We'll start with and easy one.
1. If you were alone in a house, (day or night), what would frighten you? What would it take to make you fill your britches?
2. Same question only you are alone on a path through the woods at night.
My answers:
1. A noise that doesn't belong there. B. Finding someONE had made the noise.
2. A noise in the underbrush. B. Having the wind blow so hard that I couldn't HEAR the noise in the underbrush.
My fear is of the unknown, once i know what I have to deal with, all the stuffing goes out of it.
2a. a light on the path ahead.
2b. a bear.
So, when I'm home alone, it would have to be just turning out the light and going to bed. It's the quiet. Though when I had a dog, it was when the dog would suddenly run to the back door and growl inexplicably.
For #2 it would have to be seeing another form moving toward me in the dark, a person, an animal, whatever.
2a. Walking along a country lane that goes through the middle of a woods, seeing a set of temporary traffic lights ahead and thinking, 'hmm, now the light's turned green, if there was somebody sitting directly beneath it with an axe I wouldn't see them until after they'd chopped my head off. And the noise of the generator means I probably wouldn't hear any small noises they might make to give themselves away either. . . .'
2b. Three seconds later hearing an owl go: 'Waaaaaah, who who who whoooo!'
2a. Suffering a serious and immobilizing medical affliction--pulmonary edema, or getting shot in the chest or torso, or having a severed femoral artery, etc.
2b. 2a, when the scavengers start showing up.
[This message has been edited by J (edited February 10, 2005).]
2. The sound of a child giggling nearby in the dead of night, in the woods.
For example, something (most likely clothes) in the corner of a room that begins to look like an aligator. I know it isn't but I can't figure out what it is and it looks like a damned sleeping aligator! Now if that non-algator started hissing or moved suddenly, I'd totally freak out even though the rational side of my brain would telling me how ludacris the whole thing was.
2 A&B
Outside, alone, in the dark doesn't usually bother me unless I'm in unfamilliar surroundings or if there is something gnawing in the back of my mind.
For example, when I was living on an island in B.C. a few years ago, I had a couple of friends and we liked to go for walks down to the ocean to talk and hang out. We went most evenings and had a special spot we liked to go to.
One night my friends had to do something first so I went on ahead without them. It had been raining earlier and the sky was still cloudy so it was a particullarly dark night. I guess I hadn't been clear that I was indeed going on without them and that they should just follow. Normally being alone in the extreme dark, down by the ocean wouldn't have bothered me, except that a few weeks before that there had been rumours of a peeping tom/possible predator running around the island. He had never been caught or identified. As I waited for my friends for more than half an hour (I had expected them within 5-10 minutes) the darkness closed in and I heard every sound and the irrational part of my brain was starting to play nasty tricks on me. My friends finally arrived, but if a stranger had happened by I think I would have freaked out pretty bad.
In the woods, finding myself between a mother bear and her cub.
1A If I'm home alone that means hubby is out somewhere with the kids. So the most frightening thing that could happen would be for the phone to ring and have a police officer or an ER nurse on the other end of the line.
1B And if she said something along the lines of, "I'm sorry to have to tell you this..." Well, that's when I'd fill my britches.
I'll have to think more on #2.
For me, seeing someone in the house watching me would be pretty awful.
Outside at night, how about a throaty growl?
I've always conjured one of two images when I'm outside at night. The first is an upper torso crawling toward me on the ground, crunching leaves as it gets closer. The second is looking up to see blood soaked sheets wrapping corpses hung from the trees above me.
Which reminds me that I'm out of ketchup .
[This message has been edited by JennyMac (edited February 11, 2005).]
A stranger in my kid's room. Oh you said alone well finding some one I love or my pet hurt or murdered and secreted into the house without my knowledge. To say goto get popcorn and return to the den to find the body.
2. Same question only you are alone on a path through the woods at night.
Well I have been stalked by both a bear and a cougar and neither were as terrifying as when I found a bloody woman crying in the middle of the path out in the middle of the woods at night. My gut grew cold and I swear she looked like something straight from resident evil! Lurching towards me wailing incomprehensibly!
Something to make me doubt my sanity. Something that makes me believe that what I'm seeing, hearing or thinking aren't real.
We'll start with and easy one.
1. If you were alone in a house, (day or night), what would frighten you? What would it take to make you fill your britches?
--For the first part, I think there isn't much, though opening your eyes at 3 am to see your toddler's shadowy face two inches from you own can give a person quite a start! As for the second part of that question, I'd say about three bowls of my award winning Chili, chased with a bottle of Dave's Total Insanity hot sause and a good gallon or so of water to wash it all down will probably do the job for just about anybody!
2. Same question only you are alone on a path through the woods at night.
In the woods? I dunno. Maybe a randy elk with that special "look" in his eye as it approaches while I'm stopped over the campfire....
Sorry....long day.
Odd and inexplicable things usually make me more curious than scared, like odd noises that I can't identify coming from places that shouldn't be emmiting noise and stuff not the way you left it and so forth.
I'm not particularly prone to startle, though I'm not abnormally insensitive to sudden shocks. So things like those prank shockwave pages (the kind certain people will link) and scary scenes in movies and video games are among my "scariest" experiences. Real pranks too, but it is usually difficult for someone to take me totally by surprise with a feigned attack. You have to be willing to hide in garbage or something like that (not that my family members wouldn't go that far ).
I used to have a pretty normal "dread" response to clearly preternaturally evil things, but I've long since developed certain natural abilities to the point that I can employ them without conscious thought (or with conscious thought, which is nice). And I don't know if dread of preternatural evil is really "fright" as such.
As for filling my britches, diarrhea is probably the literal answer. I'm not sure that rj's recipie would work on me, but I'm not about to try it.
2a. A gunshot b. someone saying that the guy in the blue coat saw it. (Considering I'm wearing a blue coat.)
2: In the woods? The sound of someone else tripping and falling, followed by their friends searching for them. Maye a a car accident on a nearby road or a light airplane with engine trouble crashing nearby. Real people getting hurt somehow -- without the invincibility and/or melodrama that usually shield fictional characters in these kinds of situations.
I spent a lot of time in the woods when I was a toddler, and there isn't much that's inherently creepy about the woods -- but then again, I may be in the minority, though, since I didn't think that the Blair Witch Project was particularly creepy.
Anxiety is a different matter. I don't think that anxiety really counts as fright, terms like "stagefright" notwithstanding. I could be wrong about that. Some people do really act frightened when put on the spot.
But I'm very sure that the sense of "Aw, $&^%!" that things like major property damage and so forth inspires doesn't count as fear. In a case like that, you're reacting with a sense of disappointment/outrage to something that has just happened. You're not really afraid of anything that's going to happen.
1a) I'd be frightened (at least a little) by about anything. I hate empty houses, and even creaking noises bother me slightly. (That darn furnace is the most terrifying thing on earth).
1b) Now, to scare me THAT much would be harder. I think that first the lights would flicker and then go dark. Every window in the house would explode inwards, sending shards of glass everywhere. And then, despite the electricity being off, all TVs and computer monitors turn on, and I see... An eye staring at me. Then I hear singing.... "Daisy, daisy..."
2a) In the woods? Mildly frightened? Maybe by a bear or something, but if I were in bear territory (Alaskan salmon fishing trip or something) but I'd be carrying both my .45 Desert Eagle and my Benelli shotgun.
2b) Now, if I were to run into large numbers of well-armed paramilitary forces, I think I'd be aptly bothered. Either South American mercenary guerillas or cyber-ninjas would do it for me.
As for if I was alone in the woods...I think the opposite would hold true here. It is rare that it would be completely dark outside. There is usually moon or stars to cast some light, enough for creepy shadows at least. In this case I would be more afraid of what was lurking in the dark rather than the dark itself.
Ironically, what I would fear lurking in the dark of the woods is different than what I would fear lurking in the dark of a city. In a city I would fear men hiding in shadows. In the woods I would fear the dark side of the supernatural - vampires, werewolves, etc. I am not sure why I would not fear them in the city as well since they could just as likely be there but I've never claimed my fears make sense.
If the event is happening to you, it can be pretty damn scarey. If you're watching it happen to someone else and are safely removed from the effects, it might be funny. I guess that is why some people enjoy perpetrating practical jokes.
How the "fright effect" is executed will affect how your audience responds.
I was frightened and disturbed after watching "Event Horizon" and got a good chilly thrill from watching the American version of "The Ring", but I laughed all the way through "Jeepers Creepers" and found the recent version of "Dawn of the Dead" amusing.
I want more movies like the Sixth Sense and the original Haunting. I'm scared of something behind me vanishing when I turn around. I'm NOT scared of something making obscene phone calls and crawling towards me from a TV as slow as humanly possible.
And it helps if the plot as actually believable. Not that that could help any version of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre...
I think the thing that scares me the most when I'm alone is my own mind. I start imagining "what if I saw something weird right now".
I guess the unnatural or unexplainable scares me more than something like someone breaking into the house. I already have a plan for that, and they would not feel so good afterwards.
Still, I gotta admit, I keep an eye on the door (which must be shut) when I'm in the shower. Psycho related I guess.
When we first moved into this new house, I got a little scared because every time I let my dog in, he would run upstairs and bark at a particular spot on the wall. Of course I was imagining that he saw some specter I couldn't see. In fact it turned out to be some bats in the attic (no literally, real bats). I put up a bat house outside and now they and my dog are happier.
Scared in the woods. That actually happened to me once. I was on this hayride thing, and my sister got a little motion sick, so she got off, I guess to vomit. I didn't notice she had gotten off until a few minutes later, she didn't say anything and I was talking to someone else. When I noticed, I didn't want her to get lost in the dark so I grabbed my flashlight and got off too. I started walking back towards her and because the moon was shining down through the trees and I was walking on uneven ground, when I saw her shadow walking toward me it made a strange illusion, like she was getting closer, really quickly. Almost like a strobe effect. Then I started thinking, what if that's not your sister. Did anyone notice you got off the ride? That scared me a little.
When I was about ten years old, my father took me to see Twilight Zone the movie. I was cool with everything except the airplane scene. When we got home that night, I had to feed the dog.
The Zeller dog was a massive mammal and as such was always kept on a leash in the backyard (with a clifford sized doghouse and about 100 feet of chain -- not rope, he'd break rope too easily -- to roam on).
We lived in the country, so it was a very dark, long trek from the house to the dog. I was a understandably leary of going out in the dark alone after seeing that movie.
But that's not what really did me in. What really got me was when my father said, "just remember, if a monster drops out of the sky and waves its finger at you, you know you've done something wrong..." Then he laughed and went inside.
Thanks dad.
As for other horror films, I didn't mind The Ring. Not great but not terrible to me. WHat I thought really stunk up the joint was Event Horizon. It was marketed as a Science Fiction tale that promised to be inventive and explorative; instead it just turned out to be a horror film. The ship went to hell and back, yay....
sorry.
Z
I think the reason "Event Horizon" freaked me out is because I had no idea what it was going to be about. I found it in the Sci-Fi section and had never seen any of the commercials for it. I let myself get engrossed in the sci-fi elements and the next thing I know there is Sam Neill going saddistic.
If they come from another universe/dimension/etc., then they are allowed to be totally unlike conventional aliens and immune to a lot of the technology we use, but if they get here using something that is presented as technology and humans try using science/technology on them, it's SF or at least Sci-Fi.
You guys talked about Misery too much.
riiiiight...
That must mean Caves of Steal sucks because it's a mystery, and categorized as sf.
Science Fiction is NOT a genre, people. It's a setting.
Futurist Utopian literature (such as Star Trek) is defined by setting, just like "Post-Apocalyptic" and "Galactic Empire" stories. But none of these, nor all of them together, even come close to comprising the whole of SF. The only setting that comes close to grabbing a majority share is "Contemporary America". If we could plausibly include all stories that take place in the present day (or very recent past/near future) as being part of the same "setting" (which we can't) that might actually be a majority of all SF stories, but it would be far from representative.
It is true that SF allows a large number of settings not found in many other genres (namely most settings which take place in a speculative future), and the setting of Caves of Steel (as well as that of Event Horizon) falls into this catagory, but that is not quite the same thing.
#2
Going in the wrong direction or missing the sidetrack I was supposed to take. BTW I have this thing about tripping, freaks me out, how dark is this path?
[This message has been edited by hoptoad (edited February 17, 2005).]
I say this, because a genre tells you what kind of story will take place, and a setting tells you a little bit about how it is going to take place.
Let's take our two previous examples. Caves of Steel is set in a science fiction setting. There are robots, massive cities that would be engineering marvels to us, etc. But these are not what make the story's genre. What makes the genre is what happens in this world. There is a murder, and a detective tries to solve it. That makes the genre a mystery.
In Event Horizon, the setting is also science fiction. It's not exactly the same place as Caves, but if you're using the Earth metaphor, they're on the same continent (the future). It has horrific imagery and is about a group of people being terrorized by evil spirits. This makes the genre horror.
The same combonation goes for Dr. Jekyl and Mr. Hyde, although it's on a different continent (possibilities of contemporary science), but it's still a horror story set in a science fiction world.
You can disagree with me all you want, and you can pull out a definition or two, but saying that sci-fi is a setting makes it a lot easier to free oneself of a lot of negative things (such as sticking to conventions, or making assumptions about what a story will be).
1.b
Being shot by a gun.
2.a
The aloness fed by the creeks and groans of trees and the following "loud" silence.
2.b
If I had worked myself up enough anything jumping out at me-- even if it was just a person playing a joke on me. But since my brothers did this all the time while I was growing up and I never came close to an accident, I think my body is pretty hardened. So maybe it would have to be an animal attack or something I could not cope with physically or rationally.
"Lady in White"-- I liked that, though more fun than freaky. "Sixth Sense"-- definitely spooky.