When I was young I suffered from Frankophobia
Many people are scared of spiders. Others are scared of enclosed spaces or heights. But, I reckon in the 30s and 40s my phobia was probably more common amongst children and young adults than all of these run-of-the-mill phobias put together.
I had a really bad case of Frankophobia.
If you're not familiar with this strange phobia let me explain.
It is an irrational fear of a manmade monster created by Doctor Frankenstein and first written about in Mary Shelley's book Frankenstein. I'm sure there were people who read the book and were seriously distressed, but for the vast majority of Frankophobics it wasn't the book that was the problem it was the 1931 film of the same name.
Now here's the odd thing. I didn't see the film until many years later so it wasn't that which caused my problem. It was a book. One of those movie year books that were so popular decades ago. The ones that had photographs of all the stars. along with little pieces of editorial, reviews and maybe a few film poster graphics thrown in for good measure.
We had one such book in our house. It had a light blue cover. On page 23 of that book was the picture that was guaranteed to send shivers down my spine. So much so that between the ages of about 8 and 18 I couldn't bring myself to turn to that page. I'd very careful turn from 21 to page 24, by turning two pages together. I'm sure I still have the book kicking around somewhere, but I couldn't manage to track it down when I just spent an hour looking (it's like Fibber McGee's closet), however, I have managed to find the photograph on Google Images.
It is laughable that todays youngsters will watch the most horrific horror movies and not bat an eyelid, whereas when I was a kid I couldn't look at that photo without being completely petrified.
And talking of being scared I thought it was about time to put up a list of suitably spooky radio shows for you to enjoy over Halloween. I hope none of them petrify you as much as Boris did me.
Happy listening my friends,
