Hi all
There have probably been similar threads to this so feel free to post links.
So what do you find creepy?
I’m really after general answers like uh I dunno clowns rather than uncle Bob because he married his cousin* (although feeling creepy about cousins marrying would fit)
Why do you personally find it creepy?
Has your creepy feeling changed over your lifetime? Where you quite ok with something as a child but creeped out now and vise versa.
I’ll start:
Handshaking - when the other person holds on for slightly longer than necessary. Double the creep if their hands are moist.
I’m not hugely keen on being touched at the best of times so I find it partucularly creepy from people who know this. It makes me feel like they are not going to let go for some reason and drag me off.
This has gotten worse over the years. However I no longer find men with mustaches the slightest bit creepy as I did when I was a child.
*Disclaimer: I mean no offense to anyone named Bob who may or may not have married their cousin.
Oddly enough I’m fine with sharks. As soon as you get around the larger squids found, and whales I get scared. For reference in the Natural History Museum in New York, when i went into the aquatic room and looked up at the GIANT FREAKING BLUE WHALE REPLICA I got very, very close to fainting. I think if I ever went into the deep sea and saw a sperm whale I’d probably start crying. I have no clue when this even started, it feels like one day I just decided to be afraid of sea creatures or something.
I also hate Mirrors in dark rooms. It probably started with hearing Bloody Mary as a kid, I was a coward around elementary school, and then became a bit braver than my friends somewhere around the time I decided to start debunking Bloody Mary. My friend and I practically made a business of testing every single “summoning” tale (or any one you could try and reproduce without resorting to ritual suicide at any rate), especially BM. I don’t know why it still creeps me out, I know for a fact it’s not real, and I’ve done MUCH stupider things than trying to court disaster with a mirror witch (ever try provoking one of those scary story creatures that involve being out in the middle of camp woods after midnight? Stupid on many levels, danger of getting in trouble, danger of getting attacked by animals, danger of getting lost… etc) but for some reason I cannot be in a room that’s perfectly dark or very low lit that has a mirror in it. It’s not even about the legend anymore, the fear has somehow transcended the story and become an odd irrational fear all its own.
I fall asleep and suddenly wake up in my own bedroom, but “things aren’t right” a sense of paralysis and hoplessness prevade… I can not move, or if I can my limbs feel like they are made out of some heavy, hard to move material. My arthritius kicks in and there are waves of really bad pain, as my muscles strain…
I have an urge to flee but can not move. My ex wife has told me that I moan atonally when this happens
it happens rarely ( less than once/year)
I "know’ its a physiologic hypnogogic state… but it leaves me feeling more than empty, purposeless and alone.
I usually get no sleep when it occurs (for the rest of the night)
And creeped out…
completely
regards
FML
I get this too, I only had one a long time ago but recently (stress from moving away form my mom to college perhaps?) something caused me to have Sleep paralysis a couple times a week. For some reason, on occasion the hormone or whatever that causes “the irrational fear” part of it turns off and I can somewhat lucidly control it, which is wicked awesome, though still mildly disturbing. But the ones where I am scared, I agree, it’s terrible.
Their personality changes to unrecognisability, and therefore become unpredictable to me, which frightens the hell out of me. This is why I stay away from situations where I’ll encounter them.
Wow, someone who agrees with me on that. I wouldn’t say I’m scared of them, but it always feels vaguely unnerving being around them, just somewhat uncomfortable. Due to this I’ve basically vowed to never drink alcohol, I have no idea how my personality would change and I don’t want to know. Can’t be the worst vow anyone ever made.
Deep water. Of all the horrors on the Earth, the very worst seem to be found in the sea. I’m fine with SCUBA diving and snorkeling, but just treading water in the sea :eek:
I find it more funny than creepy when people I know are drunk …
My friend’s new boyfriend creeps me out - I’ve not met him (we’ve been corresponding by email since she moved house), on their first date he came out of the pub to escort her in, and very early in their relationship he told her he loved her and wanted to spend the rest of his life with her. He also said something along the lines of “I don’t know what I’d do if I ever lost you”.
When she asked me what I thought of him (several emails later) I told her he gave me the creeps. She ignored me completely.
Bugs in large quantities. A single cockroach–no problem. A whole bunch of them–ewwwwww. One worm–kinda interesting. A gazillion maggots–shudder. One bee buzzing in a field of clover or one ant carrying a heavy load can be pastoral or poetic. But the swarming, crawling all over each other masses of a hive or ant hill give me the creeps.
Cockroaches. The massive scuttly ones you get in Japan. And the memory of my friend eating one for a drunken dare.
Also the mirror in the dark thing. I was told as a kid that if you look into a mirror in the dark at midnight Satan would appear behind you. Yeah yeah, the usual summoning stuff, but you don’t realise that as an 8 year old brought-up-Catholic imaginative kid. I’ve been agnostic for years, but I still don’t look anywhere near the bathroom mirror if I have to get up in the night to use the loo…
Babies talking like adults. Not like Look Who’s Talking - that’s just babies with blank stares and a voiceover. But that TV show Baby Bob and the various commercials that seem to come out every year with a baby with a CGI mouth… shudder
This. Set aside that I have never been drunk in my life and can’t tell someone is drunk until it is completely obvious. It makes me feel completely uncomfortable and awkward.
Completely with you here. Two of my friends and I were swimming off the gulf coast in FL. The water was crystal clear. You could see the bottom in 30’ of water. I don’t know why, but we kept swimming further and further from shore. We are all excellent swimmers and there was no rip tides so there was no real danger. We got about 1/4 mile from shore and for some reason, I put my head under water face down and opened my eyes. Under my feet I saw nothing. There was no ground, no frame of reference, no anything. I was floating in a void and it scared the shit out of me.
I made some excuse as to why I needed to go to shore and booked it out of there as fast as I could. I guess I can literally say that nothing creeps me out.
Maybe something similar: If it’s a bright clear day out with no clouds, and I lie on my back with no trees blocking my view straight up of the totality of blue sky completely encompassing my vision, so it looks as if I might fall straight up, on and on with nothing to grab on to–man that creeps me out. I need to sit up or at least quickly shift my gaze sideways to something on the ground, else I’ll start hyperventilating. I get just a bit of the willies thinking about it.
Most of the things I find creepy have to do with touch, read into it what you want:
handshaking in general. I cannot stand to have people touch my hands, it just feels dirty and gross. Knowing what I do with my hands, I have no desire for other people to touch them. In social settings, when I am introduced to people, I keep my distance and wave, if the other person insists on trying to grab my hand, I will make up an excuse like “oh, I just sneezed, you don’t want to touch my hand.” In a business setting, I have to excuse myself to go wash and lotion my hand afterward. I will only hold hands with family members, and only when I want to – they know never to just grab my hands. FWIW, it’s not a germ thing, really, I just cannot stand the feeling of other people’s hands against mine. If they want to touch me pretty much anywhere else – even my face – it doesn’t bother me. I just find hands touching to be creepy.
huggers. You know the people I mean – they must always hug you. Hello, goodbye, I just peed myself, whatever – it’s hug-hug-hug. Sorry. Creeps me the fuck out. Yeh, I know why, and yeh, it’s a personal issue (not going into details, but suffice it to say, I know why I find it creepy). I still find it creepy. FTR, I don’t find hugging to be creepy – just the people who are constantly trying to hug other people. UGH – my husband once introduced me to some friends of his. First time I’d ever laid eyes on either one and they both tried to hug me. I stepped back and told them that I didn’t know them well enough for them to make such and intimate gesture towards me, and they both said “oh, it’s not intimate, it’s just how we say hello.” I avoided them like the plague.
Clinginess. The other poster’s comment about the guy saying he didn’t know what he’d do without the girlfriend – that’s creepy as hell to me. I’ve been stalked and that shit pings my radar like mad. Heck, I’ve been with my husband for going on a decade now and have known him since frickin’ junior high, but it creeps me out when he makes comments like that!
people who are bothered by naked little kids. Ok, this one sounds weird, but the thing is that naked kids (I’m talking toddlers and babies here, not old enough to go to school) are adorable. I have no problem with naked kids – mine or anyone else’. When someone freaks out over a naked kid, it makes me wonder why their first thought went there. Creep meter goes into overdrive if it’s a woman that freaks out over the nudity.