From the article Hats Off to Charles Gemora, Hollywood’s Greatest Ape by Tom Weaver: “Once I got the suit on, I looked in one of those big, full length mirrors. I looked at myself the first time and, I wanna tell you, I got a thrill that I’ve never gotten over. I had chill bumps on top of chill bumps. Here was a lifelong dream fulfilled: I’m looking in the mirror, and looking back at me is this incredible gorilla.”

Charles Gemora

Imagine this desire, this powerful need to be something else.

Bela Lugosi chose to wear his Dracula cape to his grave.

Clayton Moore played The Lone Ranger on ABC from 1949 to 1957. In 1979, the owner of the copyright of The Lone Ranger obtained a court order prohibiting Moore from wearing the Lone Ranger’s mask in public. Moore countersued, stating he lived his life following the Lone Ranger’s ‘creed’ and that he truly loved the character. The judge ruled in Moore’s favor. Moore continued wearing the Lone Ranger mask until his death in 1979.

Kane Hodder, infamous for playing Jason Voorhees more times than anyone else, stated, “This may be a sick and sad thing to say, but Jason is the most comfortable I’ve ever felt playing a character. I put the mask on, and it just felt right.”

How many times has someone said, ‘He was such a nice, quiet neighbor,’ as the police pulled body after body from the basement?

One such nice, quiet neighbor, Ed Gein, enjoyed wearing the skinned faces of his victims. The polygraph specialist, Joe Wilimovsky, who gave Gein his test, asked Gein if ‘he would wear the faces over a prolonged time?’

Gein’s reply: ‘Not too long. I had other things to do.’

Why? Why would Gein wear these faces, these masks, for any length of time?
Because he had a powerful desire to be someone, or something, else.

The Portuguese writer and poet Fernando Pessoa, who wrote under several different names, declared that he didn’t use pseudonyms but that he wrote under different heteronyms. He defined a heteronym as an entirely new individual, as if the writer had become a new ‘character’ complete with his or her own background, writing style, and vision. In Pessoa’s own words, a “…heteronymic work is by an author writing outside his own personality: it is the work of a complete individuality made up by [The Writer], just as the utterances of some character in a drama would be.”

Was Richard Bachman simply a pseudonym used by Stephen King, or did King slip into a heteronym creation? And in The Dark Half, King explores the life of a writer that, when he slips into his heteronym to write, his entire personality, even outside of his writing, changes—the writer becomes darker, violent, and prone to drink.

The Changed by BJ Burrow

Slipping behind the mask of a Night Elf in Warcraft. Going from Manager at work to Family Man at home. Teacher during the day, Hipster-Chick at night. From a terminator on the golf course to donning a sad, contrite mask at a ‘forgive me’ press conference.

Sitting in front of a blank page and becoming someone else.

What dangers do we face when slipping on each mask?

And when we take off our masks, can people see the lines left by the strings in our flesh?

B.J. Burrow is the author of The Changed, a zom-com from Apex Publications.