We have two coat and hat racks in our house, one in the entry and one in the bedroom. Both have scared the bejeezus out of me, multiple times. That’s not hard though, I’m a startles easily kind of person.
I have a prop mummy. It used to have a permanent place in my apartment, but once I moved to a place with more storage, it stays in the prop shed except when I take it out to fix something (which usually results in it standing in odd corners for weeks before I actually get around to it). Right now, it’s leaning against a wall in my bedroom.
I’ve had it for years, know what it is, and know where it is, and every now and then, it still startles me a bit. Other people react more strongly, like a lady from a cleaning service who screamed, ran out of the apartment, and wouldn’t return until I hauled the mummy out to the garage.
The best reaction (or worst, from the mummy’s standpoint) came from my sister-in-law, though.
Back when the mummy had a permanent spot, that spot was in the corner right next to the door of the guest room she and my brother stayed in. She knew perfectly well that it was there, having walked past it day and night for a week, but that knowledge was apparently not accessible one night when she got up to get a glass of water. She walked out of the bedroom, glimpsed it out of the corner of her eye, and went into HOLY SHIT INTRUDER mode. Uttering a battle cry suited to an anemic (but very, very fierce) kitten, she hauls off and punches THE INTRUDER in the face…
…and THE INTRUDER’s head tears off and flops back, hanging down its back by a scrap of bandage. This, of course, compounded the freakout until someone came out and turned the light on, at which point the panic turns to giggles and she went back to bed.
Getting away from chicken masks and cardboard Spock standups, I seem to recall a thread several years ago which included a post by someone who had an actual serial killer bust into his house and attempt to murder him; the victim said something like “Why are you doing this”, the killer responded with “It’s what I do” and shot him several times. Victim lived to tell about it.
I fell asleep on the living room couch when I was a kid. It was dark when I woke up, and the first thing I saw was my stepdad’s coveralls, hanging up to dry. I yelled.
Yesterday Sadie the dog barked like crazy at some shirts on hangers in the utility room. Dogs can be a lot like cats – new/different can freak them right out.
Not a serial killer, and not in my house.
I was exploring a monument to the first Gulf War (back in the days when one didn’t need the first qualifier), and approached a glass wall at the same time a scary security person wearing a black uniform and oddly white sneakers did.
Um, I was the person in black clothes and white sneakers. The wall was reflecting back at me–and it isn’t like I could see the upper body anyway.
The ones I’ve had involve space aliens. The first one - many years ago I was driving south on the 5 thru Oregon at about 2 am, hopped up on coffee and exhausted. I became aware out of the corner of my right eye that I was passing something extremely large standing at the side of the road, but because there were no lights on that part of the freeway, I couldn’t see what it/who it was. Then I passed another one! I was convinced they were Martians until I passed one where there was light - just very big towers to hold up power lines…
The other one was also the middle of the night and me hopped up on coffee, this time driving over the Snoqualmie mountains on Hwy 2. As I came down the east side, I could see this really bright light “jumping” up into the sky. Despite fears that we were being invaded by the Martians from Oregon, I kept driving cautiously, until I got close enough to discover that the lights were on the towers for the naval air base. The sad thing is, I’d driven past those towers at night before, but for some reason that time they were aliens!
?? Seriously??
I had one in my office last week.
But that’s not really unusual for me.
I suppose not. It’s a big house, after all.
The people who owned our house before us left the “porch” swing in the backyard, and the first night there it was really windy, so there were all kinds of crazy shadows from the trees and the swing, well, swinging.
DH made some comment about hoping not to see a creature with really long arms sitting on the swing.
Guess what I see every time I look out on a windy night?
I hate those motion sensor robots!
My goddaughter wanted a pony, the little sweetheart. So my buddy got her this robot horse thing. You can actually sit on it and it whinnies, its ears wiggle, its head goes up and down etc. I can’t remember if it’s just motion sensors or sound activated, or both. Anyway, she loves the abomination.
One night I was babysitting the little darling and that stupid thing came to life when we went upstairs to put her to bed. There is an off switch. Did I use it? Nooooooo. Not me, I just left the f**ker turned on. I turned on her nightlight (because she doesn’t like the dark), made sure the closet was closed and that there were no giant spiders under the bed. And for the next quiet 20 minutes or so I read three Sesame Street books from her little bookshelf, complete with my expert voice impersonations of Grover and Elmo and that little blond girl muppet with the pig-tails.
Relaxed and sleepy, she was about to nod off when I stood up and that… that … that thing raised its demon horse head with an electronic “PBPBPBPBPBP! Neeeeeeeeher!”
Ever the superhero, my gallant response was to squeeze my eyes tightly shut with a primally screamed:
“WHOAAAAAA SHIIIIIIIIIIIIIT!”
And so my sweetheart goddaughter, adrenalized out of her whistful slumber, spent the rest of the evening watch Dora DVDs with me on the couch until her parents came home.
Oh, and DH once had our computer set to make a very realistic flushing sound every time it was turned on or off.
Then he got a new job and started out working nights.
Something - I don’t even remember, the keyboard, maybe - malfunctioned, and the stupid thing would turn itself on and off at odd times.
Like when I was at home alone with just the dog. “OK, Mojo’s here on the couch with me, so I know HE didn’t figure out how to flush…”
Not a serial killer, and frankly, quite embarrasing:
Over the past few years, we’ve had a couple mice in the house - not an infestation by any means, but I’ve discovered that apparently I have a phobia of mice. Like, freak out and hyperventilate phobia.
Anway, a few weeks ago, a mouse found its way into the space below our gas fireplace, and got stuck in a spin-trap we’d placed down there. My wife, being awesome, took care of it, but the spin-trap popped open and the mouse got out, evetually to kick the bucket in a corner of our laundry room, to be found only when it started stinking. So for a few days, while we thought there was a mouse loose in the house somewhere, and needless to say, I was a little stressed out.
So a day or so after we find the dead mouse, I’m in my son’s room tucking him in. I turned his light off, took a step back, and heard a loud SQUEAK-SQUEAK-SQUEAK-SQUEAK!!! Still being stressed out from the previous mouse incident, I freaked. the. fuck. out. I jumped about three feet in the air, screamed like a little girl and sat on my son’s bed, and pulled my legs up. Only to look down and see a Zhu-Zhu pet - one of these robotic hamster toys that make various squeaking noises when you touch them (very lifelike noises, as it turns out).
Not my finest moment.
As for actual serial killers - my dad tells me that before I was born, he had Juan Corona over to the our house. Corona was a labor contractor for a lot of the local peach orchards and my dad was a mechanic at the local peach cannery and and was involved with the local Teamsters, and they were discussing some labor business. Although this was before any of Corona’s known crimes, my dad said Corona came off as a bit “touched in the head”.
In high school me and a bunch of friends were out one evening, and we stopped in to the house of one our group’s cousin and her husband. Very sketchy part of town, very downscale couple. Not a comfortable vibe.
Six months later, he killed her. With a knife.
Standies(The shaped standing displays that Movie theaters put out to promote the next big thing) Are really cool…
Until you turn around in just the right level of darkness
As I drove to work late one summer night along a dark country road, I glanced in the rearview mirror…and saw a grotesque head rising up behind me with a slow and deliberate menace!
I screamed twice and nearly put the car in the ditch before remembering my young son had left his balloon from the county fair in the back seat earlier that day.
I think I stopped buying him balloons after that.
This doper had John Wayne Gacy over for dinner shortly before he was arrested. http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?p=3040240
My first child was born in a Catholic hospital. My hospital room was at the end of the hall next an alcove with a life sized statue of some saint or priest or something (Im not Catholic, I just like their hospitals) dressed all in black and reaching forward. My OB told me to walk around the halls 4 times a day to prevent DVT’s. Every time I stepped out of my hospital room door this hulking black figure with his arms outstretched, waiting to grab me, scared the shit out of me. I stayed for 4 days and EACH AND EVERY TIME I left that room I just about went ninja on his Catholic statue ass.
Seriously. We were living in Maple Ridge (a suburb of Vancouver) at the time. Shortly after we moved to Vancouver. My brother had hung out with one of the girls that was killed, but it wasn’t until more than a year later that we knew who was responsible, or how many others there were. I later learned that my parents had hoped that Olson might be a mentor or positive role model for my brother, who was already fairly troubled. Glad he wasn’t too interested.