In the book thread Lisa brought up that scene from Rikki Tikki Tavi where the cobra is under the table saying to the mongoose, "If you move, I will strike. If you don't move, I will strike."

That terrified me as a kid. So did the flying monkeys from the Wizard of Oz and the clown doll from Poltergeist.

What scared you?

-- Anonymous, July 05, 2001

Answers

The chimney sweeps in Mary Poppins terrified me. All those guys, filthy with soot, crawling down peoples' chimneys and making all that racket...

-- Anonymous, July 05, 2001

Ms. Garret on the Facts of Life. I could take the good and I could take the bad, I cuold take 'em both but, that woman was a freak.

-- Anonymous, July 05, 2001

The flying monkeys I was pretty neutral about, but when Auntie Em would fade from the big crystal ball and the Wicked Witch fade in, whooof, I'd be across the room.

Um, slightly embarrassed here, but I was babysitting the first time I saw the "Thriller" video for a new family in an unfamiliar house, and despite being 15, I was scared at the end when he turns around and has the demon eyes.

I had nightmares after seeing the David Soul "'Salem's Lot."

"The Exorcist." Boy howdy. (In joke: early on, Regan calls her spirt "Cap'n Howdy.") I was recently talking to people four and seven years younger than I who weren't scared by that movie at all, ever. Jaded young things.

Oh yeah. Of course. The one, the only: when Mrs. Bates's chair swings around at the end of "Psycho," with that shrieky creak? Shivers.

-- Anonymous, July 05, 2001

I can't remember the movie (probably because I wanted to blank it out), but it was some psycho horror type of thing where a young woman is babysitting and some guy is stalking her. (This was pre all the current crop and were probably the film they were making fun of.) Anyway, they show all the horror she goes through and then later on when she was older and married, she thinks she hears a noise or something (again with the selective amnesia) and when she goes back to her bedroom, her husband's still in bed -- she lies next to him, relieved it's nothing, and says something to him and yup and a couple of beats later, realizes... and yup, it's the psycho.

I saw this when I was babysitting (the one time I did) at a strange house which made lots of noises. When she turned around and it was that psycho, I nearly came unglued. (I know, corny now, but I rarely watched horror.) Scared the bejezus out of me.

To this day, if I get up for something (or go to bed later than my husband), I have a moment where I sort of put my hand on him to make sure it's him there. I know, stupid, but I cannot forget that moment.

If ever he wanted to knock me off and look innocent, all he'd have to do is say something scary right at that moment and I'd drop dead with a heart attack.

-- Anonymous, July 05, 2001

Lisa. Word on 'Salem's Lot. I slept with a rosary under my pillow for weeks.

The hands coming up out the ground at the end of Carrie freaked me out. And the head rolling across the glass in The Omen.

I was never afraid of the flying monkeys, but the witch setting the scarecrow on fire was hard to watch.

-- Anonymous, July 06, 2001

-anything remotely having to do with shartks after seeing the cover of the paperback of "Jaws" when I was 5 or 6. I am still sort of convinced there are sharks under the bed at night.

-There was a commercial for some "rosemary's baby" type movie called "its alive" that featured the tune of "rock-a bye" baby and then you realized the baby carriage was smoking or something...had some freakish devil child in it. That scared me to death.

-Seeing a food critic being interviewed on TV wearing a huge black hat with a brim that swept over her face, obscuring it. I was certain she was horribly deformed.

And forget Poltergist. I'd learned by then what a wimp was. I didn't watch a scary movie until the Blair Witch lured me back into a theater.

-- Anonymous, July 06, 2001

Oh yeah, I forgot... little kids are creepy.

The Sixth Sense scared me because of the kid as much as the ghosts. WEs Cravens New Nightmare was creepy because of the kid.

-- Anonymous, July 06, 2001

Remember that movie Magic with the dummy? The commercials scared the shit out of me. I hate dummies because of those commercials. And Christopher Reeve.

-- Anonymous, July 06, 2001

Okay, so Christopher Reeve wasn't actually in Magic. I still think he's creepy.

-- Anonymous, July 06, 2001

Magic was written by my favorite author, William Goldman.

He's also responsible for the dentist scene in Marathon Man. "Is it safe?" Oh, man. Scared the hell out of me.

A few years ago, there was a commercial for something (I no longer rember what) that had a clown sitting next to some unsuspecting woman in the theater. She turned around, in the dark, mind you, saw him sitting there, and freaked out. So did I.

-- Anonymous, July 06, 2001

Toni! That movie was called "When a Stranger Calls," and it had Brian Dennehie (sp) as the detective who caught the psycho. I saw that movie shortly before I began my babysitting career, and all of us girls got a kick out of calling eachother at various babysitting gigs and asking, "have you checked the children?" Do you remember how it went? That is the scariest movie in the world, and I am not exaggerating people. Also frightening: the first twenty minutes of "Scream." The first one, with Drew Barrymore running around the house threatening to call the police. I told my boyfriend if the whole movie was like this, I was going to have to leave. That is just my worst nightmare, and they put it up there with Dolby surround sound. Bastards!

-- Anonymous, July 07, 2001

Cynthea,

Yes! That's the one! I couldn't remember enough about it to look it up, but that movie scared the hell out of me. I swear, to this day, I still flash back on occasion to that movie and feel a little freaked. Thanks for supplying the title. I had completely blanked on the detective.

-- Anonymous, July 08, 2001

ooh ooh, me too! "Have you checked the children?" Must be a whole generation of us who saw that when we were teens.

I never understood why Rosemary's Baby was so scary.

The one that freaked me as a kid was a 70s movie i've never been able to identify about a girl that gets buried alive by her kidnapper. in retrospect, the actress looked somewhat like jennifer jason leigh (i think), but she was buried in a coffin with a supply of air to last x hours. i don't even remember when/how she was (presumably) rescued, but the image of her being buried alive still terrifies me. i thought of it again a couple of months ago when that russian sub went down...equally terrifying, i think.

-- Anonymous, July 08, 2001

That happened in Dirty Harry... the girl getting buried alive thing. I'm not sure if that's the movie you were talking about... but it should be.

I can't deal with anything happening to people's eyes or ears in movies. I seem to remember some action/thriller movie where a guy got stabbed through the ear into the brain with a screwdriver. totally freaked me out.

and those bugs in Star Trek II - The Wrath of Kahn? Fucking forget about it.

-- Anonymous, July 08, 2001

"The Wrath of Khan" Bugs are the worst of the worst. When the worm/bug/thingy was let into his EAR?!! Oh, My God. Same thing about some X-Files episode I saw where a bug invades a human, and you see the worms crawling up through the whites of his eyeballs. It's a fear of worms I have, folks, in the human body. Roundworm, tapeworm, alien, whatever. I can hold an earthworm in my hand no prob. But the "in the ear" thing is just wrong. The movie "Aliens?" Scary only because the bitch goes IN YOUR BODY to lay eggs. Gag.

-- Anonymous, July 09, 2001

Ewwww! The bugs in "Wrath of Khan", nononononono, me neither. Yuck.

Anything in the horror genre involving evil children has a very good chance of freaking me right the fuck out. "Children of the Corn"? Yikes! (though the sequels were too cheesy to bear)

Clowns. Ohhhh God, clowns scare me. "It" practically traumatized me for life with that damn clown.

And thanks to (i know, it's terrible in this day and age and was horrendously cheesy) "Evil Dead" I have always had a phobia of unfinished cellars and stairs that are open at the back. You know, so someone can reach through the stairs and grab your ankle.

Much to my horror, my grandmother owns a house with an unfinished (and very creepy and very damp) cellar. It has a lone hanging bare bulb and each end of it. It has stairs that are open. The door to the cellar is in the main floor bathroom and I can't go in there to pee until I check that the cellar door is locked. It turns out she used to frequently store extra jars of homemade jams on the steps or on top of the cool sand and once she asked me to go get one. At ten o'clock at night. No way grandma.

-- Anonymous, July 09, 2001