Who wasn't terrified by the Wicked Witch of the West? It wasn't enough that she was going to get you. She'd get your little dog, too.
When it came to evil, she'd go the extra mile.
When the witch first appeared in a cloud of smoke in the bright, candy-hued land of Oz, it sent a cold sluice of dread down your spine.
Even if you knew how it turned out — and we all knew how it turned out because we'd seen the movie before — there was something so twisted and dark about her vicious interruption that you longed for her to go away. When she finally nabbed Dorothy and upended the hourglass to show how long she had to live, she terrified you even more, because you knew she was perfectly capable of killing our heroine.
That hatchet face, that lurid green visage, that sneering voice — they drilled down into a child's mind and lived in the basement where our primal fears lived: Margaret Hamilton, the cackling queen of nightmares!
Unless she was your aunt.
"I think of Aunt Maggie in lovely dresses with high heels," said Astrid King. "And always smelling of roses."
I met Astrid in 2013 when I was interviewing her mother, Peg Lynch, a pioneer radio and television actress and writer who grew up in Kasson, Minn. I thought Halloween would be a good time to call Astrid at her home in England to find out how she got to know — and love — the symbol of childhood terrors.