Article By Ian Holland

Flashback Weekend 2014 is dead and buried and leaving it, dragging my heavy suitcase, feels like the last day of camp. New friends and like-minded enthusiasts scatter back to the four corners but there’s a feeling that remains. You feel nothing short of reanimated, brought back to life from the drudgery of the everyday world. As I board my train home I can’t help but feel I’m leaving my very own Willoughby from “The Twilight Zone.”

For one wonder-filled weekend, the halls and ballrooms of the Crown Plaza were a parade of people from all walks of life coming together to relish and pay homage to something so much a part of our humanity, that thing in the dark, fear.

Personally, I don’t come across other horror fans often in daily life. There’s always that pregnant pause of concern when I tell someone, “I love horror movies.” For one weekend, I was normal, possibly too normal.

Yes, many fans were there to meet Robert Englund, but there were so many great moments with other iconic figures. Watching Lance Henriksen speaking to a fan outside the hotel; “Hello, I’m Lance,” and her eyes well-up with joy when he asks her name. Also, I will admit, I felt like a 13 year-old boy when Traci Lords waved back at me in hall.

What’s wonderful about Flashback Weekend is how horror brings so many people together, not to be scared, but to be friends. Late Saturday night, the back courtyard was overrun with people in black shirts and costumed characters all just there to get to know new people. It was infectious. Planes would thunder over-head, sometimes terribly close, every two to five minutes during the O’Hare rush. A deafening WURRR would wash over the crowd, but the second it passed, a chorus of conversations reconvened. This went on for hours.

There was a family reunion at the hotel, too. A long picnic table was where they sat together talking and soon, when someone played Michael Jacksons “Thriller”, they got up and got to dance with the monsters. Next thing you know, they were all sitting together. As the night went on someone in the shadows cried out “Herman Munster lost his bolt.”

People from all over came together to meet Robert Englund and see him (possibly for the last time) in make-up and to every person he was delight on par with Santa Claus.

You would see a family in line with three little girls all dressed as Freddy. It is odd that such a monstrous character has come to mean so much to generations of people, and as these people grow up and have children, they are imparting that onto them. This is how legends are born, how myths are forged. With this tradition, Freddy Kreuger has become to our society, and possibly what Zeus and Hercules are…timeless and truly immortal.

Part of loving Horror is reconciling with misfortune, with the darkness that you have to accept as a part of life. You can really see it with Freddy Kreuger fans. When asked “Why is Freddy so important to you?” so many people looked far-off for a moment, sometimes their eyes welled up, sometimes they choked, and then they would share such a personal and at tragic story of loss, of everyday-misfortune.

Many times it was another family member who introduced them to Freddy and, at some point, they passed. When they watch Nightmare on Elm Street movies a miracle happens, even if for an instant, they feel like that person is there with them, on couch next to them, watching it, too.

Personally, I got into horror movies because of E.T. It was the early 1980’s and we had gone to see it as a family. I was little and, unfortunately, the corn-field scene scared me so much I must have started crying. My Mom stayed with my brother in the theater while my Dad took me back to the powder-blue Ford F-150 to wait out the movie. While waiting he thought, ‘Ok, let’s teach him movies are nothing to be scared of. He can rent anything in the Horror section and we’ll watch it together. Maybe then, I can finally go to a movie.’

Soon, I was going down the Horror section, tapping on VHS covers saying “Seen it. Seen it. Seen it…” It’s the first time I remember someone looking at me strange for liking horror…I was rather young.

A few years after that, my Dad was diagnosed with Cancer and too short a time later; he died. I don’t have more that a fistful of memories of him and most of them are of watching movies with him. In a way, the story of Freddy spits in the face of that damn mortality we are all burdened with.

While I had nightmares as a kid, I still dream of Freddy to this day. It’s become something different, though. Often, I’m lost in a crowded party in house that’s more a weaving labyrinth; room after room, floor after floor of punchbowls, streamers, and people. I’m looking for someone or something, I can’t remember, but the party is becoming like a bag over my face and panic’s beginning to take hold.

Then I round a corner and sitting on a staircase, or behind a Tiki Bar, or by a keg, or surrounded by ladies, is Freddy. He sees me, smiles, and points with his gloved hand in some direction; saying “That way, kid.” I go, the dream ends, and I wake up calm and ready for the day.

As the afterglow of this weekend fades, maybe…just maybe Freddy was pointing me in this direction…to a place that feels so much like home.

Special Note: Flashback Weekend 2015 is Aug 7-9th and oriented around HALLOWEEN.

*If you have a story of how you came to love Freddy Kreuger or just anything Horror, please share it in the comment section below.