What Makes You Scared?
Mon, 2009-08-03 20:31
#1
What Makes You Scared?
I was just thinking, after listening to an ice cream van do its jingling thing, which sent a shiver down my back, and it's always been like that after seeing John Carpenter's Assault On Precinct 13. Now for people who haven't seen the film I will not reveal why this is so. But apparently, whether this is apocryphal or not there were people in the States after watching Psycho, who never had a shower again. What normal activity that you used to undertake you don't do after watching a film or play?
threeleafshamrock
I have never pissed in a rose bush since watching (and reading)'Wilt'. I went right off sausages after 'Deep-throat' too. :(
poetjude
There's no activity I avoid but after watching 'The Swarm' as a child, bees send me into panic stricken flight.
jude
mcscraic
After watching a Doc called The Rat Catchers Of Hackney I always fear sitting on the toilet seat
jxmartin
As a child, it was the unknown that I feared most. The dusky penumbra, of what might be lurking in the dark, is what raised the hackles on my neck. Did that shadow just become darker and deeper? Did it move? What is that noise which whispers hissingly along, like stealthy movement? Who is looking out from the depths of that shadowy pool of darkness?
When we were kids, it was the unlighted attic that scared us most. Rarely did any of us feel brave enough to walk up that last flight of stairs into the darkened interior of what lay above us. Who knew what had taken posession of that space in the hours just before? Even looking at the attic door, brought a tremor of apprehension to me as I walked by. Could a mysterious hand whisk out from behind the door and drag me aloft? Who knew?
The basement was also a place of murky insecurity. Even though the house was filled with people, who knew what lay in the stygian blackness of the far corners of that dusky corner of the house? Who wanted to know? Not me!
And there was the vast blackness of the night itself. We just knew that all mannner of werewolves, vampires and other assorted monsters roamed in the diminished light of the world around us. We told each other tales of the various monsters, ghosts and other denizens of the night who roamed around us. We all had heard tales of someone who knew someone who had a cousin who had seen one of the scarifying visions and dropped dead like a stone. Sunlight was a welcoming lifeline for us to roam the out of doors. The night was left for other things.
And what now that I am older and have experienced and survived the many things that go “bump in the night?” I live in a condo, with no attic or basement and never go outside after the sun sets. Who wants to know what’s really out there? Not me.