X-Entertainment's Christmas Season & Advent Calendar, 2008.

09/18/2007: Ghost Dots, Party Favors, Scary Places.

Okay, so these probably didn’t deserve their own Countdown entry, but I just couldn’t resist…they’re too cute. As has been previously discussed in one of the comment threads, the Tootsie company is adding to its typical bunch of Halloween lollipops with an all-new offering: Ghost Dots! Glow-in-the-dark colored (but not actually glow-in-the-dark) fruity specters sent from Hades to satiate our need for candy imparted with the souls of the dead!

Went out to dinner a little while ago, and since the restaurant was two minutes from Wal-Mart, we dropped on by to see if they finally got their Halloween aisles up and running. They did. Nothing too mindblowing, but I did notice that there was a far larger scope of actual, honest “scary” costumes in the kiddy aisle than there have been in recent years. Vampires, wolfmen and the like were in much stronger numbers than the usual gamut of hot cartoon characters du jour, which is always nice to see. This is what we in the business call a filler paragraph.

Oh, and I found these:

On some really messy rack full of mostly uninteresting party favors, there were carded packs of the eight monstrous finger puppets seen above. (Click here to see ‘em packaged.) While I have no tremendous use for finger puppets that only very narrowly avoid not being able to fit on any of my fingers, I think it’s pretty obvious why I had to buy these. Check out that ghost! That slime-drooling ghost! I’m just in awe that such a cheap production of shoddy finger puppets would boast such a neat little touch. How cheap of a production? Click here to see the packaged version again, but this time, look closer. The skeleton finger puppet on the upper left was packaged backwards! Oh no!

I’m usually no fan of bodily fluids as an entertainment form (especially as it relates to things under “vomit” umbrella), but there’s just something about a slime-drooling ghost finger puppet that makes me want to draw red roses while singing the one hit song Dido had before that giant bat swooped down and ate her to death.

Wal-Mart’s collection of Halloween party favors has no official title, but if you’re curious, just look for the pile of crap in orange/purple packaging with a little Frankenstein head in the upper left corner. That’s them! There’s all sorts of cheap & fun stuff — everything from packs of twelve glowing vampire fangs (just one dollar!) to tiny flashlights with bat stickers on them, to a bag full of…

…twenty-five random rubber critters, which were obviously culled together from several other existing party favor collections to create a mix jussst goofy enough to write about.

Mixed in with the random bug rings, clip-on snakes and suction-cupped spiders was a totally out of place bunch of cheery, humanoid turtles, who are no doubt counting the minutes until Halloween is over, when they will be reassigned to their rightful spot in a bag of Christmas party favors, where they’ll break bread with much friendlier Santa rings, clip-on reindeer and suction-cupped snowmen.

I don’t have much faith that Ghost Dots or Wal-Mart’s party favors will inspire much in the way of on-topic conversation, so let’s wheel out our first blog survey of the Halloween season:

In the comments, talk about the spookiest places you’ve even been, even if they don’t seem so scary in retrospect. Try to avoid the bad jokes that tend to fill one’s head when such a question is poised.

I’ll start: Grandma’s basement. I grew up in a two-floor house, but it didn’t have a basement. None of the other houses owned by people I knew well enough to snoop through their stuff had them, either….except for my grandparents. Basements are at least a little inherently scary, true, but I think my grandmother’s passed a different kind of fear test.

Nevermind the ghost stories involving that basement that had become a part of my family’s permanent culture….this place was awful. All of the pipes and tubes that kept the upper floors on the cutting edge of modern technology all ran to the basement, where they were finally exposed as the squealing, squeaking, creaky, ghoul-sounding motherfuckers that we all know them to be. You’d be down there, and haunted noises would come from every direction and in every style. 99 times out of 100, even a kid can recognize a pipe sound as a pipe sound. It’s that hundredth time that gets ya. I couldn’t begin to count the number of times I remember running up her stairs like an anthropomorphic rocket, all because somebody took a shit on the top floor and flushed.

There were only two ways to bring some illumination to the basement. The first was a lamp with a not-at-all-removable stained glass lampshade. The set theme for this particular stained glass lampshade was “blood red flowers,” which caused nothing but hideous red light to beam out at every creepy corner of the basement the second you turned it on. So, I didn’t.

The other way was with an overhead fluorescent “box” that gave off only enough light to just barely make out the hobgoblin creeping out at you from her seemingly perpetually-in-use washing machine.

Oh, and the decor! The basement was relatively sparse, but somewhere along the way in their great journey together, my grandparents became avid collectors of wood-carved, dark brown Native American statues and busts. They were all over the place, and every single one of them stared at me. There were also caricature-like statues of Laurel and Hardy, with such exaggerated and bloated facial features that they looked more like giant, peach ticks than people. It didn’t help matters that I had no idea who Laurel and Hardy were at the time.

It was brutal, but I needed to go down there. The basement hosted the only television in Grandma’s house. I had to either deal with the monsters and watch TV, or not deal with the monsters and sit on a metal folding chair in an upstairs room that had nothing at else in it but a grandfather clock.

Thats why I love this site, Matt can write about an ordinary thing like a basement, but turn it into this amazing story that we can all relate to in some way!!! We all knew someone with a sketchy basement, right?

Matt, does this blood red, evil inducing lamp, still reside in a relatives house??? Would love to see a photo!!!

crazy_mainer: I just Googled a bit and came up with this. The lamp was very much in that style, but the white panels were far fewer, and every instance of a flower petal was colored blood red. It wasn’t scary to look at, but the kind of light it gave off was more suited to a darkroom.

yeah! im totally taking credit as the ghost dot tip off..er. if i ever get a tattoo, it’s gonna be a ghost dot.

My grandma’s basement was the same sort of place. I still hate going down there.

I’m a photo major, and earlier this year I took pictures of abandoned houses for a project. That was awesome but rather creepy. Dead kudzu engulfing the houses, “NO TRESPASSING” signs, and the knowledge that these crumbling places were once homes was unsettling. I still can’t believe I actually ventured inside one.

Most of the houses were closed up, but this one had all the doors and most of the roof missing, so enough light was coming in that I didn’t feel totally unsafe. I guess the inside walls and the roof had been stripped for wood or something; all the beams were showing and that cotton candy-looking insulation fluff was everywhere. There was also a ton of random abandoned junk on the floor, and some clothes and towels hanging from the rafters. I got some neat pictures from near the doorway, but when I tried to venture a bit further back some kind of bugs started swarming out of the floor so I ran away.

Looking back on it, the fact that I went in there scares me more than the actual place. I just didn’t think of all the possibilities. I kept in mind to look out for crumbling floors or ceilings so I wouldn’t be injured, but I didn’t even think about swarms of crazy bugs, animals that could have been living in there, squatters, hiding criminals….Yeah, won’t be doing that again.

On a different note, I went to a park the other day that was deep in the woods. It has pieces of the ruins of a town that was flooded in 1887, but the strangest thing was that I could not hear any traffic from inside the park. It really emphasized for me how constantly I hear some sort of humming noise, AC or traffic. All I could hear was crickets, and the shafts of sunlight were coming in on these crumbled walls and piles of brick ruins covered in moss and ivy. Not exactly creepy, but kind of beautifully eerie.

This is my first time posting near the top! If I am indeed still near the top, that is. I’ve been writing this for almost 15 minutes. Thanks for the festivity, Matt!

spookiest place ive ever been is probably matamoros mexico, where you enter upon crossing the border from texas. i was little and we got lost and in the newspapers there were these reports of a gang of, no shit, cannibals killing tourists and taking them back to shady parking lots where they would eat them. creepy stuff!

PS - I want Ghost Dots so bad now. Regular Dots are amazing enough but GHOST DOTS.

Spookiest place huh? Well I went urban exploring this past Friday at an abandoned foundry. I’ve been there before, but the place was wrecked. Every single pane of glass was broken, there was a constant dripping of some fluid and I’m pretty damn sure that something was following us. We also found two toilets full of blood soaked paper towels (ewww) and then heard a door slam. Needless to say, we hightailed it. I’ve got a more supernatural urban exploring story, but I guess I should save that for later.

My grandma’s basement was the same way. So was the rest of her house. Especially the attic, it has all these cubby holes with tiny doors that lead outside so sometimes there’d be dead birds and stuff. It even had a trapdoor in the floor that we’ve never opened, I’m honestly afraid there’s going to be a skeleton or something under it. She had a couple of those lamps too and like everything else “nice” she had, us kids broke them.

I used to buy cheap Wal-Mart party favors to hand out in treat bags at work and they were always a hit. People would literally beg for the rubber bats and spider rings.

I went to an abandoned insane asylum in Ohio a few years ago. I was driving through and heard it was haunted from a show I saw earlier that year. So I got off the exit and was able to walk through it without much of a challenge from any authority. I don’t know if it was the fact I was alone or it had the potential to be haunted but I was seriously spooked. So much so that I didn’t stop for the night but drove all the way to Watertown, NY through the night and listened to talk radio to take my mind off of it.

The scariest place I ever went was an abandoned farm house in the middle of nowhere, Kansas. Supposedly it was the scene of a murder/suicide. It was in the middle of nowhere, and I could definitely imagine rotting bodies just sitting for weeks on end, starting to bloat and stink, until curious family members came and made the grisly discovery. However, the scariest part wasn’t the ghost story, but the fact that the place was decrepit. One night, when we were teenagers, my buddies and I tromped into the pitch-black kitchen. We promptly felt the floor shift. We ever so slowly and cautiously backed out. Had the floor given way, we probably would have plunged into the root cellar. Since this was the early 90s, none of us had a cell phone (although somebody might have had a pager). We would have been hurt, and possibly stuck. After we got out we started to take turns describing how awful it would have been, stuck with no chance of help. The vengeful spirits of the murdered family would certainly have smelled the blood from our wounds- and come for us. We gave ourselves the willies pretty bad, although nobody wanted to admit it.

Sorry for the double post, but I remembered another couple of spots. I went and found a good rendition of one story here:

I went to school in Valley Center, and Theorosa’s bridge was a party spot. I went a few times, although nothing really weird happened. However, legend had it that if you said “Theorosa, I have your baby” three times, she would come and attack you. Somebody said it twice, freaked out and stopped.

Also, my fraternity house was haunted. When my fraternity bought the house from another fraternity, the departing Phi Delts warned the incoming Pi Kapps about a ghost named Duncan. Supposedly, he died during a hazing incident, and had terrorized the Phi Delts ever since. The story goes that Duncan stood up suddenly while being paddled, and was accidentally struck on the head. Blood sprayed all over the wall, and Duncan died. Later efforts to paint the wall were futile. Blood would seep through the paint. When my fraternity bought the house, they put paneling over the wall. However, some guys saved a ball of plaster that was stained red, calling it “The Blood Ball.”

Duncan was friendly to pledges. One guy was convinced that Duncan actually saved his life. He was in the room where all the pledges slept (basically the attic), alone and asleep. However, he claimed to hear a voice telling him he had to wake up. He tried to ignore it, but the voice got more and more insistent. He woke up to find the electric blanket on the next bed over was smoldering. Shaun was convinced Duncan saved his life.

I never had any paranormal experiences, but a lot of guys had pretty good stories. I think most of them were a combination of alcohol and bravado. We got out a Ouija board in the room where Duncan supposedly died, and nothing happened. However, I was there for a few days by myself one summer. My car broke down after a party, and everyone else went home while I stayed and waited for it to get fixed on Monday. I was in my room in the basement, and I SWORE I heard footsteps. It was a HUGE house, but I knew all the doors were locked, and I was all alone. It freaked me out pretty bad. I went looking for vandals and didn’t find anyone. Then I thought about Duncan. Supposedly he was nice to pledges, but a terror to brothers. I was only newly initiated the previous semester, and I was sure Duncan was out to get me. Now I realize it was probably just a 100 year old house settling. Then, I spent the night in terror, and I barely slept.

Off topic- but… Hey Matt, do you want a McDonald’s Placemat from Japan? I pocketed one on my trip after remembering your article, if you want it, tell me where to send it.

Spookiest place… hmm. Maybe the basement of the house I lived in until I was only three years old. It had a dirt floor and it flooded and was perpetually so black you couldn’t see the walls even onc you were down there. I was nly down here twice, and both times were when I was 2 or 3, but it was pretty fucking creepy. But only after I was older and looked back on it to say “Fucking creepy”, at the time I wasn’t sure why I was never allowed down there. That same house had a door to no-where.

Halloween Sooktacular is on QVC. I don’t know, it’s 1:30 in the morning. What else in on?

I can’t believe nobody commented on what happens when you click a picture in the Ghost Dots article.

What is it with grandparents and creepy houses? My grandma’s house was built sometime in the 1900s and would be a very good place to film a horror movie.

I never wanted to go upstairs and it wasn’t until a few years ago that I remembered why. The children’s bedroom is filled with creepy old broken dolls and other toys. It’s mostly empty and the light is dim. The walls have the creepiest damn zoo animals painted on them.

And my grandma can’t get up the stairs anymore. She hasn’t been up there for over a decade. There are dead cockroaches all. Over. The floor.

Whoah Matt! That is one creepy basement I don’t think the call of the t.v. would have even gotten me to go down there.

The scariest place I have ever been to was the drainage system in my old neighborhood. When I was a kid me and a bunch of my friends used to trudge around in the rain drains under our neighborhood..I know crazy right. Well there was a legend among the the kids that if you went far enough into the drains you would come upon a red door and it was literally the portal to hell.Then there were the more earthly fears of ..you know ..rain..and rats and bats and snakes. Ahh …Good times.
Oh yeah I was an avid Stephen King fan when I was a kid as well. The last time I went into the drains was upon finishing the first chapter of IT.

My grandparents didn’t have a creepy basement. They had a creepy garage. My grandfather was a carpenter and there were all manner of sharp tools in there. Over the years t just got creepier as the wood rotted and the metal rusted. Nowadays it looks like a scene out of Silent Hill.

A concerned reader - Good catch. I feel ashamed for not being more curious. Matt, you are a master of anticlimax.

Matt, I don’t think anything I’ve ever been to or done can relate to this, but I do have a good story about a haunted house my brother, dad and I would set up every few Halloweens.

Because of how small my old house was, it was really a haunted tour through a garage and part of a back yard, but it was awesome. We sealed off the front of the garage with a tarp, only allowing a small entrance in one corner. You would walk in to a black-lit only room with fog/smoke all around the floor. There were some shelves with some scary as hell mannequin pieces painted with red paint (to look like blood, natch). As you traveled down the path, you would have to step up on a platform (with a very tiny me under it, to grab unsuspecting ankles) and walk past my brother, set up to look like his legs were chopped off at the knee (complete with dripping “blood!”) After you passed him, you’d walk next to some haunted house staples (spaghetti brains, grape eyes, dude’s head coming out of a table, stuff like that.) Then you would be in the back yard.

The back yard was the tail end of the trip, forcing you to make a sharp turn to our gate, but one final piece de resistance was right in front of the exit: my dad was hiding behind a tree (or something) wearing a hockey mask, and holding a chainsaw. A real chainsaw. The chain was removed, but the sounds were not. And now, a blooper real!

The fog was made from dried ice, but actually dissolved almost completely before people started arriving en masse. The platform with me under it was actually about a quarter inch too short, so I would get slightly crushed when people went over me, and a lot of older women (or teenage girls, I couldn’t tell) were offended when I grabbed their legs, thinking I was some mad, seven year old groper. My brother’s “blood” on his knees smelled really strongly of vinegar (since it was partially vinegar) and most of it dripped off pretty quickly. And as for my dad and the chainsaw, nine times out of ten it wouldn’t start, but there was one REALLY good time when it did work.

An acquaintance of mine went with his mom, and throughout the entire thing she kept saying “I know you’re out there Mark, trying to scare me! You aren’t going to scare me, Mark!” etc etc. She went through the entire thing, completely aware of exactly who was what and instead of being scared when I grabbed her leg, said “Hi Ben!” and “Oh, how are you, Matt?” when she went by him. But when she got outside, she was just as smug as before. Feeling safe, or assuming my dad had left, she was completely ready to leave. Right before she reached the exit, my dad jumped out and made a Hollywood-quality chainsaw rev. Even though I was separated by a wall, the shriek was crystal clear, followed by a small, mouse-like “Mom, you’re… squishing me…!” from her son. My dad probably made a few forced pants/costume changes that night…

Matt,
Your grandparents basement had nothing on my grandparents basement.My grandparents house used to be a funeral home!It had a big basement with a huge cellar.My brother,my cousin and I used to play down there and I was alway’s afraid I was going to get locked in that cellar.I alway’s got weird feelings down there.Hell the whole house was freaky including the attic.The house was huge and would have been a great for a horror movie.To bad after my grandfather died my grandmother sold the house.Oh what I could have turned that house into for Halloween!

P.S.I was one of the few people that liked The Hill’s Have Eyes 2 and it’s a good thing you didn’t let the woman buy Bridge To Terabithia.It stunck.

I live on a border town, that borders Texas and Mexico, If you ever thought white people had some freaky story Mexican people got some messed up once. One of them is about a ghost women named La LLorona (not sure on spelling) but its translated the weeping women.

The story goes the women wanted to cross the river to get to the united states. So her and her two children deiced to make the swim. THe story goes that the current got to strong and both of the children were sucked into the Rio Grande River. She made it to the other side and of course imidialty began to cry while she combed the bank looking for the children or there bodies. Texas rangers patrolling the area happened to find her first and made her go back into Mexico, with so much sorrow on her she didn’t quite make it back and ended up drowning as well. Urben legend says that you can still here the womens crys close to the river and some people people have actually seen her. Shes dressed in an old style dress and her face has a wrinkled water loged looked. Mother used to tell their children that if they didnt go to sleep the women would come and claim them. THis of course worked and made us all go to sleep.

SO thats the intro to my story. WHen I was in Jr. High I went for a weekend to stay at a freinds house who lived in Matamoros, which is the crossing town to Brownsville which is in the US. His neighborhood was an older neighbor hood which was right by the river. We had decided to go play some basketball at a nearby school and he started telling me the story of La LLorona and told me that he and his friend had actually seen her. I didn’t really believe him but it still made me think and made me a little paranoid. It started getting dark and we decided to go back to his house which was about a half mile walk, On the way over there we saw a women with a baby carriage who was probably just some normal lady who was also walking back home from wherever she was, but she was dressed in a long black dress and she had her face down so we couldent see features. She was walking the opposites way from us and it was only a few minuets before we would cross next to each other, and I started getting really scared, I looked over at my friend for some reassurance and I could see that his face had turned pale and he was obviously freaking out also. Both of us didn’t even say anything and we started bolting from there on, problem was this kid was the fastest kid in our class and I was never known for my athleticism. Before long I was running by myself through a Mexican neighborhood that I didn’t know well with a freaky ghost chasing me wanting to take me to the underworld with her.

Of course I finally made it to his house out of breath with know ghost on my heals, the lady must have though we were a couple of idiots.

H-O-S-E-D….HAHAHAHAHA perfect! A comic gem. Thanks for pointing it out Concerned Reader.

My grandma’s basement wasn’t that scary, at least by day. Actually, her house is kind of a split-level, with the main rooms at the top, and a kind of living room below, complete with glass doors and bay windows. It was just one time when I was about 7 and I went down there at night. She has this orange plush-doll cat, and that I opened the door when the room was dark, the light shone on it, and it looked like a ghost. I wouldn’t go down there again for some time, and that stuffed cat gave me the willies for even longer.

But other than that, I haven’t been completely scared by a lot of places. After dark just a lot of places still seem spooky to me. There was one time we were on a hike in California’s mountains, and there was a dead tree that made me want to get out of that area (I hadn’t seen Poltergeist yet then), but usually it’s a question of light and dark.

When I was a kiddie we used to live in this house with this long ass narrow hallway that would take you from the linen closet to the dining room. To the right of the dining room was the kitchen, which is where we had the T.V. and the food (it was a big kitchen). Of course, my room was all the way on the other side of the hallway, and the lights in the kitchen were conveniently placed all the way on the opposite side of the entrance. Next to the garage.

I’m sure everyone here has made their share of dashing sprints to the light switch, no?

Day before Halloween, my sister stayed up until midnight watching some horror movie. Left my Jason mask by the front door as to not forget it for school. Short story; scared the shit out of my sister. Literally.

Both sets of my grandparents actually had disturbing basements. My grandparents on my dads side had their basement set up as a kind of bar, with pool tables and the works. All the woodwork was dark and in a victorian style and it terrified me to no end. There were also a lot of strange noises, which i’m not fairly sure just came from the furnace which was also in the basement.

My grandparents on my mothers side was more or less exactly like Matt explained his grandparents to be. The ceiling was very low and there was just one bare bulb for light. It was full of tables and old chairs with all sorta of quilts and blankets draped over them. Every single time I went down there I thought I saw something moving beneath all those quilts.

By the way Matt, I think you should be a salesperson. I can’t think of anyone else that could make more than 10 people ecstatic about white dots.

Scariest memory/place was a the local mall’s haunted house when I was 5 years old. All was slightly creepy and uneasy as it should have been, but at the end was the mounted head of a vampire clown, recently shot by a British explorer. For whatever reason, when that clown busted out of the wall, I lost it. I ran out screaming my head off and thus began my deep rooted hatred of clowns (except for Boso for some reason, maybe because he gave prizes away).
Well, time to write my resume.

One: My grandma’s cellar. Her house was warm and inviting, but this cellar (which was separate and away from the house) was where she kept her preserves. If you were looking for a hellish one-room terror, this cellar would be it- especially the jarred something in the back that had been down there since they built the house and put the cellar in. I was convinced one of those jars would bust open and some new and pulsating life-form would creep out at me.

Two: My old house. The house wasn’t actually that creepy, but it didn’t have a ceiling fixture in the living room, which gave it a weird feeling when we were moving in.

This was more situational, though. We were moving in. I was in the kitchen wiping out the cabinets, and I climbed up on the counter to get the upper cabinets. Boo! Cat Skull. Not even kidding, someone had left a cat skull in the top shelf of the cabinet. To this day, I can’t figure out why you would save the skull of a cat, but foget to take it with you when you moved.

It wigged me out. I sat curled up in the living room with the dog until my brother and mom got back with another load.

The real kicker is that this happened Halloween night of 2000. And yes, it was a dark and stormy night. (My brother wanted to keep the skull, but I objected. Strongly.)

BTW: Coolest Halloween thing I bought at Wal-Mart was the bleeding skull candles- although you have to buy a couple, because sometimes the wax is a little more purple than red.

Hi Matt, I’m curious how you take your pictures. I know you use a cell phone, as I’ve read before, but do you ever use a compact camera in the store and what’s the reactions been? I have to know because I’ve thought of doing the same. My cellphone cam sucks.

Scariest place was definetly my grandparent’s barn. They lived on a farm in the middle of nowhere surrounded by nothing but miles and miles of deep woods around the land they farmed.

So you’re in the hayloft of this old decrepit barn late at night and the only thing you can hear is the occasional coyote yelp, and the wind starts blowing and jingling and jangling all the metal stuff hanging in the barn. The woods is creaking and you realize that if someone came out of the woods right that instant and grabbed you, not only would no one hear you scream but they’d likely never find you.

Also, it was even creepier now that I think about it. The back of the barn dropped off into this steep ravine, and years ago some of their pigs got loose and escaped. Domestic pigs go feral very easily, and actually physically change getting bigger, hairier, and even sprouting tusks they didn’t have before.

So there’s a population of feral pigs behind there and occasionally you’d be out there and suddenly hear this weird rustling noise punctuated by these lound oinks and grunts. That was terrifying.

My Grandma didn’t even have a real basement…she had a creepy CELLAR that was reached in the kitchen via a huge squeaky, rusted door hidden under a rug. This place had rickety stairs, a ceiling a spiderwebs, a wet, rotten smell and housed a bunch of pipes that made tons of groaning sounds. Scary stuff.

Scariest place for me? No doubt, my family’s shed. Big, dark, smelly, full of spiders and sharp tools, and I was forced to keep my bicycle in there, so I had to face my fear once or twice a day on average.

Scariest place i’ve had the pleasure of meeting was a ‘witch cave’ in PEI’s Rainbow Valley. Yup a place called Rainbow Valley. Basically it was this small cave with the entrance and exit and a witch in the middle that would light up and stir her cauldron while giving that perfect witch cackle. Being a 6 year old and having had a month of nightmares from my older brother letting me watch Evil Dead (my parents don’t forgive him to this day for that month of hell) I wasn’t sure what was beyond the darkness of the cave entrance and being a bright sunny day didn’t help my vision out once I entered.

Once I got far enough in the witch activated and I was out of there so fast that I saw the light of day before I soiled myself…. embarassing moment but one happy to share about a scary place for a little kid.

PS. As I got older (8) and we vacationed there again, I managed to walk up to the witch and gave her a nice punch on the shnoze for ruining my favorite superman undies.

For anyone interested in UrbEx’ing (exploring abandoned buildings), you’ve gotta check out opacity.us (click my name to link). The guy who runs it photographs abandoned buildings, and there is a giant forum dedicated to displaying other’s photos as well. Stop by for a while, you’ll get hooked!

Scariest place I’ve ever been…. my back yard. Seriously, it creeps me the hell out. I live way out in the country, no street lights anywhere around, so it’s very dark out there. Combine that with the sounds of wild animals (usually either cats or raccoons), and you can’t get me out there after dark without a flashlight. During the day I have no problem with it, in fact I think it’s very beautiful to look out on. But at night…. everything just seems so sinister.

No scary basement stories here; my grandparents all had well-lit basements. My great-grandmother used to tell us stories of “Herman”, the ghost who haunted the attic, but that was just to explain why the house would creak when it was windy….

Hmm… the empty room containing only a chair and a grandfather clock sounds worse than the basement. Especially if it’s an old rocking chair that sits by the window at an angle. Every hour the grandfather clock chimes, creating a small cloud of dust.

I’ve been to some creepy places scattered around the OKC area. The abandoned orphanage and the old hospital in Guthrie, one or both of which have been seen on one of Travel Channel’s haunted shows.

By my mom’s house is a creepy old house that was built long ago. The house doesn’t have electricity to it (not saying it’s cut off, saying the house isn’t even wired for electricity, it’s that old) and it has a basement that looks almost exactly like the basement in the end of Blair Witch Project. I might be one of the few people who liked that movie and it’s probably because I believe in that sort of stuff, so this basement is the ultimate in creepy for me.

Grandma’s basement WAS scary, but the scare was multiplied by 1000 by the stories that my aunts and uncles would tell me about who/what lived down there. The main inhabitant was “Ernie,” who was, in my mind, a giant, hideous, reformation of the Muppet. (Is “muppet” supposed to be capitalized?) Anyway, Ernie lived under the stairs, and proof of his existence could be seen on the door leading back upstairs. There was these crazy scratches all up and down the door that almost went all the way through. That was enough to make me HATE that basement, and enough for my relatives to MAKE me go down there. (The scratches were from a previously owned dog who passed away before I was born.) My fam still teases me to this day, even though the house was sold years ago.

Scariest place growing up: The House Two Doors Down. The house two doors down from my childhood home was part abandon deli in the front and part creepy old house in the back. A very old, and witchy looking woman named Tesse lived there. According to neighborhood lore, her husband, who ran the deli, suddenly died and Tesse became a recluse. She closed the deli as-is and stopped taking care of the house and surrounding yard. Decades later my family moved onto the block.

First day in our new house my father and I were sent out to get some lunch-meat. We decided to check out the little deli two doors down. From afar it appeared to be stocked; advertisements in the window. We walked and realized the store was dark, but appeared to be in “operation,” kind of. We searched for the store’s hours. I tippy-toed and looked into the window. Everything looked old and dusty, but there was candy on display,can goods on the shelf, and a meat slicer in the corner. It felt creepy, as if time had stopped in the store. I turned to my father to show him what I saw, I looked back into the store and was horribly greeted by a wrinkled, old, witch-like face.

I lived on that block for 10 years, the store never changed. DAMN CREEPY OLD LADY!

When I was in the Boy Scouts (about 9 or 10), we took field trips every now and then. One of them was to an old, out of commission destroyer in Boston Harbor. We got to spend the night, and live like they did during “The Great War” as our host called it. The place was populated with a mix of young and old guys who would rather be any where else than serving a bunch of snotty kids.
After watching some movie we were ushered off to bed at 9 or so in order to get our rest for our big tour of the boat the next day. As my friend and I lay in our bunks, the swaying of the water caused the hammocks we were laying in to move back and forth, making creeeeeeaaaaakkkking noises that kept us away and wetting ourselves a little. Every nosie was amplified, and the only light came from a red bulb in the middle of the room. I had to pee at one point and my friend and I snuck out and promptly got lost. The whole ship was illuminated by red and green bulbs it seemed…cheer at Christmas for some, but the horrors of the death boat for us. We wandered down a hall way and came face to face with several mannequins posed in glass cases, in the hallway, in rooms. Their blank eyes, fake beards and mustaches, and jaunty yet sinister sailors’ outfits made us shriek in fear and terror. We ran a’la Scooby-Doo around the ship, trying to find our bunks, but alas, could not. Every room was a dark room that contained a)mannequins b) old supplies c) a door to another dark room d) huge spiders.

We fell asleep in the hallway right outside our room, being too scared to move any further.

I had a neighbor who also had those terrible Laurel and Hardy statues… I was terrified of those ugly ass things!!!

Scariest places I’ve been to on Staten Island- the abandoned Sea View Hospital… the “Ghost” on Bedell St…. and the cemetary where Ichibod Crane is burried.

Scariest place….this is a hard one for me, because even as a shy little girl I was always really skeptical about spookiness and could find a reason for everything that happened. So this will probably be lame, but I was always creeped out if we went to pick my dad up from work (he managed a Kinney’s Shoes at the mall) and all the stores were closed, the gates were down in front of the stores and it was dark. It just seemed so soulless; not to mention the possibility of the mannequins coming to life and stalking stiffly around the mall.

As a kid, my kitchen was really creepy when in it alone. It was an old house and the cabinets towered over me, and they all were that warped wood that produces glowering monsters in the eyes of a child.

As an adult, I ran a broadcast studio in Pittsburgh and next door was the first indoor pool ever built in America. It was right before it was going to be renovated into more studio space and so I’d go in there every once in a while.

It had the stale dampness of a cellar in the tropics. There was a fifties-era bathing suit hanging in one of the shower stalls and the cloudy windows squeezed the life out of sunlight. And I felt like someone was always watching me.

I would have to say the guest room of my grandma’s old condo was really, really scary to me. Mostly because I was never allowed up there.
Being told I wasn’t allowed in a room for no apparent reason made my mind fill with terrifying images of what sort of evil crap could be going on in there. The door was always closed save for one or two times it was cracked and I got to catch a brief glimpse of it’s haunting interior.
She moved out of the place when I was like 5 so I never got to see just how many mummies and half dog/half little girls she had hidden in there.

Also, I think we might one day see Ghost Dots with faces if they continue to make them. It took years before Little Debbie finally added the extra chunk of dough to make Pumpkin Flips have Jack-o-Lantern smiles.

Has anybody tried the Ghost Dots under a blacklight, I bet it would be pretty kickass.

Usually when my family goes to Upstate NY for the summer, we stay at whatever house is owned by my dad’s friend. He could probably best be described as “crazy mountain main” despite growing up on Long Island.

One of his houses in particular was a large cabin that he built himself in literally the middle of nowhere about an half hour or so north of Saranac Lake. It didn’t have a lot, like tv or a good bathroom, but what it did have was this:

Lots of taxidermied animals, as in, stuffed. He’s an antique dealer and has a lot of animal carcasses stuffed, mostly deer, caribou, and a few owls.

At night, with hardly any lights, I would be sleeping in the room where all these animals would be. I was freaked out the entire time, and he just made it worse by pretending to make the sound of an owl flying around the house (which I’ve since used on my girlfriend to tease her for my amusement).

The house he has now is slightly better. It used to be a church, which he converted into his store, which he later converted into a house. This one is also in the middle of nowhere, but this house is actually in a town…in the middle of nowhere.

Damn it Matt you’re making me want to go out and buy shit. I can’t afford that, even cheapo Wal-Mart goodies.

To the guy that asked, there is a continuation of the first comic if you snoop around that page.

This is one of my favorite parts of the season–reading other peoples’ creepy stories. It’s just a shame that I didn’t read this thread around midnight. Some years I’ve managed to spook myself badly enough that looking around or leaving my chair become nigh-suicidal options.

My grandma had a pretty freaky cellar. Crumbling concrete walls, insufficient lighting via naked bulbs, wasps, clutter. But we had to go down there anyway, because there was a couple of cool board games and puzzles that were stored down there. Plus, since three of my uncles had used it as a bedroom through their teen years, there was also that Fara Fawcett poster (you know the one I mean) and a whole stack of Cheech & Chong 8-tracks.

I’m pretty sure the spookiest place I’ve been was the abandoned zoo up in the hills around Cisco, Texas. Most of the cages are basically shallow caves carved directly into the rock with rusting old bars across the mouth. It was built by the WPA, so it’s all very old-school. None of this “habitat” crap here. We went up there in the middle of the night and wandered around, and I’m sure anything rustling in the bushes would have caused an immediate failure of morale and/or bowel control.

If I ever manage to move into a real house, I’d really like to write a diary-style story of haunting, madness, and Lovecraftian evil. Then I’d copy it by hand into a journal, including increasingly shaky and deranged handwriting as the descent into insanity continues, and then suddenly cut off the narrative and sprinkle blood droplets on the last page. Then when I move out, I’ll hide it in the attic or on the top shelf of a closet somewhere for another owner to find sometime down the years.

I’d have done it already, but I don’t think I’m a good enough writer to convince anyone that the apartment next to the Sonic is a haunted house of indescribable horror.

Spookiest place I’ve been has to be the old Western State Hospital in Lakewood, WA. It was a 19th/20th century mental asylum whose property is now part of a large park. The actual building is now a big pile of concrete blocked of by a shabby chain link fence. Of course it is now covered in graffiti and it is actually used by the government as a training ground for search and rescue dogs on occasion. Even in the daylight, I can still envision nameless patients being lobotomized and electrocuted into sanity. I say they were nameless, because so many were in fact buried in the hospital cemetery on the grounds with only a very small numbered headstone. A testament to the time not so long ago when anyone with the slightest sign of mental or emotional problems would be dropped of at the asylum and forgotten forever. Some of their descendants have tracked them down and placed proper headstones though. Just sad. There is a picture of my wife standing in front of it on my myspace (assuming I typed the link correctly). Anyway, on a brighter note, I already bought and devoured a bag of Ghost DOTS last week and they were delicious. Maybe next year they will actually glow in the dark!

BelmarBenny: Always strange to come upon another Staten Islander on this big old http://WWW. I’ve been to all of the places you mentioned. The Bedell ghost was a wash, though it was scary enough to walk down that long dark street.

Hands down,the scariest place I have ever been was the basement of my old apartment building.
The first thing that hit you when the elevator doors opened, was the SMELL. This horrible, overwhelming odor of damp, rotting plaster. The place was huge, I’m fairly sure that the basement actually extended out from underneath the building, it went on so far. The whole thing was divided up into these tiny little rooms, and then each room had big, floor to ceiling storage lockers made of 2×4’s and chicken wire. Each little room was lit with one or two, flickering, dim flouresent tubes, but all the stuff in the lockers created the scaries shadows, and the walls were all crumbling and flaking, and the disgarded crap of previous residents was just piled up everywhere, matresses with the springs poking out, mouldering arm chairs. And everything you took down there would get coated in an thick film of damp plaster dust The floors where totally un-even and lumpy, and caked in dirt. and the ceilings where low, and covered with gross looking pipes. There were little dorways everywhere, and the doors were always hanging open just enough to reveal the darkness beyond. God, I’m getting chills just thinking about it.

This comment thread has been awesome! I love reading about creepy shit like this. Probably because I’ve always wanted to explore places like that, but have never had the chance.

I bet there’s plenty of creepy stuff in Oklahoma. Like, some people tell this story about a place called Sacred Heart, and I’ve always wanted to visit this place to see what it was like. Have any of you Okies heard that story?

I know of a few haunted places around here. But I’ll tell you of one time Little Brother and I were really freaked out.

Now even though we hads lived in the city, we had adjusted to country life in Oklahoma pretty well. We were used to the various wildlife sounds and the like, and we were in the house with the cabinet-exploring poltergeist. (dude must have been fascinated by boxes of macaroni or something.) One time, we went up to Geary to spend a week up at my Aunt’s place. She lives out in the wilds too, but somehow the place is diffent than down this way. It’s not because it’s unfamiliar, ’cause it’s not, my Dad’s family have lived around there for what seems like forever. My Aunt’s house is a nice place, for a Indian Home (tribal funded housing) and next to that was a older government-built bungalow that was once owned by in-laws. That was where we were sleeping, sharing the living room with our cousins. (not being used for a while, the place was mostly storage) Now as I said, we knew the area pretty well, but there are times that put experience into doubt. We were asleep, windows open, screens down, and the usual sounds of country night were keeping us relaxed. Then out of the woods, there was a scream that sounded like something you shouldn’t be hearing. Little Brother and I both sat bolt upright, fully awake. “What was that?!” One of our cousins said, “S’just a wild cat,” and went back to sleep. “Did that sound like a cat to you?” “No way, bro. That did not sound like any wildcat I ever heard.” I got up to look out a window. “Where did the dogs go?” Now when the dogs go hide somewhere, after something like that, you will spend a restless night. We have heard big cats on the prowl, and they will sound like babies crying, women screaming, and a couple other things near-human, but this was completely other. We sat up back to back, and slept in fitful dozes till morning. They kept trying to tell us that it was just a bobcat or something, We hear them all the time out that way.” “You ever see ‘em?” “No way! We don’t too far into those woods. You never know what’s out there!” “Hell of a lot of help you are.” You know how people try to describe how a Bigfoot sounds? That what it sounded like. Not to sound like “The Legend of Wooly Swamp,” but there are some things you shouldn’t look for.

Yeesh…The Jones soda “Lemon Drop Dead” is a bit too sour. I thought I suffered a testical retraction and had to be dropped off the couch Indian style.

scariest place would be this really really old ass looking town in North Carolina, that i passed through on my way home from FLorida to NJ in March ‘06. It was like 3 am and my husband and me were trying to find this motel we were told about…we got lost on this one road that looked like something from chiildren of the corn. There was HUGE fields on either side, and a spooky looking abandoned farm house…and them weird solar windmills.

Also in 05, when i was going to Maine to visit my dad, there was a looooooong stretch of highway in Rhode Island, that was just …a road…and some lights. it was scary as hell…i woke up crying in the car, and telling my husband that we were dead. And that road we were on was like purgatory and we would be driving forever. I was loopy from my tranquilizers i had taken earlier that night.

My grandparents had a creepy basement, too. The walls were covered in hideous brown carpet and the floor was carpeted in red felt. There were these two red saloon-looking lamps that hung from the ceiling and cast the same eerie red glow all over everything. My grandfather had shot a bobcat and had it stuffed and that sat on the mantle for as long as I can remember, teeth barred and one of its eyes missing. Then there was the door Grandpa told me lead to another basement down below where a ghoul lived. I was always terrified to be down there by myself. When we started cleaning out the basement after both grandparents died, I couldn’t watch them open the creepy door. Turns out it was a stairwell leading up into the garage.

All the stories of being in abandoned houses reminded me of the time my grandfather (same as above) took my dad and me (I was probably 8 or 9) to this old house that had had its roof ripped off by a tornado. My dad was going through a metal detector phase and Grandpa thought he might find some neat things at this old house. We went inside and there was all this rotting furniture and old photographs scattered all over the floor. We found a nest of snakes under an old bed and hightailed it out of there. I wasn’t really scared, just intrigued… until we met the snakes.

Heh. And speaking of spooky, I just finished playing Bioshock for the first time. Now there’s a screwed up gaming experience. In fact, I got so enmeshed in the gameworld that I had to go to YouTube to watch the alternate, “evil” ending, just because I’m not prepared to play the game in the manner required to get it on my own. If that’s not a hallmark of solid game design, I don’t know what is.

Scariest place I’ve ever been? Well, there are a few places/events that would compete for the top spot. When I was seven or eight years old I had a stranger put a knife to my throat… so that would be up there pretty high.

I also have a good story about an old State School, in other words one of those places where families in the ’50s and ’60s would stash a member of the family that was severely handicapped or mentally unable to function. It closed down in the mid-seventies and I explored it in the mid-nineties. I found filing cabinets with patient’s daily progress reports and all sorts of neat, probably illegal for me to see things. I still have a plastic sign that I found that reads “CAUTION CHEMICAL AGENTS IN USE” in my garage. This place was so bad that a few photos of the abused inhabitants were featured in a Chicago Sun-Times retrospective article a few years ago that featured some of the most moving and memorable pictures the newspaper had published over the last half century.

Well, this happened to me around 19 years ago… so bare with me. I’ll try to remember as many details as I can.

It was 1988 and my family had just moved to a new town because my dad had been transferred. We were stuck renting this really old two-story home because we didn’t have enough time to really house hunt before the move. I had two brothers living with me before the move, but both of them stayed behind since one had already graduated from high school and he stayed to move in with his girlfriend, the other stayed to live with my grandmother so he could finish his senior year at the same school. So now I am an only child… in a way. My parents took the nicer “master bedroom” that had been added onto the back of the lower floor. That left me my pick of any of the four upper bedrooms. Well most of them had horribly ugly wallpaper, so I chose the one that most any 11-year-old boy would have picked. The one that looked the least girlish.

This room also provided the only entrance to the attic of the house. This wasn’t the typical attic entrance, this was a full sized door that opened up to a dusty wooden staircase that curled up to the attic. In looking at the door you would have thought it to be a second closet.

The first time I wandered through the entrance I was very surprised to see at the top of the wooden stairs there was a small door; roughly half the size of a regular door. Low enough where you really had to duck to enter the attic. Now, the door was creepy enough to me, but what I found hanging in front of the door really made me hesitate about entering.

Hanging gently from a piece of purple yarn (why purple I’ll never know) was a small (around 2 inches long) wooden cross. It was hanging on a small rusty nail above the tiny door. I found this to be very strange, as I assume most would. I collected the cross, pocketed it, and slowly swung the flimsy door open to reveal the attic.

After the creepiness of the wooden cross I found the attic to be quite uneventful. It was the typical older attic that was unfinished. You had to be very careful about where you stepped, otherwise you would find yourself crashing through the plaster ceiling. There were a few things stored up there from the previous owner, but nothing too strange. There was a stack of checks that dated back to the early ’70s. That was kind of neat. Some lady that had lived here before us had left a stack, of maybe 200-300, checks in a dusty pile in the floor boards. Sort of hidden, but not entirely. It was eerie in a way to look back and see just where she was on June 3, 1971 and where she spent her money. Or at least it was to me. But hey…

I ended up leaving the attic and taking the cross with me. I nonchalantly set it on my dresser and continued to help my parents settle into the house. As I was setting up my room I decided to leave the entrance to the attic unblocked (by dresser or bed) in case I felt the need to hide anything up there (something any normal 11-year-old would do).

A few weeks passed and I was busy trying to adjust to life in a new town and new school.

One night, after waking up sometime in the middle of the night, I heard something that still sort of freaks me out to this day when I think of it. It sounded like someone walking slowly down those dusty attic stairs. I absolutely froze in shock. I was terrified to get up and try to leave the room. I sat, motionless, as quiet as possible, and watched the door, lit only by the moonlight that was seeping through a nearby window. I tried to see if the knob was moving, but it was painted black and it was much too dark to notice such detail. All I could do was watch the door to see if it would crack open - or worse yet, fling open wildly. Actually, now that I think of it, I’m not sure which would have been worse.

Thankfully the door did not open. I sat there in silence for what felt like an hour before I slowly started to creep out of my bed to go downstairs. I still vividly remember how scared I was to plant my feet firmly on the ground, terrified that whatever was in the closet was now under my bed.

Well I crawled to the foot of my bed and jumped over the rail and headed out the door. I woke my parents up (feeling pretty stupid) and asked my father check the attic. Needless to say he wasn’t too happy and I’m pretty sure he refused.

Over the next few nights I kept waking up in the middle of the night, thinking I was hearing sounds. Sometimes I heard what were definitely creaking sounds, most, if not all, I believe were natural sounds; just the old house on a windy night. After a few nights of this I decided it was time to block that damn door. It seemed to me that the best solution was for me to move my bed directly up against the door, thereby blocking the door shut. I know this sounds like a bad idea, but it actually worked well with the layout of the room. See, the area the door opened into was a smaller, recessed area of the room. One end of my bed was against the door with the other end extending all the way to the opposing wall. I was satisfied that there was no way that door was going to open. My bed completely blocked it shut. Now I just had to adjust to the idea of sleeping so close to it.

Well, I slept there for a few nights without incident and was feeling pretty good about the whole bed moving decision. Even if there was nothing up there, it made me sleep easier knowing the door was blocked from opening.

That is until one night. I was awoken by, what seemed like, my bed being shaken ever so slightly. I was semi-conscious as I realized what was going on. I flew out of my bed as quickly as possible and ran to the light switch near the main door. I flicked the light on and turned back to the corner where my bed was with eyes opened as wide as they would stretch. I crept closer and closer, every muscle in my body burning with tension, until I could turn the slight corner to see the front of the attic door.

It was open about 1/2 an inch and resting against the frame of my bed. I completely freaked out. I went downstairs and woke my parents up again. My dad did not go into the attic. He told me that it was windy and it was coming in from the attic and the door was probably not latched all the way. Just the wind he said, or something similar.

The next day (in the middle of the afternoon) I scooted out my bed and opened the attic door. I looked at the dusty steps but saw no sign of any footprints. I walked up the stairs and turned the corner that led to the small-half door that opened to the actual attic. I approached the door, but did not open in. Instead I took the small wooden cross, hung from a piece of purple yarn, and quietly hung it back on it’s rusty nail.

For the next few months I actually slept downstairs in the living room. A little while later I decided it was time to get back into my room, the couch wasn’t entirely comfortable obviously. I slept in the room for a week or two without the slightest peep coming from the attic. Not a sound. Not a creak. Nothing.

I decided that was enough and moved my belongings to the room that, layout-wise, was furthest away from that room. We lived in the house for around two years after that and I never went into the attic by myself again.

Ghost Dots remind me of when the glow-in-the-dark numbers on alarm clocks were painted with radium. Although I wasn’t alive then. :O But I did have one of those old school alarm clocks.

I forgot about one. When I was in the Army I was deployed to Tuzla, Bosnia for a year.I had third shift guard patrol around the outside perimeter of the base and sometimes at night, I swear to God, you could hear a crowed of people in the distant forest laughing and talking. We called air fly-overs and looked through heat sensitive equipment (FLIR) but no one was there. It turns out when we went to investigate it after multiple nights of reporting it, the sounds led right to an undiscovered UXO area (unexploded ordinance or mine field). Our interpreters said they believe since the massacre happened the dead try to lure people into mine fields.
The Army actually made a code number for the official reports during the night. That was creepy.

Matt… I was fooled nice and good by the old Bedell Ghost… I really bought it. but that was back in high school- around 1996.

But now thinking about it, there was something else pretty scary that happened that same day. We were waiting around for it to get dark so we could go see the ghost and decided to go hang out on one of those random beaches around there- somewhere off Hylan Blvd. in the Tottenville area. Well, the beach was loaded with all these crazy looking “sculptures” and designs… like the sand version of crop circles… this was early spring, so they weren’t sand castles. They had large sticks stuck into the ground, and lots of big rocks. To me it looked like some sort of witchcraft ritual site.

I like the concept for the Ghost Dots candy…personally, I would’ve gone for something like “Ecto-Dots” with a neato tag line like “Spooky specters of ghoulish goodness”.

Well look like the Halloween Countdown finally started. This actually my first Halloween away from home, but off topic,how your pokemon team going Matt. My okay, but it right now I trying to get Red/Green starters (Bulbasaur, Charmander, Squirtle), GSC starters (chikorita, cyanaquil, totodile), and phione. If anyone want to trade my Friend Code is: 5369 7364 7434 (note I’m will not trade any my legendary, though I could trade my female torterra and my female Espeon)

Yay! Countdown time again…I need to head to target and pickup some soda…and Matt, tell your jukebox guy that “Cry Little Sister” isn’t by Sisters of Mercy, but Gerard Mcmann from the Lost Boys soundtrack…sorry, I’m a music geek and had to point it out! =o)

Those turtles in that critter bag look alomst exactly like the creatures in Roger Korman’s B-movie “Humanoids from the Deep.” only thing missing were the tentacles.

Spookiest place was a small patch of woods on a steep hill near my grandparents house. For some reason I used to think that the villain from the old 80s NBC kids show “Kidd Video” was hiding there laughing and plotting on kidnapping me.

Add me to the list of people that had the Ghost with the most make their day. Awesome. Also, they have the huge bag of Ghost Dots at Target, if anyone is curious about where to find ‘em.

I love the Frankenstein monster logo on the party favors. It looks like his creators tried to give him a larger, more intelligent brain, but it only results in making him sleepy.

I was definitely the first person to mention Ghost Dots. I made an obnoxious post exclaiming “GHOST DOTS! GHOST DOTS! GHOST DOTS!

Scariest place to me? The abandoned hospital in town we went walking through once. Death just hung in the air….

Yeah, I actually lived in the buidling for several summers. I swear Edwin Booth opened a door for me once….

I may have to quit school. It is cutting into my XE time. I was planning on skimming the article, but it was oddly compelling. I had wondered about these candies when I first saw them. I thought they might be mint flavored and I too thought they would be glow in the dark. Yay for proving assumptions wrong!

My local Walgreen’s has set up a nice little section of Halloween-related paraphernalia. Among other things, they have:

-Giant snow globes with swirling confetti inside and a ghost or skeleton who says spooky things over stormy winds

-A candy dish with a motion-activated hand that longes forward and says things like “Trick or treat!” or “Want some candy?”

-Pictures or normal-looking people that change into monstets when viewed at a different angle

And, of course, various masks and costume accessories. One which stood out: THE BURGER KING. Now’s THAT’S spooky.

Also, There’s a farm north of my house that sells pumpkins for Halloween and pine trees for Christmas. They’ve alreayd set up their Halloween display, a wooden cutout of a bunch of jack-o-lanterns stacked on top of each other.

I’ve been in plenty of creepy places before like my great-grandma’s house (or outside the house) at night or a couple of years ago a friend showed me this graveyard (at night even though it’s just as creepy during the day) that dates back to before the Civil War. It was abandoned and far off the main road so not many people knew about it. I refused to get out of the car though. Way too creepy and overgrown for me. With my luck I would have been bitten by a snake!

Ok, so what’s under the Ghost’s sheet, Matt?! You better show us by October’s end!

Ah, the Countdown. A yearly tradition. We’re generally too poor to really dress the place up, even with a bunch of Dollar Store schwag. So it’s nice having this madness around so I can live vicariously through it.

That out of the way… I dunno if I’ve ever been anywhere scary, per se. Nothing COOL, anyway. My parents are divorced, so when I was younger I’d go visit my dad from time to time. He moved around a fair bit, had a few girlfriends/wives, that kinda thing. Well, this one house was near a forest. And while I have no creepy memories of IT…

There was a demon bug colony in there. Ticks everywhere. Scorpions everywhere. And I woke up one night when dad came in to check on me before he went to bed (I was all of like 8). And apparently?

I had a scorpion dead center on my chest. I don’t remember much of it, thank god, but it still gives me the creeps.

I love that they didn’t funk up the flavors for the Ghost Dots. Just turned them all glo green, it’s perfect.
I don’t think I’ve been many scary places. I’m honestly not sure if I’ve even been in a basement. I’ve been close by some of the Manson family’s haunts my whole life, but I’ve always been too chickenshit to go.

I have not seen those Dots yet. Not surprising, since I haven’t been to many stores with large Halloween candy displays. I did try a Chocolate Mocha Kit-Kat from the Dollar Tree, though. Pretty good, with just the right amount of coffee flavor.

That’s not all I saw at the Dollar Tree. I picked up a straw broom-shaped door hanging, a fake white pumpkin (I have never seen REAL white pumpkins before, much less fake ones), and a small Maleficent action figure for the TV section of the living room. They had three other Disney villains (Cruella DeVille, Ursula the Sea Witch, and Scar of “The Lion King”), but I figured Maleficent was the scariest, and thus the most appropriate for Halloween. They had other Halloween and fall items, but I’m a bit limited in funds right now.

As for scary places…for all the haunted houses in Cape May, NJ, where I grew up, my scariest house was in Rio Grande, about 10 minutes north of Cape May. I was babysitting late at night, and I made the mistake of watching the 1964 Bette Davis horror movie “Hush, Hush Sweet Charlotte” after the kids went to bed. The wind was blowing fiercely, and the house was noisier than the entire spectral cast of “Ghostbusters.”

In truth, nothing really happened. I let my imagination run away with me and with my sleep. I barely slept all night, though it turned out the kids were fine and the cold weather broke the next morning. I haven’t watched a horror movie alone since!

The spookiest place I’ve ever been was also my grandma’s basement. I was fine until I saw Return of the Aliens: The Deadly Spawn. I watch it now as an AWESOME B-movie, but at ten years old it scared the shit out of me. Basically, a huge alien with a head made out of teeth grows exponentially in a farmhouse basement.

Said basement resembled my grandma’s, and I refused to go down there for at least a month. So I guess the place itself wasn’t spooky, but the circusmstances certainly were.

Starwenn, I am curious as to where you live. I cannot imagine a place with out white pumpkins! You could grow some this coming year, and freak out all your friends for next Halloween!!!

Sorry for the double post, but can someone help me figure out how to play the juke box? The nero thingy wont load on my computer. I am usually pretty good with all this stuff, but I just cant figure this one out. Thanks guys.

For those who care: Super Smash Bros. is legit for oneline WiFi mulitplayer! Nice!

crazy_mainer: Do you have an expired trial version of Nero on your computer? That program is notoriously hard to clean out of your system. What browser are you using?

I’m using Firefox, and when I click the jukebox a download dialog appears that lets me choose what program I want to open it with. See if you can find Windows Media Player in that list and using it instead of Nero. Let me know at which point in the procedure things start to go hellishly wrong.

Man, it’s hard to think of a place. But then I remembered my friends downstairs level. It was about as messy as K-Mart’s Halloween isle. Only worce. I had to SLEEP down there, and I swear I saw a rat in his underware that he left in the floor. I lost my hat there, and I didn’t even want to find it. Trash and crusty clothes everyware. However, that was the only place to play his game systems. The worst part… I can’t go into his room because it was only described as 10 times worse. Lord help me.

OMG I dont even know how, but the damn thing is working now. Thank you so much Jedoc for your help!!! I wish there was a way we could go back and delete/edit our posts. This is my 3rd post in like the last 5 minutes…lol. YEA FOR SUPER SWEET HALLOWEEN JUKE-BOX-Y-NESS!!!!

I keep wracking my brain for scary experiences I have had, but they have been mild compared to a lot of the experiences other people have posted here! I have been to so many historical places in New England, in Maine, hell, in my town. Everything in New England is so old, you get used to the idea of ancient ghosts walking around and hanging out where they did when they were alive. Native Americans, English pilgrims, Irish/Scottish/French settlers, they all had settlements and homes all over the place in Maine. I dont know…its like you just get used to feeling like there are ghosts hanging out everywhere. I dont feel that way here in Denver, everything is shiney and new right here in the city. I miss the feeling of spirits lingering in my town, at my friends houses and in their barns, in the woods, in lighthouses, ect.

Scariest place I have ever been- my friend’s basement in Norridgewock, ME. Her house was one of the first houses built in the town (early 1700s), it was used as the town meeting house/school. You get down to the basement via a set of wobbly stairs, that are so small, that when you step on them, half your foot hangs over the edge of the step, there is no railing. You get down there, and there is one naked bulb that is ancient itself, and it reveals the cellar in all its dirt floor glory. There is about 5 ft between the dirt floor and the ceiling (1st floor), so you would have to crouch if you wanted to actually get down there for anything. No windows of course. You can just about make out the naked timbers that make up the foundation of the house, it looks like a log cabin in the cellar, just naked half logs, held together by crude large, hand made metal bolts. They dont use it for anything, and I dont blame them. It looks like the house could cave in at any moment, but its been 300 years, and the logs and 300 year old bolts have held together this long….

I used to live in this big old 3 story 150-year old house on the campus of Eastern Michigan University back many years ago… We moved into this house, only to find out later when we talked to the city that our “landlord” didn’t own the house, it had been condemned back in the 70s, it was somewhat of a flop house for hippies, and a girl had hung herself in the bedroom in the attic, nobody had lived in the house for some 20 years before us. So we live in this house that had this mysterious room boarded up/chained off in the attic , so curiousity gets us… we pry the door open. Creepy thing is , all her stuff was still in the room, books still open, clothes and such laying around covered in 20 years of dust and spiderwebs and mouse poops. And a hook in the ceiling where she had hung herself…. Seriously im not making this crap up. Someone actually threw all her stuff out, and moved into the room. I lived there for 6 months and every night you would hear weird noises (probably the noises of a 150 year old house settling and such) upstairs, scary as hell. It was one of those weird old houses with strange hidden rooms, doors that led to a wall behind it, stairs that led to nothing - either a wall or ceiling.

For everyone wondering what was under the sheet in Ghost with the Most, keep looking for the other link. It’s there. Click, click, click.

Oh, one place I forgot to mention which I think would be the scariest. That would be Mount St. Helens. There was an extremely thick fog when we drove up there, and we could just barely see all the dead trees by the road, which made one think of floating down the River Styx. Anyway, there’s this visitor center there, and inside there was a ranger giving a lecture on the forest regenerating.

It turned out it was actually just a projection, but given the atmosphere of the place, and the fact that I was just 11 and didn’t know they could do that sort of thing, I ran away and didn’t want to go back in there without the rest of my family. I think that’s what I’d do if I actually did see a ghost.

dont know about any of above stuff. couldnt find dots,and have been married(scary enough) but at cvs they have jolly rancher creepy pops . and they are good…..

I don’t know if it is a state law or federal law, but in Georgia, if someone dies an unnatural death in a house it must be in writing to anyone who buys it in the future. Friends of mine bought a house where someone asphyxiated themselves in the garage. Makes one wonder.

I used to work at a haunted house for several years and it was next to the biggest juvenile detention center in SC, so it was loads of fun to chase people out of the house and into the yard as they attempt to stay away from the fence surrounding the juvy joint with all the dodgy kids leering at them from the other side. The house even sat on a road called “Shivers Drive” No lie. It was REALLY old and surrounded by woods and falling apart. It had loads of secret doors and hiding places and a hole in the ceiling seperating the first and second floors so we could jump down from the ceiling on people.

Our maze was sectioned off whenever the fire inspector came by cause it was SO against code. Of course it was completely dark and the walls were covered in vaseline. Odd things hung from the ceiling that brushed against the customers’ faces. Little did anyone know they were actually tampons. The ceiling got lower and lower until you were forced to get on your hands and knees and crawl your way out. We also had plants in the crowd, usually girls single or in pairs, in line with everyone else pretending to be regular patrons. My friend Rick, who’s a very tall bodybuilder would dress up like Michael Meyers and would come out the front door and wander around the crowd. He would pick one of the plants, who played the part well, and grab her kicking and screaming back into the house through the front door in full view of everyone where she would scream her head off and never be seen again. Her partner left in the line would really play it up like she had no idea what was going on and would freak out and pretend to demand her money back. It was hilarious. People were just pissing themselves before they even got in.

Anyways, my scariest moment comes not from when I actually worked in the house, but several years later after it had closed down for good. Several years after the house had been declared condemned, my gf and I at the time decided to go back up there one evening when it was just about to get dark and take a look at it to see if we could creep around inside. The woods all around the property had grown up quite a bit and it was pretty creepy just trying to get to it. Luckily there was still some daylight out. Just before we got to the porch, we heard a voice say, “Hey, how y’all doin?” We looked up, and there on the porch sitting in a rocking chair was the gnarliest, hairiest homeless man. He was just sitting there rocking. Then he said, “Why don’t y’ll come up here and spend some time with me?”

I thought I was just about to shit myself. The ironic thing was despite all the years of doing paranormal, creepy things in the house and lurking around with people dressed up like monsters and such, the thing that scares me MUCH more is some backwoods, Deliverance, Texas Chainsaw kidnapping type of deal out in the middle of the sticks. I was imaging right then that as Johnny Homeless distracted us his “family” would leap out of the woods, grab us, and drag us inside to hang us on hooks and strap us into all the torture racks and things that I KNEW were inside that thing (Mostly because I helped to build them). Needless to say we tried to politely say something along the lines of, “No thanks, were just lookin’” as we slowly backed away down the driveway and then turned and high tailed it out of there to the car. I’ve never been back since…Actually I was just down there this weekend and drove by and noticed that the land had just been cleared away and the house was gone. Looks like someone finally bought the land. I just wonder how many bodies they found inside that WEREN’T made of rubber.

DJspace… Fucked. Up. So it turns out you “landlord” had no association with the building at all? I think I would have shit myself after finding that out, let alone living next to a hanger. A used hanger. Fuck.

Although DJ’s is pretty creepy ass. I was pretty paranoid after reading all these stories, but I swear I hear someone moaning outside my house for a split second. It was pretty freaky. Not even like “Oooh, I’m going to geeeet youuuu” kind of moan, but kind of like a cry for help and then just ending with an unsettling feeling.

Oh and Matt, that song about the Headless Horseman is from the Disney version of Ichabod Crane (and Mr. Toad), but you probably knew that. But did you know it was sung by none other than Bing Crosby? He actually narrated that movie.

Holyshitdamn! That’s the mom from Seventh Heaven! hahahahahaha I about pissed myself.

Yeah, I gotta admit, djspacecase did have a pretty kickass story. For some reason I think the open books are almost as scary as the hook hanging from the ceiling. It’s as though she’s still standing around reading them, confused and not knowing she’s actually dead. Maybe you’ll feel some weird weight at the foot of your bed one night, and find her sitting there, blank faced, expressionless and holding a book….Waiting for you to read her a bedtime story.

I like cliffhangers also, I found the second part but not by clicking, I couldent find where you put the hyper link. So I did it the other way. hint hint “2″

Ok, so I’ve got 2 (One was only creepy in one instance, the other…all the fucking time)

First the one timer…Back when Resident Evil was the scariest 3d zombiefest to grace console gaming, my friend Pat and I pulled an all-nighter taking turns on our respective savegames, leapfrogging over one another’s progresscfor hours on end. Well, around 4AM or so, Pat succumbed to exhaustion, and I was left battling the undead on my own…I too was exhausted however, and Pat’s house sat like 10 feet from a densely wooded area. The woods were scary enough but since the room we were in was like 75% windows, I kept checking over my shoulder, fearing zombies were creeping out of the woods to eat my sweet brains. After awhile I started to really freak out and I kept trying to wake my friend, but he was out cold. During one of my vigilant glances outside I swore I saw a fucking zombie, and that was it, I beat Pat until he woke up and told him what I saw…half asleep, he started to panic too, so we headed for the safety of his bedroom. In my exhausted, zombie-panicked state, I saw a shadow on the dining room wall, and in my mind that shadow was a Hunter, one of the more agressive nasties from the game. I did the only thing I could do, throw my glass of water at it. Needless to say, There was no monster, and I woke my friend’s mom up, but all she could do was laugh at how retarded I was.

The second place was my friend, Anthony’s basement. We were both scared shitless of that asshole Freddy Kreuger (I used to have night terrors that Freddy was my guest chef on a cooking show, and I’d wake up and see blood all over my walls), and for some reason, we were convinced that he lived in that dark, evil space. Every time we needed to fetch something from down there we booked like or lives depended on it, because in our silly child-brains, they did. Sometimes Anthony would be a dick and lock me down there with the lights off. That’s ok, because he’s still afraid to go in his own basement (or outside alone) in the dark. Freddy must still plague his dreams, turning his cooking show into a bloody fiasco.