As a child I knew two older men who both fought for the Nazis in WW2.
One of them was a extremely choleric, grumpy and broken person. He hated children and I think he was violent against his wife too.
The other man was a very kind person. Both oft them must have murdered dozens of innocent persons and I don’t even want to imagine what else they did. Paradoxically, the choleric sociopath was far easier for me to handle than the kind man since he gave me enough reason to hate him without thinking twice. Seeing such a person as a evil non-human monster is easier than accepting the fact that this is what normal or even sympathetic humans are capable of. Of course this is too much to process for a child.
In hindsight, I see the whole thing a little differently. While the nice man has tried to find forgiveness by making everything right, the choleric has kept everyone away from him. He wanted to be hated because his guilt was so high that forgiveness or making it right was not an option. If there is a „death of soul“ then it’s probably this particular state of mind.
But in its innermost core, if one is able to dig deep enough, there is some mercy hidden behind all the malance. Pure evil does not exist, but some people are trying to keep this illusion- for themselfes and for others. Maybe this gets intensified because - as it has been mentioned before- we probalby all have been murderers at some point and the murderer himself is a mirror of what we came from and reminds us how we could fall again.
I absolutely share this horror. While I never had any nightmares about murdering someone, the thought of bearing a child or bringing a new life to this world is one of the scariest things I can think of. Others see this as the ultimate fulfillment and I like to see happy young families. Still my horror about having a child seems to be constant.