It was Halloween night 2007, and I was making the 45-minute commute home to Loveland after another day of work in Boulder, Colorado.  As I settled in for the long drive I tuned in to a local radio station, which was broadcasting a popular afternoon show I listen to almost every day.  Being Halloween, tonight’s topic was, of course, horror themed; listeners were encouraged to call and share their scariest true horror stories.

I was living alone in my parent’s home in Loveland, Colorado at the time, house-sitting for them while they were out of state for a couple of years.  I love my parent’s house, which sits in the foothills just outside the entrance to Big Thompson canyon – fifteen minutes from the nearest grocery store, it’s close enough to town to feel connected to the “real world”, and yet far enough into the country that you can see the stars and hear more nature than city when the sun goes down.

But as much as I loved living there, I have to admit, even as a grown woman in her mid-twenties, I would occasionally get the same creepy-crawly, goosebumpy feelings I used to feel when I was a child, when the conditions were just right.  There weren’t always obvious triggers; sometimes I would be standing in the kitchen cooking, or in the living room watching television, when I would suddenly feel the little hairs on my arms stand up, and a small chill run up my neck and settle into the base of my head.  There would just be something – a feeling of some sort – that made me feel like maybe I wasn’t as alone as the isolated, empty home would lead me to believe.

So it was, that after a long drive through the growing dusk listening to callers share their real-life horror stories, I had a big case of the heebie jeebies when I pulled into my driveway that Halloween night.  It was a subtle creepiness; I knew there was no boogey man hiding in my basement, no derange serial killer lurking in my backyard… but there was still that quiet feeling of unease, causing me to jump at every little noise or corner-of-eye movement my fear-heightened senses picked up.

As spooked as I felt, I also felt there was something intriguing about how I was feeling.  So rather than distract myself like I normally would have, I held onto the creepy mood and sat down in my living room with my laptop (and all the lights on the floor on) and wrote the first draft of Alone over the next two hours.  When I finished the script I emailed a copy to my filmmaking partner, Alone’s co-producer Damon Martens, and immediately turned the television to the first sitcom I could find.

Alone isn’t a traditional horror film; there are no scary monsters, no axe-wielding madmen or murderous creatures from outer space.  Alone is more about our reactions to feeling scared than the things that scare us; the quiet unrest we feel inside when something just doesn’t feel right.

I had a wonderful time making this film with Laura, Damon, Ed, Marty and Derek.  I hope those who watch it are entertained with that same spine-tingling enjoyment I felt while writing it.

Eileen Agosta
Writer & Director, Alone