Any media is fine, even “my friend Johnny’s story he claims is totally true :rolleyes:,” video games are fine too.
This may be cheating since I was a kid at the time (the biggest pansy when it came to scary stories EVER), but I watched some documentary I got from the library about Man-Monsters from Greek Mythology, think Minotaur, Medusa, Pan sort of stuff. I loved Greek Mythology, and honestly, the only one that’s remotely creepy nowadays is Pan (or at least their telling of it, I’ve never found another source with quiiiite the same story), but for some reason I got it in my head that at night the Minotaur was going to charge me if I got out of bed and Medusa was going to gaze at me if I ever opened my eyes. This persisted for maybe a year or two.
Long term-wise, Bloody Mary got me pretty bad. I mean, ever since 5th grade where I literally tested every Bloody Mary myth out there (leading to me becoming 1. A Skeptic and 2. Completely unflappable when it comes to horror in general) I haven’t really been scared of the story, but I still don’t really like being in dark rooms with mirrors (though I can do it without complaint), which I expect is a residual side effect of the story.
For least scared (and I’m specifying stuff that’s supposed to be scary for this category), it’s Lovecraftian/Eldritch horror, there’s something about sheer hopelessness that makes me not scared. Subtle hopelessness can be a good motivator, but Lovecraftian horror, as much as I like it, is just kind of like “oh, so basically the moral here is ‘you’re fucked.’ That’s great, if I can’t do anything about it why should I worry?”
I’m not very interesting though. My friend, on the other hand, couldn’t go to the bathroom alone for 3 months after seeing Saw.
I’ll admit that my ulterior motive here is kind of to find new creepy stuff to read/watch since I’ve pretty much used up every Creepypasta on the internet. But I’m also genuinely curious about what kind of stuff has affected people in different ways.
I remembered another one. E.T. scared the shit out of me. I forgot about it because unlike other things, I was never scared E.T. would gobble me up when I got out of bed or looked in the mirror, but it took me a long time before I could watch past the intro of that movie without making my mom turn it off.
When I first started reading H.P. Lovecraft I had an anthology of At the mountains of madness and about 20 other shorter stories. I read Mountains one afternoon and then for about a week read one story a night just beore sleep. After that I had to stop as I was having some really weird dreams.
The Clone gave me the heeby-jeebies (short version - green goo generated in the filthy sewers starts eating just about everything). I got about a quarter of the way into it, to a bit where someone starts getting absorbed, douses the infected part with iodine (which is known to kill the goo) and gets eaten ANYWAY because only the top layer got converted, they were still being eaten away under the skin.
Uuuuuurghhhh! Just reading that TvTropes page is probably going to give me nightmares about it again
My aunt was a librarian, and I spent hours at the library shelving books for a few bucks a week. I had access to any book I cared to read. When I was about 12 or so I went through every Alfred Hitchcock scary-story anthology. Some were lame collections for young folks, but the adult editions contained several classic horror stories that made my hair stand on end. I also came across a book on Korean brainwashing of American prisoners that really really disturbed me.
Ha ha, me too. I saw it on TV when I was about 6. The part that got me the most was when the wife pulled the sheet off her husband’s head and saw what he had become. She lets out this scream, which we see through the Fly’s compound eyes.
That night I was *terrified *that the Fly was under my bed. I couldn’t even make myself get out of bed when I had to go pee real bad, so I wet the bed.
The only other “scared kid” experience that sticks with me was when I watched the remake of The Invasion of the Body Snatchers. The one with Donald Sutherland. I must have been about 11. The pods giving birth to the replicants–coming out all gaspy and slimy and white. Sutherland pounding them with a shovel. Brrrr.
Another very difficult night, as I didn’t want to fall asleep and turn into a pod person.
As a kid, friends’ descriptions of the apocalypse/Armageddon, according to the biblical book of Revelations. Turns out some (the scariest stuff) is from Daniel, but I remember being terrified that I existed and this thing was sure to come very soon.
I started reading “Bluenose Ghosts” (apparently true ghost stories from the Maritimes) when I was 12 and had to stop because the stories and photos scared the shit out of me too much.
Some of the stories in Jan Harold Brunvand’s anthology of urban legends The Choking Doberman did this to me, even though the editor made it clear that they weren’t true.
When I was in early grade school (this probably would have been about 2nd grade) I was a pretty gullible kid (only child, nerd, overprotective mother–that’ll do it). Anyway, this nasty girl named Cecilia had me convinced that there was a ghost called “The White Lady” who would come after me in my bed if I didn’t…I don’t remember what she wanted. My lunch snack cakes, maybe. But in any case, I was terrified of The White Lady for awhile.
I guess I must have turned out okay, though, because shortly after that I developed a lifelong love of horror books and gory true-crime stories.
I bet a lot of people will agree with me on this one: the Zuni fetish doll from Trilogy of Terror. Damn, that thing was scary. I’d forgotten that his name was “He Who Kills”.
The hand coming out of the grave at the end of Carrie scared the shit out of me. The only other time I’ve literally jumped out of my seat at the movies was the waterhole scene in Crocodile Dundee.
If you’ve perused lots of creepy pasta, you’ve probably already come upon Marble Hornets. I wasn’t so terribly bowled over at first, but the other night I was up with one of the kids, put her back to bed, and glanced out a window as I went back to my room. I started thinking about how creepy it would be if Slenderman was out there, and I have to confess I kind of ran back to my (curtained) bedroom!
Stephen King’s short stories “The Boogeyman” and “The Moving Finger” also come back to haunt me in the wee hours.
Being a tad claustrophobic, my pulse was really racing as I watched the movie The Descent.
When I was a young teen, my best friend and I went and saw The Amityville Horror at the theater with her parents one evening. When we got back in the car you’ll never guess what was in the car. Yep, a couple of flies. We freaked right the hell out until we made her dad kill them. With prejudice.
Candyman gaves me nightmares - the original one, not the sequels.