Very vaguely creepy.

In My Humble Opinion
141

I find it creepy when driving along and notice a shoe laying along the edge of the road…just one shoe. Something about that bothers me.

Having a very dangerous, sick person tell you to step closer so they can rip your windpipe out. I had done nothing to this person…was just doing my job. That was a little creepy.

Also, when I was young, a family lived just 5 houses from us and they were just regular people. During the same week both their son and daughter totally freaked out…no drugs involved and both had to be put in mental hospitals. Neither of them had mental problems until that week.

I am enjoying this topic a LOT. :slight_smile:

142

Earlier in the thread, Welfy mentioned the deer head in her barn. My grandparents had one of those in their garage, which they used more for the storage of old, broken stuff they didn’t want anymore. It was above the door, so you had to walk in under it… hated it!

Related creepy tale: Couple of months ago, the BF and I went to the Westchester County Fair. As we’re meandering along, we come across this tent containing a mechanical bull and nothing else. But it wasn’t your ordinary mechanical bull-- it had a real, stuffed cow head and hide attached to it, to add to the experience. It appeared to be a Holstein.

Now, I’m not fond of taxidermy anyway, but this was just plain disturbing. We could tell from a slight distance-- and I wasn’t going any closer, because it was just horrible to look at-- that it was ratty, the eyes were crooked, and it had this dead look that I always kinda thought taxidermy was supposed to avoid. You know, go for a life-like, if perpetually frozen, pose, instead of a dazed, just got hit with the mallet look. Way to add to the carnival atmosphere! Let’s stick parts of a dead cow on our ride and see how many people wanna try it!

There wasn’t one single person in line to ride this creepy thing. The look on its face is still giving me chills…

143

I can’t believe no one has mentioned this one yet…, CLOWNS!

Sheesh! they creep me out. And to make matters worse, when I was younger, we had a particularly evil clown living right under our noses.

When I was about 17 my younger sister had a clown that she kept sitting on her desk along with a bunch of other clown knicknacks. It was about the size of a cat and had one of those perpetually creepy smiles cemented on its demonic face (hey, they’re evil, remember?). Anyhoot…, that year an especially creepy (but, enjoyable nonetheless) movie came out - Poltergeist. Now, I like a scary movie as much as the next guy…, maybe more, even. But no quick brush with the Grim Reaper would prepare me for the horror that I would see while clutching my Mike 'N Ikes and a Super Sized Mt. Dew…

As I watched the eerie suspense with bated anticipation, the little boy in the film goes to sleep in the watchful glare of Satan’s own maple tree. As the tree begins to scratch at the window, beckoning the boy to come closer…, who should come up from underneath the bed to begin strangling our little friend…?

…but that SAME CLOWN WE HAD SITTING IN MY SISTER’S BEDROOM BACK HOME!!

Yikes! it still gives me the willies just thinking about it.

Unrelated, but a creepfest in its own right, I once lived in a second floor studio in a huge warehouse that had been converted into dozens of apartments. Outside of the only bank of windows (which rose all the way up to the 20 foot ceiling) in the apartment was a small lip of the roof that made up the extension of my first floor neighbor’s patio. It was about 3 feet wide, went down the entire building along everyone’s apt. on my floor, and was of dubious stability in carrying the weight of an adventurous adult (or psycho killer, for that matter).

From a previous relationship, I had been left with…, um blessed with…, two cats. Although pleasant to have around, they were not know for their bravery. They were skittish to say the least. Anyhooow, the nature of these aforementioned windows is that when they were kept open (only the bottom paign opened) at night (which was most of the time) the reflection of the interior lights on the screen made it difficult to see outside. The area above the screen was as clear as…, um…, a really clear glass thing…, you get the idea.

So I’m sitting there one balmy summer evening playing tunes on the 'ole guitar when the braver of the two cats, who has been sitting on the window sill like he usually does, starts a low rumble-growl. Now, these are indoor cats who have never set paw outside in their lives. I get up to see what all the commotion is about, yet when I get to the window…, nothing. Clear skies. A light breeze. and nothing else. The moon is full and I can clearly make out the other side of the lower patio area through the upper part of the window (above the screen). The cat looks at me with eyes dialed out bigger than the size of my fist, as if to ask, “My God, man! Don’t you see it?!?”. Well…, no. I can’t see anything. And now I’m starting to get all freaky. The cat goes back to it’s death knell and I start getting really wigged out. I’m looking and looking and I CAN’T SEE ANYTHING!

Now, other than clowns, nothing much phases me. Not like this at least. But this is starting to make me believe in ghosts. My cat has the vision of an otherwise unseen specter in his sites ('cause, hey, animals can see that stuff all of the time, right?) and only his threatening growls are keeping the hoary host from coming into my studio and ripping my heart out of my chest…, not that it needed much more assistance to make a clean break from my seeming woefully insufficient rib cage.

I shout at the cat. His gutteral tones only seem to carry my fear. “Shut up, damn you!” I beg. I fear that only the pale light of my all too distant floor lamp is keeping me safe. Its warming glow a refuge to cling to…, like a dying campfire holding back the red glowing stares of a pack of wolves, who know that time is on their side…

Finally, I figure I’m a goner anyway and that I should cut the lights with the off chance that my ghost is nearsighted, and I might have a fighting chance in the dark. No sooner have I doused the lamp that the only-too-clear silhouette of an all black cat reveals itself right outside the window.

D’oh!

I shooshed him away (probably that crazy cat lady down the hall’s little fur ball…, not thinking of what that then made me…) and laughed nervously for a few moments, apologized to the cat, and went to bed.

But what if the cat was just a red herring by a particularly clever spirit…?

I didn’t sleep a wink that night.

144

I’ve got a good one. It’s long, but worth it.

I was at home, alone and it was about dusk. So I’m walking through my house, (my house is fairly new, nothing creepy about it) and I look out the window, and there’s this cat walking along the road. I feel like having a little fun, so I open the window, and make this loud MEYOW! I’m pretty good at imitating animal sounds, and the cat stops dead in it’s tracks and stares right at me. So I keep meyowing, and it walks over near the window and meyows back. I’m thinking this is awesome, so I sit there for about five minutes having a conversation with this cat. I finally get bored, and close the window.

At this point, I’m at the extreme right side of our house.(It’s two stories, the top floor, and a basement set into a hillside, with windows facing out on only one side, Our house is very long, four to five rooms length-wise (facing the road) and two-three rooms length wise. At the time, I was standing in our kitchen, so I walk over to our living room and watch TV for a while. Then I go to my room at the extreme left of our house. I casually glance out the window and I see the cat sitting right outside, staring at me. This mildly freaks me out, so I go over to the window and hiss at it and shoo it away. It runs off. I stay in my room for a while, then check my window again, and scan the front yard for the cat. Nothing there.

So I walk back to our living room, but something in the kitchen window catches my eye. Guess what? The cat was back again. So this time I actually go outside and shoo it off. It runs off down the street, and I say good riddance.

I go back in the house, and make a sandwich, then adjourn to my basement. (Where my computer is) I look out the window and there that cat is, in my back yard staring at me. And it’s hissing at me. Now I’m starting to get freaked out, and figure it’s not going away, so I just ignore it. Later that night, when I’m laying in bed, I can hear it outside my house making weird noises. After that night, I never saw the cat again.

Oh, and Mammie, just to add to the creepiness of your ‘one shoe by the side of the road’, I read somewhere that whenever killers are driving away from killing someone, they throw their shoes out of the car one at a time along the road way. They’re trying to dispose of the evidence, or something.

145

Great thread. I can think of lots of creepy things I’d like to share, but I have to get some sleep so I’ll have to just pick one.

I was camping in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area (northern Minnesota, the name pretty much explains what it’s about) a few years ago. One night a pretty good thunderstorm went through. I always enjoy a thunderstorm in the tent, but one bolt of lightning struck very close and scared the bejeezus out of me at about 3:00 a.m. Stood me right up in the tent. When I returned to civilization three or four days later, I learned that two campers had been killed by lightning about a half mile from where I was staying that night. A group of four was in a tent, two guys and each with their son, and lightning struck a tree next to the tent and killed two of them. I tend to believe it was the previously mentioned bolt, although I have no way of knowing for sure. Wow, I got all creeped out just relating that one.

I’ll part on a lighter note, and not really much of a story. I’m not a big tough guy or anything, but I am more or less of a nature freak and rather comfortable in the outdoors. Two things make me want to scream like a little girl, though. First is when I’m swimming and my foot touches a little piece of seaweed. Ecchhh!! The second is centipedes. Yucka!! Both at least slightly creepy.

Hasta.
Lowell

146

Ewww. I just remembered this one. Flooded towns.

The Lake of the Ozarks here in Missouri is huge, and man-made. They simply (as I understand it) gave people notice that the area was to be flooded, shooed everyone out, and flooded many, many square miles of land. I can only imagine the flooded houses and farms, the barns, roads, and towns. The forests, fields, and dead animals. All under the water that I’m now swimming or boating in. It’s just too impossibly creepy. Ugh. Yuck.

What makes this even worse is in one main thoroughfare on the lake (we use it to get to Party Cove, woohoo!) has a huge road bridge over it. What’s horrible about this part of the lake is that there was originally a different bridge there, but the water rose higher than expected, and they simply laid a new bridge higher above the water right on top of the old one. It’s about 10 feet under the water, and when the sun is right overhead, early in the season, you can dimly see that creepy bastard under you as you go through the pass. ::shudders::

I used to do construction work in the summers, and one day I got sent to work at an area south of here. Metcalf Avenue is a long ass road that runs very, very far south. But at 330th Street, there is a roadblock and you have to take a dirt road down two miles and back out to get back on Metcalf. The reason for this is that a few years ago, they flooded an area to make it into a state lake. Instead of running a bridge over the water, they simply flooded out the existing road, and routed traffic around the lake. I stopped and got out of my car to look, and surely enough, the pavement, lines and all, runs right into the water, and you can dimly make it out under water for a few yards, and it runs right back out of the water about a mile and a half away on the other side. Oh man, that’s so creepy. I just can’t handle that. Imagine fishing out there, and looking around and realizing you’re right over where Metcalf used to be. Or Scuba Diving, and swimming down to the paved surface. Or even worse, running into an old intersection sign while diving, or a farmhouse, or an old tractor that no one moved, or a house or something. Oh shit that’s just too creepy to even imagine. I’m getting the willies just talking about this stuff. Uhh… ::shudders again::

Am I alone in thinking this stuff is creepy? Everyone around here just shrugs and says “Yeah, so they flooded out the road… so?”

–Tim

147

You are not alone. It seems odd something like that would be creepy, but man-o-man is it ever.

It also reminds me of something which really creeps the holy heck out of me. I have always hated swimming under water in a lake and looking out over the drop off zone. Just seeing the sand beneath you suddenly disappear into this wall of black water. I always expected to see something big and menacing swim out of the dark. It is for this reason that I could never take up scuba diving. Same with swimming from a boat in the ocean. I always just felt like bait floating in the water.

148

I find it unsettling that all the thoughts in my head have the potential to make many people insane, and that more then one person probubly has a similar…ahem…affliction. I am terribly unnerved at the idea that in theory the only thing between my thoughts and reality is a thin barrier between the concious and unconcious.

149

For some reason getting into a car when wet always creeps me out. After swimming or a big rain, you’re just sitting there, in the car, soaked, and it just feels…icky/creepy. Strange, I know.

How about sitting down at someone else’s computer to use the internet. You start typing in a URL and it auto-fills some creepy address (normally pornographic). I always feel that that was just a bit too much information about that person than I needed to know.

150

Great thread. I have two things to add…

Have you ever been to a windfarm? A field of those gigantic white windmills in the middle of nowhere, all humming in their eerily harmonic way is vaguely creepy to me.

Also, once a month or so for the last year, I have seen this guy on my cable access channel who apparently sets up a camera on a tripod in his bedroom and films himself reading his own poetry. His hair is always messy in an Einstein-y kind of way. He wears the same moving company t-shirt that is way too tight, and he has a pair of thick black plastic frame glasses that are way too big for his face and always smeared with a greasy film. He is always sitting on his bed, which is unmade, and he always sets up the camera so that you can see his back in the mirror behind him. There is a big brown stain on the back of his shirt. At first I wondered if he was a performance artist and maybe this was all part of a carefully conceived image he wanted to portray, but the poetry never has much to do with the character I thought he was creating and frequently he will stop in the middle of his reading and rant about various conspiracies that only he seems to perceive in the world. Frequently they invovlve the United Nations and/or Jews. I have since decided he is nuts. My wife thinks this is creepy because I am always strangely compelled to watch him if he is on. I, of course, will be creeped out if I ever run into him on the bus or something.

151

My neighbor had her brother visiting from out of town. He invited all the neighbor kids over one morning for a “magic show.” He was wearing only underwear briefs and called himself “Captain Banana.”

I think magic shows in general are creepy.

152

How 'bout when you realize you’ve been hearing a bell toll in the middle of it striking an hour and you just know what time is being striked? how do you know how many strikes you’ve heard when you didn’t notice the start. creepy. definately creepy. always thought this would be a great excersise if you wanted to teach youself to be psychic.

153

I have a friend who, when there’s a lull in the conversation, throws out random “topics” of conversaation. The first of which is always “cheese”. And he looks at us expectantly every time he says it, waiting for the converstation to start.

I also find it creepy that I can sit at a table at school with fifteen people, all of whom are capable of using “obfuscate” (in the Vampire: the Masquerade sense) in normal conversation, and only half of whom actually game.

154

This is a great thread!!

I had broken up with my BF a couple of weeks before this incident. Around 2:00 am one night, my old boyfriend comes pounding on my door, very drunk, wanting me “back”. I told him to leave, but he just kept knocking and knocking. I was getting really freaked out that he wouldn’t go away. I threatened to call the cops, but he still wouldn’t leave. Finally I had no choice but to call the police. They asked if I wanted to press charges, but I said no, just make him LEAVE! So they ran him off. The next morning I stepped out of the apartment and saw my car. On the windshield he had written “I love you” — in blood! There was also blood on my door from him knocking and knocking, I guess. Some people walking by said, “Oh, man! Helter Skelter!” Freaked me right out!

Oh, yeah. There is a website called “The Nightmare Project”. People have sent in many nightmares, and it’s a real creepy site. Thought it fitting to include the URL:
http://www.geocities.com/nightmareproject/

155

Yes, clowns are creepy. I don’t like department store mannequins either, or dolls. They just…stare.

One Halloween when I was a kid, my little brother made a scarecrow. He stuffed some of his clothes with wadded-up newspapers and taped them together, and sat it in his rocking chair. The head was probably a paper bag with a hat on it, I think. Pretty creative, especially since he just decided to do it for fun and it was a fair amount of work putting it together. I saw that thing every time I passed his room, and I had to pass his room to get to mine.

Finally I made him take it apart. I just went nuts and yelled at him. He was so hurt. I still feel awful about it.

On another track, magicians creep me out too. Especially Penn & Teller, because they’re smarter than the others.

156

One more. I used to know this guy from work, who was known for his casual dress. Mikey was a programmer and very talented, and played the “eccentric genius” role to the hilt. He wore a T-shirt and jeans every single day (since they didn’t have contact with the public, the programmers could wear whatever they wanted). He must have had hundreds of T-shirts, because I never saw him in the same one twice.

Eventually he left for greener pastures, but one day he came back to visit. He came back wearing the serious suit and tie he wore to his job interviews (he’d even shaved and cut his hair, for goodness’ sake). He got a kick out of going into his old office and having no one recognize him in the suit and tie (he had to say, “Helllo, it’s me,” before they’d look at his face and recognize him…and then jump out of their skin).

Then he came by our office to say hello (and we reacted the same way to the suit). He was creeping me out for the longest time and I couldn’t figure out why. Finally I said, “You know how there are people you never see in formal dress…until they die? Mikey…you look like you just climbed up out of your coffin.”

Mikey thought it was hilarious. My boss thought it was in poor taste to say that, and he’s not Mr. Politically Correct himself.

157

What a fun thread. OK, here’s my story.

When I was young my parents would rent a cottage on Cape Cod. The cottage is right on the path to the beach. We’d go there every year for a couple of weeks on vacation.

One year when I’m about 10 I’m lying in bed. It’s early in the morning and the sun is barely up. From my position in bed I can see the front door to the cottage (my bedroom door was open). The front door has a window in it and a shade on the window. When I look at the window I see the silhouette of a person’s head and shoulders as if they are standing right outside the door. It seems to me as if the person outside is standing there looking in at me.

I get scared, but I figure the person will go away soon. I close my eyes and try to ignore it. When I open my eyes the person is still there. I close my eyes and roll over. I wait a good long time. When I roll back, there are now TWO PEOPLE.

Time to get up and tell mom and dad. But in getting up I need to break my line of site to the door. When I can see the door again (on my way to my parent’s bedroom) the people are gone.

Freaked me out for a couple of days.

158

When I moved in, I made use of the paper towel rack that was left on the wall. When I unscrew the handles to change towel rolls, the towel rod stays attached to one handle. Sometimes it’s the right handle. Sometimes it’s the left. I wondered why the handles switched around. I must be putting in on differently. So one time I made absolutely sure to put the rod-handle on the left. The next time I changed towels, the rod-handle was on the right. Ok, someone was entering my home and reversing the handles on this paper towel holder. When I realized this, I got a chill, which is a rare thing.

It turned out that both handles can unscrew from the rod. So it was random which handle would end up with the rod stuck to it. Silly me.

159

In retrospect, my story isn’t that creepy at all, but at the time it happened I was a little freaked out. My friends and I were walking to my car after a fun night at Knott’s Scary Farm, when all of a sudden we all had trouble walking. We felt kind of dizzy and were stumbling about. All of a sudden, the night sky started flashing blue! There was also popping sounds out in the distance. This was happening in every direction, and we thought it was some alien invasion or something. Well it actually was just a fairly strong rolling earthquake (but nothing to a native of Cali!). Anyways, it was pretty cool but was vaguely creepy during the moments it was happening.

160

When I was 8 or 9 I used to go exploring in our backyard all the time. But my favorite time was right around dusk, I don’t know why. We had a pretty big back yard for so cal (3 acres) and neighbors/fences were on all sides. So one night I’m way in the back, the furthest you could go. Its kinda weird first of all that there are two sets of fences back there, the one on our side was this normal, albeit broken, rusty fence. A few feet beyond is the neighbors fence this tall,(10’+) plastic, green thing. Between is a kinda limbo. There is a hole in our fence way in the corner, so I’m climbing through this thing on all fours, just screwing around playing in the dirt, leaves and crap. Now, because there are trees that overhang the space between the fences, it is REALLY dark in here. I’m shuffling around in there on hands and knees; scraping up my hands, who cares I’m 9.

But then as I’m working my way through, I put my hand on something hard, first I think it’s a branch, but it is really smooth. I move back, grab it, and realize that it is really heavy. I pick the thing up out from under the leaves and dirt and discover that it is a huge butcher knife. Kinda rusty, but overall in pretty good shape. Holy crap I thought, I suddenly got so freaked out, and this stuff never bothered me before. I was suddenly very aware of dark it was and how far away from the house I was.

Later I found out that a butcher used to live in the house behind us. Fun.