I was doing some research for a screenplay I’d like to write.
Mostly, I was looking for nifty ghost story lore. You know, the local version of the Vanishing Hitchhiker, the Mysterious Bridge Where Spooky Ooky Things Happen, Ghosts, all that kinda stuff. We’re not talking serious scares here, just local versions of the usual stuff.
Anyway, I was reading some of these and I eventually caught myself a serious case of the heebie-jeebies. I’m talking goosebumps, the lizard brain going, “Something’s gonna get us!”, the whole nine. And I live in an apartment complex, which doesn’t help things. Thumping on walls, bumps on the stairs, voices all over, I’ve got em all, so at least I can blame it on loud people, but geez, it’s not helping my heebie jeebies.
And then I remembered reading a thread on the “mysterious things” that some of us had experienced. I posted in it myself. And rereading it gave me another dose of the heebie jeebies.
But here’s why it bothers me. I’ll read the goriest, scariest books with no problems. Scary movies? Count me in. I love horror flicks. Nothing bothers me. I could shower with ease after I saw Psycho the first time. But reading some ghost stories that are basically urban legends, I’m on full alert.
Does this happen to anybody else? Or am I just becoming a total wuss?
Waah. GMRyujin, be glad of that apartment complex. I am a complete wuss, won’t watch horror flicks, won’t read anything by Stephen King, refuse to go on the crappy ghost train at the fair, and I live in the last house on a long, winding road, just next to a small coniferous forest. The wind howls, the trees tap at the windows, owls hoot outside my bedroom door. For all I know there’s a resident bat colony at the end of the garden. It’s not nice.
Some things just get in your head, you know? I read Stephen King, I watch ghost story movies, none of that stuff bothers me, but when people start talking about their real life ghost stories, the hair on my arms goes up and I get the heebie jeebies. There’s been the odd thing on tv that got to me, too - I think a Buffy episode actually made me jump once.
This is funny. I’m exactly the same way; made-up horror material in whatever media invariably fails to scare me, but reading urban legends or stories that supposedly really happened can drive me out of my gourd with sheer terror.
I think it has something to do with the “unsolved mystery” factor of it; the fact that the scary stuff you’re reading has a supposed basis in reality and no one has ever been able to reconcile it with the natural world or uncover the reasons for its happening. From there it’s not a great leap to thinking: “If it really did happen, what’s to say it couldn’t happen right here, right now?” Cue big ol’ heebie-jeebies, even if you know that there’s a very great chance the story’s either made-up or grossly exaggerated.