So, in light of the werewolf discussion, I must ask: what supernatural creature do you all find most scary?
For me, the undead are right out. One of the bummerer sides of being a fundamentalist rationalist is the ironclad belief that this [points to life] is all we get, and then we aren’t. Any confirmation that there is something beyond this life is the inverse of scary, no matter if it proves it by eating me shortly after.
Are werewolves scary? Naw. Perhaps it is my close proximity to Virginia Tech’s community of furries, but I have a hard time being disturbed by meldings of human and animal. Besides, people kill people much better then werewolves kill people.
So, what scares me? Golems. Picture the story of the golem that was told to bring water from the well, but didn’t stop, and floodded the house. Now picture a golem told to kill people.
Picture a golem told to kill you. Pure, unthinking order forced on the universe, with the sole purpouse of cracking you open like an egg. It can’t be bargained with. It can’t be reasoned with. It can’t be stopped. It can’t learn why people cry, or give a thumbs-up sign.
That’s scary. Does anyone agree?
Personally, I’ve always found zombies to freak me out more then anything else. Usually becuase they are so damn many of them, they are able to break through walls and doors and perhaps, parondically, becuase they move so damn slow. And because they never stop. Unless you have something akin to a shotgun or a chainsaw, they will come after you. And of course, if anyone dies, they become a zombie as well.
Vampires never really disturbed me. I don’t know why. Probably because they are either extremely weakened by the daylight or cannot stand it at all. At night, one can just hole themselves up somewhere and go hunting at daybreak. And the fact it’s rather easy to tell when a vampire is around by the unusual deaths invovling loss of blood. The only annoying thing is not knowing what rules work, since there are so many.
Werewolves and the like, not particulary scary, just harder to kill then normal ones. Silver bullets are cheap(for some calibers, anyway) and I’m guessing it wouldn’t be too hard to figure out if someone wasn’t quite human (Hot Temper, Animals get freaked out around them, better senses then one should have). They are also fairly easy to spot due to the “looks like wild killer animal but not quite” deaths around, unless they are smart and try to make it look like the maifa did it or something. If nothing else, they are more interesting because of the spilt personality thing going on.
Ghosts can be really scary if they are the right kind. I’m talking about the evil ones who can hurt you, not the echos of times gone by that aren’t aware of the living world. Particulary since there’s no way to kill them.
So Ghosts and Zombies would really disturb me more then anything else.
What scares me is the Baddie I don’t get a good look at. Once Hollywood shows me the monster, I’m not that scared or impressed. “Hmm. I think I could take him.”
Now, when I only catch a glimpse of the Baddie, then I’m afraid. Nothing can scare me as much as my imagination. I was scared by the Mothman, for example, the Blair Witch, and the Dead People before Haley Joel Osmett befriended the little poisoned girl.
rob you’re assuming that there are things beyond death besides zombiehood or some such given the existence of the undead. Though I do understand your point of view as I find most supernatural baddies to lack scare power because they fundementally undermine what I have accepted/conceded about the world. Without those things I’d no longer be sure what to be affraid of besides pain and all supernatural creatures can serve that up.
That said ghosts can do horrible things to do your life if they are the full on spirit of the dead with nifty new powers kind of ghost. They don’t have to show themselves, can engage in the kind of harasement that sadistic practical jokers masturbate to the thought of being able to do, seize the bodies of you and those you love to turn your life into a total hell and generally have very limited ways to put them down.
An extension of course of the worst sort of ghost is the horror take on demons. That is spiteful spirits that are incorporeal but able to use corporeal entities to do their bidding. You have no recourse against their torment and assuming they are clever they can do worse things to you than physical suffering.
Them and sea monsters. Horrible, behemoth, even uglier than normal sea creatures are disgusting to the point of additional horror. That and they just swallow you whole after grossing you out. Not cool at all.
Good point. Few monsters are scary just to look at. It’s when you don’t see what you are looking at that is becomes scary because you have only your imagination, and is far scarier then anything you can see.
This is particulary useful when you don’t have a budget to make a convincing monster, or the monster isn’t scary at all.
Probably the most recent example I can think of was “Signs”. I’m still trying to figure out why the “monster” in the video scared everyone so much.
I saw a grey bald naked guy, even if a little blurred.
This does not scare me, unless you use the type of scared that would go with seeing the Baron Harkonnen (or fat bastard) naked and covered with olive oil, but to a much lesser degree.
How about the fact that it would seemingly be impossible to either hide from a ghost or lock one in/out?
Forgot sea monsters. Things like giant squid have always bugged me. I hate swimming in bodies of water that I can’t see bottom, or with a really deep bottom, because I always get the creepy feeling of some horrible creature below me.
And let’s face it, something like that could go anywhere in the world that has ocean access, and has a lot of places to hide. The best we would have are submarines and perhaps destoryers to fight one.
Ditto. Stephen King’s It (tape 1, not tape 2) and the Blair Witch are about the only two movies that ever gave me the willies.
Also along the same lines was a story I read awhile back (I think someone here linked to it.) It was about a Japanese guy that had to go do something at night and was told to watch out for demons with no faces. He runs into an old lady and tells her he’s trying to steer clear of people with no face and she turns around and reveals that she has no face. That’s a terrible paraphrasing of the story but it really creeped me out. I have no idea why but it did.
The Mothman, easy. The description in The Field Guide to North American Monsters gave me the heebie-jeebies enough to sleep with the lights on. Black so you can barely see it, super-strong, and it can fly. But worst are the red eyes. Whenever I’d be driving around at night in Georgia, I just knew whenever I passed an open field that I was going to glance out of the car and just see a black shape standing out in the open with red eyes staring right at me.
Even worse are all the creepy things connected with the Mothman; the whole prophecy business. A man in black (possibly holding a scythe) and telling you some dire prophecy? ::shiver::
Ghosts have never been that scary to me. There are too many who are just lost and confused and don’t really intend to hurt you, and even the ones that are evil are usually noncorporeal enough to be no threat. Even at their worst, they’re just people.
Vampires have that whole eurotrash stigma to be really scary. Werewolves could be startling, but there’s no sense of dread there. Zombies are too slow and unorganized. Lovecraftian monsters are too wordy. Golems are too single-minded to be scary; it’d be like being scared of a steamroller, which even if it’s headed right for you isn’t “scary” so much as “worrisome.” For something to be truly scary, there’s got to be that sense of the unknown; you don’t know what it is and you don’t know what it wants, but you know it can’t be good.
This is a great question. While I agree with Robert on the whole <points to life> bit, we’re talking willing suspension of disbelief here, right?
In which case I’d have to go with ghosts. Not the usual ghosts, though- the ones that come back to warn someone, or watch over someone, and confine themselves to startling but ultimately just annoying behavior like footsteps in the attic and moving small objects. These type of ghosts are at best merely interesting, and in no way scary. The other side of the spectrum, which I guess you could call demons if you were so inclined are also not really scary. Threatening, but you know what they are and what they want: demons just want to cause trouble, and if you watch a lot of movies you have plenty of recourse to fighting them. Just call in a priest, shaman, or possessor of powerful ancient amulet and poof! No more demon.
The ghosts that scare me are the vengeful dead, especially the ones that have some unspecified beef with the living and just won’t be satisfied until heads roll. Any intagible force which shows intelligence and cunning, and uses it to cause unpedictable suffering for humans is pretty freaky in my book. Take the story of the Bell Witch of Tennessee for example. Scary stuff.
Also frightening are those vaguely ghost-like entities which pop up at random and seem to have no actual purpose- like the faceless woman of the Japanese legend. Or Spring-Heeled Jack. Or whatever made those cloven-hoofed footprints in a single line going over houses and through six-inch pipes in the English countryside back in the 1840’s.
Really scary stuff is almost never seen, but merely glimpsed, as many have pointed out. Something half-seen which causes you to scream “What the fuck was that?!” is incredibly terrifying in my book.
Vengeful ghosts are pretty fucking creepy. Things like Sadako from Ring and even the ghosts from the remake of House on Haunted Hill are pretty terrible things (the ghosts, not the big ball of evil…that was crap). Something you can’t fight, can’t touch, and generally can’t see, yet can tear a huge chunk out of your face if it so wills…just not a pleasant thing to deal with. And when you do what’s needed to save yourself and it STILL gets you or a loved one…that’s pretty fucked up.
Zombies still are a big number one for me. I don’t see how robertliguori can not be afraid of zombies, but is terrified of gollums because of their single mindedness. Zombies live simply to feed. You can’t get much more single minded than that. A zombie by itself is rather unsettling, but if you’re able to get past the initial shock, it’s not all that scary. The big trouble with zombies is the hoards. They generally don’t travel alone, and they are pretty damned coordinated when working together. They may be pretty weak, but when determined, enough of them can bring down pretty much anything. And the concept of being eaten alive, or worse, becoming a zombie, is just a horrible thought.
I think he meant a Golem, as in an artificial man, not Gollum, as in a devolved hobbit with a precious fetish. Am I correct robertliguori? Personally, both those creatures would scare me, though Tolkein’s creature is a little worse for me.
I imagine anything seemingly supernatural would be very frightening, at least at first. I know my sudden confrontations with extreme nighttime weirdness have left me in a state of intense fear. I have no doubt if my investigations revealed a ghost intent on doing me harm instead of a dog chewing on a lit flashlight in the closet I would have run screaming from my house.
Anyway, the supernatural creatures in books and movies that have the best chance of scaring me a little are angels and demons. Pazuzu really got to me the first fourteen times or so that I watched The Exorcist. You know who else scared me?
As for not being scared by zombies . . . that boggles my mind. Just stumbling upon an unexpected corpse would scare most people half to death. Having that corpse get up and start walking toward you . . .