This is creeping me out right now:
People here are referring to “Boggy Creek”…
I drive on “Boggy Creek Road” to get to work.
Well, just don’t stop to talk with Old Man Crenshaw!
For some reason I used to be frightened of monkey-puzzle trees. I also developed a fear of my Mr Jelly nightlight, but I think that was because closing my eyes to sleep made it go all wibbly. And I always had a strange fear (which remains with me till this day) of leaping from a high bridge onto a valley full of fire and spikes and stuff.
Idon’t think that anybody’s mentioned it yet, but the theme song from “Unsolved Mysteries” always scared the hell out of
me. Still does, actually.
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by Baloo *
**
…and Roald Dahl leaves them both in the dust. Just think of all the horrible things that happen to children in his books. James, from James and the Giant Peach, for example. the poor kid’s parents are eaten by a rhinoceros on the first page.
…and in his short story “Pig,” little Lexington’s parents are gunned down on the first page by three policemen of Irish extraction.
“Evil Stepmother,” hell. Roald likes to get BOTH mom and dad out of the way early on.
Thank you! I’m not the only one! My dad was a big “In Search Of” fan and as a result I ended up watching hours upon hours of it. Most of the episodes just gave me a transient case of the willies, but the “Amityville” episode really shook me. Two things in particular really did it for me; when the doll’s eyes became little red pinpoints as the mother tucked in her daughter and turned out the light and when the blood filled the toilet bowl after flushing.
The doll-eyes thing has stayed with me to this day. I can’t sleep if there are red lights visible in my bedroom; my clock radio has a green display and I take my cordless phone off the base before I go to bed. :o
Another thing that used to give me the creeps when I was a kid were the little epilogues that ran before the credits in some films. You know; the screen fades to black and something pops up like “Edmund returned to England after the war but his wounds did not heal. In 1962 he died when his thresher veered out of control and struck a school bus full of nuns.” I guess they creeped me out because it seemed like nothing good was ever described.
Regards,
Zappo
OK. I admit it. The opening animation on “The Honeymooners” scared the bejeezes outta me. I used to avoid looking at the moon because I thought Jackie Gleason’s face would be on it, looking down at me.
(And no one wants to be mooned by Jackie Gleason!)
Originally posted by Zappo
The thing that got me was the description of a satanic-looking head burned into the back of the fireplace. I looked at that and thought, “nah, it looks like part of a head.”
But then, at thirteen or so, I decide to read the book. Late at night. In the book, the head is actually described as a satanic-looking head with part of it blown away by a shotgun blast. That creeped me out.
Then as I’m reading late into the night, getting more and more creeped out, my fluorescent nightstand light starts buzzing. Louder and louder. “That’s it,” I thought, and shut the light off, got my monster snorkle out of the drawer, and pulled the blankets over my head. I finished the book during daylight hours.
In the Dr. Seuss book “The Sneeches” there were several little stories, one of which was a story about a pair of “green pants with nobody in them”. In this story a pair of floating pants stalk and thoroughly terrify a poor soul. This story was illustrated in the typical Seuss fashion, except everything was dark and twisted.
I was about 5 when I got that book, and the first time I saw the opening picture I screamed and refused to open it. Please tell me that I am not alone in being afraid of this story. Someone tell me that they had the same experience.
Also, in the original “Scary Stories To Tell In The Dark” book, there was a hideous charcoal drawing of a woman’s rotted face, with empty eye sockets, cracked teeth, shriveled skin and I think some spiderwebs. I first saw it when I was 8 or 9, and I wouldn’t even be around an open copy of that book until I was 12. I don’t even have to ask to know that lots of kids recieved this lovely book from their parents and were permanently scarred.
MarxBoy
Well, fear not, as Amityville is a hoax.
The rat was Brown Jenkin. Ahh, inane knowledge…
Me, I’m scared to hell of natural water. Anything that I cant see the bottom of or if it’s deeper than my knees, and I cant go in it. Over it is fine, seeing it or being canoeing has no effect on me, but I cant be in it it or I panic. Which is odd because I’m a VERY strong swimmer in the pools.
I think it has something to do with some primal instinct I’ve not lost. I need to have either a) light, b) my back to something, or c) Someone else within my proximity. With any one of these things I’m fine, without any one of them I go directly into Kill mode. Being in dark water does that. I know I’d panic and start flailing out at imagined enemies in the water, which would not get me to the surface, and would, unfortunatly, get rid of any would-be rescuers. If I ever fell out of my canoe, I would die. No question.
Which sucks 'cause my SO is a waterlover. A lifeguard… and I cant get in.
Also, I get slight shivers from the Smurfs.
I’ll second the uninhabited pants; especially the image of them riding a bicycle. That’s the part that really got me. Something else that used to creep me out when I was very young (3-4 years old) were those television tests of the Emergency Broadcast System. The tv would be mumbling along, doing its thing, when all of the sudden (to me, at any rate) the CBS logo would fill the screen (big eye) and this horrendous noise would come out of the box. It scared me fertilizerless, and I would be found cowering behind the piano, ears plugged and screaming hysterically. My lovely family thought it was hilarious.
I know I’m not the first to bring up clowns, but I really do have to chime in on this subject.
When I was a kid, there was a very large painting of a large crying clown within a nice frame hanging on my wall directly opposite from my bed. The clown is looking directly out, holding a hankerchief in one hand. At night, I could swear that I could see it move, either the hand holding the hankerchief, the eyes, or even worse, the lips. It wasn’t long before I had developed the habit of taking the picture off the wall and on the floor, facing the other way.
My parents asked me constantly why I did this. My only answer was, “I don’t like it.” I couldn’t figure out how explain at that age why I was really freaked out by this without being laughed at.
That painting is the reason why the only part of the movie Poltergeist is the part about the damned clown. It still scares me.
Grass is green. The sky is blue. And clowns are evil.
Without a doubt it was my Mom’s relatives. I don’t want to offend anyone so let’s just say they weren’t from here (meaning NYC). Geezus it was like a damn hootnany when they’d walk into the house and my Mother’s cousin’s husband was always grabbing at me.
Shudder
I can still picture those people.
Eventually I found that if you gave them stuff, like a vase or whatever they’d been eyeing on their way in, they would leave earlier.
I was also into Bigfoot, the Loch Ness Monster, UFOs, etc. around age ten. Lots of sleepless nights and imagination run rampant.
Where we stayed in the summers in Pennsylvania Dutch Country, there was a small tombstone on a hillside belonging to a small girl who had died over a century before. I was told that it had been a horrible death because the angel on the tombstone was frowning. So here I am, walking along these dark country roads to our cabin, and I have to walk right by it…
Speaking of “The Amityville Horror”, an illustration in one of my Weekly Reader things in third grade still haunts me–that one of a grinning ghostly pig with burning red eyes. Sheesh.
And our radiator back in the Bronx made noises that my brother told me was kittycats being killed in the basement. Hey, thanks a lot.
Another vote for Large Marge (::Shudder::).
Similarly, a picture of an old statue of Medusa in a Book of Facts. Had to either skip over that page or cover the picture. (::Shuddershuddershudder:
Um…
Um…
[sub][sup]Cotton Candy[/sub][/sup]
That one can be blamed on the (Evil, EVIL) movie Killer Klowns From Outer Space. The Killer Klowns wrapped their victims in Cotton Candy, and so after seeing the movie (Awful, awful movie, don’t know why it affected me so), I couldn’t eat Cotton Candy without imagining finding body parts in it. Of course, I knew it was silly (I was 12 at the time) so I forced myself to eat Cotton Candy, in an attempt to either appear normal or force myself to get over the stupid phobia.
Things that other people listed that I don’t find creepy (But acknowledge CAN seem pretty creepy):
The heart of Jesus with the crown of thorns (and various other Catholic imagery). I’ve always found this one to be fascinating and beautiful.
The story The Ribbon - I LOVE that story. Ok, yeah, it’s creepy, but in a GOOD way.
Huh? Oh, no problem. I didn’t even notice it until you posted the correction, and even if you didn’t I would have just thought it was a typo. No worries.
And I’m also going to have nightmares thinking about those old Mummenschanz commercials. I couldn’t even get myself to look at the website!
Rosebud said:
“Among the stories: boy chews gum, gum takes on life of its own, boy can’t stop chewing… father and boy throw gum away, gum makes its way back into house, tries to get back into boy’s mouth… gum is eventually trapped in a bell jar and buried.”
This creepy story was written by John Steinbeck. He wrote it in the style of Edgar Allen Poe as an affectionate nudge to his young son who was constantly chewing bubble gum. It’s a good copy of Poe’s style; I was impressed. Not exactly The Grapes of Wrath or The Cask of Amontillado, but I got a kick out of it. (I was also in my twenties when I read it, so maybe the creepout factor has abated some with age).
Mr. Yuck was about the creepiest thing of my youth. The Mr. Yuck campaign started when I was seven. For those who don’t know, Mr. Yuck was a scowling, frowing green face that appeared on a sticker. The idea was to place it on poisonous household substances to discourage kids from eating soap flakes or drinking paint thinner. I was old enough to know better, but if I hadn’t been, this would certainly have worked on me. There were TV commercials which showed a picture of Mr. Yuck with a low voice singing, “Mr. Yuck is mean… Mr. Yuck is green.” This creeped me out, sending me running from the room every time. I had at least one nightmare that Mr. Yuck was floating outside my bedroom door, trying to get me. He cracked himself open and let green poison seep under the door. Somehow I knew that he started smiling when he did this. Mr. Yuck never smiles in real life.
Bagworms creep me out to this day. You might know them as tent caterpillars or gypsy moths, but the word in my house was bagworm. (In fact, the only place I’ve heard that word used outside my family was in Tom Wolfe’s The Right Stuff). We had a cherry tree in our front yard where a bagworm nest would settle every spring, right around my eye level. That the bagworms were there was so traumatic that is was accepted as pointless to even ask me to mow the front yard until they were gone. My mother take care of this by sticking a cone of paper into the nest, lighting it and burning them out. I would always watch, but I’d stand back at least ten feet.
Bagworms were a golden opportunity for my older brother to torture me. The mere mention of the word bagworm sent me into agonized howls, no doubt amusing to any child. I never used the word myself; I wouldn’t even refer to the things with anything less than an adjectival cough. They still creep me out, but it’s not as bad these days. I actually did have a dream that my parents served deep-fried bagworm nests for dinner one night, and I suffered other bagworm-related dreams, as well.
I’m surprised that so many people were freaked out by The Wizard of Oz; it never bothered me. I’m also surprised that no one has mentioned Bambi—though maybe Bambi isn’t that bad. I can’t say for sure, since I’ve never seen it myself.
Mr. Polumby. He lived in a little house near the woods and the rumor was that he kidnapped little kids and fed them to his pigs. Scared the crap outa me, but he was probably just a harmless, lonely old man.
The song “They’re Coming To Take Me Away”. Scared the SHIIIIIIIIITE right the hell out of me! It still give me the creapy crawlies, especially the part when the speed increases. :::shudder:::