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Halloween Countdown ’08: Clever Filler Survey.

Tonight, your mission is to tell everyone about things and experiences that have scared you. Sincerely scared you. Movies, odd sitcom episodes, wild animals, UFO sightings -- talk about your experiences in the comments. And keep it light. We've all had sick people in our families. I'll give the matter some thought and post my own a bit later.

Posted by Matt on 10/16/2008. E-mail me!



Discussion Thread: 211 comments

oh, I almost forgot…I was also afraid of that Emergency Response System sound.  Whenever it came on TV, I would hide.

Chestnuts roasted by anniemagus @ 10/17/2008 9:09 AM

Rev, it’s funny, because I’ve always been fascinated by UFO’s.  As a kid I loved that movie “UFO’s Are Real” (creepiest music ever, BTW).  I never thought I’d have that reaction to one!

Chestnuts roasted by anniemagus @ 10/17/2008 9:10 AM

When I was 19, I was the tour guide for The Myrtles plantation home for well over a year. At first it was just do the tours on the weekend but gradually I was given more responsibilities around the place. It was a B&B and I would do things like check people in, bring them room service, help clean the rooms after they left, etc. After about four months the owners trusted me enough to start watching the place when they and no one else were there. Oh right, did I mention It’s one of America’s most haunted Houses? Yep. It’s been on Unsolved Mysteries and in about a hundred books. Now upfront I’ll tell ya, I didn’t really believe that it was haunted. It was job, the house was stunning (Twenty room Antebellum mansion) and the owners were to of the coolest guys I’d ever met. To me it was just a whole lotta fun. Until i got too comfortable. It was normal for me to show up on dead (no pun intended) week day, see the owners had what they needed for there trip packed up…they really enjoyed staying over in New Orleans… and then settle into the night studying, eating, just whatever until bedtime. The next day, walk though the house making sure nothing was wrong with anything, and then stay in the office taking calls and what not until the owners came back. This even in THAT house this was routine and slightly boring. But things started to change. The first thing was the sound of someone walking in the rooms above me when I was walking in the rooms downstairs. The house was well over two hundred years old and Louisiana’s water table is very near the surface, thus the foundation was a nightmare of cables and concrete. I heard this place settling almost hourly. So at first the sounds upstairs were easily explained away. But again, gradually they changed. For one thing, they would follow me around the house, room to room. Secondly the sounds were NOT a settling house, They were mimicking my footsteps one by one. (It was explained to me once that of course they would echo my exact footsteps because as I stepped, the floor moved with me and viola’ the sounds.) This wasn’t no house settling. They were following me, except they were just upstairs. Well fine, so be it. If that was the worst of it O.K. by me. The next thing were the smells. I would walk into a room and would be smothered in either the smell of tobacco smoke, or roses. Then came the cold spots. Louisiana’s weather is HOT, and it wasn’t the most unusual thing to walk into the Bridal suite, or the Blue room and suddenly feel the temp drop twenty degrees. Now I never saw a ghost. It was common knowledge to the owners that if i ever did it would mark the end of my employment, but the rest of the things…. they just got worse. To start the tour, the crowd would gather in the main room downstairs. I was upstairs waiting until I got my cue to come down, holding a candle in one hand that I would use in the first part of the tour. So there I would be, sitting alone up there with just one burning candle, waiting And the damn candle would be blown out. ALL THE TIME. I changed places numerous times thinking it must be a draft were I was sitting. It did absolutely no good. Once while sitting there the door to blue room suddenly opened by itself. It was everything I had not bolt the stairs knocking people out of my way as I sprinting for my car. Chairs in certain rooms would be turned in the wrong direction, folded towels in the bathroom would be flung on the floor, lights would be on for no reason when I KNOW I turned them off. Now I mention the last because it was that, that caused me the worst experience pretty much of them all. I was sitting in the bar which is outside the main house reading and I look up at the house and the fucking light in Twins Room is on. Now I’m alone, the house was empty of guests, so great I know the are fucking with me again. I really did not want to go into there and shut the light off. What was the big deal anyway? The owners could afford the electricity. But it NAGGED at me. After 30 minutes or so I just myself not to be a chicken shit and turn the damn thing off. I remember thinking “If I don’t do this now they will keep at it until every light in the damn house will be on.” What happened was a terror of mind and not one of apparition. I entered though the back French doors and started up the main stairway. I got about halfway up when I was struck by such fear I can hardly describe. My vision started to tunnel, and I held onto the railing to fight the wash of vertigo. I suddenly found myself not being able to move up the stairs or down. I thought “This is it….I’m finally going to see one…” But then just as it hit me, the grip vanished. I went down the stairs two or three at a time, out the back doors and directly into my car. I didn’t leave, I just wanted to be somewhere that wasn’t a part of that house. After a few minutes I got my composure back, walked slowly back into the bar and sat down. I then looked up at the house, and the damn light was off. I never went upstairs in that house alone after dark again.

Chestnuts roasted by Razzy the Cat @ 10/17/2008 9:20 AM

Just an aside- yesterday (the 16th) was my birthday. I am now 26. Hey you damn kids, get off my lawn!

Now onto things that scared me… seeing a Freddy Krueger movie for the first time. I think it was part 4. My parents did not allow me to watch scary movies at such a young age, so I ended up seeing it at someone else’s house while being babysat. I had recurring nightmares about Freddy for years after that. I mean, this shit lasted into junior high school.

The scene in the animated version of The Hobbit where Bilbo and the dwarves get ambushed by the goblins used to freak me out. Those things were incredibly creepy, what with their towering size and huge, pointy teeth. Also, they seem to just come out of the dark from nowhere.

The pictures in my Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark books scarred me for life. Hell, I still can’t look at them without getting the heebie-jeebies.

Chestnuts roasted by Cheetara @ 10/17/2008 9:30 AM

A few years ago I had a strange guy break into my apartment, my bedroom to be exact, in the middle of the night while I was sleeping. He didn’t do anything to me and I survived the ordeal, but I was pretty terrified at any noise for weeks after.

Oh, and one time Dick Cheney asked if I wanted to go hunting with him…scary!

Chestnuts roasted by DC @ 10/17/2008 9:46 AM

First of all, LOVE this thread!

I think the time I was most freaked out was when I was 16ish.  My friend and I went with our boyfriends to this place called “13 bends”.  its a local urban legend.  apparently its a windy road with 13 bends with something freaky at each bend.  at the end of the road, there was supposedly a burned down orphanage and you could hear the kids screaming.  my friend and i were too scared to walk the bends, so we let our boyfriends go.  after what seemed like forever, they hadn’t come back.  we decided to move the car closer to the HUGE gate blocking the road.  the headlights lit up the gate and just stopped.  nothing beyond the gate was lit up.  then, there were 3 loud taps on the car window, but no one was outside!  at this point, i was convinced that our boyfriends were dead.  totally convinced.  we sped away down the hill away from the gate and stopped to calm down.  we decided to go back after a little while to see if they were ok.  this time, the headlights shone all the way to the first bend and we saw them walking back towards us.  They didn’t believe us about the knocking and we didn’t believe that it wasn’t them doing the knocking.  either way, something knocked on the window!

a more wussy fear: Friday the 13th for nintendo.  couldn’t play it alone

Chestnuts roasted by bitchpants @ 10/17/2008 10:02 AM

this is pathetic, but as a kid, i was terrified of an episode of Too Close for Comfort, in which Ted Knight’s character has a huge painting made of his head. for some reason, at night, he goes out to see the painting in the dark and the fucking thing COMES ALIVE and talks to him. scared the holy hell out of me. i’d love to see that episode again, as i’m sure it’s totally innocuous, but as a kid, that was hardcore. anyone else ever see this episode? or even this series? i guess it’s kind of obscure for an 80′s show. 

and to whomever said the Egyptian Tomb Bert and Ernie sketch freaked them out: Amen, brother. Amen.

Chestnuts roasted by Carpeteria @ 10/17/2008 10:02 AM

When I was little my dad bought these dinosaur attack cards for me and my younger brother… They were very VERY graphic and gory, and gave me endless nightmares, and I am not the type to get nightmares. There was one in particular with a T rex stepping on a little girl’s dog that chills me to this day…

Chestnuts roasted by c0rp0ratez0mb1e @ 10/17/2008 10:12 AM

UNSOLVED MYSTERIES!! When I was younger and this show aired in prime time, my parents loved to watch it and I would watch with them on occasion.  That show usually scared the $@!# out of me.  They would always have some story about a killer on the loose or some horrible “unsolved” thing running amuck.  Not sure if it was the actual stories or the way the creepy narrator spoke, or the combination of the two but that show would give me nightmares.  To this day, I still can’t watch old reruns without getting a slight chill. 

Chestnuts roasted by lsufan @ 10/17/2008 10:41 AM

Carpeteria: I used to love Too Close for Comfort! I totally remember that episode and had forgotten about it until you mentioned it!

Isufan: Unsolved Mysteries did scare me but Robert Stack’s voice was definitely the extra creepy factor.

Chestnuts roasted by DC @ 10/17/2008 10:55 AM

Throw me in with the Large Marge contingent.  Also, second the E.T. (movie).  Other things that scared me as a youth: Arachnaphobia-  When I was in third grade, a friend took a bunch of us to a night showing for his birthday party.  (His parents were really nice people, though I question their judgement in this situation.)  I have been mortally afraid of spiders ever since.  A few years ago I saw it was on cable and turned it on halfway through, thinking I had been very young when I saw it and was probably overreacting.  Couldn’t sit through more than a minute of it.  My wife generally kills the spiders in our house. And, since Matt asked us to keep it light, Tron.  I saw this movie, again, when I was pretty young.  Afterward I had terrifying nightmares of flying arches.  I haven’t seen the movie since, so I don’t even remember what these did in the movie, but I do remember waking up and praying as I tried to fall back asleep that the flying arches wouldn’t come back.

Chestnuts roasted by Rhino @ 10/17/2008 11:32 AM

Melting Grimace.

Chestnuts roasted by kingklash @ 10/17/2008 11:34 AM

There was an episode of the old syndicated horror show called “Monsters” where a honeymooning couple go to an old, creepy hotel and they both enter a room where they both fall into a giant spiderweb. The wife escapes and kills the spider, but not before the husband is eaten. I recently rewatched this on Youtube and it’s still pretty creepy.

I remember a Halloween episode of the old NBC sitcom “The Hogan Family” giving me nightmares one night. All I remember though is that the family had on weird alien-like faces.

There was an episode of the 80s New Twilight Zone where a kid is going to take a mandatory test his parents have been preparing him for, but refuse to say for what purpose. At the end we find out the kid is killed because he failed it. YIKES.

The “Saying Goodbye” episode of Tales From the Darkside is has a tragic/creepy ending.

There was an episode of the UPN version of Twilight Zone where the parents of a deliquent teenage girl decide to kill her and turn her into compost so they can continue living in their peaceful community. Yeesh

One time I got a collection of old “Tales From The Crypt.” comics and read them. That night  I had nightmares.

Chestnuts roasted by JLAJRC @ 10/17/2008 11:35 AM

A little background before the story..  When I was 6, my babysitter would bring over Nightmare on Elm Street and let my little sister and I watch it, and I LOVED it.  Not normally the bedtime movie of choice for 6 and 3 year olds, but whatever.

That year on Halloween, my parents took us to the last trick-or-treating stop of the night.  As per eldest sibling rules, I just HAD to go up to the doors first.  Anyway, as I was going up the stairs to this one house, our parents watching from the end of the walkway, I was on the second step and this shiny, glistening hand shoots out from between the stairs and grabs my ankle and won’t let go.  I react by wailing on this arm and hand with every fiber of my 6 years with my candy bag, sending candy flying EVERYWHERE, screaming my lungs out.  My sister had already dropped her bag and FLEW back to my parents.  The hand finally lets go and I run back to my parents.  This drunk bastard had gotten the “funny” idea to take some shotgun shells with slits cut out of the ends,  shove popsicle sticks through the slits, wrap them all with shiny duct tape, and put them on his fingers to make his very own Freddy Krueger hand.  Drunk Bastard crawls out from under his stairs and comes over to show us that its not real, apologizing for all he’s worth.  Drunk Bastard’s WIFE comes tearing out of the house with a wet dish rag on her shoulder and beats the snot out of him with it screaming, “I told you to leave those kids alone!”  Consequently, since my candy was scattered all over 3 counties defending myself, they ended up giving us their entire candy stock, bowl and all.  And, yes, I’ll admit that I did wet myself, but being 6, I think I was allowed.

Chestnuts roasted by freakin_crazay @ 10/17/2008 11:40 AM

I have quite a few. I’m a sucker for putting myself into compromising holyhell! positions.   Most of them involve things that have happened to me while out at haunted/abandoned schools and prisons.  But the two creepiest ones happened while I was at home.

The first one happened when my family lived on the grounds of a prison ( a real live working one – it was common to see the “good” inmates walking around the house).  My step-mom was a nurse up there and we got a good deal on a house on the property.   Anyway,  I’m getting ready to go to bed one night and I’m brusing my teeth -  I look out the bathroom door and see someone sitting very straight in one of the chairs at the dining room table. It’s really dark so it’s just an outline of a figure. I start yelling for my step-brother to knock it off, when he walks around the corner with this weird look on his face. I look back at the table and it’s gone.  I was flipping out the entire night. I slept with some scissors and the covers up to my nose. I just remember getting this awful feeling that whatever it was – it was going to hurt me. I ended up waking my step-brother up and making him play leggos with me until the sun came up.  I believe in creepy ghosts to this day because of that one incident.

The other one happened about a month ago.  When hurricane Gustav came to visit – he knocked a cable line out in the back of the house. We didn’t know this at the time. We only knew that for some reason the cable worked with the tv in the bedroom but not in the living room.  So my hubby and I are hanging out in the bedroom one night when we both jump at the sound of the t.v. coming on in the living room blaring very loudly some cable program.  I shrug and say “yay, it works again” and he proceeds to tell me that he was playing some game earlier and the tv was on “game mode” and there’s no way in hell it would have been able to just click on itself, turn itself off of game mode and back to tv mode AND have the cable working again.  As soon as he says that, it clicks off.   What made the whole thing creepier was when the cable guy came to fix the t.v. and found a line down in the backyard that connected the cable with that t.v.  

Chestnuts roasted by Squishy @ 10/17/2008 11:42 AM

I used to have horrible nightmares.  You know the kind…wake up screaming and sweating, petrified to go back to sleep.  This was doubly terrifying as a kid because I LOVED dreams and dreaming, and being afraid of the thing I looked forward to more than anything throughout the day was an uncomfortable situation to say the least.

Then, in high school, I had this dream.  I often had unsettling dreams that took place in an amusement park…the rides were never the same, but I knew in the dreams that it was the same park.  They weren’t all nightmares, but they were almost always creepy.  This one dream started off going into this funhouse-style ride (we had just gone to MGM studios in Florida, so the cart was modeled after that.  Large, wide bench, rail to hang on to).  The cart drove through a series of dioramas…most of them very mundane, but twice as scary because of that.  A woman sitting drinking a cup of coffee, but not noticing the eyes forming in the drapes on the window behind her.  Kids playing, not paying any mind to the scraping outside.  That sort of thing.  Suddenly, the ride stopped at a pool with a bunch of inflatable tubes.  Everyone got out and into a tube, and started paddling for the exit on the other side of the pool.  Sharks were released into the pool, and everybody started laughing and having a good time, but I had remembered reading that the sharks were not mechanical…they were real.  I made it to the exit, which was a curving violent slide.

Then, I saw the exit back into the park.  However, there was a second door to the left with a warning on it.  This was, supposedly, the REALLY scary  part of the ride, and warned people not to go in unless they really think they can handle it.  I felt like I wanted to leave, like there was something not right about this whole experience.  Behind the door were stairs leading down into a basement, filled with exposed pipes leaking steam.  Very Elm Street-esq.  There was a workbench, and sitting next to it, illuminated by a dirty, cracked window nearby, was a set of golf clubs on a wheeled cart.  The cart was one that I, in real life, had thrown away the week before because it was broken.  I was gripped by an indescribable fear unlike anything I had ever felt before, and woke up.

As I woke up, still feeling the terror and the surge of adrenalin that goes along with it, my immediate response was to think that was the greatest thing I had ever felt.  It wasn’t fear due to seeing a scary monster, or even really an unknown fear of something in the dark.  It was complete and total irrational fear…it could have been anything in that basement and I would have felt the same way.  I fell in love with the feeling and couldn’t wait for my next nightmare.  However, I never had them again.  15-16 years later, I’ve had unsettling or uncomfortable dreams, but never another nightmare.

I WISH that something could scare me like that again

Chestnuts roasted by Narse @ 10/17/2008 11:48 AM

I’m surprised no one said 9/11 scared them. That scared the crap out of me and I’m in Canada! Maybe that one is a given. Also, I remember this anti-smoking commercial they used to play where a young woman goes into her bathroom to sneak a cigarette or something like that and as she’s smoking she turns into a hideous hag and there’s a song playing in the background it it scared me SO MUCH. Never smoked to this day. Another weird one was the episode of Captain Planet where they all get addicted to that drug “Bliss” and go all crazy and start busting the doors down and breaking through windows. Shit. My mother came into the TV room and found my sister and I clutching each other and bawling our eyes out. I remember dwelling on that one for weeks. I guess I get scared easily?

Chestnuts roasted by Sam @ 10/17/2008 11:59 AM

Anyone remember in a dark, dark room as a kid. It was like the precursor to scary stories to tell in the dark . i think it may have even been written by the same person. All i can remember about it was the last story involved a girl who always wore a ribbon around her neck and on her death bed she took the ribbon off for her husband and her head fell off. terrified me as a child.

Chestnuts roasted by richter1582 @ 10/17/2008 12:11 PM

While we’re on the subject of scary PSAs, here’s one mentioned in a previous countdown.

http://www.x-entertainment.com/halloween/2004/september27/

The one that scared me most, as I mentioned then, was the one witl the girl being drowned when she snorted coke, because the effects on the brain are the same as drowning. It gave me nightmares about being trapped in a flooded house. Anybody got a YouTube link so we can share the terror? Also, what the hell is wrong with MusicChoice’s server?

Chestnuts roasted by TB Tabby @ 10/17/2008 12:19 PM

Ah, here it is! And it turns out it’s inhalants, not coke.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s83kP07ufUI

Chestnuts roasted by TB Tabby @ 10/17/2008 12:22 PM

freakin_crazay that is hillarious.But also very cruel on 6 year old u :( LOl

Chestnuts roasted by Blazer @ 10/17/2008 12:22 PM

Huh? What happened to my previous post?

…The above link is to another scary anti-drug PSA that scared me for the wrong reasons.

Chestnuts roasted by TB Tabby @ 10/17/2008 12:23 PM

Well this first one actually freaked out my mother, but it involved me when I was little and when she told me about it later, it freaked me out a bit too.  I was around 2 years old and my dad was working the night shift, so it was just my mom and I at the house one night.  She said it was late and we were watching TV in her bedroom.  Well, I suddenly pointed to the open bedroom door out into the hallway, and asked my mom “Who dat man?”  She looked and saw nothing, so told me there was no one there, but I kept insisting there was a man there.  Scared her so bad that we went to her mother’s to sleep that night.
Another time I was completely terrified, I was about 13 and my friend was sleeping over.  We stayed up late to watch movies.  It was probably around 2 am and we were goofing off, watching <i>Alice in Wonderland</i> when we heard a very distinct, slow deliberate *tap-tap-tap* on the sliding glass door (the blinds were closed).  We both froze and gave each other that “did you just hear what I heard?” look.  Just as we were figuring out we both heard it, there it was again.  *Tap-tap-tap.*  We bolted up to my bedroom and barricaded ourselves in for the rest of the night.  Later on, when my friend was telling her mom about the experience, her mother confessed it was her.  Mom had something to tell my friend and because she didn’t want to call and wake everyone up, she decided to stop by the house and see if we were still up.  The woman was an alcoholic, so I believe that influenced her decision making that night.
One other time I was totally freaked out (there are plenty more, but I’ll spare you guys more of my horrible story telling), I was coming home from dinner with my family just past dusk, when there is still an odd glow in the sky.  Well, we pulled up to a stop sign and I happened to look out the window and up into the sky when I saw this odd thing fly above the tree line.  It was shaped sort of like a comet, with one end rounded extending back into a pointed tip and was a glowy orange/yellow.   It flew a bit then stopped and sort of hovered for a few seconds, then shot off into oblivion.  One of the freakiest things I have ever seen. 
*shudder*

Chestnuts roasted by DarkSideofBrightness @ 10/17/2008 12:25 PM

This maybe a little long winded. I’m just going to cut and paste this from the old blog. It may make me sound crazy but this really happened.

I have been to Savannah, GA no less that one thousand times. Shit, I used to live there when I was in the Army. But it has only been the past few years that I have taken interest in the history of the old city. And it is a dark and macabre past. Did you know that most of the city is one giant grave yard? They just buried people where ever back in the day. Only the rich were given Christian burial privileges. So Savannah is known to be the most haunted city in America and it was there that I became a believer.

It happened here at The Pirate House. I knew about this place and the fact real pirates used to drink here as well as the ghost sightings but as many times as I had been there before, no luck. Only a fat bill and over priced beer. I dragged my poor ex-girlfriend there every time we visited and she had to put up with my dumb questions about peoples’ experiences.
But last year I went on business and I was able to pop over there at 10pm for a quick few Ghost Ales (excellent). They close at 11pm so I was the lone person at the long bar. I kept my dumb questions to myself because the bartender was busy closing down and didn’t seem like the chatty type. I couldn’t blame her. So, I half payed attention to the game on the flat screen at the opposite end of the bar and flipped through my Blackberry.
Then I heard someone running down the steps, very fast and loud, just out of view where the TV was. The figure stopped smack infront of the screen. I didn’t look right at him but kept flipping through old messages on my phone, quite aware that this rude figure made a better door than a window. Finally I put my phone down, picked up my beer and looked to see who was blocking the view and there was no one there.
I felt like I was floating. Finally, I have touched the ethereal plain. I can’t remember if I was holding my beer or I put it down but just as I was about to close my open jaw the bartender kick the double doors open from the kitchen, holding a glass rack. I about jumped out of my skin. She saw my face and just ginned.
“You saw something, huh?” Her candor towards the matter was about as shocking as the experience itself. I told her what happened and she smiled and nodded the whole time. When I told her about the loud noise of running down the stairs she stopped me and asked me to follow her to the end of the bar. I did so and when I turned the corner every hair stood on end.
There were no stairs at all. It was just a wall and an old wine barrel with a model ship on top. She explained that before the kitchen expanded there used to be a staircase to the upstairs but that had been removed years ago. I think she felt that I needed another drink so she and I went to another bar and proceeded to get drunk. I needed that.
The more I thought about my experience the more comforting it felt. Maybe there is something beyond death? I am hard pressed to believe that when we die there are pearly gates and a list but maybe we do go on? The thought that is disturbing is whatever came down the stairs, stopped for a good five minutes and I don’t think it was looking at the TV. It was looking at me. Goooood God that is creepy!
That happened. I keep it on the down low but, Matt, you asked.

Chestnuts roasted by Bill @ 10/17/2008 12:27 PM

Bill, that story is beautiful and insane. :)

Chestnuts roasted by Matt @ 10/17/2008 12:30 PM

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