I was just reading a post in an old thread that kind of struck a chord with me:
Me three. Reading about that whole silly concocted rumor/conspiracy theory started out funny, but then . . . not so funny. Creepy even. Somehow made weirder by the fact that of course it’s not true.
There might be silly rumors you half believe (for me, ouija boards) or things you’d like to believe (NDEs?), but somehow the strangest of all might be ones you patently don’t believe.
Anything like that for you? Where do you think this feeling comes from?
The scary thing about the “Paul is dead” stuff for me was the supposed messages in the songs, which of course, then stood out everytime I listened to them. Though I knew they weren’t REALLY there, the idea that people were joking about a friend’s death creeped me out big time.
Also, backward messages- especially the ones that didn’t seem to be deliberately placed & was saying demonic anti-Christian things. It’s amazing what you’ll hear in a darkened auditorium after an authority figure tells you to listen close & this is what you’ll hear.
Oh yeah, and EVPs.
Btw, the Scylla quote above is worthy of Lovecraft!
There was a story I heard when I was a teen about someone eating a sammich from some place. A fish filet from McD’s, or was it a chicken sammich? Doesn’t matter. Anyway, the story went that the sammich had a tumor in it and the girl got cancer from it.
The story horrified me. My rational mind told me it was wrong. The meat is chopped up so fine that nothing like that could come through. Etc.
The thing is, it wasn’t getting cancer that frightened me but the thought of actually eating a tumor. For years I was off whatever sandwich it was and the mere thought made me ill.
A lot of the snopes stories, that I know are false, still give me the heebie jeebies. The white slavery story, the story of the couple that goes on vacation and comes back to their dead baby because the babysitter got into a car accident, and the Mexican pet are examples.
I always thought the ‘Paul Is Dead’ bits were kinda funny. Any conspiracy that was supposedly based on John Lennon hiding anything that coherent in his music struck me as improbable, considering how difficult it was to make him talk sense under normal circumstances. Or sing anything the same way twice.
The one that really creeps me out is neither a rumor nor necessarily very silly. It’s those shortwave radio stations that broadcast nothing but groups of numbers, from various places, at set times of the day. It’s pretty certain that they belong to a variety of intelligence agencies, and pretty obvious that it’s a numerical code, probably from a one-time pad, but there’s no way for me to know, you know? It’s just information, floating around out there, and I have no idea what the context is or what it says. When I first read about them in William Poundstone’s “Big Secrets” book, I was so creeped out that I had to read that section with all the lights on, and my back solidly against a wall. Brr.
The whole Publius Enigma just really freaks and creeps me out for some reason. It still does.
In fact, anything that deals with weird coded messages or puzzles like that provokes a strong fear reaction in me for some reason - like that whole thing where people have put those anonymous coded messages in that college paper for years, or whatever.
The short-wave radio station stuff is intensely creepy. It gives me chills to think about, for some reason.
The other thing that gets me is the urban legend where the babysitter realizes that the scary calls are coming from within the house. :eek: AAH! No matter how many times I hear it debunked, it always scares the shit out of me.
For me it’s “Bloody Mary.” Logically I know it’s just an urban legend. But I cannot bring myself to say it into a mirror, and I will be in a state of low-grade terror if the power goes out when I’m in the bathroom. I have had this fear since I was a little girl and I first heard about it (mid-70s).
The idea that people dress up as police officers so they can catch victims off guard and abduct or rape and murder them. I haven’t seen a lot of statistical evidence to back up the notion that this is actually a threat, but it’s certainly a rumor and has been portrayed enough times in movies and books to have a general idea of how it would go.
Ever since I was aware of that rumor, even knowing it was silly, I have gotten the willies every time we get pulled over. Heck, we got pulled over by some cops once when I was living in Mexico. I was freaking out. I kept expecting them to make us get out of the car, line us up single file, and shoot us execution style.
No particular reason, really. They were just evil people posing as cops.*
(I felt kind of silly when we got a ‘‘no seatbelt’’ citation.)
*No, I’m not particularly mistrustful of cops. Just evil people pretending to be cops.
Oh, and another: That ridiculous rumor that people hide under your cars with knives and slash your achilles heel when you’re least expecting it. That will never stop freaking me out.
Bloody Mary creeps me out, too. I know it’s not true, I know that no one’s going to come out…but I’m not ever going to do it. Same goes for chanting Biggie Smalls.
Can’t have the lights off at all in a bathroom with a mirror (outhouses are fine for example, because they don’t have mirrors). That episode of Supernatural gave me the heeby jeebies bad.
Anything with Ouija boards. Logically I know it’s nothing, but my Mom refused one in the house when I was younger, and just too many stories when I was older that creeped the hell outta me.
All the “local” ghost stories (every community has them). Around here we have Dark Hollow and 9 mile bridge. In the town I learned to drive in there was Pink Bridge, Spook Hollow, and the Goat-man’s house. We all knew they were b.s., but we had tons of fun cruising around these places scaring the crap out of ourselves when we were kids.
And now whenever I have to drive through the woods at night I get the willies something fierce, and have to lock all my car doors and periodically glance into my backseat to make sure nothing horrible has magically spawned back there.
Or sing anything the same way twice.