Freddy is your average every-man: works 9 to 5, enjoys watching “Blue Bloods” and “Family Guy,” closet-Presbyterian, knives for fingers. Just an honest American worker, Freddy Krueger’s made quite a name for himself in the dream-demon industry. Though many of us have heard the stories of his infamous hauntings, many have not heard his story, and for this reason I was glad he agreed to sit down with me. The tale he had to tell was more tragic than any hell he’d ever wreaked.
“Last Friday night, I was prowling through the dreams of some freshmen in Keough — ”
“ — As, I understand, you’re wont to do.”
“Yes, as I’m wont to do. So I’m moving into these dreams, trying to terrify these little fools to death, chase them down and what not, when, time after time, I find them watching Notre Dame football, with no interest in me.”
Krueger broke down multiple times in the retelling, but I eventually lassoed out the truth: Infiltrating students’ dreams, he’d found multiple times that their nightmares were more concerned with Navy’s dreaded triple option than they could ever be with him. Heck, many still had vivid flashbacks of Miami, or continued to fantasize about a world where they’d lost to Pitt. Krueger’s career collapsed before his eyes.
And poor Freddy isn’t the first to feel the strain of modern society. Who could forget Ghostface, coming to great popularity through the Scream franchise, who last year was targeted on social media for promoting “white face,” forced to apologize and give up the mask for good? Krueger had nothing but sympathy for the slasher-celebrity.
“He was a really adept killer, but people just aren’t scared by that anymore. The world is changing, and, I’m afraid, reality is starting to be more damning than the best damnation has to offer.”
In a later interview, Michael Myers offered similar sentiments. “Kill a couple babysitters, you get your name in the papers. But then think about this: I maintain the peak of my inhuman strength for 40 years in some insane asylum, break out and come back to get my revenge or something or other. … And what? The world has moved on? I’m a serial killer, and that used to be terrifying, but now I’m dismissed as little more than a cult classic.
“I mean,” Myers continued, “I knew there’d be competition in my absence — Voorhees always has something new, and Jigsaw is constantly generating new content — so I expected something like ISIS to come along and push my type from the limelight. But they’re not even the issue! Since when have politicians and priests been in this business? I swear, rumor and a few stray tweets are doing my job better than I ever could. Terror’s taken on a new medium.” Myers recently attended a political protest, hoping to inspire some fear by maiming a few women, but was himself scared off by their intensity, demoralized.
Renowned lake demon Jason Voorhees has recently organized a support group for all these old villains, who now feel patronized and belittled by contemporary society.
“News and internet have done more for fear than the big screen could ever accomplish,” Voorhees told me, voice somewhat muddled by the hockey mask glued to his rotting face. “The sad fact is that us monsters have nothing, nothing, on the monsters of reality. I was recently hanging out under the dock at Crystal Lake, about to leap up and slice at two lovebirds who’d come out for some quality time. Then they started talking about what they were going to do after college, and, if I’m being perfectly honest with you, I was shaking in my boots.”
The support group meets every Wednesday at 5 p.m. in CoMo, if you’d like to attend. It truly is a tragic sight, and these gentlemen (it’s really only guys, huh … ) could really use our support. After every interview, they tried to catch me with a jumpscare and I barely moved — had my thesis on the mind. If you could, even for just a few seconds, consider lending your fears toward the ones who need it, these make-believe bump-in-the-nights. When deciding how to stress out and loss sleep, Notre Dame students often devote their energies towards things within their control, if not things that are inconsequential to a relational existence of meaningful friendships, and in many ways that’s only self-servicing. I mean, if you’re going to be overly anxious about something, it might as well be the creeps who actually want to harm you.
