I just want to say that I love you guys.
THe more time i spend on the boards the more I realize I’m a nice normal well adjusted member of society, with the periodic desire for world domination.
Mannikins.
Like when I’m at Sears, looking at shirts, and I see somebody standing in my peripheral vision, and I turn and look and it’s one of those goddamn mannikins. Frozen in an eternal fashionable pose, a detachable statue of contrived vanity.
Maybe it’s because of a Twilight Zone episode I saw as a kid, where a woman is trapped in a department store and all the mannikins start calling her name and appearing everywhere she turns. It turned out she was actually one herself. They each take turns becoming alive for a few hours, and she had forgotten about it.
Ditto most everything:
Shower curtains - I always have to look
Open curtains & blinds at night - can’t have it.
Horror movie dolls - especially that monkey with the cymbals! Also, my great grandma had a house full of dolls & doll parts. (her hobby) The kind with those eyes that open & close. That place always gave me the creeps. You’d open a drawer or cabinet and…AAHH! A severed doll head!!
And I can never sit on the throne without thinking about snakes popping up through the water to bite my heiny.
I had the snake thought just yesterday, as a matter of fact. Totally irrational, totally creepy.
I have two books that I absolutely have to stack and store face-side down. One is Mikita Brottman’s Hollywood Hex, which features a still from The Exorcist of Linda Blair all Satan’d out, with peely skin, rotting teeth, and dead eyes. The other is a book called Laughing Screaming about the generic crossovers of comedy and horror, and has the still from Carrie on the cover where she’s all covered with the pig blood and has that blank but seriously focused look in her eyes. When I have to refer to these books, I gingerly take them down from the shelf and try not to look too long at the covers. When I’m done for the moment with them I need to put them under other books or put them face-down, so they can’t see me.
Looking at mirrors in the dark is horrifying. I always expect red, glowing eyes to look back.
Remember on “Friends” when Joey puts “The Shining” in the freezer? I wish I’d thought of that - when I used to read Stephen King novels as a teenager, it used to creep me out when I put the books down and they were beside my bed all night. And I also avoid looking in mirrors in the dark - and I’d never heard of the Bloody Mary stuff until I started reading these boards.