FOR almost a quarter of a century, Scotland’s international horror film festival, Dead By Dawn, has been celebrating movies that scare the bejeezus out of folk. This year's event takes place this weekend, which means thousands of gleeful Scottish moviegoers will be sitting expectantly in theatres with laps full of popcorn, fizzy drinks the size of toddling weans and pick and mix priced at a rate similar to that of saffron.

Their joyous expressions, their barely containable excitement, their unbridled anticipation couldn’t be more different to the experience they have come to “enjoy” (or “endure” as I might suggest).

The films entitled The Evil Within, Accidental Exorcist and the pithily named Dig Two Graves have two things in common:

1. All form part of the festival’s broad and eclectic offering

2. All form part of an ever-growing collection of films that I will never, ever watch.

I don’t know how to say this without being called a massive Jessie or, as I was recently described by a respected colleague “a big baby”. (I was forced to point out that he was being both babyist and sizeist.)

The most effective way for me to explain why I cannot and will not watch such films is actually the explanation that appears on the Dead By Dawn website.

“At Dead By Dawn it’s all about the story. We thrive on films that unsettle us and which address our anxieties and our mortality in vibrant, curious, wry and startling ways. We are devoted to films that allow us to scare ourselves, to see our own fears materialise in the long shadows and the dark space under the bed.”

Aye. Go’an yersels. I’ll get yous in the pub efter. Life is unsettling enough as it is and when it comes to my mortality, rest assured there is nowhere more vibrant, curious, wry and startling than my mind. I really don’t need a film to remind me. Clearly I am in something of the minority. Dead By Dawn is the UK’s longest-running genre film festival. Since 1993 it’s grown from strength to strength. While many other genres suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous cinema-going trends, horror seems somewhat insulated from such vagaries.

I’ll never forget the time that my boy had a few pals roond tae stay. Half a dozen 12-year-old boys, boisterous and braw. We had just got one of those hard-drive box things that had a modest library of movies. Given their age I was very conscious of selecting a film that wouldn’t result in irate emails from other parents. They chose a movie called The Others, starring the brilliant Nicole Kidman. It was a 12 certificate; perfect for these boys. I had no idea that this seemingly sweet film was in fact a gothic horror. Imagine how I felt as I had to excuse myself from the room, leaving children to watch a film that was freaking me out?

I’ve been trying to work out why I have such a profound visceral rejection of horror. There are no other genres I reject so readily. Perhaps the fact that as a child I suffered terrible nightmares; I spent plenty of my fifth and sixth year on this planet dealing with my “own fears materialising in the long shadows and the dark space under the bed”. Four decades on I can still remember shivering and sweating in bed, convinced that under my bed lay a nest of vipers, ready to pounce the moment they realised I was there. Then there was the nightmare that the devil could hear me breathing and would come for me at night. And finally the awful nocturnal nonsense that saw a group of angered women chasing me, the most furious of them holding a pair of massive scissors. Had they caught me, they would have employed the scissors in a most painful way. Freud would have been fascinated.

I’ll never get why folk put themselves through the gut-churning, scream-inducing, bowel-thinning experience of horror. But while comprehension fails me, it’s difficult to argue with the entertainment it seems to bring to so many. I’m sure they don’t enjoy a romantic comedy the way I do. Not so much Dead By Dawn, more Love On The Lawn.