 Horror/Scary: January 08, 2025 Issue [#12909] |
This week: Ubiquitous Telephone Poles Edited by: Annette  
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| “I saw the years of my life spaced along a road in the form of telephone poles threaded together by wires. I counted one, two, three... nineteen telephone poles, and then the wires dangled into space, and try as I would, I couldn't see a single pole beyond the nineteenth.” ― Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar |
| ASIN: 0910355479 |
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Amazon's Price: $ 13.99
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Ubiquitous Telephone Poles
Finding horror in everyday items is a time-honored tradition of scary stories. This can be done via possession, Scooby-Doo style make believe, or silly superstition.
But what about everyday items that are all around us and that have dark histories? Can a thing that you see out of your kitchen window be evil? Not likely, but it can still be used for evil.
When the first telephone poles were installed, they were met with fierce resistance. The worries of the people ranged from loss of property values to losing sunlight due to the poles and the cables that they carried. Even with the passage of laws protecting the installation and maintenance of telephone poles, the resistance did not end. Some of the resistance was led, encouraged, and protected by local politicians and the police departments.
Their name has now been updated to utility poles, but their function and looks largely remain the same. And the dangers they represent.
Erecting utility poles was and is a real job. It takes people with equipment to dig holes deep enough and set the poles up in a way that they can't fall over. Every now and then, someone will get injured or killed during a utility pole setup.
Even once they stand, utility poles represent a hazard as about 1,400 people a year die when their car collides with a utility pole.
For a while, telephone / utility poles were used as lynching devices. This is undoubitably their most horrific use. None of that makes these poles evil in and of themselves. At the same time telephone poles are now a reminder of the horrific mob-mentality described by Stephen King in It.
To write horror stories, you don't always need supernatural things. You can just investigate the history of objects and find how they were misappropriated to discover real life horrors and use those in your fiction.
What currently new invention gives you the creeps? |
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Replies to my last Horror/Scary newsletter "Jack the Trickster" that asked Did you know that Jack was a real person?
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