"Scary" concepts that really aren't, or shouldn't be

[skykiii]

I've said elsewhere that I'm of two minds about things that are considered "horror" or "spooky" or "creepy."

Those being A) that they're often just a praxis for exploring ideas we normally wouldn't.

But also B) that this is rather misleading because it makes it seem like they're meant to spook you (which sometimes has the bad effect that they get sensationalized and played up. Want to invoke Lucid Dreaming? Oh, you gotta add that you encountered a demon and got possessed).

Which is why I prefer the old term "Weird Tale."

Aaaaaanyway though, just some things that keep getting tossed under the label of "scary" that really should not have been:

Time Slips
These are stories about people who somehow wind up temporarily in the past or the future. That one pilot who got a brief glimpse of what a British air base would look like in five years for example, or those women who visited that one palace, walked around a corner, and for some reason were back in the 1800s for a brief time.

... How is this "scary" exactly? This sounds freaking awesome! Like, I almost want to go to these places and see if I can replicate their results.

The Mandela Effect
Now, to be fair, some of these do weird me out, or even annoy me at times. I've actually got a collection of "personal" Mandela Effects I've considered posting, but I'll save them for another time. Of commonly-discussed ones.... that girl in Moonraker definitely used to have braces.

That said.... the actual concept itself is actually kind of cool. So parallel universes might exist and we slipped at one point? Then it could happen again and we could have fun with that. Even the more mundane explanation of how we misremembered something at least involves a bit of discussion and detective work which is a fun enough mental exercise (though it gets tedious when people get lazy and go for the whole "well we're all basically retarded so you can't trust memory" explanation, which sounds like something a corporate PR department would say).

Ouija Boards
They're a device that lets you talk to the dead. Yes, getting to speak to your favorite grandma one more time is so spoooooky. Sniff.

That I tried to find guidelines to prevent this from being clogged up with shitposts and responses that miss the point but really could not think of any.
Hey, that makes it funnier.

 

[obliviousbeard]

Dentists
Literally dude who pokes, cuts, drills and pierces your mouth parts while you're sitting there unable to see wtf is happening. Also the operations tend to hurt.

Barbers/Haircutters
Someone standing behind you using sharp utensils while you cannot see shit what's happening. Bonus points for clipping your ears (happened to me)

 

[Idiotron]

or those women who visited that one palace, walked around a corner, and for some reason were back in the 1800s for a brief time.

... How is this "scary" exactly? This sounds freaking awesome!

Depends what the people there will do once they see you wearing weird clothes and speaking a weird dialect.
Also, if you're there for longer, not having money from the time period might be an issue.
What are you going to do?
Mug someone and by doing that, change history in a significant way?

Ouija Boards
They're a device that lets you talk to the dead. Yes, getting to speak to your favorite grandma one more time is so spoooooky. Sniff.

I don't believe in that shit but according to various sources, souls of the dead aren't the ones who answer, demons do.
If you're talking to your grandma, that's actually a deadly hellspawn who wants to feast on your flesh but he needs you to open the gate first.

 

[eDove]

Can I say little girls? There's nothing scary, visually or conceptually, about girls under the age of ten. The Ring, the Grudge, pulled it off which prompted the film industry to beat it into the ground (without realizing why those girls were spooky in the first place).

 

[SSj_Ness (Yiffed)]

Yes, getting to speak to your favorite grandma one more time is so spoooooky.

If it's a demon pretending to be grandma, then yes, it would be spooky.

 

[Lovely Kin]

Anything involving analog "horror" it isn't even scary, a good portion of it is just dumb.

 

[Positron]

I don't understand trypophobia. I'm not afraid of spiders or maggots but I understand why some people are freaked out by them, but holes?

 

[skykiii]

Can I say little girls? There's nothing scary, visually or conceptually, about girls under the age of ten. The Ring, the Grudge, pulled it off which prompted the film industry to beat it into the ground (without realizing why those girls were spooky in the first place).

And The Grudge's girl isn't even a little girl, its someone's wife (I assume you meant Toshio though).

I agree tho, whenever they try to have a creepy little girl I'm more likely to go "awww how adorable!"

 

[DSP for president 2032]

Can I say little girls? There's nothing scary, visually or conceptually, about girls under the age of ten. The Ring, the Grudge, pulled it off which prompted the film industry to beat it into the ground (without realizing why those girls were spooky in the first place).

Hit the nail on the head there! I want to add 'scary little boys' as well:



Insidious made me shit my pants because it's just such a well done horror film (except for the finale). But I will never understand why people are scared of creepy kids. Seems to be a VERY common fear though. That reminds me, they're even in The Shining.



Oh no... little girls who got axe murdered? More sad than creepy.

Edit: I just remembered, I wanted to mention the Dead Space daycare as well

To their credit, they probably could not get away with the exploding necromorph babies today.

I don't understand trypophobia. I'm not afraid of spiders or maggots but I understand why some people are freaked out by them, but holes?

I was going to say hole-phobia as well, but I think I understand the reason behind it. The holey surfaces remind me of a flesh-eating infection, or flesh filled with parasite eggs. It's more of a disgust than a fear though.

 

[Barry Williams]

I don't understand trypophobia. I'm not afraid of spiders or maggots but I understand why some people are freaked out by them, but holes?

The studies I've read about this show it to be more akin to a "shared memory" that is somehow hard wired into our brains. The sight of densely packed holes is believed to be something akin to disease or rot or something like that and that pattern upsets the monkey part of our brains as something we should avoid. It's not a "fear" so much as an evolutionary skill.

Edit: it's why you can look at a stack of PVC pipes and feel nothing, but look at something like a beehive and start feeling on edge because that one is biological. And the further you slide that window down the more intense the response gets.

 

[Señora Airi]

I don't believe in that shit but according to various sources, souls of the dead aren't the ones who answer, demons do.
If you're talking to your grandma, that's actually a deadly hellspawn who wants to feast on your flesh but he needs you to open the gate first.

It just feels scummy to mess with the dead just for your own entertainment as well.

 

[Dysnomia]

In the case of time slips have you heard of the Bold Street Time slip in Liverpool?
https://theguideliverpool.com/legend-of-the-bold-street-timeslip/

Allegedly there's a time slip occurring here that can take people momentarily back to the past. Some say they cannot interact with anyone during this time slip. But others have said they have. It's probably just an urban legend to attract tourists to the shops. I don't know if there's any reports of people going missing permanently there due to a time slip. Most people just say they experience a momentary event then are back in their correct time.

It could be really dangerous is time slips actually existed. Slip in the wrong spot and you could get stuck inside a wall or a tree. Slip too far back and you could end up in the ocean. Not to mention the wildlife and people that might not be so friendly. Diseases. Scary.

There's a movie called Synchronic. It's about a drug that lets you travel through time by disrupting the pineal gland. So your perception of time is essentially blinders off. The plot goes off of the theory that time as we know it is an illusion. I really liked it. It's part of a loosely connected trilogy including Resolution and The Endless. Give them a try if you like this sort of stuff.

It just feels scummy to mess with the dead just for your own entertainment as well.

That's why I hate those TV mediums that pretend they can connect you to your dead grandmother. They just do cold reads until something hits. They use hidden earpieces and will have staff fish for information from audience members. John Edward. Long Island Medium. Sylvia Browne. All scam artists. Sylvia Browne is probably most famous for telling many families that their missing relative was alive somewhere. In one case she claimed a six year old girl named Opal Jennings was trafficked to Japan. In the case of Lynda McClelland, Browne couldn't even tell that the murderer was in the room during the reading.

She also backtracked completely on Coast to Coast due to a mistaken news report concerning the Sago mine explosion. Although I guess she was technically "Right" because there was indeed a single survivor. But her wording there was all over the place.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sylvia_Browne#Criticism

"I don't think there's anybody alive, maybe one ... I just don't think they are alive", adding, subsequently, that she "didn't believe that they were alive ... I did believe that they were gone."

How she could be so glaringly wrong all the time yet still get on TV so much is beyond me. Maybe it was because producers knew she was a sham and it was good for entertainment. Although I don't think giving families false hope is very entertaining.

 

[Brain Power]

>backrooms

 

[Chromeo]

Ouija Boards
They're a device that lets you talk to the dead. Yes, getting to speak to your favorite grandma one more time is so spoooooky. Sniff.

I was gonna comment on the demon aspect of this, but I see that other commenters have said the same thing. If ouija boards AREN'T hokey board games sold to spook people out, they're a way to invite demonic forces into your space. That's absolutely scary.

 

[2mm and 99 others]

I don't understand trypophobia. I'm not afraid of spiders or maggots but I understand why some people are freaked out by them, but holes?

I think fear of spiders could be just wrongly calibrated, but hard-wired fear of scorpions.

I once had a gutpunch reaction when I saw a multi-legged creature on a tree branch. Then I took a second look, and it was just a dead crab someone had put up there to dry out. Crab on a shore or in the water wouldn't jumpscare me like that, but a thing with many legs on a tree?

 

[Your Starter for 10]

Sharks.

Just don't go in the water. Nigga just walk away.

 

[skykiii]

>backrooms

To be honest I can see this being scary. Suddenly finding yourself eternally stuck in some weird purgatory, even without a monster present. I already don't handle hunger well, and I take medicine for back pain, so I'd have the stress of both soon running out.

The Backrooms as a concept is one of those that got ruined by a "too many cooks" situation. Creepypastas like this and Slenderman have shown that if you outsource creativity to a collective, they'll invariably end up with the weakest and lamest version of a thing. Slender Man got reduced to just some teleporting hobo who kills you if you get too interested in him. Backrooms became some dimension of yellow hallways, a far cry from its original idea of some place you might arrive at if you somehow "noclip" out of reality. Just look at what noclipping is like in actual video games--the results are far more interesting.

THREAD TAX:

The video game that comes to life/starts talking to you. I can see it being startling at first but if it confirmed to be legit I would actually be kind of interested in chatting more, not freaked out.

 

[Sebben Crudele II]

The studies I've read about this show it to be more akin to a "shared memory" that is somehow hard wired into our brains. The sight of densely packed holes is believed to be something akin to disease or rot or something like that and that pattern upsets the monkey part of our brains as something we should avoid. It's not a "fear" so much as an evolutionary skill.

Edit: it's why you can look at a stack of PVC pipes and feel nothing, but look at something like a beehive and start feeling on edge because that one is biological. And the further you slide that window down the more intense the response gets.

This is correct, it's a primitive reaction to something that looks diseased/infected/rotten and you could either catch that disease/infection or somehow have contact with that rot, or if it's on you then you're already diseased/infected/rotten and it's a cause for alarm. It's why blood is also unnerving on a primal level. Monkey brain thinks blood = injury = DANGER.

 

[XYZpdq Jr.]

too far back and you could end up in the ocean.

Really if you're traveling time the constant movement of the galaxy and the universe means you're nowhere near where you were even an hour ago. Unless you're strapping in and rewinding or fast-forwarding you're gonna step out into cold vacuum

 

[Tingle]

Clowns. I get it, John Wayne Gacy was a clown and he killed a bunch of kids. Stephen King wrote It and probably single-handedly made this such a widespread popular concept. But clowns are literally just guys, dressed up funny with paint on their face. Never once have I seen someone feel the same way about Mimes, or the Blue Man Group.

Maybe it's because clowns are fully grown people putting on an act of immaturity, since they're entertaining primarily children? That could even help explain the "horror" of mascot costumes and animatronics that sort of go in line with this, but at least with those I think the uncanny valley pulls a lot more weight in making actually discomforting.