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30 March 2006

What do you find terrifying? Horror movie kinda stuff.
post by: rainbaby at: 13:16 | 52 comments
Birds trapped in houses.

Being in a car that somehow goes underwater.

Mall entertainment.
posted by rainbaby 30 March | 13:17
Losing my child. I avoid horror movies, but Man on Fire just about made me lose it.
posted by mike9322 30 March | 13:21
Immortality.
posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson 30 March | 13:26
Carnies, you know, carnival folk.

Nah, just kidding.
posted by fenriq 30 March | 13:27
Anything involving the eyes being pierced, stabbed, popped, etc.
posted by PinkStainlessTail 30 March | 13:30
The crawl space under my house. Spiders, centipedes, old cat poo, the whole bit. *shudder*
posted by go dog go 30 March | 13:31
Girls that outline their lips with dark brown lines.
posted by StickyCarpet 30 March | 13:36
Scalp wounds. Smell of burning/burnt flesh. Having to give CPR to someone and they vomit in your mouth. Feet run over by trains. Heads burst open by shotgun blasts.

Oh, wait, that's real-life stuff from my time in the healthcare industry. Never mind.
posted by WolfDaddy 30 March | 13:41
car accidents.

also, spiders.
posted by kellydamnit 30 March | 13:42
Big, silent, fast-moving monsters/evil people that lurk under my bed with big knives.

Not being able to run away when bad things are about to happen.

Having to watch a loved one get hurt but not be able to do anything about it.

Also, I'm claustrophobic, so enclosed spaces where I can't breathe are hellish to imagine.
posted by Specklet 30 March | 13:44
On preview: WolfDaddy's feet getting run over by trains. Jesus.
posted by Specklet 30 March | 13:46
anything bad that has to do with (my) kids.
posted by carmina 30 March | 13:46
Being in a small, brightly lit space, unable to see an exit, surrounded by a crowd of strangers. *shudder*
posted by cmonkey 30 March | 13:49
Doctors. Needles. Knives.
posted by Fuzzbean 30 March | 13:50
Yeah, the kid thing is intense. I can't watch movies that feature kids or animals being hurt; I get really upset. In the supernatural realm though, vampires used to really scare me when I was a kid - actually, pretty much anything scared me as a kid, except Frankenstein. Frankenstein's monster is just not scary. He looks like Herman Munster.
posted by mygothlaundry 30 March | 13:50
Ghost/poltergeist/evil spirt things make me unable to sleep for days. (When seen in movies, I mean. Not like I'm running across them in the course of my daily life.) I pretty much just try to avoid supernatural horror films, though I go through periods (usually hungover) when watching hours of "America's Most Haunted Castles" and the ilk on the Travel Channel seems like a good idea.

It's not, usually.

And eye-related trauma is definitely a problem.
posted by occhiblu 30 March | 13:59
I can handle all of the ghouls/dismemberment/gore you can throw at me, but if you insinuate that dead people are "watching" me, I will freak out so fast, your head will spin.

Oh, and small children. They really freak me out - in movies. In real life, they are as cute as can be, but when they stalk you in a movie, you've got problems.
posted by blackkar 30 March | 14:13
Stuff from horror movies:

Breathing mirrors. Like the one in Phantasm. I had to cover my mirror for months when I went to bed after I saw that movie. (Hey, I was 9.)

Faces that are missing or entirely devoid of features, bodies without limbs, and heads that shake imposibly fast. Jacob's Ladder was a movie I could have gone without seeing.

Real life, irrational:

Things under the bed (the downside of an over active imagination, my bed is now on the floor - problem neatly solved.) Things falling off of big trucks on the highway when I'm driving behind them (won't even touch the Final Destination sequels.) Big things close to me in the water when I'm in the water.
posted by Frisbee Girl 30 March | 14:17
Zombies don't usually bother me, but the remake of Dawn of the Dead freaked my shit right out. I had nightmares for days.

In real life, though, I get a bit of Vertigo/'fraid of heights if I'm near a high drop where there's nothing holding me back. This despite climbing all over my roof like a monkey when I was a teenager.
posted by me3dia 30 March | 14:22
Graphic torture and sexual violence.

But nothing else, otherwise I am utterly unfreakoutable.
posted by Divine_Wino 30 March | 14:24
being buried alive.
posted by crunch 30 March | 14:27
Faces that are missing or entirely devoid of features, bodies without limbs, and heads that shake imposibly fast. Jacob's Ladder was a movie I could have gone without seeing.


OMG, those fucked up photos in Ringu, where the faces are all distorted!

Scariest. Movie. Evar.
posted by pieisexactlythree 30 March | 14:34
Being watched, by anyone, without my knowledge. I'd rather you break into my house than watch me sleep from the window.

Technology going awry. The episode of The X-Files with the subliminial messages in LEDs (KILL 'EM ALL) and the tape-dubbing scenes in The Ring fucked my shit thoroughly up.

One of the most terrifiying nightmares of my life—don't laugh—involved a microwave's timer sending me messages from an incorporeal spirit.
posted by Zozo 30 March | 14:37
I CAN SEE YOU, ZOZO. RIGHT NOW. THROUGH YOUR MONITOR.
posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson 30 March | 14:41
Thankyouverymuch, pie. I had *almost* forgotten about that movie.
posted by Frisbee Girl 30 March | 14:45
Oh god! The Ring's drowned girl with her seaweed hair and rotting eyes is going to get me in the shower! Aaaaaa!
posted by Specklet 30 March | 14:48
Florence, if you start making it go staticky I will piss myself.
posted by Zozo 30 March | 14:50
It's funny, but I am not usually afraid of the monsters. After I watch a horror movie, my real fear is not the monster itself, but becoming crazy. Like "OMG, I'll look at the mirror right now, and if I see a monster behind me it'll mean I've gone fucking crazy. I don't want to be crazy!"
posted by qvantamon 30 March | 14:54
When a Stranger Calls ("have you checked the children?" "go upstairs and check the children"... )
, and other terrifyingly scary but not at all bloody stuff in movies.

-- and bugs or any kind of vermin anywhere near my bed--ever.
posted by amberglow 30 March | 15:04
Id have to go with the sexual violence as prime terrifier #1.

Undocumented prehistoric bugs living in the crawlspace of this building runs a distant second.
posted by chewatadistance 30 March | 15:13
Hands coming out of the toilet to kill me.

Yes, really.
posted by YouCanCallMeAl 30 March | 15:14
I can't thank y'all enough for this great list of ideas, just two days before April Fools' Day!
posted by BoringPostcards 30 March | 15:39
I don't watch horror movies, but I am freaked out by only a couple of things:

Interpersonal violence. Like the stuff that does really happen to people sometimes: torture, rape, murder, cruelty.

And falling. This includes falling from a high place, going down in an airplane, or having a bridge break under you as you're driving over it.

I can tell how much anxiety I'm experiencing in life by whether it bothers me to go over a bridge. When I'm feeling really anxious, bridges scare me a lot. When I'm comfortable, I just notice the nice view.
posted by Miko 30 March | 15:39
My first thought: that ludicrous Britney Spears sculpture.
posted by chewatadistance 30 March | 15:45
Yeah - I can see Britney crawling through my monitor a la The Ring. Dragging a stillborn baby wolf still umbilically attached.
posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson 30 March | 15:48
IRFH, you are in fine, fine form today, my friend.
posted by Frisbee Girl 30 March | 15:52
Aw, thanks! I'm always at my best when I'm at my worst.
posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson 30 March | 15:54
When I clicked through to this thread I was having a hard time figuring out what my answer would be, but after reading it I'm going to have to go with:

EVERYTHING

Thanks a lot. The rest of the day alone in the office is going to be a joy.
*freaks, looks over shoulder repeatedly*
posted by krix 30 March | 15:58
I have to second the imagery in Ringu/The Ring, and I think the depiction of the ghostie was masterful. You know how Alien was such a great horror movie because you never see the monster in any definable way until the end of the movie? Well, in the Ring, the image of the drowned girl coming at the camera with her face obscured is a *fantastic* merging of "showing the horror" and "hiding the horror". We're terrorized by the sight of this ghoulish apparition crawling out of the television but our minds go apeshit because her hair is hanging down and we can't see what she looks like. So we're at once freaking out at what we see and we're freaking out even more because of what we can't see. So yes, it freaked me the hell out.
posted by ooga_booga 30 March | 16:18
Platform beds are great, because there is no place for "IT" to hide.

After almost 30 years, deep dark salt water, where the sharks might be, scares the crap out of me. I stay in the center of the boat. Swimming? No way!
posted by sarah connor 30 March | 16:30
Ring was ok, I thought the terror was pretty good, but I thought it was a pretty stupid movie overall. I'm trying to thing of things that really scare me but none of the above really do anything for me.

One time though, I worked at this old gym and had to close at 10 or so, totally alone. I had to walk through all the different old rooms to turn off the lights. Walking through total darkness with that dank old smell and strange noises all around me was pretty un-nerving. Then I went upstairs to the conference room that has a window overlooking the parking lot and I could just imagine someone(or something) standing in the lot watching me through the windows in total darkness. That was pretty frightening.

So I guess you could say being alone in the dark. They use that in movies, right? Besides Alone in the Dark, which was a huge piece of shit. Tara Reid was a scientist for fucks sake.

My only real fear is heights, or more specifically, falling from heights.
posted by puke & cry 30 March | 16:45
sarah, with my twisted imagination, the water doesn't have to be deep or salt. Remember the scene in Star Wars where they get caught in some kind of refuse processor and there's something cruising around under the surface, yanking them down? I rememeber hating that entire scene.
posted by Frisbee Girl 30 March | 16:58
Fris reminded me -- mirrors at night.

And a lot of the old urban legend horror stuff like Bloody Mary or a man with a knife in the back seat of my car still freaks me out.

Oh, and ghosts or crazy men in the bathtub. I have no idea why, but I often get freaked out when I have to go into the bathroom at night because I'm convinced there may be something hiding in the tub. A see-through shower curtain has fixed this at my current apartment, but I was starting to wonder if someone had died in the tub at my old place because the phobia was so strong.

(In summary: I'm scared of bathrooms, it seems!)
posted by occhiblu 30 March | 17:02
Drowning, burning up, being trapped somewhere (doesn't matter how I'm trapped), clowns.
posted by deborah 30 March | 17:48
What if you were drowning while being trapped by burning clowns?
posted by ooga_booga 30 March | 17:56
Most everything. I get so involved in watching a movie that I jump at almost everything. The "Oh, it's just the cat" scene. Or someone creeping up behind someone else who is totally oblivious.

True story: I was working at the cash registers at Best Buy, sorting out the "go-backs" and someone came up behind me and did said hello or touched my shoulders or something. I actually literally screamed a short scream inside the store that I got reprimanded for because it was "inappropriate." Tell that to the former manager who decided it was a good idea to say hello by sneaking up behind me, okay?

Real life? Scenes in movies or TV that show real medical procedures that have a lot of blood in them. Swarms of ants on my kitchen counters.
posted by TrishaLynn 30 March | 18:12
being right about the wrong things.
posted by geckoinpdx 30 March | 18:42
When I was about 22 and my sister was 12, me and her and our mom were talking late one night about things that we're really scared of. You know, stuff like people have said here: someone grabbing you from under the bed, etc. So my sister gets this very serious expression on her face and she says, "You know what I'm most terrified of? Bell bottoms coming back into style." And they did, too.

I don't think I'm scared of anything anymore. When I was a kid, I had real problems with getting very scared and fixating on closets and stuff. I had many nights when I didn't sleep at all. Then, finally, I decided that if something awful was going to happen, it'd happen whether I was scared or not, and I was sick and tired of being so damn scared—so I just stopped being scared.
posted by kmellis 30 March | 19:42
Ring was ok, I thought the terror was pretty good, but I thought it was a pretty stupid movie overall.

Probably. Can't say for sure, because I haven't seen it. Now Ringu, on the other hand, scary shit.
posted by pieisexactlythree 30 March | 20:10
Adulthood.
posted by Eideteker 30 March | 21:14
Much of it's optional, Eid.
posted by tangerine 30 March | 22:30
What if you were drowning while being trapped by burning clowns?


Hm. I'd be happy the clowns were burning yet sad that I was dying so I wouldn't see the death of the clowns. Or something like that.
posted by deborah 31 March | 18:58
← Apologies in advance, || I'll be there on time →

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