Stephen Helmes – Nightmares, Dr. Shock, & Nightly Visits

Hello, everybody. My name is Stephen Helmes, and I am the author of the Nightly Visits series.

I was born in Fort Oglethorpe, Georgia, in the U.S.A. It’s a nice place to Google if you enjoy reading about historical locations. Fort Oglethorpe and Chickamauga are places where one of the major battles of the American Civil War occurred. The 5,300 acres of battlefields are maintained to this day. Cannons, statues, monuments, and even a museum are there, teaching locals and tourists alike about the second bloodiest battle of the war, next to Gettysburg, that took place on the days of September 19^th and 20^th, 1863.

If this sort of history doesn’t interest you, many also know the place from the ghostly legend of Green Eyes. Green Eyes is rumored to be a very large and hairy creature that roams the Chickamauga battlefields at night. Green Eyes has been a local legend I’ve heard all my life but have never actually seen. But I’ve never made it a point to walk the battlefields after dark either.

In 2015, I finally followed my dream of living near the ocean. I loved my home area, but for years, I had felt like a fish out of water, a beach bum three-hundred miles from the nearest beach. I loaded my car with what I could carry, leaving everything else behind, and headed six-hundred miles south to Bradenton, Florida. I am still there today.

I love everything about the ocean. There is nothing more inspiring than to sit in my little corner of Bradenton Beach, bury my toes in the sand, and watch the sky change colors as the sun sinks into the waters of the Gulf of Mexico. It’s the simple things that strike a spark in the imagination more than anything else.

I have always had an unstoppable imagination. When I was little, I can remember always being content with my free time. In the long, hot midsummer days while my friends were often complaining about being bored, my mind was running wide open. Oh, there were times I was restless, such as if we had special plans of going somewhere later that night, miniature golf, or a movie, but as far as sitting and wishing I had something to do, my mind has always kept me entertained. It didn’t matter if I had a box of toys in front of me, a piece of paper, or a stick I’d found on the ground. There was always that magical rainbow that would transform that stick into a sword or a gun. I would stop and listen. I could hear the enemy soldiers coming from just over the hill across from my grandmother’s yard, and whether my friends joined me or not, it was game on.

In many ways, my grandmother sculpted me into who I am today. My love for the horror genre came when I was very little, even before I started school. I enjoyed spending weekends with her. Granny, that’s what everybody called her, was the sun that our family of planets revolved around. She was loving, caring, funny, and sometimes embarrassing, saying what she thought aloud in public, regardless who might be around to hear it. It was her quick wit, spunkiness, and attitude toward everything that made her shine to everybody, young and old.

She had a few favorite television shows that she never missed. One of those shows, Shock Theatre, aired on Saturday nights at 11:30 p.m. This was a local show that featured old horror films. Host Dr. Shock and his right-hand dummy Ding Bat entertained us with comical remarks about the film and nearby events before and after commercial breaks, making it a spooky, yet funny, local hit in the seventies. It was like a rule of the house. If you stayed with Granny on Saturday night, you watched Shock Theatre. That was where I got my first taste of horror, and believe me, it was love at first bite. It wasn’t only my grandmother who had this love for ghouls, spooks, and things that go bump in the night. My dad shared this interest as well. Saturday nights meant Shock Theatre with Granny, and Sunday afternoons meant seeing the new horror releases at the Battlefield Twin Cinema with Dad before he took me back home.

The first time I ever put pen to paper to write a story was in 1981. I wrote Halloween, Part 3. Yep, you read that right. Move over John Carpenter. I had just seen Halloween II at the theater. My mind was revved, and I knew the ending simply could not stop where it did. The movie must continue! I had a brand new 40-sheet notebook on hand and a Bic pen full of black ink, more than enough to carry the story of Halloween on out.

I don’t remember anything about what I wrote in that notebook, but I filled the pages with what I thought would be the greatest installment to the Halloween series of all time. I wish I could see that notebook today. The first draft of my very first story would probably quickly find its way into John Carpenter’s trash can, but I bet it would make a great script for Abbott and Costello.

Although that notebook and the words written inside are gone forever, I remember how much I enjoyed writing it. It was like a fever burning inside of me as the words flowed like sweet honey from the tip of my ballpoint pen. Each time I put the notebook down to do something else, I couldn’t wait to pick it back up again. It wasn’t like sitting in the front row of the theater at all. It felt like I was there with Laurie Strode as Michael Myers chased after her! I could feel the fear inside as she ran through a maze of hospital doors, not knowing where she was going or what might be waiting for her around the next bend, just trying to escape the shape that was slowly closing the gap behind her. I could feel the fatigue as her strength faded with every step. I could feel the anticipation when she reached the dead end, back against the wall, knowing Michael was about to break through that final door leading to where she was. I was living the nightmare!

After writing my-never-seen-by-anyone version of Halloween Part 3, I laid my writing to rest. I had never thought of the possibility of making writing a career. I had huge dreams of becoming a musician, which I poured every ounce of my ambition into, but the thought of becoming an author never crossed my mind. It wouldn’t cross my mind for another twenty years.

The year 2001 brought the most vivid nightmare I’d ever had. I shot up from the sheets in a cold sweat at 4:30 a.m. with my eyes darting around until I realized that I was safe in my own room. This dream scared me more than any movie I had ever seen. As a lover of horror, I knew I had to write it down while it was still fresh in my mind. I could not risk these visions disappearing into a fog of vague memory.

I got up while the nightmare was still fresh in my mind and set the foundations for what would eventually become my first original story, “Glasswalker.” It happened instantly, just like twenty years earlier when I had my Halloween fantasy, only this idea wasn’t inspired by any other imagination but my own. The seeds that my subconscious mind planted into my head that night began to grow into the first sprout of my garden of stories. After “Glasswalker” was finished, I began collecting my dreams by either writing them down as soon as I woke or recording them on my little voice recorder I now keep on my nightstand.

So, now you understand why my first two books are titled Nightly Visits. Most of the ideas within the pages are based on dreams, my visitors in the night. Are all of my ideas from dreams? No, they are not. Ideas can come from any direction at any time. You never know where ideas and inspiration may come from. “Reminiscing April,” a story in my second book, From 12 To 6, was actually inspired by a voice on the radio. I was driving home one night, listening to a woman’s voice speaking about . . . I don’t know what she was talking about. Truth is, I wasn’t listening to what she was saying. I was listening to her voice, the bold yet smooth sound of her accent as she webbed her words together into sentences that I wasn’t grasping, but I was hearing and feeling. It was her voice in my head, telling me the story of a lonely man who worked as a caretaker. The moment I arrived home, I rushed to my desk and began tapping at the keys. The story formed as the words fell, like stepping out of a dense fog into an unknown world. From nothing more than the sound of a voice it appeared, blooming from nothing at all. Isn’t the imagination wonderful?

Ideas just keep coming in a never-ending waterfall. Perhaps it’s because they know that they are welcome here. When you reach the end of the river and you think you’ve gone as far as you can go, that’s when the ocean appears in front of you and new ideas begin to rain from the sky. It doesn’t matter if it comes from sculpting a plate of mashed potatoes into a mountain or from scribbling all over a sheet of paper and seeing a mysterious face staring at you from the black ink; if it comes, welcome it.

With two Nightly Visits books published, both loaded with stories from the strange and bizarre universe trapped inside my head, you can rest assured that the third is on the way, along with some other surprises as well. So come take my hand. The Trail of Dreams is dark, but I know the way. Together, we’ll explore the other side, the dark side of the rainbow.

Join me on Facebook. Drop by, send me a message, and say hello.

Stephen Helmes Facebook Page:  http://tinyurl.com/hdof2s8

You can read one of my short stories right here on Lisa’s Writopia. Click here to read “Spots” – http://tinyurl.com/ztotnss

Amazon Links:
Nightly Visits
From 12 to 6 (More Nightly Visits)