There is an active thread for long, creepy stories and another one for links to creepy stuff around the web.
Let’s list the little things that send that chill down (or up) our spines. Include a (preferably short) explanation if you like. I’ll start.
The sound of dry, dead, October leaves being blown across pavement–the slower the creepier. (I read Something Wicked This Way Comes in October of the year that I was the same age as the protagonists.)
The sound of a woman crying, but only if I can’t see her. (Too many movies about ghosts.)
A child talking to their imaginary friend. (Same as #2.)
Finding an object somewhere other than where I (seem to) remember leaving it–especially if there is no one else around who might have moved it.
Your turn.
Not chills down the spine creepy, but always bugged me nonetheless. The Chuck-E-Cheese Animatronics resetting to the original positions after they finished what they were doing. After the music was done and the lights were off. It only took about 3 or 4 seconds, but even as a kid I thought it was weird. Even then I remember thinking it would be more ‘elegant’* if they could make the routine end with them back in the starting position. This video sort of shows what I’m talking about. It’s cued up so it happens right away. As soon as the lights turn off, you can see them reset for the next show. I think it’s the ‘not alive’ look that bothered me.
I couldn’t find a
*though I didn’t know that word yet.
I’m creeped out by people who talk on their cell phones in public bathrooms. Some even talk while relieving themselves, and whomever they’re talking to can surely hear toilets flushing. It makes me shudder just thinking about it. If I see the who it is, I make a point of avoiding them as much as possible from then on. After all, if they think bathroom phone conversations are okay, who knows what else they think is okay?
When you catch a guy staring at your body, then he makes eye contact. And. Raises. His. Eyebrows. Gah!!! That ruins my whole day.
When little kids mention something incredibly violent. “I hope his head falls off and rolls into a mudpuddle.” WTF?? Excuse me, I need to find some holy water and a cross.
When a well meaning stranger tells you “You’d better…” do something, like tell your family you love them more often, appreciate your good fortune, or take an umbrella or something. I can’t tell from looking whether that guy in the grocery line is clairvoyant, from the future, or the ghost of the deli past, so any “take heed” moment from a total stranger seems portentous and ominous.
Passing a mirror in the dark. I always want to look, even though my brain is screaming “don’t look!” because I know it’s going to scare the bejesus out of me.
Taking a shower in the early morning, when it’s dark outside, and you have a window in your shower stall. I always have this mental image of a twisted alien hand reaching through the black window into the shower and grabbing me.
In case it’s not obvious, I’m pretty much afraid of the dark.
Modernist concrete buildings and architecture. Especially when you get up close to them: their aloofness and deliberate eschewing of traditional aesthetics is amplified by the coolness of the concrete.
I have a little voodoo/Santeria doll that I got in New Orleans. It is on a display shelf. My gf and I mess with each other by occasionally changing its position ever so slightly. I think.
The slimy stuff in the drain sieve left after washing dishes. I know that A) I just finished eating that same stuff and B) I just finished washing that stuff off the dishes and C) It’s been swirled around in soapy water so it’s as clean as clean gets and D) I handle actual infectious biological waste for a living without a second thought. Still, gives me the heebie jeebies to have to touch limp lettuce leaves and orphaned corn kernels.
Casual cognitive dissonance. A childhood friend and award winning photographer posted this message “Thank you, Lord, for this incredible day which you hath made” along with several photos of the blue October sky scattered with a few wispy clouds and crisscrossed with thick, perpendicular, geometrical contrails.
Contrails. I love to fly, and I’m impressed by our aeronautical feats and technology, but what is beautiful, artsy, or heavenly about vapor trails in an otherwise pristine sky?
