Saturday, 16 July 2011

I'm not morbid, I promise

So I'm sat here tonight wondering what to write about? I was sat here last night, fingers hovering over the keys on my keyboard, wondering the same thing, when my facebook chat thingie beeped and it was a friend asking me how my blogging was going. I said it was going great (coz it is and I love it) but that I was a little stuck for what to write about. I asked him how his book was going, and he said he was suffering from lack of motivation. So we chatted, and the chat somehow turned onto the subject of serial killers.

This is the part where I try to convince you I'm not morbid. (or weird, though after my chat with my friend last night, he may not agree)

Ever had a fascination in something that when you told people about it, they look at you funny? I tend to get that from time to time when I get all excited on the topic of serial killers. A few years back, I announced to my office colleagues that I was very excited because I was stopping off at 25 Cromwell Street in Gloucester on my way down south to Cornwall. Some gave me rather blank looks, but some looked at me in horror like I had just announced I was going to dye my hair blond or cut off my leg. The truth is, I was really excited to go there. Mostly because I had read so much about it and I wanted to be able to say I'd been there, I'd seen it for myself.

I don't know where my fascination in serial killings started. I think it was round about the time my fascination in World War two Nazi extermination camps started (you freaked out yet?). This is about 10 years ago.
What happened was, I had moved back home to my parents house in order to get myself ready to emigrate to the UK. I didn't have too much to do with my time other than sit around and sunbathe (oh the pain of it!) while I waited for my visa's to come through. My grandfather had been a soldier in World War 2 and had fought up in north Africa and my mom showed me his diaries that he had kept while fighting. I kept a website then too, and I offered to have them typed up and put on the web for whoever to read them. It took me a few weeks but I did eventually get them all typed up. What happened though, is that I got engrossed in his story and I started googling information on world war 2 and one thing led to another and I got to read all about the various death camps around Germany and Poland....and my fascination in that was born. (Click here for the link to my grandfathers diaries).
I remember somehow happening on a site about murderers - it was something about a true story being converted into a movie called 'Paradise Lost' and me getting engrossed in that.  That led to me ending up on a site called Crime Library and it just took off from there.

I had never thought much about it before.  To be fair, thinking about killers and how they think was something that never crossed my mind.  But once I started reading about all the different serial killers in the world (and there are SO MANY) I become totally engrossed and completely fascinated.

Its not because I love the idea of killing.  Don't misunderstand me!  Its the fact that I wonder what goes through their minds. What makes some people different that they can kill, and get a thrill from it?  If you asked me to pick somebody random in the street and kill them, I would bulk and would never even consider such a thing, so why are there people out there that hunt and kill others and enjoy it.  Its this part that fascinates me.

Ive done a lot of reading on the subject.  I've gathered a lot of facts and assumptions of why some people kill and why others don't.  But I don't think anybody will ever really know the answer for sure.  In some cases, not even the killers themselves know. But, to be sat, in front of somebody that is considered a serial killer would be incredible to me.  What would I say? What questions would I ask? I don't know, but to get just a small insight into their minds, to understand just a little of what makes them tick, would be absolutely amazing.

So there, I did get a little motivation from my conversation last night.  I was walking to the office this morning, thinking about that conversation and thought, I could blog about this.  Try and explain how I feel about this.

I do hope I haven't freaked you out too much.  I promise I have no murderous tendencies. And although my fascinations on some things may be slightly on the morbid side, as a person, I am anything but morbid :)

Till next time.

Bx

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