Tall buildings, especially ones that rise straight up instead of stepping back after a bit. I remember on a trip in 1988 coming out of the subway in NYC and walking near the World trade Center buildings and feeling so overwhelmed and oppressed it was difficult to walk or even breathe. It felt like they were going to fall over me. My mother made fun of me saying the those buildings would be standing long after both she and I were dead.
I’m also creeped out by tall buildings, but more so by unusually large, old buildings. But I enjoy the creeped out feeling. I think I’d be freaked out but enjoy Rome.
I was in London and walked up to St. Paul’s Cathedral around midnight. There was no-one around and the lights showed all of the discolored bricks and stains. I almost filled my pants out of sheer terror.
I guess people are more freaked out by abandoned buildings, but disused hospitals and asylums make me scream.
Last ones for me? Really big coins (I find the walking Liberty half-dollars and the barber-heads creepy as hell) and STINGING NETTLES. I can’t even look at a picture of one.
Church. My family used to go to a Pentecostal church. I quit going at about age 15 or 16 when I couldn’t in good conscience pretend that I was a believer anymore. I look back and realize how deeply disturbing the charismatic churches are, with members having fits, dancing around while being possessed by the holy spirit, speaking in tongues, prophesying. Bloody freak show. More mainstream churches are less disturbing on the surface, but still have aspects that creep me out now.
Some of you people didn’t read the thread title: What do you find creepy that others don’t?
I am speaking specifically here of the people who have come into this thread to say “spiders.” Come on, folks, spiders are the number-one creepy thing. More people find spiders creepy than not.
There are a lot of truly creepy things people have mentioned, and some very vaguely creepy.
Now, wooden ice cream paddles? That’s more like it. Most people don’t find those creepy.
Here’s mine: I find weddings creepy. I would like to be late. I can enjoy the reception, or most of it, but the part where the bride walks down the aisle and gets handed off from one man to another–really creepy. Extra bonus creepy points for using the wedding march from Lohengrin. (I’ve only been to one actual wedding where that was used, though, because the bride didn’t know any better.)
Also, those weird signs of fabric stretched around a base that is not really oval and not really round, kind of comma-shaped, that businesses stick beside the roads to advertise. They are not as creepy as the inflatable pulsing man-thing, but they are pretty creepy and give me the shudders when I pass.
I’m glad I’m not the only one. Those things are hideous.
Creepy is a little too strong for my this one. I’ll say it makes me uncomfortable how some men will have a tiny interaction with a woman in a random place (not a bar where one might think about meeting someone) and imagine it to be almost an event. Example: one of my guy friends met a woman at a department store the other day and spoke with her about furniture. After a few minutes they parted ways. He’d been almost obsessing about her (what she looked like, smelled like, wore, etc) for two days and kicking himself over not asking her out. It’s as if he’d invented some kind of future for them that wasn’t even there. It makes me often wonder if most men just walk around looking for potential dates. Just odd to me.
Similarly, a lot of 1950s rock that focuses on underage girls in ways that just don’t seem totally clean. I guess the singers were pretending they were teenagers to appeal to their core audience, but still, creeps me right the fuck out. And it really bothers me that, while Chuck Berry, a guitar god, lost his career for daring to hang out with a woman of another race once and getting arrested for it, all of these sappy pop singers got away with singing about how hot their 16-year-old girlfriends were. Don’t seem right to me.
Yeah, obsessiveness in general is pretty creepy to me. For this reason, I like sports but I tend to avoid sports discussions with people I don’t know. There’s a sort of faked adulation that creeps me out.
I hope you don’t make a habit of eating sandwiches from Starbucks or Seattle’s Best Coffee.
Seconded. When I was working for the DNC, a lot of mothers would give to the campaign and then ask their little kids “Who are you voting for?” and the kid would say “Obama!” It weirded me out that they actually trained their kids to do that for the entertainment of other Democrats. It just seems like treating the kid like a dog.
BTW, I’ve watched some basketball in my time, and played it for three years in high school, but this towel-in-mouth thing is totally new to me. Have I just completely missed this phenomenon somehow?
Oh, luckily, you must have! It’s a common phenomenon that occurs during the final tense (or any tense) moment of the game. The seated players, with arms entwined, have THEIR TOWELS IN THE MOUTHS! GAH!!! I only watch Illinois B-ball and the NCAA championship, but I’ve seen it a lot. I can’t take this anymore. Do a search like I did…
Furniture and tools are OK, but I take pause at things like broken-in shoes where you can see the shape of the departed owner’s feet. It’s like the shoes are sitting there ready for the owner to slip them on, something that’s never going to happen again. Also a deceased person’s prescription eyeglasses.
Those are just pause inducing, though. What I find hard to look at are antique children’s toys and especially antique (brrr) baby clothes.
I find webkinz, or any other online game for kids has huge potential for creepiness. Because I suspect that some adults are also online and manipulating their pets into strange behaviors. Ok not you and your friend SD.
But my kid showed me one webkinz that was humping the couch while she was on. EWWW. Just the idea that there may be less than honorable adults infiltrating a kids playsite is creepy. OF course there are! Why would the operators insist their site is safe because they have protocols and restrictions on play etc.
I have posted about wooden ice cream paddles in several threads. I cannot use them. If I see someone else using them, I have to stop what I am doing and get them a real spoon, or leave the area.
Any public swimming pool or jacuzzi grosses me out beyond belief. I can’t believe people actually will dunk themselves in other people’s filth. Just writing this creeped me out. There isn’t enough clorine in the world…
The basketball towel issue reminded me me of something that has been creeping me out for 20 years.
In 1989, my H.S. went to Texas for a basketball tournament. The host school had this back-up group of girls for the Senior Boys team. During games, the girls would stand in a row behind the bench, and whenever their assigned player came off the floor, the girl would put a warm-up jacket over the player’s shoulders, mop his brow with with a towel and hold his water bottle while he drank. The girls wore cheerleader-type uniforms while they performed their duties.
I don’t know how common back-up groups like that were then, or are now, but I’d never seen anything like it before. My 16 year old self could not even begin to fathom the appeal of waiting on anyone hand and foot like that. I wonder what it was like for the boys who went on to play ball in university and had to get their own damn water.
It’s long past time to get over it, but whenever I think of that city in Texas, I shudder, just a little.
In regards to lotus pods, if you agree that they’re creepy, I present this photo of a lotus pod with the seeds still in it. You didn’t think it could get worse, but it can.
Vent fans in bathrooms. Ever since I was a little kid, that loud, whirring, humming noise has freaked me out. I can’t turn it on when I’m in the bathroom, I have to wait 'til I leave, and close the door behind me.
Urgh. I had a dream once that my fingernails peeled off and it looked like that underneath. Don’t know why that would ever happen, but if it did, I’d cut my hands off in a second.
Things that creep me out? Really large things. When I was a child, I used to have nightmares about BIG. Not a big thing, just BIG. I can’t describe them, but if I think about it too hard, that terrifying feeling comes up on me again.
That and large casts. I can handle a broken arm. If someone I knew had to be in a full body cast, I’d send them a card, but I’d never visit.
