by G. D. Carroll

Created on: April 16, 2008

Ah yes the Villains, bad guys, evil or sinister characters that cause a chill down your spine. They creep into the pages or onto your screen, often from a dark corner or behind a tree, and yet sometimes they are right under our nose, upfront and in your face. They are the ones you love to hate, the costume you want at Halloween, the one's you tease a little sister or brother about because they cover their eyes. They can be the reason you slept with the light on as a child, refused to visit a cemetery as a teen, or the grown man who refuses to go camping and sleep in the woods.

My earliest memory of a "villain" would have to be the "boogie man". The ones that lurked behind trees on a dark path, or were hiding in your closet & under the bed after the lights were out. The dark characters that haunt your psyche as a child, and cause bad dreams; I think back there was the "big bad wolf", "the grinch", "Oscar the grouch", or troll under the bridge. With my introduction to the Sunday night "Disney" movies, ghost stories, and slumber parties; my imagination went wild. I remember well Maleficent in Sleeping Beauty, Lady Tremaine and the Step sisters in Cinderella, Queen Grimhilde in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Captain Hook, and Cruella De Vil, and regardless of them being cartoon characters, they really did make the average 4 year old recognize good from bad.

The unknown and unfamiliar, no matter how confident you may feel as a child gave a real work out to even the bravest of young minds. Hiding my face under the covers at bed time suddenly didn't seem to be a bad idea, even if my little sister called me a scary cat.

As a child my family went on many camping trips to the Shenandoah National Park. My father being the good ole down home country boy that he was, always seemed to provide us with some sort of hair raising story, usually just before the sun went down. I remember the talk of the time he and another fisherman saw "big foot" in the woods, just over that ridge of tall dark mountains behind our tents. There was also the initiation into "snipe" hunting, where you are armed with the flash light with the loose bulb in it and a burlap bag. My mothers reply was most commonly, "you are going to make those kids have night mares", and you can get up with them. My father always replied with a wink of an eye and a peck on the cheek.

I entered my pre pubescent years and my great aunt who watched my sister and I after school, introduced us to the wonderful world of sci-fi,

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