Horror Aficionados discussion

How about a thread where we tell the ridiculous real-life scares that we've had that are really nothing but exaggerations of our horror-addled minds?

I work shift. So, it is not uncommon for me to be out walking the dogs at odd hours. A 3:30 am walk is the norm when I am working days.

I live in suburban Houston. A relatively quiet neighborhood. One corner of our walk is particularly dark. But, nothing that should bother anyone.

About 6 months ago, walking through the dark corner, my larger dog, Greta, a 115 pound Anatolian Shepherd stopped, turned and stared down a dark driveway between two houses. She growled and let out a low half bark before turning and continuing our walk. I could see nothing.

The hair on my arms was on end.

The next morning she did the same. Again I saw nothing. But, my hair stood on end.

She has not done it since. But, still walking through that area I have to look and see if I can see anything creeping there.

Of course, there is nothing. But, in my horror-addled mind there is someone standing in the shadows next to driveway watching me, waiting for I don’t know what or why.

Another dog walking tale.

5:30am, just before day break. Half asleep after coming off of a 12 hour nightshift. Decide to take the dogs for a walk around the block before turning in.

There is a slight fog settling in (the mist…). It’s not a thick fog, just enough to partially hide the fronts of the houses as seen from the street.

The dogs and I are passing a house with landscape lighting that exaggerates the opaqueness of the fog.
There is a shuffling to my right.

A figure, tall, hunched, is silhouetted in the landscape lights. Just standing there. Night of the fucking living dead.

After a fog obscured stare down, the shadowy figure turns and silently ambles across the front of the fog-lit house. I swear to God that I am about to have to outrun a goddamn zombie.

The figure slowly fades into the fog towards the back of the house.

THEN….I heard a trashcan being wheeled toward the curb. Oh yeah, its Monday. The old guy needs to put out his recycle bin.

You still stayed there after sighting that figure in the fog??!! Don't mind admitting I'm not THAT brave. I would have been back at my gate with no recollection of how I got there.

This one was when I was young, so I don't know if it was too much horror, or just the paranoia that parents and TV are good at giving kids.

I was probably 10 or so. My friend and I were walking to her house. A grey pick-up truck drives slowly past us and stops a ways up the street. Then it starts slowly backing up until it's a ways behind us. It basically keeps doing this until we've freaked out and took of running through a shortcut in the woods.

I think after we started running, I saw one of the guys get out of the truck and start looking around.

Honestly in hindsight, I think they were looking for something that fell on the side of the road. But that's not how it felt at the time.

Gerhard wrote: "You still stayed there after sighting that figure in the fog??!! Don't mind admitting I'm not THAT brave. I would have been back at my gate with no recollection of how I got there."

I had the benefit of having two dogs with me, one is 115 pounds with no brains but an instinct to be a protector.

That's you sorted then!! Who needs brains when you have 115 pounds of brawn? I would have left my shoes behind getting out of there -- dogs or no dogs. Any more experiences on that dark walk of yours?

Mixofsunandcloud wrote: "This one was when I was young, so I don't know if it was too much horror, or just the paranoia that parents and TV are good at giving kids.

I was probably 10 or so. My friend and I were walking to..."

Reminds me of a another incident.

I was about 10 or 11 years old. Would have been late 1970's. That was back when people weren't so self-conscious about throwing their freakin' garbage all over the place.

The price of recycled aluminum was $0.32 per pound, which basically means we could get $0.01 per can and the cans were laying all over the place. We NEEDED cans to buy baseball cards.

I went to a small, private elementary school in a semi-sorta seedy part of town. My mom worked there after school hours part-time and I was in her group of kids. She let me go outside and pick up cans while she babysat the other knuckleheads.

So, I'm walking about the place, pretty obvious what I was doing, collecting cans. Broad daylight...4:30ish in the afternoon.

I remember this very clearly. A heavy set guy in a wife beater t-shirt was sitting in a white station wagon in the school parking lot. He yelled over to me "Hey kid, I got some cans for you". I froze. I don't think I said anything. But, I sure as fuck wasn't going to walk up to that man's car. I think they call it "stranger danger" now. But, back then, it was just "don't talk to strangers".

He saw my hesitancy, "C'mon, its just some cans. I'm not going to hurt you." Yeah, fuck right! I'm not buying.

I scee-daddled my little ass right back inside. I don't think I ever told anyone. Not sure why. Maybe it was just the fear of being thought chicken. I don't know.

Houston, Texas of the 1970's always creeps me out a bit. We had the whole Dean Corll thing going on (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dean_Corll) and the Ronald Clark O'Bryan Halloween poisoning. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ronald_...).

So, I guess it wasn't horror in this case that warped me but rather the reality of the time.

Gerhard wrote: "That's you sorted then!! Who needs brains when you have 115 pounds of brawn? I would have left my shoes behind getting out of there -- dogs or no dogs. Any more experiences on that dark walk of yours?"

No. But, I walk past this house on my walk:

http://www.chron.com/news/houston-tex...

That happened around 3:30 am on a day that I was off of work. Meaning I walked the dogs at 7:00, not 3:30. I could have been witness to something interesting!

Chilling stuff. Well, clearly you were not meant to be there at the crucial moment. Makes you wonder about the weird quirks of fate.

Alright, let me tell you a tale.

Years ago back when the movie 'The Fourth Kind' came out, and to be quite honest it really wasn't on my radar at the time. Well, that was until a friend of mine brought it up, with a very emphatic "XXXX THAT MOVIE", because it freaked her the hell out. Naturally, I HAD to watch it.

So I start up the movie, at about midnight, and give it a go. For the most part, I'm not feeling anything for it. Like it's somewhat interesting, but overall I'm laughing at it thinking to myself "why did she freak so much?" and then.....the scene hit. Now if you've seen this movie, you know what scene I'm talking about. That plays.....and I felt rather uncomfortable and creeped out, something which almost never happens due to movies anymore. Movie ends, and it's somewhere around 2 in the morning, and I have no choice but to go to bed.

I'm laying there feeling all kinds of creeped out, and I won't lie, I'm finding myself constantly glancing over at the window by the foot of my bed. I lay there for probably a good 15 minutes, and after another window check I glance up and see this massive shadow that looked just like a head and shoulders directly over my head.

Now, I should have known it was nothing. I should have known for the shadow to be anything it would have meant someone was leaning through my wall on the second floor somehow. But did I realize any of that? Nope. I flipped out and jerked myself up into a sitting position freaked out of my mind. Which was about the time I realized the shadow was being cast not by an alien on a mission to abduct me, but by my foot.

Tim wrote: "Alright, let me tell you a tale.

Years ago back when the movie 'The Fourth Kind' came out, and to be quite honest it really wasn't on my radar at the time. Well, that was until a friend of mine b..."

Nice!

I saw both "Carrie" and "Friday the 13th" on a 12" black and white TV when I was half asleep. If you've seen both of those, you know that they each have a jump scene at the end. They both got me! No sleep those nights.

I have a puppy named Scout. He's not yet a year old, and I'm training him not to bark just to bark. One night he awoke me with his huffing half bark, and then let out a full on bark out the bedroom window. All I could think of was who was out in the dark. (For reference I live in a farm with acreage. It can be creepy at night if you aren't used to it.) So I sit up and look out the window (it's dark, but some moon light). I don't see anything, but he's still doing his huffing growling thing (to avoid barking). Finally I get up and take a gander out the window into the dark. I look right and nothing, and then I pan left and wham....there stands something staring back at me. Scared the crap out of me for a half second. It was the neighbor's pregnant cow. She was standing at the bedroom window staring at us. She had gotten through the fencing on her side.

This is why I don't watch scary movies before bedtime, and if I happen to, I must watch something nice and fluffy before going to bed like a Disney cartoon.

Some of those Disney cartoons are pretty freaky.

LOL that is true. Disney can run a gambit of genres.

The front door wasn't latched shut this afternoon. The wind blew it open and it freaked my puppy out.

Apparently the house I live in has seen its fair share of ghosts.

Today I got a close view of a brown rat getting run over by a car. Well, it was quite gross to see the rodent being sqished and crushed under the tire, but a few seconds after that, the body started to twitch and spasm around, obviosly with a broken spine and bones.

Besides the gore, the rat s behaviour was quite weird: It ran directly onto the street and under the wheels of the car which was waiting at a traffic light. The rat sat down directly in front of the tire and then the car drove forward... It looked somewhat suicidal. There are diseases and parasites which may cause weird rodent behaviour. For example, toxoplasmosis makes infected rats feel attracted to the smell of cat urine. I wonder if the rat was infected with something...

ekel that is gross. Just don't touch dead rats.

The proximity to the tire probably made it feel comfortable, like its in a cozy cave or something. Poor rat probably didn't grasp that it was about to roll over him until it was too late. Plus, it probably figured the smell of fresh rubber on pavement was a pleasant, even intoxicating, aroma.

How I now know I read to much horror is I now know all the different Ghosts and Spirits

Sorry for repeation

and Sorry for spelling