The poets down here don't write nothing at all, they just stand back and let it all be

The first scary movie I ever saw was one of the Children of the Corn sequels. I was terrified of everything as a kid. If I was watching TV and they even started playing music in a minor key, I was in a fetal position under the nearest bed before you could say "For the love of God, Brigid, it's Greensleeves."
So I was really surprised to discover Children of the Corn was hardly scary at all. Which is why I chose to watch The Stand. And then read it. And then literally have nightmares about it for a decade. Turns out some Stephen King movies are decidedly more terrifying than others. 

Oh god, no - it's Wesley Crusher!

So seeing as it's Halloween for another couple hours, and I am curled up at home with two extremely non-threatening black cats asleep on me, I thought I'd lay some trivia about the man who has been giving the world nightmares for the past 40 years.

• Stephen King said in an interview that he's scared of spiders.
• In the book It, the titular it isn't a clown - or a spider. He just takes the form of your greatest fear...

Oh god, why?

• King's son Joe played the little kid in Creepshow. 
• Joe, who writes under the name Joe Hill, penned the novel Horns, which was made into a movie starring Daniel Radcliffe. I haven't read it, but I did read Heart Shaped Box, about a guy who buys a ghost on eBay. It was quite good.
• Speaking of kids, the kid from the 1980 film version of The Shining, Danny Lloyd, was only 6 when the film was shot. Kubrick didn't want to traumatize the kid, so he made sure the kid didn't know what the movie was about - it wasn't until years later that the actor learned he'd starred in one of the most twisted horror movies of all time.
• Kubrick did not go to the same lengths to protect another of the film's stars, Shelly Duvall. To get a better performance out of her, Kubrick resorted to psychological torture - he was so cruel to her that by the time shooting was finished, she was going bald from stress.
• The movie version of King's Needful Things holds the world record for "most instances of people mispronouncing Akron in one film." I assume. 
• There used to be a store in Akron called Needful Things. I haven't been able to figure out which came first. 
• In The Stand, the character Larry Underwood is based partially on Bruce Springsteen. King, a huge Boss fan, had really hoped Bruce would play Larry in the movie. Instead we got the guy from Mystic Pizza.
• Speaking of Larry Underwood, Damon Lindelof, creator of the TV show Lost has said that the character of Charlie was an homage to Larry Underwood. And to be fair, the only fictional song worse than Baby Can You Dig Your Man is You All Everybody. 
• Speaking of The Stand and Springsteen, the film's title was inspired by a lyric in  Springsteen's Jungleland. I am in love with this fact because I figured it out on my own. The entire album Jungleland's on (Born to Run) could be the soundtrack to the book.