From “The Exorcist” to “The Amityville Horror” to “The Shining,” kids can be downright demonic. What is it about the idea of evil youngsters that scares us? After all, they’re “only children,” right? Perhaps it’s the idea that children are usually thought of in terms of ultimate innocence; for a child to be corrupted by evil goes against our collective perception of what children should be.

When they are first born, children are considered angelic and free of the burden of inhibitions and the sometimes morally unhealthy ways of some of their adult contemporaries. And then authors like Stephen King write “Pet Semetary,” completely disrupting our idealistic perception of the perfect child, turning a young toddler into a raging murderer after daddy buries him in an accursed ancient burial ground.

Are children scary? Many parents might think so, and Golding’s “Lord of the Flies,” while traditionally not considered a horror novel, holds terrifying and disturbing themes, all centering around a group of isolated pre-pubescent boys as they build their own primitive (?) version of a warlike, cannibalistic society...wait a minute...perhaps that society isn’t so “primitive” after all.

There are documented incidents which indicate that a great deal of paranormal activity surrounds children as they are struggling into adulthood; some speculate that "poltergeists" are the energy that is manifested supernaturally around the child in such a developmentally vulnerable child, while others feel that children often draw ghostly presences to them. While this has been an ongoing theme in movies (the ever-loved classics Poltergeist and now The Sixth Sense, for example), there are several novels and stories that capture the absolute horror of having one's child consumed by evil, as in Blatty's Exorcist or King's Children of the Corn.

There is something profane in the idea that evil will attack us in such a blasphemous way. Yet, this epic fear is also symbolic of the generational and epic wars that parents have with their kids; each generation seems to produce a bunch of heathens and rebels whose singular purpose is to confound and frighten their parents into submission.