We don’t have a coat closet in our front hall. Instead we have a hat stand/coat rack, where our heavy winter coats and winter hats hang. I have a chicken hat. A fleece-lined, knitted wool cap with a beak and goofy goggly eyes with flaps that keep my ears warm. I was getting dinner ready last night when I thought I heard a quiet tapping at the front door. Our doorbell is on the fritz and doesn’t always ding, so I thought my partner was tapping quietly as she does when she forgets her key.
I walked past the coat rack on the way into the hall, checked the door. No one was there. I closed and locked it, then turned back to go into the kitchen, passing the coat rack as I do countless times a day. I looked over at it and saw this… which my brain decided to interpret as this. I’m quite sure that right at that moment, in Libya they paused mid-battle to ask each other “Who’s screaming?”
Now I KNOW I’m not the only one who has come close to wetting my pants because I saw an innocent pile of laundry that my brain insisted was a crouching madman about to pounce. Who else has been betrayed by their flight-or-fight lizard brain?
A few years ago, my sister wanted to learn how to drive stick. I took her to our old elementary school parking lot. I got out of the car and walked over to the passenger side. For some reason, she’s still sitting in the seat, cowering in fear, almost unable to talk, pointing at the school doors. I looked over, didn’t see anything and asked her what the problem was. Still, frozen in fear, she could hardly muster a word, but she finally managed to squeak out that there was a person inside. I looked over and sure enough, there was a person sitting right inside the doors, with his back to us. I walked over to the doors, it appeared to be a guard (that I didn’t think the school had). Either way, who ever he was, he was either dead or asleep, so lets get on with the lesson. Nope, she was terrified. So we called it off. On the way back to my parents house (I think this was on Thanksgiving night), I called my dad. He was chairman of Buildings and Grounds at the school, if there was someone in the building, with permission (like a guard) he’d know about it. He had no idea. By the time we got back, he had made a few more calls and no one else knew of any reason for someone to be in there.
Him and I drove back up to the school, he unlocked the doors with his passkey, we walked in, flipped on some lights and found this guy.
You have to admit, if you’re already the squeamish, easily freaked out, flinchy type person (like my sister…youngest child syndrome), seeing this and not being able to tell what it is, isn’t going to go over well.
Also, remember, all we could see was his back. We couldn’t tell he didn’t have a head…
Ohhhh, that reminds me. After I took a picture of it, I sent it to her phone. Knowing the picture on her phone would be too tiny for her to make it out, I included the text “Found guy, no head, calling police” and then didn’t answer the flurry of texts that came back until we got back home 3 minutes later.
Nothing as scary as that, but just yesterday I had a disgusting scare. I was picking up my dinner plate, and moving it over the stove to put some food on it. I have one of those stoves with the electric eyes and the grease catchers underneath. Well, out of the corner of my eye I saw what looked like a GIANT FUCKING COCKROACH flee across the stove and under the burner! Ack! bleargh! So now I’m on a mission of murder. I rip up the burners and dig out my 3 watt luxeon flashlight on a merciless seek and destroy mission. After a frantic search I find nothing. As I put everything back, I see it again! Only this time, I see it was actually … my reflection off the grease pan’s outer ring. At least I don’t actually have roaches.
My boyfriend has one of these. Until we moved to this house, our bedroom was his nerd haven (Lego Star Wars ships lining the walls, Star Wars figs - in packaging still hanging from the walls, you get the point). This damn thing was standing in the corner. I KNEW it was there. It still scared the crap out of me every time I walked into the room because my brain couldn’t permanently encode the fact that there was an alien in the corner.
Finally I won the battle of the standee when I hobbled into the room while flying high on post-back surgery medication (and home alone). I beat him to death with my cane. My boyfriend came home the next day and wanted to know what I did to Spock. I threatened to beat HIM to death with my cane. Spock has been in storage ever since.
Just slightly off topic, but funny and related nonetheless:
My best friend’s favorite holiday is Halloween. One year in mid-October, she bought an almost life-size glow-in-the-dark plastic skeleton. She arranged it on her front passenger seat, with the head turned slightly so that it was looking out the side window. She got a major kick out of watching people glance over and do double-takes. As she drove home, it got darker and she didn’t realize the skeleton was starting to glow – until she glanced idly to the right and almost jumped out of her skin at the GLOWING SKELETON RIGHT BESIDE HER.
My husband has one of these. (continuing with the Geeky husband theme) It is currently in the garage. Occasionally I have to stifle a scream when I’m carrying laundry out to the washer because I forget that it’s there.
I also almost maced my roommate during a wind storm once when we both got up to investigate the sound of our roof tiles flying off.
I have this guy in my basement. At one time or another, he has startled everybody in the family, visitors, and a couple utility workers. We have him dressed in a t-shirt to save wear-and-tear during work-outs, but it makes him just enough more realistic for him to scare a body even when you know he is there.
I put up a coat rack in my house last year. It’s just for guests - I hang my coats in the coat closet.
Sometime this winter my coat got wet so instead of hanging it in the closet or hanging it on a chair, I hung it on the coat rack. Then, when I walked past the coat rack and saw there was a coat hanging there I immediately thought “OMG WHO IS HERE WITH ME?!” You know, that polite burglar who hangs up his coat before he steals your shit.
I think being alone all the time is really starting to get to me
Our has a black rapper jacket on it, but basically this. He is full size and motion makes him do his rap. I now can’t put it up until the evening of the party because it scares the crap out of my wife when she comes down to make coffee at 4:30 am… I told her she won’t need to make the coffee this way, this little guy will just wake you up each morning, but she makes me leave him in his box until the night of the party now. Come on, he is just a harmless rapper skeleton, he won’t harm you.
The very first Christmas I spent with my then boyfriend/now husband we stayed the night at his aunt’s house so we could do family presents first thing in the morning. She decorates for the holidays like it might qualify her for the Olympics or something so her house was full of trees, tinsel, candles, etc. That night after we went up to bed she was still decorating and put out a life sized santa. The thing about this life sized santa, however, is that he doesn’t look like the cartoony version of santa that is immediately recognizable out of the corner of your eye. He has more of a father christmas feel to him and looks like some crazed bearded man snuck into your home overnight. As I rounded the corner down the stairs I literally jumped backward and almost fell on my butt at the sight of the strange man standing next to the tree. I didn’t scream but several people watched me recoil in horror at santa’s appearance on Christmas morning.
An actual serial killer killed someone in the apartment building next to mine.
Years ago I repainted my bedroom and decided to decorate the walls. I got some cheap framed prints of famous paintings from Woolworths and hung them on my walls. Later on I was sitting on my bed and got the creepy feeling that I was being watched. When I looked around, no one was there. But when I looked down again, I got that feeing again.
