I have this open right now.
If this is one of those “jack-in-the-box” pics, after I pick my ass up off the floor I’ma climb into John Fowles’ head and we’re going to have a lil’ talk, k? 
Oooh! I see it now.
Had to adjust the contrast in paint.
It does look a bit cartoonish.
How sad am I, this thread is making me get the willies.
I’m alone at work right now… no radio, no customers…
::shudder::
Anyway… the movie Signs freaked me out for a long time. We saw it, loved it, and came home from the theater. Above my duplex, there was a man shaped silhouette outlined by the glow from a street light. Ardred and I took one look at each other and bolted for the door. Signs got me, but The Ring didn’t scare me at all, not for a second. I find that odd.
When my GF (now wife) first lived together, we were lying in bed one night. Neither of us could sleep. I suddenly felt an ominous malevolent “presence” in the room. I wanted to make sure it wasn’t just me. I asked my GF:
Me: “Are you… feeling anything?”
GF: “…yeah…”
Me: “Can you say what?”
GF: " It’s like… a dark presence."
Me: “If you had to say where it was, could you point to it?”
And then she pointed RIGHT AT THE VERY SPOT I WAS THINKING OF! Yikes! :eek:
Rationally, I realized it was unlikely that this was anything real. But it was late… and dark… and the house was very old…
The last time I had really bad irrational heebie-jeebies was when I was in college in the sixties. I was at a party where a lot of people were very, very stoned. Some guy started musing about the possibility that Cthulhu and other Lovecraftian arcane horrors were real. :eek:
The guy was quite eloquent, as stoners sometimes are. This was one of those “Wow, man” moments, and everybody in the room was creeped out. I still get an uncomfortable feeling thinking about this, nearly 40 years later.
That was Timmy. I wanted a friend, so I made one up.
I have a very vivid imagination. Always have. When I was still quite young, my Dad gave me this story where the protagonist pulls a stunt on his radio audience. (Think Orson Welles) In this story, the man is going to stay at a deserted castle which is harrassed by a creature that rises form the bog nearby.
He goes to the castle, and does a very realistic version of the creature breaking in and finding him. he figures this should light up the switchboard back at the station. So, everyone involved in the remote broadcast packs up and goes home. Except for our man of the hour. He stays to light up a fag and relish the moment of this awesome broadcast, while hanging out in the castle yard, whatever that’s called.
In the distance, he hears a roar. It’s coming from the bog! ‘Good joke,’ he thinks to himself, sure that his soundman just played him. But then sees the trees on the castle grounds moving as tho something large was moving between them. This unnerves him enough to douse the ciggy and seek the refuge of the castle walls.
Bog creature reaches the door. He can hear it sniffing around. Then it leaves. Man sighs with relief. Which was what the beast was waiting for! Focusing on the sound, the creature begins to wail aginst the door the man is standing behind.
Panicked, the man runs upstairs and barricades himself in an upper room.
Next morning, a gruesome scene awaits the sound man and the story guy’s assistant when they go back to look for some stuff they may have left there. It was just like what the broadcast story told. The sound guy remebers some psuedoscience friend of his who who claims that if you imagine something strongly enough, it becomes real. Someone in the listening audience must have imagined the story was real, and real it became.
Moral? Too vivid an imagination can be dangerous.
(Thanks loads, Dad.)
Years later, in another state, living with a friend as a roomate, I have a series of nightmares concerning a certain sleep demon who had power over me. The details were striking, the name of the demon was fairly odd, and his laugh was quite unique. I toled my roommate about it and he suggested the sleep paralysis solution, coupled with my imagination and love of weird stories. Made sense.
A few weeks later, we went to a Sci-Fi/Fant convention and are browsing thru the Frank Frazetta type art for sale there. I come across a picture of exactly what my demon looked like! Turning it over, the title of the piece was the name of my demon. Looking over my shoulder, the roomy says to me, “If you imagine something real enough, it becomes real.” :eek:
Damn roommate! Damn Dad!
Of course, the simple explanation is that I had seen the artwork before. But the momenet he said it to me, I swear my heart stopped for a moment.
Oh, and noclueboy reminded me of a more recent thing.
Sometimes when I am waking up or falling asleep I experience a conscious sleep paralysis. No big deal or anything, but some interesting things can “happen” when I’m in that state. Seeing people that aren’t there, for example. One thing I sometimes try (and remember I am in a somewhat altered mental state) is to astrally project or otherwise “leave my body” just on the off chance that it might actually work. (And, hey, it might make for an interesting dream).
When I try to do this, I hear a very specific noise, the same each time, which increases in intensity the harder I try. I describe it as the sound of pressing on a force-field (like in a sci-fi TV show) and it is a low growling buzz. It is as if this noise is somehow involved in keeping my consciousness inside my body. Pretty weird to experience all by itself.
A while back, I was talking to one of my physics student buddies and the subject of sleep came up. I described this and mentioned that I sometimes try to “leave my body” when I am experiencing sleep paralysis. He mentioned that he, too, had experienced the same sleeping state and had tried doing the same thing I had tried.
Me: “Do you hear any sort of noise as you do this?”
PhysBuddy: “Yeah… kind of like trying to pass through a forcefield… if that makes sense…”
Me: :eek:
His “forcefield” sounded different than mine, we soon determined, but still it was an odd coincidence. If any of you have had that experience (I know, it’s a bit odd) do tell, and we can have fun creeping each other out
It’s just a mask, just a mask, that’s what I’m telling myself…
Speaking of out-of-body experiences, my dad still tells the tale of how, when he was about 20 and living in London, he went out one night and came back to his flat (of which he was the only inhabitant) very drunk. He says he sat down on his bed, and then sort of blacked out…then suddenly he was looking down from a corner of the ceiling of his room, at the back of his own head. He could see a reflection of his body in the dresser mirror…but it was like he himself was up near the ceiling looking down at the scene.
Freaky, huh? (Could just have been too much whiskey, of course).
I was hiking in the woods, just pre-dawn, on one of those misty low-visibility days you get in the late fall. I had driven the truck a long ways into the woods, but hadn’t hiked very far from it. For many minutes, I kept thinking something was pacing me… just out of sight thru the thick brush. I could never put my finger on it, but was certain something was there. I hung around the truck for awhile before I left, and kept swearing I was movement out of the corner of my eye. Finally decided I was imagining things, walked around to the driver’s door, and saw this print. Pretty good sized fella, don’cha think?
It had been on the other side of the truck the whole time :eek: