Gothic-Horror.com

The Twisted Biography of the author

ANTON VON STEFAN.

Part One  - the beginning 

Spawned* at the very beginning of his time, author ANTON VON STEFAN came to life amidst the remnants of a ghastly conflict that rendered his land into a blackened hue of devastation by bomb, fire and cannon.  Before his time, the dead lay everywhere; the carcasses were gathered, buried, but not forgotten as his first scream shattered the peace of the room of his birth.  Torn apart by four separate powers, each wishing to impose their own rule upon the wasted land of his begetters, the family fled to the first nation that would grant them asylum. 

Packed into the steerage of an immigrant steamer, mother and child were robbed of their meagre room by unscrupulous officers.  The cold and drafty quarters allotted by the unsavoury crew resulted in damage to one eardrum which plagued him through his early years.  This hardship may have resulted in the hyperactive imp who terrorized his neighbourhood for the first 5 years of his existence. 

A brief attempt to tame the little devil was made by institutionalizing the monster in a convent run by catholic nuns.  This spanned the first two years of enlightenment, and seemed to have a pacific effect on the child.  Yet, this positive direction was not to continue.  Through no fault of his own, his family was soon banished to the outlands, leaving the relative bliss of urban life behind.  It took two separate, heathen schools to bring about the third year of schooling, but the result was so dismal that he was again institutionalized into a parochial school.  Here, his free-wheeling ways, his imaginative mind, and an almost complete disregard toward authoritarian rule resulted in his almost constant expulsion from the classroom, being forced to kneel in the dormitory’s hall on hard peas before the statue of the Blessed Virgin.  The instruction rendered, upon the youthful transgressor, during those countless hours of punishment, was to pray for deliverance from his evil ways.  Yet, it must be said that though deliverance was prayed for, it was a constant plea to be alleviated from the tyranny of his hapless existence.

Poverty drove the family from the host country into an adjoining land where war was the foremost thought.   Settling in a place where there were an average of 2 ½ murders per day, the instructions of piety and goodness being preached by the nuns were in sharp contrast to the reality of his surroundings, a land where discrimination on colour and religion, a form of apartheid, was rampant.  Unwilling to cast the sons into a war no one in this new country had their heart in, the family was expelled and sent packing once more.

Landing in a boarding school where corporal punishment was the rule of law, the author noted how fear played a leading role in guiding an unwilling soul to bend to one’s command.  Herein lay power; herein came compliance and the unwilling child bent his ever active mind to the teachings of his black clad clergy.  Herein, the author first took to pen and wrote “The Purger” a work which, once discovered by the master, resulted in many hours of punishment and detention, but the work survived and was not destroyed.  Nor were the roots of developing a gruesome story eradicated by the justice dispensed by the ruthless tutor who had discovered the ‘vile’ fiction.  This professor even read this infantile piece out loud to the class in a vain attempt to shame the author.  ANTON VON STEFAN, in fact, secretly laughed within.  His gothic work had been aired and the public, though to him they were but peers of a lesser skill, heard his lines for the very first time.  The author was proud, and this feeling guided him through the dark hours of his sentence.  A Gothic writer had been born!

 *Note: It may be of interest to a reader to know that, as bizarre as it may seem, the author was brought into this world by a mother who had died three years before he ever entered this realm.  Strange, you ask?  Read on, dear friend, read on!

Go To:  Part 2 - The Middle Years

Go To:  Twisted Biography

Go To:  Home Page

Go To:  Books