Kim wants to know what scares you.
by kimharrison on Jun.04, 2009, under Kim Harrison
Okay, this is going to be a little selfish, but since I don’t write horror, but am often shelved in horror, I think I might need to brush up on what scares people. Me, I don’t like elevators. It’s not a phobia, because I will use them, (maybe I’m too lazy to take the stairs.) But when I’m stressed, I will dream about malfunctioning elevators. (Sad, but true) Ghosts, too, are another big shudder factory in me. So give it up. Consider it you helping me be more “scary” in my writing. What makes you shiver. Blood? Missing body parts? An old girl/boy friend knocking on your door with a bassinette? Physical or mental torture? Real stuff, or things you can’t see. –Kim
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June 4th, 2009 on 11:34 am
My 6 year old daughter woke up the other night from a nightmare and told me a cat was trying to kill her. But the cat wasn’t using it’s teeth and claws, it had a knife. I asked her what else the cat did, and she told me the cat said “Get in the car, lock the doors”.
I’ve been scared of cats since.
June 4th, 2009 on 11:58 am
Clowns. Court jesters (don’t see many of those around, but you know what I mean). Marionettes, freak shows, that creepy carnival music…ugh. A few SciFi classics nearly put me over the edge!
June 4th, 2009 on 12:33 pm
I read an article in National Geographic recently about people who are addicted to exploring new caves. There was a section where the author described a spelunker wedging himself into a narrow crack, letting out as much breath as he could, inching himself in further, breathing a little bit more, letting it out, and so on. All in an attempt to reach some new, unknown part of a cave. I am not normally claustrophobic, but this just gives me the willies. Shoving yourself into a spot so small you can barely breathe - and not knowing whether it’s going to get any bigger on the other side.
June 4th, 2009 on 12:45 pm
I’m with Ciar, clowns, definitely clowns; being buried alive (way too much Poe in my youth); dark, echoing parking garages; and sometimes just the wind through the trees…
June 4th, 2009 on 1:21 pm
I have to get up in the middle of the night sometines with my young children. One of them is old enough to get out of bed on his own and sometimes meets me in the hall. My biggest fear is that I’m going to get up in the middle of the night, think I’m meeing my child in the middle of the hall, and have it be some kind of demon or alien creature!
June 4th, 2009 on 1:30 pm
Oh, here’s another one. I won’t give away her name, but one of my editors is afraid of things that wiggle, sway, swing, etc. I guess that’s more of a bona fide phobia/disorder. But can you imagine?
June 4th, 2009 on 1:40 pm
I have to go with suffocation, along the same lines as Nikki. The idea of drowning or dying through loss of air is absolutely horrific to me. I was almost drowned as a kid and ever since then, it’s been a deep fear.
June 4th, 2009 on 1:52 pm
Out of curiosity what category do you consider your writing to be? I ask because the subject of genres has come up in conversation a lot lately (most recently at BEA).
As for what scares me? People scare me. And the end of the world scares me. Especially the end of the world at the hand of man.
Great question, thanks for asking!
June 4th, 2009 on 1:56 pm
I’m a sucker for diseases. Little invisible things that steal your breath and boil your insides… gives me the willies every time. After I read The Stand I couldn’t hear a cough or sneeze without jumping out of my skin.
June 4th, 2009 on 2:03 pm
The dark, and what’s in it that we can’t see. If I ever went completely blind I’d probably need heavy tranquilisers.
And, a relative I won’t mention. I’m not being funny; she’s unpredictable and violent and just plain nuts and (oh God) will always be related to me. It makes the ringing phone a scary thing; the mailman arrives and I hold my breath. Ugh.
June 4th, 2009 on 2:39 pm
I’m a total horror junkie. The scarier the better. And I go to great lengths to create just the right mood for terror: watch the film/read the book completely alone in the middle of the night, preferably during a thunder storm with the threat of power failure. It takes a lot to scare me and I’m usually disappointed, yet these simple things are bound to freak me out:
1. Sharks– I saw Jaws at an inappropriately young age and haven’t been the same since. (Thanks, Dad!) Hands down the scariest film ever. My fear is so powerful that it actually transcends sharks and includes all aquatic life. A few years back my parents went on a cruise and had a DVD made of their snorkeling adventure. They were surrounded by all these “beautiful’ tropical fish. It was a horror movie! Instead of “don’t go up the stairs” I was screaming “don’t go near that tropical fish!”
2. Spiders – Seriously, why do they need so many legs?
3. Chainsaws – anyone that selects a chainsaw as a weapon of choice is seriously evil & clearly not concerned about drawing attention. And the victim’s chance of survival is pretty slim.
4.Whistling – I don’t care if it’s a jaunty tune or something somber – whistling sends shivers of terror up my spine. In my mind, anyone who whistles is clearly a homicidal maniac. (Just imagine: whistling sharks battling chainsaw wielding spiders! That might be ridiculous enough to cure my fears! Or it could backfire and I would wind up never leaving my apartment.)
It’s also pretty terrifying when things that you thought were safe or known suddenly become dangerous. For example, when the creepy lady in Ju-on appears under the blanket. What!? Hiding under your covers is supposed to be safe! Or when vampires can’t be deterred with sunlight or crosses. The rules change and you need to figure out a new way to survive. And what’s this business with zombies suddenly being super fast? I chose the zombie apocalypse because I was told there wouldn’t be any running.
June 4th, 2009 on 2:47 pm
I have to admit, I’m freaked out by the idea of being eaten.
Heights will do it, too (I couldn’t watch the finale of Peter Jackson’s KING KONG, and it was only playing on my 19″ TV) but being bitten is a button that should never be pushed.
June 4th, 2009 on 2:49 pm
Absolutely anything is scary if it isn’t working the way it’s supposed to.
Elevators are scary if the doors won’t open or if they plummet (definitely not in the realm of operating properly), or ascend at mach 1 out of the roof of a building.
Bridges are scary when you get to the top and realize that the other end of the span isn’t there.
Cars are scary when they don’t obey your orders to turn, slow down, stop or even stay on the radio station you’ve chosen.
Body parts that you shouldn’t have are scary.
Voices in your head that you can’t control are scary.
Doctors are scary when they laugh knowingly.
Authority figures who mutter…are scary.
The Undead, however, are a pure font of wholesome fun. What’s not to like?
June 4th, 2009 on 3:48 pm
Agree with the elevators. I have no trouble using them, but each time I enter/exit I wonder whether the elevator will fall while I’m in the doorway and I’ll be sliced in half.
Otherwise, I suppose I’m afraid of zealots, those violent people who believe so strongly in something that they just can’t be reasoned with and they won’t accept an alternative viewpoint. Yes, I know…they’re everywhere. Scary!
June 4th, 2009 on 4:38 pm
My scare-list:
), heights, many kinds of diseases, esp. (because I work with affected people) psychiatric disorders, fly by plane, diving….
Caves, Spiders, sometimes “the monster under the bed” (yes, I´m adult
June 4th, 2009 on 11:25 pm
I don’t like closets. In my latest apartment, I ended up with a room that attached to a really long walk-in closet. The ceiling has one of those trapdoors that leads to a crawlspace. As luck would have it, there is no such trapdoor on the other side of the apartment unit in my roomie’s space. Why me…
The leasing office had kindly nailed narrow boards across the panel frame to block off the access, and the paint job looks undisturbed. I’m presuming the one inch wide boards are supposed to convey a sense of security.
But, still, there was too much visible space to my eyes. I ended up pushing my dresser inside the closet, up against one of the walls beneath the hanging clothes, figuring it would take up some of the space. And I piled bags, suitcases, sports gear and stuff on the other side. I figure no one could lurk in there.
Last fall one of my neighbors decided to throw a barbecue, so I got to meet some of the other tenants. One of the gals informed me that a year ago some guy had been robbing people in the complex while they were out. At some point, he made the mistake of trying to enter someone’s unit while they were home. Police surrounded the complex while they went door to door to track him down. Of course, they found him in the crawlspace above someone’s closet, moving unseen from one unit to the next.
Thus, the boarded up trapdoor that hardly looks secure. ::frown:: ::points up:: ::shiver:: That neighbor’s revelation didn’t help my irrational fear much.
When I was a kid, one of my uncles shared the family ghost story with us. He said that one summer, my stepmother was visiting the family house up in Canada. She’d been getting ready for bed, brushing her hair in front of the mirror, when her little daughter waved at the closet and greeted her grandfather. Well, he’d passed away some time before, and my stepmother reportedly shrieked, grabbed her kid, and ran out of the room.
I say, it’s a closet. Who can blame her…
June 4th, 2009 on 11:29 pm
Reliving my high school years is a common topic of my nightmares. It was the time when my father was slowly dying of leukemia and I was having a hard time handling it.
June 5th, 2009 on 12:17 am
While it may be irrational, I’m afraid of clowns. It all started when I was young and went to a circus with my dad. A clown was working the crowd before the event started. He walked up to me and got me with the hand buzzer and flower squirter. This was my first experience with clowns in person and after the incident, the folks around us were laughing. The clown did his job because he was entertaining the crowd. I was scared to death and started crying. It didn’t help that the clown was really creepy looking.
Then, a few years later I see IT with Tim Curry. Until it got to be a giant spider, Pennywise the Clown was horrifying. That’s the one Stephen King book I can’t bring myself to read.
June 5th, 2009 on 12:21 am
Garden variety slugs. Grey or white ones, either will do the trick.
June 5th, 2009 on 12:27 am
I would suggest renting Poltergeist. I swear, everyone I knew who saw it has at least one thing from it that gave them nightmares. For me it was that darned tree.
June 5th, 2009 on 3:59 am
Phantasm I & II make you jump out of your skin repeatedly. You don’t walk away scared, because deep down you don’t believe in aliens who recycle the dead as slave labour.
Stories about madness are another matter. We all know people who’ve gone mad.
There was one of the Hammer TV films where an estate agent wakes up, sets about his day, which gets steadily weirder until he wakes up and it was just a dream so he sets about his day, which gets steadily weirder … I have such dreams.
In the end, believing he’s still in a dream, he kills the woman who’s been tormenting him in his dreams, the police take him away, the film ends.
I found ‘The Hungry Moon’ a deeply scary book, not so much because of the actual monster, but the vivid description of the whole village going progressively insane.
June 5th, 2009 on 7:05 am
I think its about those things that lurk in the dark, things that our minds can’t possibly understand or comprehend, I think more than anything horror is about the human mind not being able to recognize.
June 5th, 2009 on 8:36 am
Clowns and high places!
June 5th, 2009 on 9:41 am
i’m with Nikki — tight places that you may not get out of.
the first Aliens was horrifying (albeit i was 12) because the concept was so new and you didn’t know what this alien thing was and what it could do — so i’d say something new and different.
thinking no one will like the novel that i’ve spent the last two years writing to take the vampire/sci fi/thriller world by storm — now that’s scary!!!!
June 5th, 2009 on 11:27 am
Loss. Of control, of life, of a situation, of the known/familiar. Introduce something menacing or simply off into the comfortable life we all mostly lead and expect the character to deal rather than be rescued is always a good place to start a scary story.
June 6th, 2009 on 12:07 am
Things with no eyes. Not blind, more like that doctor from “Jacob’s Ladder”. And especially things with no eyes that squirm around seemingly blind, but know exactly where they are going, like slugs.
Parasites, any kind. Bugs, fungi, microbes, aliens, whatever. Especially ones that take over fetuses.
People who do evil things, but giggle the whole time.
June 9th, 2009 on 5:52 pm
My biggest fear is spiders. I become paralyzed in fear at the very sight of the eight-legged creeps. The fear isn’t completely irrational - my grandmother, of whom I am a spitting image, died because she was bitten on her spinal cord by a spider and in turn had to have a leg amputation. The amputation got f-ed up and she died.
My irrational fear is burning to death. I can’t even stand to be out in the sun if it is more than 80 degrees. This fear isn’t so bad I can’t function, but when I’m feeling a bit crazy, this is the thought that consumes me.
August 19th, 2009 on 2:56 pm
Aliens don’t scare me. RE-read the chest-busting scene in Alien 3 times over High School Spaghetti… =P
However:
Hanibal Lecter. Absolutely creepy to me that someone can literally not care one way or the other if you die, how you die, or how you taste with Fava Beans and a nice Cianti. *shivers*
Lasic surgery! The very thought that someone will shoot my RETINA with an intense beam of light… *shudders*
Big dogs. i.e.: Doberman, German Shepherd, etc. The movie Cujo wasn’t that scary to me because it was a St. Bernard, and it didn’t look real. But the Dobermans in ‘Damien: Omen II’ …
*gnaws fingertips*
But THE scariest thing I’ve ever experienced was reading the scene in The Shining when the animal shrubs were coming after the boy. Absolutely scared the wits out of me. I STILL get chills when it’s mentioned… *gives up and goes to foetal position*
August 19th, 2009 on 3:06 pm
Addendum:
Scariest book ever (and I’ve read quite a number) -
Stephen King’s “Pet Sematary”.
Second scariest - “Wit’ch Fire” by James Clemens. (If you haven’t read it, you should. Great book.) Specifically the scenes near the end when there are these black, oily, seethingly Eeeevilll demon/drake things trying to get her. I could practically smell the stench of them and the intent in their eye-sockets. (I should mention that it takes a LOT to creep me out. Been a fan of Jason Vorhees, Michael Meyers, and Freddie Krueger for years…)
February 25th, 2010 on 2:23 pm
I agree with what they were saying just not as direct
April 3rd, 2010 on 11:27 pm
Alright so I’d have to say demonic work scares me the most. Why? Because whenever I think about it, It terrifies me what they are able to do, the power that the demons weilds, only in the most literal sense tho Like if Im reading a story and it has demons in it Im not going to scream at the top of my lungs and run away, but personal use of almost anything demonic or supernatural in that way , the possible outcome terrifies me. Its kind of hard to explain.
April 3rd, 2011 on 7:50 pm
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