Not really sure when my interest in the strange and Paranormal really began. It could have been my love for Scooby Doo and Goober and the Ghost Chasers as a child (Showing my age here, they were my favorite.) It could have been listening to all the Ghost Stories told by my Grandfather, or when my Mother finally let me watch a scary movie, which became a lifelong love for Horror.
Whatever the cause, it started me down a path of no return.
Endless hours of good old Scary movies, countless books read (Fiction and Non-Fiction) The true stories are always the best in my opinion.
As a child, my cousins and I would sit outside at my Grandfathers and just listen for what we could hear, (You couldn't see there. It was literally the boonies, where Wolves, Bear and Big Cats still roam.) Just hoping we would hear or see something unexplainable or at least one of the wild creatures... Mostly we wanted to see Bigfoot.
Walking the woods and finding old cemeteries, or old schoolhouses that time forgot, the old creek bed that an Indian village set on and hearing the stories that followed.
Every day my interest in History, the truth, and Haunted places grew.
As time went by and I was old enough to venture out on my own. I sought out these places to see what I could uncover or experience. Today some call it Legend Tripping or Ghost Hunting. I was Ghost Hunting before Ghost Hunting was cool.
I can tell you I've seen and experienced some strange and unexplained things.
~William
ABOUT WILLIAM
Born and raised in Southern Illinois, William Mitchem Jr. is an avid Horror fan. His film education began at a young age, when his mother introduced him to the classic horror films such as The Wolfman, Dracula, Frankenstein, and the Mummy. Most of his film education continued in the same way until more recently.(2018)
Being the horror fan he is, in 2008 the idea popped in his head to share his love for everything Paranormal, Horror, Dark and Scary with the rest of the world, so whenthefreakscomeout was born. It started to get some notoriety. The Serial Killer section was even being used across the Nation by Military and Law enforcement in their training. It was used in the writing of a thesis at Harvard. Several sites reference to whenthefreakscomeout.
Then something catastrophic occurred... In 2014, his 16 year old son passed away suddenly from a congenital heart defect called Hypoplastic coronary artery disease. He went into a severe state of depression and the site was forgotten.
Fast forward to late 2016. With the suggestion from an old friend and encouragement from his wife, he brought When The Freaks Come Out back, rebranded with a new name, The Nightmare Closet.
He stated that "My son loved Halloween, Scary Movies, Ghost Hunting and this Website...We were supposed to make a movie some day... So I shall carry on."
In 2017 he was in the middle of several projects, from revamping the website, getting ready to do a podcast, and developing a web series called Paranormal Me (which is in pre-production) when he started writing a screenplay titled "I Don't Believe In Ghosts" which took over everything else at that time. "I Don't Believe In Ghosts" (Starring Brinke Stevens, and Shawn Michael Wimberly) is slated to start production in October of 2018, and is William's directorial debut.
While in pre-production of "I Don't Believe In Ghosts", he found a lot of things lacking in the creative side of Independent Horror . He is currently(2018) in the process of revamping thenightmarecloset once again, but this time focusing on the Independent creator, and making it a place for both creator and horror fan alike.
William has several feature scripts in development, including "Stories My Grandpa Told"(an anthology), "The Things You Can't See", and a short film called "How To Bury A Body".
He still resides with his wife in a little burg located in Southern Illinois.