All Our Fears In One
All Our Fears In One was written by the students of 826LA’s Write On! After School writing program in the fall of 2025
Introduction
In 1999, my parents took me to see End of Days at the movie theater. This wasn’t the first time I had seen a scary movie, but I was seven and terrified. My parents didn’t restrict me from watching these movies despite the ratings. They were scary, but exhilarating. My parents always reassured me that the stuff in the movies wasn't real. As a first-generation American, my parents had gone through real-life horrors and struggles, including risking their lives migrating. Scary movies seemed like nothing in comparison, and horror/scary films became my favorite genre.
Years later, after taking many film appreciation classes, I learned that horror, scary, or suspenseful movies represented life. They are real-life analogies that explore human fears and social anxieties. Metaphors for issues like racial oppression, grief, depression, and so forth. And you are probably thinking, “But this is a children's book!” Movies, especially horror, are ones that can help people understand their feelings and offer a way to process their emotions. You know you are safe in bed and pretend scares are preferable to the real life ones.
Scary movies are similar to spooky campfire stories, or haunted school floors and bathrooms. They offer the thrill of being scared in a way that is both fun and exciting. Students this semester were asked to look within their hidden dark creativity and tasked to write about what keeps them up at night. They wrote about losing someone or something. They wrote ghost tales and created new legends. They had fun, and at times too much fun. We reminded them that the unknown is scarier than the explicit. The majority of the students are watching shows like KPop Demon Hunters, Stranger Things, or Squid Games. Comparably, they examined dark themes that help our fight or flight responses find calmness against all the chaos.
When students are surrounded by real-life horrors or bombarded with horrible news on social media, they need something else to help them understand and be seen. These movies, TV shows, and books give them a tangible relief. Experiencing these fictional forms of media is a cathartic release. This entertainment is a safe way to connect to storylines and characters that face dark parts of the human condition. They offer reassurance that all emotions are important and the only way through them is to feel them.
Over the summer, we weren’t sure how we were going to address students' concerns about the issues impacting their lives. Political turmoil and ICE raids led to civil unrest in Los Angeles, which greatly impacted our community. We wanted a theme that would unlock the different ways students could express their feelings. Scary stories offered a way to help students create a controlled environment to process these emotions. The students used negative emotions in their stories to create happier outcomes or endings with riveting cliffhangers. Many of the stories you’ll read come from fear, loss, and curiosity. These stories are hopeful because students turned their fears into positive relief.
Arisdeysi Cruz, 2025