Question of the Day Sunday 27 October, 2019

[Mia6]

HELLO AND HAPPY SUNDAY!!!

I received an email from BookBub yesterday. They asked people what books have you read
that were so scary you wish you hadn't read them.

So in the spirit of Halloween, I am asking the same question and also the same about movies
you've seen. Has something happened to you in your life that was so scary you still think
about it? Have nightmares about it? Doesn't have to be so scary you wish you hadn't
read the book or seen the film.

I watched the Blair Witch Project for the first time in December of 1999 while at home alone.
Afterwards I was afraid to go outside and put my car in the garage. It is now one of my favorite
movies. I don't have a car but if I did would I be afraid to put it in the garage? hmmm...

 

[sweet jane flash]

When I was a little girl I watched Psycho and my mother found me literally shaking so bad she got me out of the TV room. My siblings who were older than me were just fine with it, but Eulalee was for decades a terrible memory and I would have to run so fast sometimes leaving a room where I was alone. It haunted me then, but not anymore. I was just too young to be watching something like that. I still don't enjoy horror movies or books. Also when I was young there was a story about "injun joe" that terrified me. I'd think that character was hiding out waiting to snatch me. Now I'm more scared of the real dangers, fiction is great entertainment, but the last horror book I read "The Lovely Bones" sickened me. So at Barnes & Noble I tell them don't bother ringing it up if it is in the horror genre.

 

[Winchester]

Nothing that still scares me to this day. But many moons ago, my GF was staying with me for the evening while Rick was gone. We watched Dawn of the Dead. After the movie was over, my GF didn't want to drive home alone. I told her I'd take her home. Got her back to her apartment and then realized that I'd have to drive back home. Alone. Um, nope, not going there. I brought my GF back to our place, she spent the night, and drove home the next morning when it got light out.

I watched the movie Christine. Again, it didn't really bother me at the time. But about a week later, coming home from a planning commission meeting, I was driving along a dark, pretty much deserted back road. When I found myself looking in the rear view mirror for eyes and checking out the passenger seat, I turned the inside light on and drove home that way.

The worst one, and one that I kick myself in the rear for to this very day, was when we were visiting one of Rick's cousins. Our young son was with us and I didn't even think. We started watching The Tingler with Vincent Price. Our son was playing on the living room floor. That night (and for a few weeks after), he woke up yelling; he was having nightmares about the "thing" in The Tingler. I felt horrible when it happened and I still really feel badly about it now. We were talking about it one time and he still remembers that movie. I really blew it that time.

 

[di and bob]

Whispers by Dean Koontz is one novel I remember from years ago. It was so suprising with it's twists and turns it kept me hooked to the end. The heroine in the novel gave me inspiration on how to act if ever attacked by a killer, I would highly recommend it though it was one of the very few that actually gave me nightmares!

 

[neely]

The Shining with Jack Nicholson - "Here's Johnny."

 

[Jem]

There's not anything that bothers me to this day, but I remember when I was a teen, I was home alone for the weekend. The movie "I Know What You Did Last Summer" was on TV so I decided to watch it. The movie itself isn't really that scary on it's own, but I was alone for the weekend and there was a thunderstorm going on at the time. My bedroom was a converted workshop so I had access to outside. My door had a window in it and at the time, I did not have any curtains over it. So when the movie was done, with the lighting flashing and casting shadows from the tree outside, I swear I thought I saw the fisherman standing outside my door! Needless to say, I turned the TV back on and continued watching boring stuff to fall asleep. I stopped watching scary movies if was to be home alone overnight from that point on.

 

[susanm9006]

Definitely Stephen King’s “It”, the book and the movie. I have never been able to feel the same about clowns since. They just all seem evil to me.

 

[EmersonandEvie]

When I was around 7, I watched Pet Semetary on TV. My dad found me hiding under a blanket with only one eye watching the actual television. I can remember the ending of the movie to this day and how much it spooked me.

As far as books, there is an author named John Saul. He is basically a less wordy Stephen King and 99% of his novels have children (under 18 years of age) as the main characters. Children make anything more unsettling, and he gets into some pretty grim stuff.

 

[verna davies]

A couple of films scared me at the time. The Shining, The Exorcist and Jeepers Creepers. The last one I watched when I was at home on my own, didnt seep well that night.

 

[kashmir64]

Definitely Stephen King’s “It”, the book and the movie. I have never been able to feel the same about clowns since. They just all seem evil to me.

Clowns were creepy long before that came out.

 

[Tik cat's mum]

28 days scared me zombies aren't meant to be fast

 

[aliceneko]

I remember visiting the London Dungeons with my school when I was 9 and it terrified me - goodness knows why my teacher thought it was a good idea for a bunch of 8 and 9 year olds to tour them near to Halloween! I remember having nightmares that night and the following night, too.

 

[Kat0121]

Clowns were creepy long before that came out.

I agree. Clowns have always been creepy and always will be.

I'm not a Stephen King fan and don't read scary books. They just aren't what I reach for when I want to read a book. I'm also not the biggest scary movie fan. If I do though, I look for ones that have some humor to them like the Evil Dead series. I'm not into senseless gore. I just at them.

So I guess my answer would be none. There's enough horror going on in the real world that I don't feel the need to add more of it to my life it when I'm watching a movie/tv show or reading a book.

 

[Talien]

The evening news.

 

[1 bruce 1]

The Shining with Jack Nicholson - "Here's Johnny."

That's one of my favorites
I won't even talk about the Exorcist, because that's a given.
Gerald's Game and Misery were both books and movies that left me feeling very on edge, and some things that the Twilight Zone did back in the day were just odd and good at un-winding your nerves.

 

[MonaLyssa33]

Pretty much anything involving ghosts freaks me out. Although I have been reading this new children's book series about a girl who can "cross the veil" into the afterlife and I don't get creeped out by them.

I read the book I'll Be Gone in the Dark by Michelle McNamara about the Golden State Killer and I actually got freaked out about it because it made me realize how these people were murdered and they obviously weren't expecting it. It made me really think about my own mortality.

 

[Willowy]

I tend to read creepy stories on Reddit (there is an absolutely delicious thread supposedly written by a forest ranger, talking about the creepy things he supposedly sees/hears/experiences in the woods), and they scare me for a while after I read them. . .but then I just go to sleep, no problems there. I think I learned how to compartmentalize when I was little. I don't read horror novels though. Although I was thinking I might try Stephen King's books sometime.

What tends to bother me is real-life stories of cruelty and abuse. That'll keep me up at night. Ghosts can jump in a lake; the real monsters are humans.

 

[bengalcatman]

Not sure how old I was, but I could just see over the couch while standing. So there I was...standing behind the couch in my pajamas... peeking over to watch The Day The Earth Stood Still. That robot was there scariest thing my child eyes had ever seen!

When the visor opened and that red eye went back and forth - YIKES! I suppose I figured the couch would protect me if he fired off that death ray.

Nothing much really frightens me these days... well... politicians make me kinda nervous. But not hide behind the couch trembling nervous.

I believe its the way you view things.

Had a neighbor who always left lights on outside at night. One day he asked me "if someone is on your property at night, don't you want to be able to see them coming?" I thought for a moment, then the truth tumbled out "we have motion detectors and sensitive cats, I leave the lights off so that someone on my property in the middle of the night won't see me coming."

Its the difference between prey and predator. I identify more strongly with the latter. I tend to become resolved to strategize and act more than frightened.

 

[lizzie]

I grew up with an older sister,who took great delight in seeing to it that I had the bejesus scared out of me on a regular basis...during the time of Boris Karloff,Alfred Hitchcock,the Grim Reaper,the Birds,Whatever Happened to Baby Jane....nope!Horror and blood and guts are not my thing.

 

[Winchester]

Clowns were creepy long before that came out.

Oh yeah. I've never liked clowns.

Does anybody remember Carol/LaRussa? She had a large clown collection. She loved them. They always gave me the creeps.

I am deathly afraid of the dark. For years, when Rick would go away, I didn't even make it back to the bedroom. I slept on the couch with the tv on and all the lights inside and outside on. I just couldn't deal with it. Fortunately, I'm mostly over it. I can go back to the bedroom and go to sleep, as long as the tv is on and the sound down to a low roar. I can turn all the lights off because the TV is light enough. I don't know what I'd do, though, if the power went out.