Spooky Saturday Survey.
There’s a new feature up, covering four random Pokemon foodstuffs from thirteen years ago. I admit that I’m not the Pokefan I once was, and that it’s become something I admire more from afar. Still, the featured snacks come from a time when I was all about Pokemon, and if you were into the franchise at that time, the sight of these gloriously tacky Pop-Tarts and Eggo waffles should thrill and excite you.
My pal Judson sent me a care package of assorted trading cards, and I nearly died when I saw this one. It’s from Topps’ 1988 Dinosaurs Attack series, where each card presented a new vision of gory torment, with violent dinosaurs warping to present day to tear us to shreds.
The cards held nothing back, and they were damn creative in their brutality. Aside from the expected visuals of dinosaurs eating people, you had stuff like prehistoric bugs devouring our scalps, and even a card where a dinosaur blipped into present day directly over a human being, with merging fleshes and all. Jesus!
But this is the card that really affected me. Good old #52. “The Ultimate Sacrifice.”
To save civilization, some guy sacrifices himself to the “Supreme Evil” – essentially an enormous MUTANT LEADER DINOSAUR, which was Topps’ way of bringing Satan into the mix without actually saying it. Adding the sick story to the fact that they used a photo of a real guy on the back of the card, #52 haunted me for years.
I collected the cards when they were still new, which, by my math, made me much too young for something this twisted. It wasn’t as if I expected a multi-eyed mutant dinosaur to zap into existence and eat me, but between the hellish themes and the melting skin, #52 opened my mind to all sorts of previously inconceivable horrors. When it was dark and quiet enough, bad thoughts took over.
And it’s those memories that inspired tonight’s survey:
What are some of the weirdly creepy things that gave you pause? I’m not simply talking about moments in horror movies that scared you only in that instant. I mean, things that affected you and stuck with you. Things that got in your head, stayed there, and directed brain traffic for far longer than they had any right to. Maybe it was a movie moment. Maybe it was a scene from a video game. Maybe it was the “Tallman’s Ghost” episode of Unsolved Mysteries.
It’s time to confess. Perhaps you’ll exorcise a few demons. Go!
R.L. Stine had a series of books besides Goosebumps, which I believe were aimed at a slightly older demographic. (tweens, as opposed to schoolers) they were called “Fear Street.” I made the mistake of reading one of these books a little before I should have, and was forever creeped out by the descriptions of floors turning to tar under a character’s feet and sucking her in, green goop pouring out of ceilings and sinks, and a character getting lost inside the walls. (It was a really long time ago, so I may not be remembering that correctly.) I think the book was called “123 fear street”, or something like that. Super stupid, but it really freaked out 8 year old me. ..Also, a painting of Jesus that my parents has stored in the basement under the stairs.
There’s a few movie scenes that scared the shit out of me as a kid. Namely, the scene in Batman Returns where Selina Kyle goes nuts and destroys her apartment, and the scene in Jumanji where the kid gets sucked into the game. The part in Super Mario Bros. where they first reveal the fungus king creeped me out, too.
My creepy things are pretty ordinary.
The Scary Stories to Tell In The Dark series of course and just the idea of a TV show like Sightings entranced and horrified me as a child. The theme to Unsolved Mysteries is still creepy and I watched it all the time when I was kindergarden age because it came on after my favorite TV show Rescue 911. I remember going to bed afterwards and feeling incredibly creeped out and the way I made myself feel better was imagining going to school the next day or Bill Cosby for some reason.
I also remember the first instance I found out that terrible people existed. I was about four or so and I was playing in the living room when some news story came on about some girl that was my age that was murdered and dismembered and put into plastic bags. I still remember how unsettling I thought it was, it was probably the first time I had ever had an unsettling feeling before.
Here’s another one: My older brother had studied tornados at school the previous week and started telling us about it. There was even a documentry on television called Tornado Tuesday (or something like that) that he made us watch-scary as shit. A few days later my parents leave him in charge to babysit us while they go out of town for a few hours. Of course it started storming REAL BAD. My brother had us convinced that a tornado was coming to kill us and that there was nothing we could do about it. A 5 year old kid should never feel the urge to scream “Were all going to die!!” Even though the storm passed and everything went back to normal, I held a firm grasp on what the finality of life might feel like.
Scratch that- the documentary was called Terrible Tuesday:
http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=VoJqVEylxto&feature=plpp
Scared the living shit out of me.
I recall two episodes of Amazing Stories that creaped me out as a kid: the one with the actor stuck in a mummy costume while his wife is in labor (I ended up watching that one all the time as a kid because it was on the same tape that we used to record Back to the Future) and the one where the (I think it was a) farmer and his daughter send things down a well and some creatures in the well repay them with gold or something. I haven’t seen it since I was a kid, I just remember the ending being really disturbing. (In a moment of greed and impatience, the guy goes down in a diving suit to claim all the gold. His suit is sent back up, full of payment, and bearing a note saying they preferred some other meat, I think.)
And in Monster Squad, when the youngest kid tells his dad there’s a monster in his room and his dad opens his closet and completely ignores the mummy in it. (I had a thing about mummies)
The librarian ghost and the corpsey cab driver in Ghostbusters scared me more than anything I’d ever seen in a movie for years.
And I think the most unusual moment to spook, disturb, or give me pause was actually in Darkman. When Peyton wins the carnival game with his wife and the guy antagonizes him. Specifically when he grabs the elephant off the wall and shoves it at his wife, growling ‘Take the fucking elephant!’
I can only think of two things that really freaked me out when I was a kid:
1) The Incredible Hulk. Yep, from the tv show. I have no idea why. My parents tried to tell me he was the good guy, but I wasn’t hearing none of that mess. He scared me. I even remember a nightmare I had as a child…I had found a toy truck in the dirt in my yard a few days before the nightmare and in the nightmare, the Hulk came into my house, picked me up, carried me outside, and reburied the truck I found.
2) Alice Cooper on The Muppet Show. Scared the hell out of me. I would watch The Muppet Show on our big tv in the den every morning and after that one, I would wait by the tv every morning for Kermit to tell me who the special guest was so that if it was Alice, I could change the channel fast (this was before remote controls…or at least before we had a remote control tv).
There’s currently a Little Caesar’s pizza commercial in which two girls in the woods discuss a supposed”deranged clown” that lives there.I thought I had invented that!I’ve been freaking my friends out on various camping trips with a similar notion except my version has sharp teeth.I believe I might have gotten the idea from a Man Thing comic I bought in the 70′s.I guess clowns are just plain scary to everyone,no matter what environment they’re in.Matt,this thread MUST continue somehow.I’ve been following it for 2 days and have enjoyed the Hell out of it .Obviously this is one bunch of wildly imaginative tortured souls.
This thread must have stuck in my brain. I had a dream last night about an old twilight zone episode that scared the living daylights outta me as a kid, I didn’t even remember it when I made my original reply. I know I only saw the episode once at my grandmothers house so it must have made an impression. All I remember of the plot was that it was two guys who broke into an animal testing lab, at the end one of them goes to get in an elevator but there’s a gigantic spider in there. Then it showed his flashlight at the bottom of the elevator shaft with blood dripping around it. UGH.
Lots of mine have already been mentioned… Return to Oz, Scary Stories, Are You Afraid of the Dark?, etc. I don’t think I’ve seen anyone mention the dying skeksi at the beginning of the Dark Crystal, which I always wanted to fast forward because it bothered me so much.
MimiTheMuse mentioned one of my big ones with the Jabberwocky. I was TERRIFIED of that thing… which is kind of funny, because if you look at that scene on youtube as an adult, it looks like someone in a trash bag with a dragon head attached to it. But it was scary back then! That movie also had a freaky scene with Carol Channing tripping out as the White Queen and then acting sinister right before turning into a goat.
Another biggie was Willow, specifically that general with the skull mask and the warthog/dog creatures that killed that poor woman right after she saved the baby. Also, those skeletons in the gibbets where Madmartigan was imprisoned. And the trolls, along with Bavmorda, who happens to be played by the same actress who played Mombi in Return to Oz. SO MANY nightmares because of that woman!
And last but not least, there was an episode of Unsolved Mysteries where a family found a VHS tape by the side of the road that had some guy filming a house he’d set on fire and just gloating about it in a really strange voice. The teens who burned the house and made the tape were eventually caught and punished, but it sure was freaky as a kid whose imagination ran wild with who started that fire, if they might be nearby, etc.
There was a Looney tune that to this day I can’t seem to find anything online to confirm it’s existence, and I figure you guys are my best bet. I don’t remember all of the specifics, but I’m pretty sure Daffy drank some kind of Jekyll/Hyde elixir, and it turned him into this green(?) sinister looking duck, with hair (feathers?) parted down the middle and fangs! That shit haunted me for years…ring any bells?
I’m surprised no one has mentioned the ending of Sleepaway Camp.
I watched a clip of it on YouTube before I watched the full movie because I heard that this was one of the most shocking and disturbing movie endings of all time. I was in my 20s on my first viewing and it definitely creeped me out beyond belief. A number of factors contribute to the shocking tone: the music, the gutteral growling, the look on Angela’s face. Even the wide shots, though the effect is very low budget, is unsettling. The movie itself isn’t really scary, but that ending comes out of nowhere.
I’ve watched it a few times since and it’s still tough to watch. If you want to watch it, it’s on YouTube, but I’m just going to give a NSFW warning, as, even though it was obviously ripped from a VHS tape and the quality is really low, that wide shot mentioned above involves the big reveal of Angela and shows a certain part of the male anatomy. Fuzzy though it is and hard to make out, it’s still there.
When I was ten, I went with my Aunt and teenage brother to see “Pet Semetary” at the theater. The flashback scene with Zelda scared the hell out of me. I had visions of her for weeks. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw her yellow, emaciated face. Of all the things in that flick to freak me out?!?!
One of the things that scared me a lot as a kid was the Nightmare on Elm Street movie where Freddy came out of a waterbed. After that, I didn’t sleep on my bed for a year. It was all floor for me.
My younger brother was scared to wander off bricks or concrete after watching the first Tremors movie.
One of my earliest dreams was very macabre and scared me as a kid. I had visited my great grandparents’ house when I was about 4 or 5 and saw this huge tree that had overturned, leaving a big hope in the ground. I had a dream about falling in that hole and landing on a conveyer belt full of dead bodies. The belt dropped them into a huge pile of corpses. I was hanging on the edge, about to fall in. Never thought a downed tree would give me a dream like that..
When I was a kid, nothing was scarier than the “Inside the Closet” episode of Tales from the Darkside. Even though I was a loyal viewer, if that episode came on, I wouldn’t watch. Once was more than enough for 9 year old me…
I just happened to be thinking about this series and that card recently, I couldn’t remember the name of it though. Back when they came out with them my dad brought me home a whole box of the dinosaur cards and I remember it having about the same effect on me. Is it possible you could please post the card that shows the demons face?
I remember a card showing a dinosaur stomping and squashing on a dog or cat that one was pretty disturbing too
oh I did not see the link, sorry
An old episode of the Twilight Zone called “Perchance to Dream”. It was about a guy who was afraid to fall asleep because he would die. The part of this episode that convinced me that it could actually happen was when the afraid man went to a psychiatrist who had a painting of a boat in the sea on the wall. The man said that if he stared at it long enough, the boat appeared to MOVE. We had a very similar painting in our house, and, you guessed it, I stared at that thing for at least ten minutes . . .and it appeared to move. To my young, impressionable mind, it THAT part of the episode was true, why couldn’t the rest of it come true. (sleep = death) Of course, the is a reasonable explanation about the movement of the picture– the optic nerve sort or “jumps” after a bit of staring fixedly at something and compensates by making the thing look like it’s moving. The doctor in the episode even explained this phenomenon, but I didn’t care. FRIGGING BOAT MOVED UP AND DOWN. and—spoiler alert- the guy fell asleep on the couch without saying a word to the doctor and DIED. I think my insomnia till this very day is caused by this. I destroyed that boat painting long ago, and I am still terrified.
also: in Pet Semetary when the resurrected dead kid, Gage, cut Herman Munster’s Achilles tendon. I still look around corners for creepy half-dead kids.
Matt: I totally remember that eyeball movie! It absolutely HAUNTED me as a kid. I had multiple nightmares about it. In one of my most vivid nightmares I’ve ever had, I remember going out to our back porch where we stacked fire wood and chucking the eye at the logs. The thing exploded into an impossibly enormous amount of pus and green slime which covered me and everything in the back yard. I was morified, bu tdidn’t wake up. I walked back into the house AND THE EYE WAS BACK IN THE CUP LOOKING AT ME. That’s when I woke up!
I had to go check the back yard to make sure there was no exploded eye there, and then ended up sleeping with the folks. They never could figure out what was so scary about an eye that wouldn’t leave.
I have no idea what the origin of that is. I’ve spent hours googling it myself. Maybe one day we’ll find out. Let me know if you do!
To contribute an original story of ridiculous fear: At some point when I must have been around 11 I stumbled upon Leprechaun 4 on HBO during some month where we must have been “sampling” the channel (we normally didn’t get the premium cable channels). I watched it for about 1 minute (alone, in the dark) and saw that dude get his face totally smashed and flattened by a pan. Watching it now it’s hilarious, but I guess my younger mind had never contemplated that one’s head COULD be crushed in such a way, so I think the concept must have haunted me. I lied in bed many a night afterword just contemplating the horror of having my head smashed flat.
Pretty much everything I was terrified of when I was a kid I got over and I was scared of a LOT of stuff (the witch from The Wizard of Oz, the Queen from Snow White, Darth Vader, E.T., even the Oompa Loompas from Willy Wonka were terrifying to me). Teddy, I agree with you on the Hulk, but it wasn’t the actual Hulk who frigthened me, it was the changing into the Hulk that I didn’t like. Of course, now when I’ve looked back on all these fears, not only do they not scare me anymore, but in many cases, the effects or characters themselves are cheesy as hell (except Darth Vader, he’s badass).
There is only ONE thing left from my childhood that stilll disturbs me to this day. For some reason, I can not bring myself to watch Mola Ram ripping the heart out of the sacrifice victim in Temple of Doom. I don’t know what it is. I can watch the actual sacrifice and the rest of the movie with no problem (right before this scene is one of the best action sequences in not only any Indiana Jones movie, but in any movie in general with the spikes). It’s just when Mola starts his chanting right before he sticks his hand in the guy’s chest, I have to close my eyes. I don’t know, maybe a part of me is still holding on to one memory that witll keep my childhood fears alive and if actually watch that scene again I’ll be like, “I was afraid of that? That’s SO LAME!!!!”
@lil bit
I do vaguely remember that. My childhood creepfest also revolves around Loony Tunes as well. There was an episode that was sort of a parody of Invasion of the Body Snatchers. It was surreal, and completely broke the feel of the show. Freaked the fuck out of me.
@lil bit (again)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJyUNmozcDw
I decided to do a bit of research, and this was the closest thing I could find.
Maybe you’re thinking of Count Duckula?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IoXZfuWtcxw
The scene in Robocop where the cop is essentially executed by firing squad, his hand blown off…that’s the most brutal and scary thing I ever saw.
I’ve seen the goriest of the gory horror film since, but even as an adult that scene bothers me at a visceral level. I understand that Paul Verhoven even had to trim it to get the R rating. Can’t imagine what a few additional seconds would have added.
I remember watching a Christian TV program called ‘This Week In Bible Prophecy’ or something to that effect back in grade school. My family’s not religious so I think it was the show’s emphasis on Armageddon that spoke to the 13-year-old death metal/video game nerd and drew me in.
They did some episode on alien abduction, with the theory that the abductors are demons trying to corrupt human souls, complete with sketches of supposed alien/demon hybrids that were encountered by the people they interviewed.
Not quite sure what it was about the concept (neither aliens nor hell bother me,), but it scared the living shit out of me – not enough to stop listening to Slayer and go to church, but enough that I’m writing about it here.
Also:
Loved the Dinosaurs Attack cards. My mom mistakenly bought these for me and my sister at age 6 because, like every other kid, we were obsessed with prehistoria.
The cards mysteriously ‘disappeared’ one day, much like our Garbage Pail Kids.
Never saw the Ultimate Sacrifice card until recently (which is quite a fucked-up card, even alongside the other entries in the series), but I recall the giant mosquito eating the woman’s brain as my personal favourite from the series.
Undoubtedly for me it was the cover of Night of the Living Dummy, courtesy of Goosebumps.
http://gatheringbooks.files.wordpress.com/2012/02/night-of-the-living-dummy-1.jpg?w=384
I’m not sure what it was that got me. I didn’t read the book, obviously, since I couldn’t get past the cover. But it sure is creepily drawn, to this day.
I made the terrible mistake of letting my fellow second graders know this, and I recall being chased around the library with this damn book a couple times. People are dicks.
We had one of the first video rental stores in town around 1984-85. I vividly remember the horror movies in those big clamshell VHS cases scaring the shit out of me! “Don’t go in the Woods”, “Happy Birthday to Me”, “Hell Night” and “The Boogeyman” gave me nightmares for weeks. That cover art stayed with me so i could watch those flicks later through adult eyes. Haha, not nearly as scary although Hell Night did turn out to be a decent little movie.
I’m sure no one’s still checking this thread, but I want to say SCREW YOU ALL. There were so many past traumas that I thought I had successfully repressed, but you assholes brought ‘em all back.
The Child’s Play 2 display, yup. That kiddie song about the ghost? Well, it wasn’t so much scary then, but darned if I hadn’t forgotten it until now, and NOW IT CREEPS ME OUT. What kind of horrible death do you have where your GHOST is a skeleton?!
Lots of the old-school PSAs scared me. The “no one ever said I want to be a junkie when I grow up” one freaked me out for some reason. All of them were bad, but for some reason that’s the one that got to me.
Cartoon All-Stars to the Rescue freaked me the fuck out, and for YEARS I was convinced that I had hallucinated it. In fact, that’s how I found X-E. I posted about it in a “shit on TV that scarred you for life” thread on a forum and someone assured me that it was real and linked me to the review.
Rescue 911 and Unsolved Mysteries pretty much just had to BE ON to scare the crap out of me. I’m really not sure why my mother thought it would be a good idea to let her neurotic, hypochondriac child watch Rescue 911 to begin with.
The Dark Crystal gave me nightmares as a kid. Not the Skeksis or any of the scary parts. It was the Gelflings themselves that scared the shit out of me. I’m still freaked out by them.
That alien autopsy gave me the heeb. The “alien”‘s dead face freaked me out badly. Still does thinking about it. Of course, I was twelve by then and was definitely old enough to know better than to think it could possibly be real…but I bought it.
I saw Return to Oz as a teen so I don’t think it really counts as childhood trauma, but even at that age I was like “This is supposed to be for kids? This shit is creepy!” Good flick, though.
And like a lot of you, I was a total damn weiner kid who grew up into a horror fanatic. Go figure. And I own that giant Unsolved Mysteries box set that comes in the treasure chest box. I just have yet to work up the courage to watch any of it yet…