Daywalt's older brothers, however unintentionally, fostered his interest in scary stories. He relates, "My older brothers would always let me stay up way too late on Friday nights, drink Mountain Dew, watch horror movies. I was always getting into their comic books ... Heavy Metal and Creepy and Tales from the Crypt. Also, at the time – this is going back to the mid 70s, almost into the early 80s – they were reading Tolkien and lot of that, so I had that as one side of my experiences. Growing up in a haunted house, watching horror movies with my older brothers and getting into their stash of horror magazines and comic books."
