Anyone traumatised?

[Danny McG]

. I would be in bed, facing the wall with my back to the room. I would worry that when I turned over there would be some wizened old crone leaning over the bed, staring at me

The joys of married life

 

[thunderbyrd]

i remember being about 6 and terrified by "The Giant Claw", a movie about a giant buzzard. that thing was ugly!

and i remember in my 20's i got thrown into a depressive funk for 2-3 days over "Looking For Mr. Goodbar". it's a depressing movie.

 

[ZroSkeerd]

The only story I've read that genuinely creeped me out was The Wendigo by Algernon Blackwood. It was one of my favorite stories in Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark as a kid, and I was excited to get my hands on the source.

The story itself is a bit of a slow burn, but it's incredibly atmospheric and suspenseful. I read it in one sitting on a stormy night (as you do), and when I was finished I had the full-on Heebie Jeebies. I felt like I was being watched and every little noise the house or our cats made had me looking over my shoulder. I even went to bed with the lamp on that night.

All I could keep thinking about was the quote from Stephen King that goes something like, "I know the thing under my bed isn't real, but I also know if I don't hang my foot off of the bed, it can't get me."

 

[Guttersnipe]

When I was little and my parents were together, they let me watch the miniseries adaptation of King's It. That night, I couldn't look at the toy clown hanging on a swing from my bedroom ceiling the same way. My brother managed to convince me it was real, so I started screaming. My dad came in, ripped it from the ceiling, and threw it against the wall, saying, "There's your damn clown!" It took me a while to get used to clowns again.

I also remember seeing the 80s The Fly and imagining seeing the main character crawling on the ceiling. The movie is both disgusting and horrifying, and it left a strong impression on me.

I remember seeing the Twilight Zone episode, "The Dummy," at a young age as well. It wasn't violent, but I had an extreme phobia of ventriloquist dummies at the time, and it haunted me for years.

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

There we're things I saw in movies as a child that provided me with night terrors for years. I'd call that pretty traumatic. One of them wasn' t even a horror movie, but a spoof of a horror movie. ("Abbot and Costello Meet the Mummy")

 

[Phyrebrat]

As a child I read horror and enjoyed it without fear — and horror films (I was born 1972 so were taking films shown 1979 onwards on tv and pirate video).

What did scare me were the adverts on our telly and the public information films. I always smile when I see people comment on how they thought one of the biggest dangers to life was quicksand as I felt the same!

Also the black and white newspaper pics of Peter Sutcliffe — particularly the one where he’s in his lorry cab — and headlines terrified me. I didn’t understand I was safe in Surrey even though I knew Yorkshire was Up North.

Now I think of it, horror films and books have been an escape for me.

 

[Danny McG]

What did scare me were the adverts on our telly and the public information films. I always smile when I see people comment on how they thought one of the biggest dangers to life was quicksand as I felt the same

I was the same with electric substations, if our football went over the fence I had to walk away, I couldn't stand to watch when one of my mates jumped in to retrieve it.

 

[Phyrebrat]

Donald Pleasance’s voice… I am the spirit of dark and lonely water.’

Or ‘the first natural born smoker…’ ad.

 

[Snicklefritz]

Psycho! 65 years and i still can get creeped out in the shower.

 

[Guttersnipe]

Psycho! 65 years and i still can get creeped out in the shower.

I'm not sure if I saw that film/scene when I was young, but for the longest time as a kid I showered facing away from the shower head just to make sure a murderer wasn't there.

 

[Guttersnipe]

That reminds me of a short story, called The Waxwork by A. M. Burrage. It articulates the unease a lot of us feel about mannequins and dummies very well.

Adapted for Alfred Hitchcock Presents.

 

[Guttersnipe]

Clowns and dolls, they can be pretty creepy. And old people...I remember another fear I used to have (it's all coming flooding back now!). I would be in bed, facing the wall with my back to the room. I would worry that when I turned over there would be some wizened old crone leaning over the bed, staring at me.

Ring creeped me out too. That and The Grudge (US remake, haven't seen the original) are the only films i've seen for years and years that were so unnerving I actually had to look away from the screen because it was too much.

I too was afraid of being spooked by someone close to my bed, only it was mostly Slappy from Goosebumps the TV show (only read three or four books in the series, and Night of the Living Dummy wasn't one of them). He actually surprises someone that way in the episode.

 

[Danny McG]

And the goldfish from "The Singing Ringing Tree", I had nightmares for weeks.

 

[Phyrebrat]

@Danny McG I had a weird response to The Singing Ringing Tree. I liked the fish but thought it was weird but the evil little man terrified me.

Funny, I must’ve seen it on a b and w telly as I never knew it was colour.

 

[paranoid marvin]

Most horror films don't scare me, and most modern horror just bores me.

For me, the thing more than anything that has me on the edge of my seat are the visuals, but the audio.

So Jaws, Alien and Aliens (the radar bleep on the guns is particularly effective), Halloween, Amityville Horror, The Omen and The Exorcist are among the most unsettling.

Also that 'Hammer House of Horror' intro music gets a special mention for being particularly scary, and there's also 'Tales of the Unexpected' and 'The Twilight Zone'.

 

[Snicklefritz]

And don't forget: "Here's Johnny."

 

[Elentarri]

Coma by Robin Cook.

I saw the movie as a kid - it was on TV. Then I found a battered copy of the book years later when I could understand things better.
I would now rather die at home (even if it's from something simple) than set foot in a hospital.

 

[Phyrebrat]

And don't forget: "Here's Johnny."

Include me in that.

And on the same note. When I was little we lived about 45 mins ride from London so every now and then we’d go into town.

I used to shrink from the movie posters of The Shining and The Amityville Horror. Particularly the latter - which kickstarted my love affair with horror and haunted houses — because it was just an orangey red image of one of those terrifying windows.

 

[Danny McG]

The first time I saw, on the big screen, Doctor Dolittle with Rex Harrison.
Sheer terror when that giant pink sea snail loomed over him!
People talk about the Jaws effect, back in 1975 where nobody would go into the water - I went through it 8 years earlier.

 

[RTGR]

I am 51 years old and have always enjoyed horror books. My favorite author is Stephen King, and for me, his best work is a tie between IT and Christine. I have only truly experienced fear and trauma from reading once, and that was with William Peter Blatty's The Exorcist. While I didn't find the movie particularly good, the book is absolutely sensational. King's ability to delve into the human psyche is my type of narrative.