Horror Dork didn’t just precipitate from nothing. It was something I carried in my head for a long time and when it finally launched it was during one of the darkest points of my life.
I had just dropped out of film school. (Something I rarely admit to anybody). Not because I couldn’t handle it, but because I let laziness and perfectionism drag me down. My biggest fear was always flunking out of college, and there I was, living my worst nightmare. I moved in with my grandparents because I couldn’t afford my own place. I picked up part-time work at the local Ponderosa flipping steaks three days a week for roughly, $80 after taxes. At the time, I felt like the most worthless piece of shit in the world.
Horror movies had always been one of my comforts, alongside writing. Not because I thought I was great at either, but because they calmed my anxieties. Even then, I tried to live by one simple idea: tomorrow is another day.
This was May 2010. My mom was getting remarried and selling our family home, so I couldn’t go back there. Living with my dad wasn’t an option either, he was a big drinker, and every day was a party at his house. He did help me out, though. Tossed me cash to pick up movies at Walmart. Most weeks I was fishing Hostel or Saw sequels out of the $5 bin and living on Fear Fest marathons on cable.
At the time, I thought the way forward was YouTube. I blew all my money on a $500 Canon HD camcorder (the same one I still use for Horror Dork Live today). My idea was simple: two-minute horror movie reviews, just me as a floating head. But the videos were terrible. I didn’t know how to fix them. The backgrounds never looked right, the audio was echoey, and worst of all, I had no video editor suite. I couldn’t afford software, and I sure as hell wasn’t going to edit in camera (film school taught me how awful that could be). I was devastated. My YouTube dream died before it even got off the ground.
But then I remembered podcasts.
I’d been dabbling in a few free market ones on iTunes. Nothing exciting, mostly boring business shows. But it hit me: if there are podcasts about stocks and marketing, surely someone must be talking about horror.
And there were.
I don’t remember the name of the first horror podcast I found, but I remember the feeling. No flashy intros, no stingers, just voices talking about A Nightmare on Elm Street (the remake) and speculating about Paranormal Activity. It was raw and unpolished, but it made me realize: this was possible.
From there, I raided iTunes on my mom’s DSL internet (before it got shut off), tethered my phone for “wicked fast” connections, and discovered Dave Jackson’s School of Podcasting and Daniel J. Lewis’ Audacity to Podcast. They made podcasting feel less like black magic and more like something I could actually do.
In 2012, I finally scraped together enough money — a $300 refund from community college classes — to buy gear and a Libsyn subscription. My setup was rough: a Zoom H2 mic dropped in the middle of the table, with me and a group of friends (Ezra, Andrew, Rob, Doug) huddled around it. The audio was awful. My friends weren’t as deep into horror as me. But it was something.
And that’s how it started. Not good. Not polished. But a start.
To be continued…