Halloween, a bit early

in Random Crap

First of all, IT’S HALLOWEEN.  It’s my favorite holiday of the year and to celebrate I’m posting a two sentence, two minute horror video to celebrate:

Right.  So, I’ll just never sleep again, shall I?

And in the spirit of things, what’s the scariest thing you’ve ever seen?  My real-life ghost story is too long to write here so I’ll just stick with scariest movie I ever watched (A tie between The Ring and Troll Hunter) and the scariest book I ever read (IT) which was probably only so completely terrifying because my mom said I wasn’t old enough to read it so I ended up reading it under the covers at night while listening for the sounds of my insomniac mother and a murderous clown that wanted to eat me.

Your turn.

PS.  Real Halloween post coming soon.  This is just to tide you over until I get Victor to put his costume on.

282 thoughts on “Halloween, a bit early”

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  3. Pretty sure that the scariest time of my life was the 2 weeks after I watched The Ring…. then I decided I should buy the trilogy of books it was based on. Loosely based. And was freaked out for another couple of weeks.

    Just no.

  5. I read The Shining when I was 10 for the same reason then I slept with the lights on for a month.

  6. I’ve read this story before. And my main concern is WHAT DO YOU DOOOOOOOOOOOOO? As the parent which child is which? And how do you decide? And THEN what do you do?

    *trauma*

  7. I agree that The Ring was very scary. It’s the last horror movie that really freaked me out. Maybe because I was home alone in the dark…The closest thing to a ghost story I have is when i was on my grandmother’s farm as a kid and someone(or something) kept throwing dirt at me, but no one was there. I still think it was a cousin who snuck in through the fields, but you never know.

  8. I had wicked insomnia last night (still haven’t slept) and ended up watching Shark Week on Netflix by myself in the dark in the middle of the night. Someone out in the parking lot made a noise and I about jumped out of my skin. And I wonder why I can’t sleep……..

  12. Scuba diving in South Africa. Night dive… and suddenly there was a Great White Shark circling above me and my buddy. We stayed close to the ocean floor – Sharks only attack from below so we weren’t in real danger. But it was pretty damn scary!

  13. Think of all of the stuff that I can accomplish since I will no longer sleep. Yay, me!

  14. I cannot WAIT to see what Victor dresses up as. You and Hailey killed it (halloween-y pun intended)

  15. I was just checking out an Imgur gallery with a collection of Reddit’s best two-sentence horror stories and this one was one of the creepiest. Amazing video adaptation!

  16. Stayed up all night one night reading Stephen King’s “The Dark Half” which ends with a man being pecked to death by hundreds of blackbirds. The sun was coming up as I finished the book, and I became aware of an odd noise outside. I peeked through the curtains to see the entire yards covered with hundreds of black birds (the landlord had just mowed the evening before). Gave me the creeps for days!!

  17. My parents left me alone with some strangers. We all sat around watching TV. The trailer for Dario Argento’s “Suspiria” came on. I freaked out, and became convinced there was a creature called Suspiria living in the attic. I was six. This tormented me for years, and has even followed me into adulthood. I made a short video telling almost the whole story:

    Since then I’ve watched the movie “Suspiria”, and the same thing held true for it that was true of other Dario Argento films. I’ve seen episodes of Spongebob Squarepants that were scarier.

  18. Oh, and my ghost story: A lot of times when I first wake up, I think I see people in my room, but eventually my eyes adjust and the shadowy people resolve into the mess of my room. Last month, I thought I saw a man standing in my room when I woke up. I kept watching, waiting for him to resolve into whatever it really was, but it didn’t. Then I saw his eyes flash. I freaked out, looked away for a second, and when I looked back he was gone.

  19. I have to finish the draft of my research project by the end of the day. That’s a pretty scary prospect that will likely lead to my not sleeping tonight.

  22. I’m that girl that won’t sleep with any extremities hanging off the bed for fear there’s something under the bed. you.are.not.helping

  23. The scariest thing I’ve ever seen? In 1979 my mother was drunk, dancing at our Halloween party, wearing a muu-muu which she lifted above her waist, several times. She wasn’t wearing underwear. Happy Halloween!

  25. Scariest thing that I’ve ever seen was actually early Halloween morning (around 2 or 3 AM) when I was 11 or 12 years old. It was my first experience with sleep paralysis (Wiki or Google it), except I didn’t know it was sleep paralysis at the time. I woke up suddenly from a bad dream and all the shadows in my room were moving rapidly, and I couldn’t move or scream, I could only look around with my eyes. I looked over at the pillow next to me, and a shadowy hand was reaching out of it towards my head. I soon snapped out of it, all the shadows went back to normal and I could move again. I didn’t go back to sleep for another hour or so.

    (I don’t believe this was a genuine paranormal experience now; sleep paralysis can cause hallucinations. But I didn’t know that at the time, so it was pretty damn terrifying.)

  26. Pet Cemetery freaked me out when I was 14. We had a cat that got distemper and had to be put down right when I was in the middle of the book. I just knew that cat was coming back for revenge.

  29. I love halloween, dressing up, and being awesome!

    The scarest movie I ever watched is a toss up between The Ring, and Event Horizon… I stopped watching horror movies after those two.

  30. I just watched this with my 11 year-old, and it inspired him to remember a really scary story that wasn’t really scary to him because he thinks it’s only mildly weird that a marble will roll six inches across the surface of the dryer – from a dead stop to a dead stop – for no reason at all. He thinks this story will make me feel really guilty for sending him down to the laundry room to get a new roll of paper towels. He’ll soon realize how much worse I would feel having to go down and get it myself. Isn’t this why we have things like canaries and children? To send them ahead and make sure the laundry room is safe? Anyway, thanks for the creep-out.

  31. If you and the kiddo don’t pull some variation of this on Victor, I will be so very disappointed.

    Do it. Be evil. You know you want to…

  32. I was carrying my two-year-old from the car into our house through the back porch, which was very dark. She was sleepy and laying her head on my shoulder but when we got into the porch she straightened up and asked very clearly “Who’s that?” while pointing in the vicinity of our porch furniture. There wasn’t anyone there that I could see, but for the rest of the night I was convinced that she could see ghosts (because of course children and animals can see stuff that adults can’t see) and we were being haunted. And I don’t even believe in ghosts!!

  34. Ohgodstheriiiiing!!!
    Agreed. I was so horrified by that film I unplugged my computer and TV, slept in my kid’s room with the baby gate across the door, and couldn’t keep food down for three days. I was so traumatized it was at least two years before I could actually utter the phrase “The Ring.”
    Seriously.
    I don’t watch horror movies any more.

  35. The Grudge was the scariest thing I have ever seen as an adult. But as a kid it was The Exorcist. I still can’t watch her walking down the stairs. Ugh!

  36. The first time I saw “IT” I was house sitting for a couple at church who had a cat that had just given birth to kittens. I was alone, it was dark and the livingroom was surrouded almost entirely with windows. I was wrapped in a blanket on the couch wondering why I was SO STUPID and watching this movie when I heard a scratching noise behind me. This would be the only time in my life I thought I might actually pee myself. I sat their frozen and beyond terrified as the noise made its way closer to me. I couldn’t even turn my head to prepare for what bloody death was surely coming my way. I felt something on my shoulder and my heart stopped.
    Then a sweet, tiny kitten face pressed up against my cheek and began to purr. Yeah.. my big bad scary was a kitten that couldn’t have weighed more than a pound soaking wet. I couldn’t decide which to do first… throw up or laugh hysterically.

  37. IT was totally the scariest book I ever read too. I will never forget reading it at night, laying on my bed. I got so scared that my heart was POUNDING and I had to put it down. I fell asleep, with the lights on, and eventually I woke up realizing I had to turn off the lights… and the switch was on the other side of my room. I was totally convinced IT was under my bed, with its sharp little teeth, ready to eat me. So I did what any self-respecting 14 year old would do… I stood on my bed and hurled myself off, ran to turn off the lights and then flew horizontal back onto my bed, all the while ensuring my feet were never within an arm’s grab of the floor under my bed.

    Scariest book, ever!

  38. The original Haunting has always scared me. I can’t watch it alone at night. Strike that, I shouldn’t watch it alone at night, but I always do.

    As for scary true stories, I have a fun sleep disorder that sometimes causes hallucinations at night when I’m awake so I’ve seen wasp people looking in my window, tiny little men dancing on my bed (that one was fun), and apparitions in white floating by my bed. At least I hope they’re just hallucinations. Great, now I’m never going to sleep again.

  39. Scariest thing to ever happen to me: I was in the garage at my old house working on my car and my roommate kept his motorcycle in there when it wasn’t in use. I was taking a break from my car and standing 20 feet away from his bike when the lights started going off on his bike.

  42. My “ghost” story – One morning, when I went downstairs and saw the tv on. It was on the Netflix home screen and it said the most recent movie watched was The Exorcist. As I cannot watch scary movies and all my kids were too young to figure out how to get to Netflix, it was a little disconcerting. Since then, we’ve had a butcher knife go missing and, last week, the computer started playing youtube by itself in the middle of the night. Overall, I’m not too worried as I still suspect our cats in all 3 cases…pretty sure they are plotting to kill me.

  43. Read: Salem’s Lot. Tied my insides into knots and got cramps. Freaked. Me. Out. (and I refused to read IT).
    Seen: Probably parts of the TV series, IT. Yikes.(Because I mostly don’t watch scary movies).

  44. I grew up in a true haunted house… logging camp turned prohibition era safe house turned family home to my unfortunate family. Though I never SAW anything, I felt plenty. I sense “spirits” around me often….

    I’m actually going to see a psychic medium in 2 weeks… on the anniversary of the day my sister was murdered 16 years ago. Hoping that won’t be scary, but hoping it will be a fruitful visit…

  45. And now I won’t watch that video you posted! The comments scared me off. Can’t handle the scary!

  47. Scariest movie..The Grudge! Aak! But I also feared House on Haunted hill. I know, chris kaftan is in it, how scary can it be!? The fast movements freak me out! Lol
    Scariest book? I also say It!

  49. I actually didn’t find Troll Hunter scary…even laughed through parts of it. But I also don’t watch a lot of horror movies because they disturb the fuck out of me. The Ring got to me because of the horse/ferry scene and the lack of any sort of resolution. Didn’t scare me, per se, but every time I remember it, it leaves me queasy.

    Granted, I’ve worked really hard to get past the crippling fear my over-active imagination created a lot when I was a kid. Scariest book ever was actually just a few scenes from one called Healing at the Crossroads. (Or something close.) Sentient, sadistic dingoes killing and posing creatures and making drums out of people’s faces, laughing outside of windows the whole time. I had to stay up and finish the book to find out how they were defeated just in case I dreamt about them.

  50. The scariest thing I ever read was the Stephen King’s “The Boogeyman” in his Night Shift collection from 1978. I read it in high school some time later during my King phase, and the last couple of paragraphs scared me so bad, I literally ran out of the house to stand in my front yard in the middle of a Sunday afternoon. I didn’t start to feel stupid until I heard my dad tinkering in the garage, realizing I didn’t want to have to explain to my old man how I scared myself out of my own house.

  51. Shit Jenny… I was scared to watch that damn video.. First of all if my kid asked me to check for monsters under his bed, I’d scoot back and look like that.. I wouldn’t get on my hands and knees and my myself vulnerable.. “You’re on your own kid!!” LOL

    My scariest story?? Hmmm I guess the story of the Llorona.. Mexicans are good to scare their kids with her and the Cukoy..

  52. I went to see The Blair Witch Project while living in a big old house in the woods for a summer internship. SO did not sleep that night!

  53. (First time posting — but a big fan & loved your book)

    So, I don’t usually like horror movies because I get way too freaked out. And I see above at least a few of you have seen The Grudge and thought it was as scary as I did. But I CHALLENGE you all to watch the original movie that The Grudge is based on–a Japanese film called Juon. Now, maybe it is because I had to keep my eyes open to read the subtitles??? But I think the music & sound effects are by far the scariest things in EXISTENCE. This is no exaggeration: somewhere in the middle of this movie I had to but the DVD in the freezer. The whole thing, box & all. IN THE FREEZER. Scared the living shit out of me.

    If you’ve ever had to put a movie in the freezer, it’s definitely tops for scary. Just sayin

  54. My friend and I were planning to see ‘Any Which Way You Can’ (the sequel to ‘Every Which Way but Loose’), but it was sold out. So we went to a different theater and caught a double feature of ‘Carrie’ and ‘The Shining.’ I slept with the light on for 3 weeks after that.

  55. The scariest book by far is IT. I read it in HS in the gym and at one point I got so scared that I threw the damn book across the gym just to stop the SCARY. Being a kid of the 70s, I grew up with all the classic horror movies, but when they all started to take a seriel killer turn (Seven) is when I stopped watching. CUZ that shit can totally happen!!!!

    But by far the one movie sceen that still to this day that scares the SHIT out of me…”Three Men and a Baby” with the kid ghost in the window. And that was over 20 years ago…it came on TBS the other day and my kids were watching it and I was like TURN THE TV OFF NOW…that’s a scary movie!!! I got the Mom has lost her mind look….that is ok as long as I never see that again…just got the chills.

    Love you girl….Happy Halloween!!!

  56. Right after my husband and I got engaged, we went to have a romantic get away at The Crescent in Eureka Springs, AR. I didn’t know it’s haunted until after we stayed there, but the whole time it felt like I was being watched. The Ghost Hunters had crazy experiences there when they visited. It all made sense then. My best friend wants us to go spend the night there sometime. It’s been in the works for over a year. Hopefully we’ll get to go sometime in the near future. 🙂

  57. I grew up in a haunted house. George (seriously that was his name he died in our house in the early 1900’s) Whispered my name from the top of our enclosed stairwell, scared my brother’s friends by walking downstairs, turning on the tv and then turning it off and leaving, they never stayed the night again and opened locked doors that were usually quite difficult to open, door knob turning and everything. He was mostly a practical joker because he would turn off the light on my brothers while they were peeing HAHA!

  58. Favorite horror movie! The Thing. The 1982 version. The scariest book I’ve read? Well no book has ever scared me as much as reading Jurassic Park when I was 10. I wanted to read it before seeing the movie, my Mom really discouraged me, my brother warned me but I didn’t listen and didn’t sleep for days. Lol!

  59. When a Stranger Calls scared the shit out of me. I was 17 and an active baby sitter at the time. I must have checked on the kids I watched every 5 minutes while they were sleeping.

  60. Okay, I am going to have a nightmare from watching that little video.
    Scariest movie is definitely The Exorcist. Saw it when I was sixteen and it freaked me out. I won’t watch now as an adult. And if I’m scrolling through the channels and I see that little girl possessed with that voice coming out of her I can plan to have a nightmare that night.
    Scariest book was Salem’s Lot. Read in my door room at college was there all by myself and it was late and I couldn’t look at the windows yet kept looking at them.

  61. I read Salem’s Lot when I was about ten. It scared me so bad that I convinced my four year old twin brothers to sleep on either side of me in my bed. That way whichever way the vampires came for me, there’d be a child sized buffer.

    I’m the worst.

  62. Yeah that was one scary little video (which I’ll be showing to everyone to freak them out).

    Scariest movie: Freddy Kreuger. I’m irrationally terrified of that guy PLUS the actor that played him.

    Scariest book: I also have to go with IT. Murderous clowns that prey on children? Yeaaaaah (I’ve read it 3 times at least).

  63. I once had a dream that I was in a very BDSM relationship with Dick Cheney. After that, I could watch twenty child-gargoyles pluck out bunny eyes while painted up like clown and simultaneously laughing/humming, and I’d still not be as frightened.

  64. I can’t watch “American Werewolf in London” which I know is campy horror, but I watched it too young and it scarred me for life. I’d lie in bed and look at the black rectangle that was my parents’ open bedroom door, and my active 6-year-old imagination would keep seeing that big werewolf stalking down the hall out of the blackness. /shudder/

    “The Grudge” is pretty scary to me though. Same with “The Ring.” I still can’t watch the kid rise out of the well.

    Scariest book is “The Exorcist.”

  65. I love the Twilight Zone’s. One when I was little – something about people down in a sewage drain. Trapped. Thought they were in hell. Turned out they were barbies. A little girl dropped them down there or something. All of them were so great though.
    Happy Halloween!

    -Angie

  67. My real-life ghost story isn’t scary at all, just odd and kind of awesome. The scariest story I ever read was “Salem’s Lot. There were whole chunks of that book that I couldn’t read until I was much older

  68. The scariest thing I’ve seen is the ending to the movie Carrie on the night it opened. I was 17. I screamed at the top of my lungs in the theater right into my date’s ear. I haven’t been able to go to a scary movie ever since.

  69. I liked Troll Hunter though I did not find it to be scary really. The Conjuring is supposed to be a fucking freak out show but I dont generally watch scary movies much cause Im a giant vag.

  70. Ok I take that back for the scariest book, it was something that I don’t recall the name of, but it was this small town and everyone turned into giant china dolls and chased people to kill them. Creepy shit.

  72. I read Amityville Horror when I was 9. I was visiting my Aunt and Uncle who, at the time, rented an old farmhouse in the middle of bumfuck Oklahoma. It was our family Easter and everybody and their Grandma (literally) was staying in this 2 bedroom house. I slept in my sleeping bag, under the dining room table and used a flashlight to read. We were there for 2 nights and I stayed up all night both nights reading and trying not to crap my pants every time I heard a creak or groan in the floor boards above me. I thought my Uncle was upstairs moving around. About a year later, I found out that the owners of the house had locked the door at the top of the stairs and no one, in our family, had ever been up there! I am so glad I didn’t know that then!! Also, sorry Aunt Judy for hiding that egg in the vase on the mantel that was not found until August. Hugs!

  73. When I was a teen I went to a haunted house with my father. We were crawling through the attic when someone grabbed his leg. In his best Gomer Pyle voice my father yells “Well golly!” Ruined the whole dang thing. Everybody started laughing and even the dude in the casket set up. It’s kind of creepy when dead people laugh.

  74. I don’t wanna be “that guy” but I didn’t think Troll Hunter to be particularly scary. I have been trying for nearly two years to find the opportunity to use “TROOOLLLLL!” at work.

    I was old enough to know better but thunder scared the crap out of me for about a year after watching Poltergeist.

  75. I do have a ghost story, but the ghost actually saved me so it’s not scary.

    Scariest book? Salem’s Lot, read at about age 14-15. I had to bury it at the back of the closet so it (the book) couldn’t get me!

  76. I’ve never seen a ghost, but I swear I walked by the kitchen in my Mom’s house once and all the cabinets were closed. A few minutes later one of the doors was open all the way. Totally freaked me out.

  77. My husband and kids and I were talking about scary movies and he said that Jaws was terrifying. The kids scoffed…that isn’t scary at all…so he asked me: since you saw Jaws, do you swim in the ocean?

    No. fucking. way. I am not going to be lunch.

    He says..now THAT is a scary movie..if it actually changes your life.

  78. The Changeling. Saw it when I was ten or eleven and to this day I cannot leave a loose ball lying around in case some spirit decides to play with me and toss the ball around.

  79. There is a graveyard on my employer’s property. It is behind two locked fences. We don’t let just anyone in it. I’m typically the one who gives the tours of it to family members who want to visit it. We had family members show up today wanting to go see it. TODAY………and it’s raining. There was not another coworker available to go with me today and my manager wouldn’t let me go alone. I’m grateful. It’s just creepy to me! Who goes to a graveyard on freakin’ Halloween!

  80. Just thought i should warn you to double check your trick-or-treaters tonight. I think someone might be coming for Beyonce. (Has Beyonce been using your computer to go into chat rooms while you weren’t looking?)

    Police Search for 3-foot Metal Chicken Taken From Topsham

    Topsham, Vt. (ap) — Vermont State Police are searching for a 3-foot tall chicken.

    Police say the chicken made of fabricated sheet metal was stolen from the door step of a home in Topsham on Oct. 6.

    The 77-year-old homeowner, who police say collects antiques and odds and ends, told police that he waited to report the theft while he searched for the white, orange and red bird.

    Police say the metal chicken is valued at about $125.

    Anyone with information is asked to call the Vermont State Police barracks in Bradford at 802-222-4680.

  82. I don’t normally scare (not from books or movies, anyway), but I did find Blair Witch Project legitimately made me tense. And the two books that actually freaked me out a little were “House of Leaves” by Mark Danielewski (a friend of mine also read this book and had to put it in the freezer it scared her so much) and “Season of Passage” by Christopher Pike, which has made me give Mars the side-eye ever since I read it.

  83. Seriously…I will go home tonight and try to figure out how to check underneath my bed while keeping my eyes on the top of my bed…and hope the darn cats dont jump out and scare me to death…

  84. Scariest movie – It – I HATE clowns… annnnd…. The Ring – DAMN THE GIRL WHO CRAWLS OUT OF THE TV ARRRRGGGGHHHH!!!!!!

    Book – Hmmm… I don’t really read scary books… It’s probably the last thing i need to do before i go to sleep at night is read a scary novel. 🙂

    Happy Halloween!!!!!! 🙂

  85. The Shining – HANDS DOWN the scariest book I have ever read. Have you ever seen the episode of Friends where Joey keeps his copy of The Shining in the freezer because then you’re safer from it?!? Fucking *exactly*.

    Halloween – the one and only. The best horror movie ever made. It scared me so much as a teenager, I can’t even. And I absolutely cannot wait to scare the shit out of my kids with it when they’re old enough. MUAHAHAHAHAHA.

  86. I’m completely creeped out now.
    I read “The Birds” when I was 8, even though I knew I wasn’t supposed to. A week later, I wouldn’t leave the car when we went to visit my mom’s cousin in the country because there was a huge flock of crows in a field next to the house. But I wouldn’t tell her why. She just chalked it up to my being painfully shy and stubborn, until I confessed a few years ago.

  87. So I tried to turn the sound off while the little girl was humming at the end, because creepy, but THE SOUND WOULDN’T TURN OFF. Somehow my computer is now haunted, which is bad news, because how am I supposed to explain that to the IT department??

    I used to swear I could hear “a radio” in white noise, whether it was a fan or a space heater or just the refrigerator humming. To this day I can’t have white noise while I’m trying to sleep.

  88. Growing up I read anything Stephen King wrote. I’m pretty sure that has warped my mind. In real life the most terrifying thing I can recall is a slow creeping car that followed me as a youth while I crossed a road through a field… I’m sure I just narrowly escaped murder that day.

    The 2nd scariest thing I ever saw was a recent peek into a large super magnified cosmetic mirror that I think I have to get rid of because I notice I’m spending more and more time staring into it in horrified fascination. It’s like a train wreck… can’t.seem.to.look.away.

    The scariest things I find are the subtle things… like the malicious glint in the eye of a common variety psychopath working at the corner store vs. say a street full of scary zombies or an army of vampires. Those are meh. The most terrifying dream I had (as a child) was one where my mother seemed to have been replaced by an eerie wax figure with empty dead eyes… but other than that she was the same as usual. I hate that.

  89. I woke up so giddy this morning I could have sworn it was Christmas, except I probably like Halloween more since it’s way less work for me. Shining is still the all-time scariest for me since I watched it alone as a little kid, even though my parents advised against it (because they knew nothing and I knew everything). I’ve been waiting for Victor for make his appearance, you guys are going to look great. Happy Halloween!!!!

  90. I once lived in an apartment over top of a funeral home. I could tell you alot about not being able to sleep!

  91. The Descent. That ties with The Ring as the scariest movie I’ve ever seen. As far as books, I’d say Night Surf by Stephen King. Not just one creepy story, several! No wonder I developed insomnia.

  92. Scariest books, for me: It and The Exorcist, both of which I read when I was way too young to read them, in the dark, under the covers. For the longest time afterward, I could not sleep with my elbows or feet outside of the covers, for fear something would grab me (why elbows, I have no idea, but there you go).

    Scariest movie: Movies don’t scare me much, but The Ring kind of gave me the creeps.

    Scariest actual thing: While I like to think I am too rational to believe such things, I sort of believe the house I grew up in was haunted. I could not stand going into the upstairs den — I just felt wrong when I was in there, like someone I could not see was there with me. And, at least twice, when I was alone in the house and walking upstairs, I know I saw someone standing at the top of the stairs. But when I really focused, whatever it was was gone. Did I mention my old house actually was built on or near an Indian graveyard? True story.

  93. Scariest thing: waking up in the middle of the night and noticing that the kitchen light was on, walking to the kitchen and turning it off, then noticing the person in the kitchen. Turns out my husband couldn’t sleep and was up washing dishes, but I honestly thought an intruder was about to murder me.

  94. Growing up I read anything Stephen King wrote. I’m pretty sure that has warped my mind. In real life the most terrifying thing I can recall is a slow creeping car that followed me as a youth while I crossed a road through a field… I’m sure I just narrowly escaped murder that day.

    The 2nd scariest thing I ever saw was a recent peek into a large super magnified cosmetic mirror that I think I have to get rid of because I notice I’m spending more and more time staring into it in horrified fascination. It’s like a train wreck… can’t.seem.to.look.away.

    The scariest things I find are the subtle things… like the malicious glint in the eye of a common variety psychopath vs. a street full of scary zombies or an army of vampires. The most terrifying dream I had (as a child) was one where my mother seemed to have been replaced by an eerie wax figure with empty dead eyes… but other than that she was the same as usual. I hate that.

  95. I read Helter Skelter when I was 10, way back in the “long ago” (okay 1983), it scared the living shit out of me because my parents were hippies and 90% of their friends looked like they could’ve been part of the Manson Family! I found out a few years later from my dad, that he had actually known Manson and a couple of his “girls” back when he was a musician living in San Francisco. Needless to say, that didn’t help my fear any! O.o

  96. A few years ago I got the bright idea to stay at the Myrtles Plantation (Google it, scary place blah blah blah). I *think* I’ve done my research and choose the room with the least freaky hauntings attached. I didn’t. Instead I chose the “rape room” also known as the only room that has a REAL murder they can prove attached to it. Did I mention I went by myself? Yeah.

    There were dozens of cats on the property and one attached himself to me. I really wanted to take him home and would probably have done if I wasn’t flying. He would sit on my shoulder like a parrot and walk around with me. When I went to bed, he came with me and it made me feel a bit safer. Around 4AM I wake up because he’s standing on my chest, back arched and HISSING at the door to the porch… where the murder happened. He does this for about 4-5 minutes, stops, purrs and curls up and goes back to sleep.

    I did not fall back asleep.

  97. Try reading The Other by Thomas Tryon. Scary, scary shit. It is out of print now so it might be a little hard to find (there is also a creepy movie adaptation they did of it in the 1970’s that is worth watching).

  98. I can’t “do” horror. When I was very young I saw The Incredible Shrinking Man, that scene where the spider is trying to EAT him, you see it with all it’s leggy grotesqueness and hungry mandibles, and he’s battling for his life with the safety pin, and the STICKS it, and spider goo gushes out all over him… *shuddering*

    Even though I know it’s ridiculous, even the tiniest spiders still creep me out.

  99. I didn’t turn the light off at night for a year after watching Nightmare on Elm Street. I was 14 when I saw it. I’m 46 now. I still refuse to watch scary movies. I like to read the plot summaries on Wikipedia and that’s as close as I will get.

  100. Well that was creepy and one of the main reasons I don’t watch horror movies anymore!!

    The creepiest thing I ever saw was back in high school and one night 3 friends and I were driving home the back way when we came upon a house on fire – we quickly turned around to go back and help as no one else was coming along and no one was at the scene helping – when we turned back, the house was fine, no fire, no smoke, no burn marks. Everyone I tell this story to laughs and says we must’ve been high or drinking or hallucinating but we were all stone sober. If you ask any one of us “remember that night…” they’ll finish the sentence “….the house was on fire but wasn’t on fire!?!?” That was creepy!!

  101. For me, the scariest thing I read, or at least the one which had the most lasting influence on me is “the Horla”, from Guy de Maupassant. For a while after a read it, I was convinced that I was haunted by the Horla too. I almost started making marks on my glass of water on my bedside. The only thing that stopped me was that I didn’t want my parents to think that I was completely crazy. Even now, years and years later, when I barely remember the details of the story, I sometime still wake-up at night, thinking that the Horla was there, watching me.

  104. Well Nightmare on Elm Street was really scary, but The Butterfly Effect totally creeped me. out!

  105. I was too chicken to watch the video. Darkness falls totally did me in and I can’t watch anything other than Hocus Pocus now.

  106. I came as Peppermint Patti today…. Not scary until I saw a pic of myself. I look HIDEOUSLY FAT -> scared myself. oui vey.

    Have a Minty Freshday!

  107. Saw the exorcist as a child. Never again. Saw one of the Freddy movies, and 1 or 2 of the Jason movies.. they are not for me.. too vivid of an imagination, however, the Freddy movie definitely freaked me out more, the Jason movie just grossed me out.

    Books.. hmm.. Unwind by Neal Shusterman, fairly creepy, not too distant future set book, that was about how the pro-lifers & pro-choicers came to a decision that was deemed “best for everyone”. It was horrible. Very intriguing story.

    Real life – as a child, I witnessed something that could only be explained as paranormal. In class, a trash can floated up a few inches from the floor, went a few feet and sat back down, and the door slammed. Not to mention the few premonitions I had as a child.. seeing places I’d never been to before & then ending up there, meeting people I’d never known, and finding myself there later on.. so ya, interesting at least to me.

  108. Seeing Daniel Radcliff sing in How to Suceed in Buisness Without Really Trying. Mainly because im convinced he was under the Imperious curse.

  109. When I was about eight I saw my father reading IT, and I asked him what it was about. So he told me the truth — that it’s about this monster that lives in the sewer and takes kids when they’re alone. And then he went into details about how it came up through a drain in a bathroom or out of a sewer drain. Sigh. Too much honesty, Dad. I spent the next five years taking a shower with my feet covering the shower drain and crossing the street to avoid storm drains. (Small upside is that when I finally read it at 13, it wasn’t nearly as scary as my imagination had been 🙂 )

  111. Scariest book – IT That book kept me up nights for a while as a kid. Scariest movie was Nightmare on Elm Street. My step dad and step brother took me to see it when it came out. My poor step dad said he did not think it would be that bad. I was 13 at the time and I had never been scared by a movie and had been reading Stephen King for a while. That movie scared the crap out of me and I still can not watch it today. My parents still laugh about it to this day.

  112. IT was DEFINITELY a freaky book. I was disapointed in the movie, though. :/
    I’ve been trying to get through a pretty disturbing book called Geek Love. It was recommended by another blogger, and it’s so odd/weird/disturbing . Have you read it?

    I’m a wimp, but I thought that the remake of Chainsaw Massacre was pretty horrible. I had nightmares after that one, and I was already grown.

    Exorcist of Emily Rose was pretty crazy too.

  113. thanks for all the links peoples, it will freak me out for days no doubt. Scariest movie I’ve ever watched was the first horror movie I was allowed to see. Parents left me alone downstairs, not allowed to have lights on and the MA winds were groaning through the front door…the movie was “Whatever Happened to Baby Jane”. Freaked me the hell out for a long time. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0056687/

  114. The scariest movie I have ever sern is Session 9: a crew are removing asbestos from an abandoned insane asylum, and one of them discovers a series of tapes that dredge up secrets best left buried…

    And the scariest thing I have ever read is A Prayer gor the Dying by Stuart O’Nan. It’s about a man who is his town’s sherriff, preacher, and undertaker during a time when his town, faith, and sanity are tested by wildfires and the outbreak of disease. And it’s told in second-person singular, forcing the reader to experience everything as if you yourself are the one going throygh it all.

  116. awesome two minute video. love, love, love. Halloween is my favorite, too. I may have to repost the scary video because it’s so awesome. scariest thing that’s ever happened to me (still frightens me to type it). hubby stayed in a haunted rent house in west texas while he was traveling and I went to stay with him. one night. then I drove six hours back home as fast as I could. he had told me that the house was weird and that he felt weird staying there. I woke up in the middle of the night and something, some presence was there in the bed with us. I checked hubby and he was sound asleep next to me. I tried to go back to sleep but I was freaked out. I closed my eyes for a second and when I opened them hubby’s face was about an inch from mine above me. his eyes were open, but he seemed sound asleep. I screamed. he freaked out and like woke up. we didn’t sleep anymore and I started packing my $hit back up to drive back home. we didn’t talk about it for a long time because it was too freaky. I didn’t see it, but I sure as $hit felt it. scariest movies: the conjuring, rosemary’s baby (still scares me), shutter (Japanese with subtitles – freaky scary to me), the grudge, and I know i’m missing some biggies, but there’s so many great ones. have a great night on the best day of the year!

  117. That was a great video! I love how it relies on imagination and isn’t as in-your-face as all movies are these days.

    The Ring terrified me. I made the mistake of watching the first girl’s reaction in slo-mo. NEVER DO THIS. It still haunts me and it was one significant other and two children ago. Let’s just say those Hollywood make-up people do shit right.

    For books, The Shining, It, and Pet Sematary all scared me to the point of nightmares and being afraid to turn to the next page. There is nothing as delicious as the fear to turn the page.

    In real life? Now that i have kids, ghosts do not scare me anymore. The most frightened I have ever been in my life were the one or two times I thought my kids were choking.

  118. Well at least I won’t be dreaming about zombies tonight….because like you I may never sleep again. Thanks?

    My scariest moment?

    I was staying in the priest’s quarters in a seminary turned convention centre. It’s a beautiful building built in 1852. The building are charming brick and structures with polished hardwood everywhere. The grounds are stunning and the staff gracious but I may never go back…

    I woke up in the middle of the night with the overwhelming sense of a presence in the room. Something was trying to either get very close to me or possess me. I was in a frozen half sleep state. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t talk. My husband was mere feet away and I couldn’t tell him I needed help.

    I silently screamed “not welcome” until the feeling went away. I like to tell myself I don’t believe in ghosts and the experience was a dream remnant (after all I have vivid dreams all the time). I like to tell myself that so I can sleep.

  119. When I was little my sister told me this story about “the gray man”. He was almost stick figure skinny and easily 8 feet tall. His limbs were alien looking in their length. His skin was gray and pasty, like he had been molded from clay. His skin was perpetually cold and clammy. He liked to stalk the woods, blending in with the trees, and watch the people. And when a child strayed too far into the woods, he would take them and they were never seen again. That feeling you get in the woods, when you feel like something is watching you? That’s the gray man. He’s watching, creeping closer, ready to snatch you up…

    That’s the condensed version. She told me the long version when I was five or six…. We live in Alaska, which is like 99% woods. And our trampoline and playhouse were right next to the tree line… I didn’t play out there for the rest of the summer.

  120. The scariest book I ever read wasn’t really that scary, but the circumstances around it frightened me. I was reading Isaac Asimov and Robert Silverberg’s Nightfall (a novel length expansion of Asimov’s short story with the same name). The story tells the tale of an alien planet much like Earth but with six suns in such a configuration that the planet is in eternal daylight. Well, not totally eternal. Once every 2,000 years, all of the suns set. When this happens, the people living on the planet see the stars for the first time and – having never experienced darkness of this kind before – all hell breaks loose and civilization is destroyed.

    Anyway, I’m reading the book how I usually read – totally immersed in the tale to the point that I’m oblivious to the outside world. (To reference another sci-fi/fantasy series: Reading for me is like falling into a Pensieve in Harry Potter’s world. Total, 100% immersion.) Just as the last sun is setting in the book and civilization is teetering on the brink, I happened to look up…. to see that dusk had arrived. Our own sun was setting. Thanks to being totally immersed in the book, I had a moment of horror thinking that civilization was going to be destroyed – before my mind snapped back into reality. (And even then I wasn’t 100% fine with the darkness arriving.)

  121. Oh my god! I wish there was more to it than that 2 minute snip, I LOVE scary movies.
    Can’t wait to see Victor’s costume.
    Thanks for being awesome!

  122. There are a couple incidents, but the first that came to mind happened when I drove semis cross-country with my husband. It was dark. I was alone in the bunk of the truck. I was reading Stephen King’s Christine. As I got to a passage where the dog started growling, my Lhasa Apso started growling. Freaked me out.

  125. When my daughter was a young 2 years old, she was playing in her room, across from my room where I was getting ready for work, and suddenly ran into the hall, looking down it into our living room, and waved and said Hi! I said Who are you talking to? She said, The boy. I said What boy? She just looked for a second, and said He’s gone now. And went back into her room. It’s been 2 1/2 years without any similar incident, so I assume he was just passing through, and can stay on his way, thank you very much.

  126. Scariest thing I’ve ever seen? That would have to be when my kid pooped in the bathtub as a toddler. Seriously, I haven’t bathed in that tub since.

  128. Scariest movie(s): The Birds, Paranormal Activity 1 (yes, I know, it’s cheesy, but it had some good moments in it!), The Exorcist (still can’t watch that one), Old Yeller (rabies, y’all)

    Books scare me a whole lot more than movies: The Shining, World War Z (too real!), ‘Salem’s Lot, Old Yeller (I was way too young to read it, and RABIES), The Lottery and Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson, The Other by Thomas Tryon.

    Strangely, IT didn’t bother me. Maybe I’ll have to re-read it.

  129. IT was the scariest book. I had the edition with Tim Curry’s Pennywise on the cover. The book could not stay in my room and it had to be face down when I was not reading it. The Exorcist didn’t scare me. In In fact, I got my tenth grade English teacher to let our class read it in Catholic School.

  130. My husband and I actually got married last Halloween, and we make a big deal of the day ever since we started going out, even though here in Chile it’s not that celebrated.

    I was also scared shitless with It, I had to sleep with the light on, AND I WAS 18 YEARS OLD! The movie that scared me the most was The Exorcist, went to watch it when the director’s cut came out in 2001. I couldn’t sleep for WEEKS after that one!

  131. I remember reading Christine and thinking it wasn’t scary at all. Until a month later when I was standing alone in a dark parking structure and was feeling totally freaked out. I think the movie that scared me most as a kid was Children Shouldn’t Play with Dead Things. As an adult I think 28 Weeks Later is what makes me run up the stairs really fast at night.

  132. Last time you showed us a scary video is was that awful japanese animation with the scuttly bloody woman. I believe I three my laptop across the bed on that one. Not watching this one.

    So, um, what happens in it?

  133. The Ring made me too scared to answer a phone for weeks. Same for Stephen King’s “Cell.” I watched Poltergeist as a kid and to this day, a fuzzy TV screen makes me nervous. When I read World War Z, my boyfriend came home from work during a particularly intense scene and scared me so bad I fell off the couch. And I know this is corny, but The Strangers (with Liv Tyler) freaked me right out. The guy standing in the kitchen watching her?? AAAHHHH! And the final jump-scare startled me so bad, I screamed so hard that I literally hyperventilated. My hands and lips went numb.

    …I scare really easily, apparently.

  134. I grew up in a late 1800’s restored Victorian that used to be a carriage stop, and with my mom being an interior designer and my dad in construction, they were ALWAYS remodeling. They decided to knock out the cubby under the stairs and make a little linen closet for the bathroom, and inside the walls, they found old dishes, baby clothes, and newspaper clippings from the 1890’s. They pulled out a painting of a women in period clothes, (the time period, not THAT TIME OF THE MONTH period, you guys), and my brother, who was four at the time, walked up and nonchalantly said, “Oh! That’s the woman who reads to me.”

    WHAT?! LAKSJELKJALSD. It’s been like 18 years, and it STILL gives me the hardcore heebie jeebies.

  139. Oh yeah, fuck sleep… THANKS, Jenny…

    Even though by the time I saw it I KNEW it wasn’t “real,” The Blair Witch Project’s ending haunted my nightmares for WEEKS. Amazing how something with no blood, no gore, and no violence can still completely screw you over like that…

  141. I’m a huge wimp. When I was in Jr. High I spent Halloween at a friend’s house and watched Carrie and Amityville horror. She slept peacefully all night, while I tried not to scream each and every time their gas furnace came on with a whoosh and a wheezing that truly sounded like the walls were breathing. So since then, I mostly avoid horror books and movies. I later saw the Changeling and that is about the scariest I can take.
    I enjoy the Brother Odd books by Dean Koontz. But novels about dystopian futures scare me, too. Oryx and Crake and The Year of the Flood, both by Margaret Atwood scared me as much as anything else.

  142. I’m a wimp when it comes to ghost stories and gore, and I also have mental arguments with myself (“You’re being stupid! Ghosts aren’t real!” “But, no one has proven they’re not! And, there are all those celebrity ghost stories on TV! Ghosts could be real!”)

    My only ghost story isn’t really scary at all. We stayed at a cute, old hotel. My husband didn’t tell me that it had a reputation for being haunted, but the manager told us when we checked in that we were staying in the most popular room because it has the most paranormal activity. I was freaked out for most of the night thinking the woman from the picture in the room (the original owner’s mother) was going to appear somewhere and, I don’t know, yell at me? She never did, but at some point in the night I felt what seemed like a cat jump on the bed, walk over my hip, and settle down in front of me. I opened my eyes, and there was nothing there. I read in the “paranormal log” the next morning that many people have reported a gray ghost cat wandering the grounds and coming into rooms and sleeping with guests at night. I’ll take a friendly ghost cat any day. The rest of the ghosts can just help me out by not coming around and freaking me the hell out.

  143. I was never good at scary movies. When I was a kid, my parents tried to get my sister and I to watch Jaws, and as soon as that first tourist started spurting blood, we were both screaming and crying. I still haven’t watched Jaws all the way through, though Jaws 2 was pretty funny.

  144. My parents were just next door having dinner with friends and my sister and I were home alone. Old enough to be home alone but way to young to watch a scary movie. So scared I was hiding behind a couch watching a movie that I think was called Salem. I just remember there was a little boy hovering in the air and scratching the bedroom window of his friend. But he wasn’t human anymore. Scared the bejesus out of me.

    And the book that really got me? I was reading a book by Stephen King about technique, where stories come from etc. In it he said he had one story that he had been working on for years. It scared even him every time he worked on it so he would stop and lock it up. Then later (sometimes years), he would pull it out and work a little more. He said it was getting longer and longer and he was unsure where it was going to go. And he had no idea what to call it. Then I read IT. I do believe that is what actually scared him. Totally freaked me out and I still won’t walk over grates in the ground (try that in NYC)

  145. I was 8 or 9 when I woke up in the middle of the night and noticed the bathroom light flicking on and off, on and off, on and off. Absolutely frozen in abject terror, holding my breath, I didn’t think “ghost;” for some reason my brain vividly conjured a King Kong-style gorilla. No idea why. Had I watched the movie? No memory of that, only the absolute certainty that if I so much as breathed the gorilla was going to come kill me. Still don’t know why the light was turning off and on….

  147. The Event:
    Standing beside my bed, setting my alarm clock/radio/whatever – an arm reaches out from below my bed and grabs my ankle.

    Results:
    Little sister is bruised, Dad is mad, Mom is laughing and I slept in the bathtub with the door locked.

  148. I remember I was 14 or so when the movie version of “Misery” came out. A friend and I watched it on video (yes, video…I’m so OLD!) when we had a sleepover. Her mom wasn’t home, and on top of that, we had to go upstairs of her very old house, to sleep in the attic room. We freaked out at every possible noise the whole night! Not much sleeping happened 🙂

  150. Never.sleeping.again.

    You know what’s always the scariest in horror movies? The children. The Ring, The Exorcist, and The Shining are perfect examples. Children = creepy scary.

  151. A few years ago I lived with a roommate who had a pretty old dog named Charlie. He had to be put down rather suddenly one weekend after he developed cancer-related nosebleeds. It was a rough weekend, and when I woke up Monday to go to work, I was emotionally and physically drained, just totally out of it. As I stood in the kitchen making my lunch like a zombie, I suddenly heard panting, low to the ground, coming towards me. I turned without thinking as usual to admonish Charlie that “this food’s not for you”…and there was nothing there. I immediately panicked and fled. I left my half-open food on the counter, grabbed by bag, and ran out the door, leaving a bunch of lights on in the apt. I never really believed in ghosts/spirits/whatever you want to call it but that experience completely shook me, and now I do wonder…

  153. I can’t think of any scary books I’ve read, which is funny because I’ve read quite a bit of Stephen King. I used to read RL Stine books when I was younger and those always freaked me out.

    Scariest movie? The Shining.

  154. I can’t watch scary movies on account of my mother doesn’t let me sleep with her anymore. Even though she lives down the street from me.

    The scariest book I’ve ever read is Stephen King’s “Salem’s Lot” – I used to wake up in the middle of the night thinking that I was being attacked by vampires. Turns out it was just the blanket wrapped around my neck.

  155. Exorcist is still the scariest. Something about that kid back flipping down the stairs….bbrrrrrrrr…….still gets to me. I want to hear your ghost story, plleeeeeaaaaassse?

  156. I learned my lesson after the cartoon you shared that I *KNEW* was scary because you told me it was and then it scared the crap out of me anyways lol. So I’m not watching that tiny video.

    The scariest thing I ever saw was my 12 day old child weighing two pounds less than she did two days (and she only started at 7 pounds) before because the doctor didn’t believe me when I told her how much my child was vomiting. Fortunately she got better : ).

  157. I must admit – I am too much of a chicken and quit watching the video as soon as the Dad walked in the house!!!

    Scariest book was denifintely IT – I still hate clowns and I avoid storm drains. Scary shit.

    Scariest movie – the Shining. Holy crap. I don’t watch scary movies any more. No way, No how.

  159. Reading Stephen King at too young an age was my favorite childhood pass time. I will never forget reading Children of the Corn while driving through endless corn fields in Iowa on a cross-country trip. I kept waiting for a kid to come running out of the corn and crash into our station wagon (because 80’s).

  160. Scariest movie: The Changeling (with George C. Scott, not the dumb Angelina Jolie movie with a similar name)
    Scariest book: ‘Salem’s Lot

  161. Scariest thing that ever happened to me? Found my 13-year-old daughter in an alcoholic coma with an empty whiskey bottle by her side. The emergency staff at Children’s Hospital said that her blood alcohol level was over .4 at its peak. Daughters = irreplaceable. That was more than 17 years ago; healing has happened. But there’s a part of me that goes back to that terror sometimes. About 6 or 7 years after *the event* I found myself teaching a class of freshmen at the same state university my daughter was then attending. One day in class it turned out to be the right time to tell them the story. Many of them later emailed me to extend the conversation and talk about campus drinking but I don’t know what scared them most: The “This could happen to you” story I told or the “This is what you could put your mom through” story I projected.

  162. My best friend and I decided to watch Stephen King’s Christine on late night television when we were about 15. Things were fine, we were only moderately scared–until the neighbor roared up in their muscle car, back from a night of partying and so drunk they missed their own driveway.

  163. I had to pause it when the camera started to come back up from under the bed. I just can’t handle what is on the bed….gulp.

  164. I was a very gullible, well-behaved child, growing up with a rebellious, devious twin brother. Family members & baby sitters would often try fear tactics to get him to listen…. “Go to bed or the boogey man will get you!” “Don’t go near that old electric fan, it’ll cut your fingers off” “Tie your shoes or they’ll get caught in an escalator and it will chew your leg off!”. It never worked on him, of course — he’d set traps so he could see the boogey man, stick things into the fan to see what happened, and stand at the edge of an escalator dangling strings into the “teeth” of the steps. Me? I was too terrified to sleep, I refused to go in the room with the antique fan in it, even if it was unplugged, and I still get anxious around escalators.

    My scariest experience was my entire freaking childhood. I’m scared for life, I tell ya.

  165. Thanks so freakin’ much. I was so sure it was going to be funny because you’re The Bloggess. But no.

  167. When a group of girls I used to hang out with in third grade, decided to boycott me because they thought I had a dark and dirty mind.
    I felt like a little witch.
    That was scary. Scary good.

  168. Scariest movie and scariest book — Stephen King’s The Stand. I’m a germaphobe, so, ya know, horrific illness that kills 90% of the world is kinda one of my buttons 🙂 Also, since we’re talking slumber parties, when I was about 11, my friends and I watched “The Dolls”, which, as you can imagine, featured murderous dolls. My friend’s dad thought it would be hilarious to arrange my friend’s extensive china doll collection at the top of the stairs, so the first girl who needed to pee would probably do so in her pants. Those dolls with the glass eyes freak me out to this day.

  169. This is probably the first time I’m glad my office has disabled videos.

    The scariest movie I ever saw was Kindergarten Cop. Because of Arnold. You see, when I was very small, my dad rented The Terminator, and I don’t remember anything about it, but I had nightmares about Arnold for decades. My mom was pissed.

  170. I don’t even dare watch your video because I know that it’ll freak me out. The Ring absolutely did me in! I couldn’t sleep without a light for ages. And worse? We had an old tv in the bedroom that had a faulty power button – you’d turn the tv off and 30 seconds later, it would pop back on. Heart-attack Every. Single. Time.

    I love Stephen King and It is in my top 5. To this day I have never looked at a clown without thinking about that book.

  171. I had a dream once where something was trying to catch and possess me. Finally, after running and running, I was seeing myself through a nurse’s eyes, and I turned to face her and my face smiled an evil, crazy smile. I woke up, but that didn’t help.

  172. As a Norwegian, I’m always interested in opinions on The Troll Hunter – in my opinion, the most Norwegian movie ever. It is full of Norwegian inside jokes (well, as “inside” as something can get when it’s shared by the population of a country). Maybe those Norwegian inside jokes made it less scary to me.

  173. I have three ghost stories, none of which are malevolent and only one was scary to me. When I was a toddler my mom walked into my room and saw me talking to an old man standing next to my crib. He was the ghost of the grandfather that lived in the house before us and I slept in his grandson’s room. My mom thought he came back looking for the little boy. Also when I was about two my mom and grandma were looking through old photos and they came to one of my great-grandma who died 2 years before I was born. I started smiling and saying “dat lady! dat lady!” Apparently they thought I had seen her before because I was smiling and happy to see her again.
    Finally, my cousins lived on a piece of property in the woods that supposedly had Native American remains nearby (the old Indian burial ground strikes again). Odd stuff went on in that house all the time. I personally saw the TV come on by itself and I was once on my way to the bathroom and just as I got there the light turned off and the door was slammed shut in my face. That curtailed my need to pee immediately. I came back to the kitchen and told my cousin and she was very nonchalant about it, like oh the ghost is up to his old tricks again!

  174. About 15 years ago, my best friend & I decided to turn out all the lights, light a bunch of candles, and dig out her Ouija board. On Halloween.

    We were contacted by a little boy who kept spelling out HELP ME HELP ME HELP ME. To this day, I can’t even be in the same room as a Ouija board.

  176. Okay, that was the definition of horror.
    Seriously, that was scarier than a surprise visit by your mother-in-law…..

    Well played, Jenny.
    Well played, indeed.

  177. TROLL! (I hope that wasn’t too scary).

    My wife was JUST complaining that troll hunter was a “stupid” movie. It’s a documentary about trolls… HELLO! It doesn’t get much better than that.

    TROLL!!! (that time I said it in Swedish)

  178. Tell Victor to shake a leg! I’m leaving for a 3 week vacation in Indonesia today and I want to see this shiznit before I get on a plane for the next eleventy-million hours!

  180. I saw The Birds when I was way too young and as a child often freaked out over random quiet flocks of birds because they were plotting, you know. Little brother and I saw Night of Lepus one time and that scared the pants out of us. It didn’t help that some big machinery nearby was making a noise similar to something in the movie. As a teen my friends and I loved watching the scary horror movies but you won’t catch me watching them nowadays. Real life is tense enough, thank you.

    As for books I’ve read lots of things that have scared me while reading them or for a bit afterward but a couple that stick with me are Pet Cemetery (and I’ve since met cats I think came back from the grave) and the true crime book about Danny Rollins, serial killer in FL. Not the book the author who later became his wife but the other one. I read tons of true crime and that one scares me like I’m convinced some serial killer is coming for me. Like Jaws making people not swim in the ocean, that book made me real hyper about locking doors, checking windows, being conscious of places someone might be hiding to grab me…

  181. Scariest book I ever read was also IT. I now have clown issues and can’t sit in a bathtub while the water is draining. And I’m 43 years old! I also have qualms about walking over sewer grates ….

  183. That was awesome. Although my problem? nothing scares me. Not movies, not books. I can occasionally be startled, but nothing that keeps me up at night. I think I’m defective.

  184. In 1981 I was living alone (for the first time) in the South Bay area of California. One night, late, I was getting ready for bed in my VERY small, junior one-bedroom apartment that was located on the top floor, back corner of a large apartment complex in Sunnyvale. I heard a noise in the apartment…it took me literally fifteen minutes to work up enough courage to open my bedroom door and go into the living room…whereupon I saw the apartment door STANDING OPEN. Even though I was carrying a weapon (tennis racket) I started hyperventilating. I spent half an hour looking in every conceivable place for the “intruder” (including the kitchen pantry, the oven, the cupboards and under the sofa, and in the kitchen trashcan). Turns out I hadn’t securely latched the door when I locked it…and somebody walking by must have caused enough vibration to pop it open. But I don’t need to watch movies – there’s enough horror in my head, thank you.

    Scariest book was probably Stephen King’s “The Stand.” I had nightmares for weeks…just finished re-reading in time for this year’s Halloween. I’m now working on his book, “Cell,” which will take me through to All Saints Day tomorrow. Sending warm thoughts of horror, gore and mayhem to all and sundry at this most festive of seasons.

  185. My scariest movie was Abbott and Costello meet Frankenstein. Don’t think it was really all that scary, I was just way to young to be allowed to go. It was terrifying to me.

  186. The Ring. I was pregnant (with a girl) when I saw it. When Samara appears with a hair all long from the TV and starts … crawling toward the ex BF — I can’t even think about it anymore.
    And then my daughter, at age 7, woke me up standing over me…. her hair all long….. It was terrifying.
    books: the shining. The topiary comes alive. I will nver get near topiary again.

  187. @Jena #53,

    Ju-On is legitimately creepy, as Asian Horror often is. A friend of mine put it this way: in western horror films, you fear for your life. In eastern, you fear for your soul. Wife watched Ju-On with me once, and had to watch a few light-hearted kids movies afterwards, just so she could go to bed.

    As for Blair Witch, that is scary if you are an urban Yankee. To quote my wife and her friend, both of whom grew up in south Texas,

    “You are camping in the woods at night, and you hear a weird noise outside your tent. Quick, what’s the first thing you do?”
    “I pick up the shotgun and I-”
    “DUH! Right?”

  188. So many choices. But since I was a CHILD when I saw it (where the HELL were my parents, by the way?), I’d have to say When A Stranger Calls. Not only is it scary as crap, but it all COULD have actually happened. Oh, and did I mention that I was babysitting when I saw it for the first time? In a house with a newly-installed second phone line? At age TWELVE?

    Who the shit hires a skittish 12-year-old to watch their babies?!!?

    I wouldn’t have “checked the children” for all the Lucky Charms in their pantry that night. “Later, babies!!!” I would have screamed, exiting through a me-shaped hole in the wall.

    Happy Halloween, Jenny. Great clip.

  189. That video was great and horrifying! Mm, still giving me chills. And it’s a great way to show how to do a short, short movie because I’m going to be participating in the 48-hour film project – Horror films in Seattle in a couple of weeks and need to be able to write a compelling horror script for a 3-6 minute film.

    Scariest books: Salem’s Lot (I read until it got dark every night, then sat with the lights on in the house until it was late enough to go out to a bar and watch my friends in a band. Then I’d make my way home and my mom at least would be home in bed so I could sleep. Also, when I was a child I read a book called The Sound of Crying. It scared me so much, I couldn’t stand to have it on my bookshelf, so I gave it to a friend. Yeah, but it was the only way I could think of to get rid of it.

    Scariest movie: The Thing from the early 80s. I had nightmares for months about the disembodied head that sprouted spider legs and elongated eyes!

  191. The scariest book I ever read was at as a young child…I can’t remember the name of it but it was about a mutation/virus and the people were changing into these cat like monsters and eating other people in the town (not cat people, and not sleepwalkers that was only a movie). It was back in the 80’s and it was so scary and violent that I threw up on the car ride…probably cuz I was reading in the car but still!

    And the scariest movie I have ever seen is Darkness Falls ….don’t be fooled by this one it says it is about the tooth fairy….but really its about that creepy thing hiding in the dark behind you…you know the one that mkes you fly up the stairs from the basement like satan himself is trying to take a bite our of your ass?? creepy as hell, I had to have the lights on for two weeks!

  192. I was in a play in college and one night we were all on a break from practice and we were talking about the ghost that lives at the theater. Someone started joking about how it couldn’t possibly be real. At that moment the entire theater temperature dropped at least 10 degrees. Everyone screamed and started yelling at the guy to apologize. It was terrifying!!!

  193. Scariest movie – The Happening. Because it could happen!

    Scariest book – The Shining. Steven King at his best (before he went for volume over contet). But honestly, both movie adaptions sucked. “Here’s Johnny!”

    Scariest real event – Realizing 15 minutes AFTER the head on collision that I had no front teeth. Or rather, that there was a big gap where my front teeth should be. Shock can do weird things with your mind. Like make you think it’s perfectly normal that you have a bloody gap where your smile should be.

  194. Two scary movies come to mind when I think of the scariest. One is Night of the Living Dead which I saw ten minutes of one night in the middle the night when I woke up at my grandparents house. I was sleeping on the floor between their twin beds as I always did (maybe 6? 8 years old?) and they always slept with the tv on. All I remember is seeing zombies eat the brains of the firemen coming to rescue the heroes and I had nightmares for years.

    The second was The Ring which I watched at my mom’s house while visiting from college then insisted that she let me sleep with her. The rest of the year I covered my tv every night to prevent reflections.

    I’m kinda a horror movie wimp though. I love reading the plots online but I’d rather not watch them. Of the handful I’ve watched, The Blair Witch project had me leave camping early the next night (why watch it before camping?!? What was I thinking??), Saw had me eyes covered and cowering on my husband in the theater while crying profusely (I was outvoted on movie choice that day), and just my sister TELLING me about Silence of the Lambs caused a month of nightmares about people eating your tongue!

  195. @Kendra, sometimes people will stay in REM sleep briefly when they first open their eyes — they’re not completely awake yet, but their surroundings come into the dream. It’s sort of like lucid dreaming in reverse — and it could be what’s going on with you. (I think the commenter who referred to sleep paralysis might be talking about the same thing.)

    The only time I shrieked in the theater was during a showing of the classic “Wait Until Dark”.

    The story that has scared me longest was from Alfred Hitchcock’s story collection “13 stories they wouldn’t let me do on TV” — my sister should *NOT* have let me read it when I was 10, because I saw things from the corners of my eyes for months.

    King’s “The Stand” gave me nightmares as an adult, as did the relatively new & unknown “Vampire Earth” Chronicles (E.E. Knight), and the audiobook of “World War Z”.

    Hmmmm…I guess post-apocolyptic does it for me.

  196. Oh oh oh! Lake Mungo is GREAT if you haven’t seen it, Jenny. Highly recommended.

  197. Okay, so the scariest thing I ever saw was when my friend Doug came sneaking into my room to wake me up wearing a crazy killer clown mask. I thought for sure I was breathing my last breaths at the hands of a murderous clown.

  198. I was a scaredy cat as a child and haven’t really grown out of it. But I love a scary story and begged an adult friend to tell me the story of Mad Myrtle. The story is that she lives in the caves at a nearby lake and haunts unsuspecting campers. She wears a belt of skulls and you know she is near when you see and hear the leaves crunching but no one is standing on them. It is pretty tame stuff, but I didn’t sleep for a week after I heard it. The same thing happened after I was told the china doll story. I had to wrap my china doll in a belt and hide it in my parent’s room.

    The only real scary thing is the night my mom couldn’t sleep and was reading at the top of the stairs so as to not disturb my dad. The television came on twice at full volume. When she shut it off the second time and returned to the top of the stairs, I came hurtling out of my bedroom at her shouting about “Dorothy!” I was sleep-walking. Nothing else really ever happened in that house. I think it was all related to a teenage poltergeist type of activity.

  200. I read IT as a teenager and I still ended up having a nightmare of a clown being in my closet trying to get me by pulling the telephone cord into the dark while i was on it ( see kids once upon a time all phones had cords attached to the handset and the wall) Too many scary movies, most recent was World War Z for the making me yell curse words out loud factor. I will always love the Freddy movies… the originals that is.

  202. Scariest book–definitely IT. Scariest movie as an adult–The Grudge. Every time that thing crawled down the stairs I wanted to jump out of my skin. Scariest movie as a kid–either Halloween, which is an absolute classic, or Carrie. First R rated movie I ever saw, without my parents’ permission, and once that hand shot out and grabbed her wrist, I was a jittery mess for the next 2 weeks.

  203. The scariest book I ever read was Body Double, by Tess Gerritsen. The book itself may not be terrifying to some but (((***SPOILER ALERT***))) I thought the plot was about something entirely different, and then it turned out the real twist was that there were these cold, psychotic killers who were kidnapping late-term pregnant women, sectioning the babies out of them, killing the women, destroying their bodies/evidence, and selling the babies in black market adoptions. I WAS 8 MONTHS PREGNANT with my first child when I read this. I also suffer from mild anxiety/paranoia, so you can probably see why this didn’t help.

    Perhaps not the scariest, but the most disturbing movie I’ve ever seen was “Flowers in the Attic.” Parental abandonment, imprisonment, child neglect and abuse, incest, a mother who would murder her own children for money….and I was only 11 when I saw it. A lot of good nightmares have come from that one.

  205. The Ring was so scary! But I’ve watched it a couple more times and it’s okay now. But The Grudge was horrible for me. I lived by myself with a big, angry black cat and my bed was in the middle of the wall. There’s some scene in that movie with a kid between the bed and a wall that makes some kind of cat noise. I rearranged my room that night…and haven’t watched that movie again.

    The first time I read The Amityville Horror (before I knew it was faked), I was so scared that I took it to school and left it in my locker, where it stayed every year until I graduated.

  206. I can’t handle most scary movies…I’m a wimp like that…I was well into my 20s and couldn’t sleep after watching Hannibal Rising…I called. my. Dad. at 2 am.

    However, if you want a good scare in the form of a cool, short film, may I suggest, Bedfellows – it came on tv a few years back when we had a horror film marathon that had short films playing. Good back drop for a Halloween party, right? The party stopped dead to watch this. Let’s just say one of the party-goers still doesn’t sleep for a week if you even just start to mention the title. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j6flB0XvmTo

  207. Keith Craker – I forgot about that Steven King story! I did the *exact* thing you did: ran right outside! And I was about 28 years old at the time! Great story.

    I had forgotten about my only true “ghost” story that I cannot explain away. I am a skeptic. I am an atheist. I do not believe in ghosts or the paranormal. I *wanted* to believe, for a long time, but in my late 20’s had to accept that I had just never come across any compelling evidence for all of that stuff.

    Anyway, my husband and 1 year old daughter and I were living with my in-laws for awhile, about two years ago. We had two cats that lived in the finished basement, which was also my husband’s office and our makeshift TV room while we stayed there. We slept up on the second floor, in a bedroom next to the “computer room”, which was down the hall from my in-laws bedroom. One night I woke in the middle of the night because I heard all sorts of sounds coming from the first floor. I figured one of the cats had accidentally been let out of the basement and was running around the kitchen/living room. I got up and went into the hall. I flicked the hall light switch. Nothing. I flicked it a few more times. Nothing. I noticed the door to the “computer room” was closed just about all the way; there was maybe a quarter inch crack. The light was on inside. I figured it was my father-in-law in there working on his writing, which he was apt to do when he couldn’t sleep. I went down to the kitchen and walked all around the first floor. I heard nothing. Checked the basement; both cats were in there, snoozing. This all took about 45 seconds. I went back upstairs, trying the light again because I didn’t want to kill myself on the mammoth staircase (nothing). The computer room door was all the way open and the light was off. I thought it was sort of odd that I hadn’t heard my quite large FIL come out of the room and walk back to his bedroom, but didn’t think any more about it. I never felt *scared*.

    Next morning, we were all down in the living room watching the news. I casually told my MIL that the hall light wasn’t working. She went over and flicked the switch and it came right on. I told her it hadn’t worked for me the night before! Then I reiterated my story about getting up, and asked my FIL if he had been working in the computer room. He said he had been asleep all night, hadn’t gotten up at all. I looked at my MIL, she said she also had not gone in there. My husband was asleep in our bed when I had gotten up, my daughter in her crib. My in-laws gave each other a look, and my FIL said, “It was the ghost.” Apparently, they had experienced some things in the few years they had lived there, and the room we were sleeping in had given them some trouble. It was always cold, no matter what the temperature was outside, or what the heat was set to. They had had numerous heating guys check out the ducts and the heating system, and they all said everything appeared fine.

    For a month or two after we moved in, we all experienced a handful of unexplainable things like this, beginning with mine. After that timeframe, things settled down and everything seemed normal. Except the room was always freezing.

    As I said, I’m not a “believer”, but I still have a hard time explaining all of that.

  208. Closest thing to a real life spook: my flatmates and I had a two story apartment in college. There was a little foyer/landing at the top of the stairs, about 20 square feet. I HATED standing up there. You didn’t get vertigo, or anything. There was a lot of room up there. But I always felt like I was being watched. Fast forward to post-graduation, and we’re having a bit of a moving-out party. My roommate comes tearing down the stairs and into the room, and a guest we had over gives her a weird look. She says “I hate those stairs, they creep me out, and I don’t know why.” Turns out everyone in the apartment had the same creepy feeling for 2 straight years, although we’d never mentioned it to each other. You’d better believe that NOBODY would hang out on the landing after we had that discussion!

  209. Scariest movie -the original Amityville Horror!!! Gaa!
    Scariest book-The Shining
    My house HAS a ghost!!! But is she is nice , mostly, except when she exploded a glass in the kitchen. Oh, and she smokes.

  211. It’s broad daylight and I have just pulled my chair a mile away from the desk *just in case*. Anything with scary kids freaks me, and I won’t watch it. Probably something to do with reading Pet Sematary as a 13 year old. Went to see it at the cinema the following year and walked out before the really nasty end bit.
    Wolf Creek is fairly horrific, for those that like that sort of thing.

  212. After scanning this thread, I think you guys can help me. I want to love Halloween, but I don’t. I’d settle for just liking it. Seems like so much work for such minimal pay-off. Help me!

    I’m currently hiding from my children because they keep asking me to do perfectly reasonable Halloweeny things, and I’m all, “Why would you want to do THAT?” and “Have you read the ingredients on that stuff?”

    I’m ruining it.

    I need reasons to love Halloween.

  213. When I was a child, I had a chair in my bedroom that had a doll about the size of a one year old sitting on it. I always kept the drapes open at night and the moonlight came in the window just right.

    The doll looked like it was possessed until I turned the light on. I knew it was only shadows going across the face but I didn’t feel better until the light was on. Unless light drove the demon away which is very possible. That amount of light could only mean a full moon. I put some clothes on it so I wouldn’t see it when I shut the light off. I also don’t remember having the doll much after that.

    As an adult who had just moved out on her own, I started reading Demon Seed by Dean Koontz. Read the book in one sitting and sitting is the right word because I did not leave the couch that night. I finished the book around 3 am and could fall asleep.

    Thanks for the creepy video and Happy Halloween!

  214. Scariest Horror Film—The Haunting (the original) and I do like the TV version of “It”.
    Scariest Movie when I was a kid–Whatever Happened to Baby Jane. Not really a horror film per se, but it scared the living crap out of me!!
    Scariest Book/Story—-Probably Edgar Allen Poe, the one where the guy gets sealed up ALIVE behind a brick wall!

    Happy Halloween to one and all!!!

  215. The Ring was the scariest movie I’d ever seen until I saw Darkness Falls. Ten years later and I still hesitate when walking between a lit room and an unlit room at night.

    I’ve never seen a ghost or anything like that, but something close to that happened to me when I was about ten. I’d woken up in the middle of the night, and from where I laying, I could see all the way down the hallway. While I was still looking down the hall, I saw my mom come from around the corner where the stairs are and start walking towards my room. Since I was already awake, I asked her if it was time for me to get up and get ready for school, but as soon as I spoke, she just froze in place and didn’t say anything. I called out to her a couple times and asked if everything was okay but she never responded. After about a minute, she turned around and walked through the open door of the room at the other end of the hall. I was really freaked out and couldn’t move or do anything for about five minutes, the whole time just staring at the doorway of the other room. After several minutes, I finally worked up the courage to get out of bed and check out the other room. My mom wasn’t in there, but a blanket I was sure had been folded the last time I was in there was all crumpled up on the couch. I wouldn’t have thought it possible, but I got even more scared, ran back to my room and shut the door. I’ve never figured out what happened, but I did learn to keep my bedroom door shut at night.

  217. The scariest book I ever read is a tie between two short stories; in different books. One was about a vampire tree the preys on people and the other was about a woman and her daughter staying in her house for the last night and a spider is living a disused closet and has grown large enough to coat the sleeping woman in webbing and the daughter wakes to find the whole house webbed in and she can’t get out.

  218. Scariest book: Ghost Story by Peter Straub. I haven’t read It and am unlikely too. Ghost Story made me afraid to look outside at night for a long time.
    Scariest Movies: The Grudge and The Ring
    My mother’s house is both haunted and I have seen shadow men there before. So it’s a weird place. It’s built on the grounds of an old plantation. Mom has never had any experiences, but both my daughter and I have. The scariest one for me was sleeping on the couch and having someone/something grab my leg. That was it though.

  219. I read Psycho when I was about 10. Scared the p*$$ out of me. To this day (I’m almost 64) I won’t walk into a bathroom that has a closed shower curtain.

  220. I saw Jaws when I was 10 and couldn’t swim in Lake Erie for 2 years. That’s why I don’t watch scary movies. Ever.

  221. A movie from 1973 – Don’t be afraid of the Dark. It still gives me the creeps when I think about it. There could be these creatures lurking in your home plotting to kill you so you can join them. The other is The Omen, the 1976 version – that kid was evil. That movie may be the reason I don’t like kids, except for my own. Little evils sons of a bitch!

  222. I have a non-scary, fucking awesome story. I got my pre-ordered Hyperbole and a half books today and am dancing around the room, as if no one is watching. Oh, and while drinking a wine slushie and wearing green eyeglasses with a Frankenstein nose. True story, bro. How about if you and Allie go on a dual tour? Then my head will be all splodey!

  223. I have a terrible fear of arachnids. Because of that if I see any signs of a spider in the house. I don’t sleep because I am afraid they will lay effs in my brain and the young will eat their way out of my eyeballs. Scariest movie? Arachnophobia. From the time the spider start running around the house and no one thought to bring napalm to the end of the movie. Scariest book? IT. Because clowns only exist to murder our families in front of us so they can drink our sad tears and then they eat our souls.

  224. My own personal ‘boogie’ monster when I was growing up was a large green hand that lived under my bed. ‘It’ moved with us no matter where we moved. Even though I was terrified of it I was strangely comforted by its presence. I knew it would protect me from the rest of the monsters to keep me for itself.

  225. I’ve always loved scary movies (scary, not gory) – my grandma used to let me stay up and watch Dracula and Frankenstein movies on Creature Feature. But an accidental glimpse of the old version of “Night of the Living Dead” traumatized me as a child, I still won’t watch that; I can’t even watch Walking Dead. And the Night Gallery episode about the doll that talks to the little girl when no one’s watching and kills people…that was scary, and I still feel bad about scaring my sister with that one (I told her the Doll was climbing in her bedroom window)…thanks to the comments though, for all the suggestions of scary movies I haven’t seen yet…I recommend “Stir of Echoes” if you are into supernatural, ghost-type scary movies.

  227. AAAnnnnd, the scariest stories are these POSTS!!! Holy shit i may never sleep again!

  228. Movie: The Ring. Whenever the movie pops into my mind–which is usually late at night when I have insomnia and am sleeping in the spare bedroom so as not to disturb the hubs–I think, maybe that creepy-assed girl doesn’t fit in flat screens. (Then I think about her trying and getting stuck and thrashing around while I’m standing there, pointing and laughing my ass off. It helps, but only a little.)

    TV Movie: IT. Jesus. I never liked clowns that much to begin with but Tim Curry as a murderous clown?! Not only could I not sleep for a week, I started taking the FASTEST SHOWERS EVER after gym.

    TV Show: Buffy “Hush” Those freaking Gentlemen. “They’ll take seven hearts and they might take yours.” Joss Whedon, you owe me about 40 hours of sleep.

    Hubs is going away this weekend, so I am not watching that video until he returns.

  229. The “Talking Tina” doll episode of the original Twilight Zone always freaked me out, even though the doll was actually good, inasmuch as she was trying to protect the girl from an asshole stepfather.
    “My name is Talking Tina, and I don’t like you.” “My name is Talking Tina, and I’m going to kill you.”
    yikes.

  231. Okay, THAT. That might have been the scariest thing I’ve ever seen.

    Um… What else… Oh “Blink.” That episode got me real good, but in an awesome way.

  233. In case no one else has recommended it. Dan Simmons, “Carrion Comfort.” Frightening.

    You both look awesome. Please come to our house tonight. We’ll tie up the dogs.

  235. I first started reading ‘IT’ when I was far too young (10?) when my father left it lying around. I had just finished ‘The Hobbit’ and had nightmares in which Gollum and the clown were combined into one scary creature trying to get me. I didn’t finish ‘IT’ until I was 18. In the meantime, I was scared so badly by ‘Salem’s Lot’ that I slept with a cross beside my bed for over a year. It wasn’t helpful when my mom would declare that the road to our cabin, when covered with fog, was exactly like the beginning of the movie. Thanks a lot, woman, I have to pee and we only have an outhouse.

  236. The scariest thing I’ve seen is actually a repressed memory I’m still repressing so I can’t share it.

    Next on the list though, was as I was going through my divorce, forced to live with my parents, and forced to take a holiday with them to a place called Sussex Inlet on the South Coast of NSW here in Australia.

    Their timing was poor to say the least; the sights I saw there were as follows in chronological order:
    clouds of smoke from a nearby bushfire in the distance, that was rapidly approaching us.

    Clouds of smoke enveloping us, as the emergency vehicles drove by announcing it was time to evacuate due to an oncoming bushfire.

    The sky blackened as if it were midnight in the early afternoon, due to the smoke.

    After being evacuated to a nearby club we were then further evacuated by bus to another town.
    The sight out of the bus window – at about midnight – consisted of blackened trees with embers bursting from them like fireworks, and embers dancing across the road we were travelling on.

    It took us about 45 minutes in the bus to get to our destination; another club in another town, but the whole trip the only view was the police and fire engine escorts, and the scene of what looked like hell on earth as we saw the smoking glowing remnants left behind still smouldering from the blaze that was making its way through the south coast.

    It certainly trumps finding funnel web spiders in the house, picking up a blacksnake on holidays as a kid, or just about anything else I can remember.
    This was over ten years ago.
    I still get extremely anxious when I can smell smoke, and it will stop me from being able to sleep if there is smoke in the air at night.

  237. Some of the old Grimm fairy tales were the most violent, sadistic crap I’ve ever read, and I was a child at the time. They gave me nightmares and made me afraid that my mother would turn into a witch. Sometimes, she did!

  238. As if looking in the mirror pre-makeup isn’t scary enough, while I was applying said-mask, dog came into the bathroom from the backyard and dropped a present at my feet. All I saw was skin and speed as it ran under the bed. I just KNEW it was a rat (what kind of ‘hood do I live in, where that’s my first thought?). Grabbed bucket, saw rat run to corner of room, snuck over and slammed bucket over rat to trap it (weighted down with Anna Karenina…or more likely The Half Blood Prince). Left for work, called most-significant-other and told him to get Whatever-The-Hell–It-Was out of my bedroom before I got home. Returned home 8 hours later to find the pictures he took of my huge, fierce, predatory rat……uh, baby bunny. Hey, anyone could have confused the two.

  239. Scariest (and scarring for life) movie – The Exorcist. Saw it in 1973 at the age of 13, threw up in the theater (mortifying!) and never watched another scary movie again. Ever!
    Scariest books? Husband and I agree that the “Books of Blood”, a trilogy of short stories by Clive Barker, were fucking terrifying. We took turns not sleeping when we read them.
    Halloween is not my favorite day as I’m such a horror wimp, but I wish YOU a happy holiday!

  240. I read Stephen King’s “The Fog” one night alone in my home. The next morning I woke and the fog outside was so thick I could not see beyond 20 into the back yard. I could not go out until it had lifted.

  241. Dude, IT put me off drains – and as I remember, toilets – for WEEKS. Serious bathroom fear. Pretty sure I was reading that above covers. Scariest. Book. Ever.

    The Rose Red miniseries freaked me out too. For different reasons.

    This trailer? YIKES!

  242. I can’t think of a scariest movie, but book is definitely Misery. Not scary as much as disgusting. I still tell people about my reaction. At one point I actually covered my eyes and then would have laughed at myself if I had been able to, because I realized that in order to get past that part I would have to keep reading haha. It just grossed me out so bad.

    In real life, I regularly explored abandoned places, and there’s an abandoned mental hospital in upstate New York. My cousin and I went into a building and up to the second floor. We were about halfway down the hall when we heard a door close. We thought it was just our imaginations or the wind or something so we kept going. Then, we heard the door open. Then, we heard the door slam shut. We didn’t have time to find out if it was a ghost or a homeless man with a knife cause we were out of there in about a second flat. It was definitely the scariest experience like that that I’ve ever had. We tell people it was the time we almost died!

  243. I’m a huge scary book fan. Love Stephen King. To this day I cannot tolerate The Wizard of Oz. Because flying evil monkeys freak my $#@+ out!!! {{Shudder}}

  244. The original (1963) “The Haunting” based on Shirley Jackson’s “The Haunting of Hill House”. The breathing doors & hands that aren’t there holding the girls hands in the dark scared the bejesus out of 12 year old me!

  245. Well thanks for that little video…who needs sleep really??
    Scariest thing I ever saw is a toss up between The Shining (those little girls!) and the Grudge (that little girl….hmmm)
    Happy Halloween

  246. When I was 6 years old, my sister and I went with our mom to visit her aunt at her farm in Austria (we were living in Germany at the time). I was supposed to share a room with my sister, but I absolutely refused. I couldn’t make the adults understand that the two dolls in the room would probably come to life while I was sleeping, and grow TEETH and EAT ME. Those dolls didn’t seem to bother anybody else, but they were scary as shit to me. I think there was a movie with an evil doll (not Chuckie, much worse) that looked like these dolls.

    Scariest movie for me: Poltergeist. I saw that movie in college, and I had a roommate at the time that had a large clown doll IN OUR DORM ROOM! It looked just like the clown doll in the movie. Also, there was a girl in my dorm that looked like the really short psychic. And now, we live near Native American burial mounds, and my son saw that movie just after learning about the mounds (he was 7, and his father didn’t think he was “too young” for Poltergeist. Yeah). Anyway, he slept in our room for at least a month after seeing it. He was sure the ancient dead would haunt us.

    Evil dolls and ancient burial mounds. Those are the stuff of nightmares.

  247. Book was Also by King, Gerald’s game. Will Smith’s I am Legend. Very underrated zombie movie.

  248. Scariest movie…. The Conjuring is the only movie to elicit actual screams from me in the theater as an adult but I am pretty sure I was more terrified as a kid watchin Freddy kill people in their sleep.

    Scariest book… Huh The Shining

  249. Movie–Poltregeist, hands down. Book, that’s hard. IT was pretty dang scary but I kind of got lost at the end with the turtle and the spider and all that crap. For some reason the short story The Yellow Wallpaper always creeped me out, more than any King novel.

  251. The Sixth Sense. I was in a motel room with my husband and five kids… all of them asleep and I was still too scared to get up and go to the bathroom 🙁

  253. Thanks for that. Just watched your little clip at 11:30pm. Absolutely NO sleep for me tonight…
    I too read IT under the blankets at night in secret cos I was told I was too young to read it. I was 11. They were right.
    Scariest movie is The Exorcist. Original version. When she crawls down the stairs backwards is still the creepiest thing I’ve seen on film!

  254. That was the creepiest shit EVER. Holy crap.

    I have never been much into scary movies…I watched the obligatory slasher films as a teen that we all did…but those were more campy to me than anything. This new Ring, Grudge, whatever you call the genre doesn’t appeal to me at all.

    When I was a child, the scariest thing I ever saw was the movie poster for “It’s Alive”. You may not be aware of this…but that hand lived under my bed. Swear to God.

  256. I’ve had waaaayyyy too many “experiences” to post them here. To quote my father every single time I mentioned that the house we lived in was haunted, “No honey, it’s not the house. It’s you that’s haunted.” Nice. So, all my life, I’m the one they talk to, I’m the one they push, I’m the one who dreams about people I’ve never met only to then meet their family who tells me they just died. On the plus side, I do love it when my Grandmother “visits”. I do not love it when I wake up to find a strange man going through my dresser drawers who just disappears instead of answering my question. I’ve had these experiences every single place I’ve ever lived. So, no it’s probably not the house… I guess it is me. The video didn’t bother me at all…
    The Shining bothered me… Amityville Horror bothered me (the original, not the one with Ryan Reynolds. Because honestly, he’s just hot, not scary.) Love you and your writing 🙂

  257. The Ring was the scariest movie EVER! It pretty much ruined any chance of me ever enjoying a horror movie and I didn’t have much of a stomach for them anyway.

  258. Ok, first thing, The Ring wasn’t scary whatsoever! I watched that with my hubs after a friend told me how terrified she was because of it. When it was over, we just looked at each other like that’s it?! Not scary. Either that or I’ve seen way too many scary movies and have become numb to the scariness. As far as books go, if you thought IT was scary, (and I agree it is), you should read Salem’s Lot. Scariest Stephen King book ever as far as I’m concerned.

  259. The last time I watched the Ring I was watching it at home. My tv somehow became magnetized or something and developed a ring right in the middle of the screen. Needless to say, I was a bit freaked out!!

  260. When I saw the Ring, I had watched it in the dark while home alone. And then I watched the bonus feature of “OMG here’s what was on the haunted tape, you’re screwed!!1elevetyone!” And then I walked into the kitchen, stepped in a puddle of ice water, and then the phone rang. I thought it was hilarious.

  262. I’ve had several paranormal experiences. Most were merely odd and startling, but the only one that scared me was a incubus. In all fairness it could have been one of those sleep/wake mysteries, but I don’t sleep even partially when I am scared crapless. I woke in the middle of the night (around 2- or 3am-ish) and I felt something rise out of my chest. Not off my chest – OUT OF my chest. I saw nothing, but I had to sleep with the TV on for five years – tuned to the Home Shopping Channel, because at the time that was always live, so I knew I was not the only one in the house awake. This lasted until I moved in with my future husband.

  264. The first time I saw The Exorcist. I was around 10 and the older sisters of the kids next door had it on when I went over there. I wore rosary beads around my neck afterwards and didn’t sleep for a week.

  265. I first started watching horror movies when I was 4-5 with my big brother who was 13. He would routinely fall asleep midway through leaving me to watch is complete terror with the blanket pulled to my nose. But I love horror films for years after that until I saw the new Amityville Horror with Ryan Reynolds. This movie itself is not scarey. Lets just face it Ryan Reynolds is just far too hot to pull off scary. The part that got me were the creep ass ghost. When the little boy goes to the bath room and the ghost is just chilling behind him while he washes his hands still freaks me out to this day and completely distorted my ability to enjoy any of the newer horror movies. I can still watch and enjoy the old stuff.

  266. I read The Exorcist when I was a kid and spent the next month sleeping at the foot of my younger brother’s twin bed, all curled up in a ball and freezing since I couldn’t steel his covers or i would wake him up and he would chase me back to my room. Every night, I tried to fall asleep in my own room and then I would hear the knocking on the ceiling…

  267. Just thought I’d tell you I was terrified through the whole two minute video because THAT’S JUST HOW MUCH I RESPECT YOU.
    And the most terrifying thing I’ve ever seen……well, I hate to be scared. I know myself and I hate it so I avoid horror movies and horror books. It’s not my idea of fun.
    So the most terrifying thing I’ve ever seen is three mice stuck in a glue trap at the same time.

    I hate mice and am terrified of them.

  268. Scariest movie I’ve ever seen is The Exorcist. I have that damn movie memorized and I still can’t handle both the crab walk down the stairs, and Captain Howdy’s face during the priest’s dream.

    Scariest book? A tie between Salem’s Lot, and The Summer of Night by Dan Simmons.

  269. Scariest Movie: Pet Semetery. Possessed cats & kids when drunk at a midnight showing — probably not the wisest thing!

    Scariest Book: It. Way scarier in my mind than the movie was..

    Ghost Story: Back in ’97, my best friend rented a house out in the country, that had a huge barn. The owners had left boxes and other stuff out there, so we took her 3 year old son out there with us. We left the door standing open and walked in about 100 feet. Then we saw a white mass heading toward us. We both took off running for the door, got outside & realized we had left her son behind. When we went back in, no more white mass & Brandon was looking at us like we were nuts…

  270. I can’t do scary movies. The trailers or even a 2 second clip of a creepy movie is more than enough for me. (The Ring poster totally creeped me out!) So as I read your blog on my kindle fire I am not the least put out that I am unable to watch your scary 2 minute video. Love the rest of it!

  271. The Ring!!! OMG! When she crawled out of the TV at the end?? Yeah, I ended up having to leave the theater the very second the movie ended. That NEVER happens. I always stay for the entire credits and everything. This time? There was no lollygagging shit going on. I pretty much RAN out of that damn theater. Didn’t help that my husband and I were the only two people there. Haven’t watched that movie again, since, either.

    I did go and see the second one, though, because we got sneak preview tickets. I wanted it to end at the nice happy place where everything was resolved and everyone was happy. Fat flaming chance! I won a t-shirt though that says, “I am NOT your fucking mommy!” except that it has the creepy ass girl in place of the “u” in “fucking.” I can’t wear that shirt anywhere now that I’ve got kids… People look at me funny.

  272. My husband and I go on vacations that we refer to as Road Trips to Hell (which usually would refer to annoying the crap out of each other) but actually means we stay in all Haunted Hotels and try to find everything ghostly imaginable to do. So far, nothing.

    http://www.hauntedplaces.org/

  273. you say your real life ghost story is too long to post on the blog.

    you know we’d read it anyway…

    I’m dying to read it!

  274. I feel some serious insomnia coming on…sharing with everyone I know so we can all be up all night together…

  275. Late to the party but I have to make this comment because I’m totally losing my shit that someone else had the same reaction to Christopher Pike’s Season of Passage that I did! (Shenanigan, comment #82, waaaaay up there)

    I don’t even remember what happened, only that I had about an Epilogue’s length left of the book and I put it in my top dresser drawer and left it there for several years before I went back to finish it.

    The other one was a kids’ book that I can’t remember the title of. There was a scary old lady they thought was a witch, and either the scary lady or her scary cat had a glass eye. There was a fire and her scary house burned down, and afterwards the kids find the glass eye. It got the drawer treatment, too.

  276. I’m reading It right now! I’m about 200/1000+ pages into it, so no clown phobia yet, but I have started having bizarre dreams…

  277. I read The Exorcist when I was a kid and spent the next month sleeping at the foot of my younger brother’s twin bed, all curled up in a ball and freezing since I couldn’t steel his covers or i would wake him up and he would chase me back to my room. Every night, I tried to fall asleep in my own room and then I would hear the knocking on the ceiling…

  279. Reminds me of a movie I once saw in which a woman is convinced that she and her 2 children were being haunted by unknown spirits, but in fact, it was she and her children who were the ghosts who refused to pass over.

  280. Yeah, never sleeping again. I love that they didn’t show us if what was in the bed had changed. So much creepier the way this ended. Reddit did a great compilation of 2 sentence horror stories. ‘

  281. I just watched that video with the sound off and now I’m thinking I might not rewatch with sound. It’s not scary sans sound, but sound freaks me out WAY more.

    I have a reoccuring nightmare that is spiders. Specifically, I sense/see/”know” a spider is descending from the ceiling onto me, with malicious intent. If I’m deep in a dream, it’ll be one hell of a big spider, but sometimes it’s just a small spider. I now hate spiders. But this all started after I read the short story by Stephen King called “The Mist” which is in one of his short story collections.

    I don’t suggest seeing the movie made based on the short story. The short story itself doesn’t have an ending; the movie does and it is bad. BAD. Disturbing. Awful. The movie isn’t great, either.

  282. I didn’t turn the light off at night for a year after watching Nightmare on Elm Street. I was 14 when I saw it. I’m 46 now. I still refuse to watch scary movies. I like to read the plot summaries on Wikipedia and that’s as close as I will get.

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