrified.
I was also, in the fullness of time, hooked.