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I work midnight shifts for my company and there are a few things that have frightened me here.
Every once in a while, the air stops running with what sounds like a sigh. It is creepy and if you don't know about it beforehand, it can freak you out. :D
Sometimes I turn around and I swear there is a small boy standing staring at me. I know he's not there, but I swear I've seen him.
And the ghost cats downstairs. I've seen them, but noone else sees them. It is odd. :D
Hoho, my turn to totally ignore your post and use LJ as a messaging system XD ![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) stikmancomics miiight be able to help you with dem workshops, but he's not back in the country for another week - he can talk to you then though! Also we think you should hold a prepared presentation on preparing/pitching a comic or something, because you can't really teach anything hands-on in such a short session. :|
Interesting post! I remember taking an H.P Lovecraft/Poe class in college and the teacher was going on about how horror and terror were two different things. I understand the distinction, but I do think your book encompasses both - as well as the mystery/drama aspect.
As for what scares me - I'm actually not too spooked by supernatural things, even though I've had a few "unexplainable" weird experiences. What I'm scared of the most is the possibility of getting in a plane crash. I have nightmares about it. I think about it almost every time I see a plane. I think it stems from the fact that, despite learning the physics of how a plane flies, part of me can't accept that it is possible. But I'm also afraid of elevators falling, so I guess my *real* fear is actually falling uncontrollably...
I've just realized this fear recently, and it is...driving alone on a completely empty highway at night. It's not even so much a matter of I'm afraid I'll run into some psycho hitch-hiker, but more that I'll just keep going and going and there'll be nothing or no one out there. So perhaps it's a fear of being alone, except accentuated with the very wide, open space.
being buried alive scares me. i don't know if that's more of a phobia like claustrophobia or what. drowning is another big one. for some reason, spontaneous human combustion scares me. i'm afraid that if i think too much about it i'll just catch on fire. murderers and things like that definitely frighten me as i live in a pretty dangerous city and it's not safe to walk at night. there have been many murders in my neighborhood. that's all i can really think of....
i think most of all the paintings hanging in the school in "the dreaming" are terrifying!! they give me nightmares sometimes and i love you for it!
I am afraid of the dark :O.. like when it's 3am and I go down stairs and all the lights are off... I feel like someone is going to come up from behind and kill me or something LOL I try to get whatever it was I wanted as fast as possibly and bolt back up the stairs....In my room it's fine when I have a computer screen or something turned on( although even sometimes it feels creepy )... but when it's practically pitch black and I start hearing little noises( real ones XD lol ) it's scary~ Also spiders...most bugs in general... Im not afraid to kill them, but Im afraid of them touching me.. and I watched a movie where all these spiders took over these people's house, coming out from EVERYWHERE.. pretty creepy...
Also, being dead and not knowing it is something that would be scary too ( Sixth Sense )
Ever since I was a child... I'd have nightmares about my house burning down.. and I'm trying to get out.. but things around me are burning.... I'm a person who likes her possesions and likes to collect things... so my greatest fear would be all of it being distroyed in a fire...possesions.. people... everything...
when I think about it.. that is my greatest fear..
From "The Engine", Matt Riddle says:
"Granted, I'm sure this is a common fear, but I hate the idea of being in the middle of open water in a very small vessel. I encountered this fear the first time I ever went deep-sea fishing. We were only 30 miles offshore, but I couldn't see a goddamn bit of land in any direction, and no other boats. It was horrid. It was only a 30-something foot boat, and it gets smaller and smaller the farther out you go. By the time we stopped, it might as well have been a surfboard. I have never had such an intense feeling of panic. I mean, yes we had a radio. But what IF the radio failed? And then the engine died? We would be proper-fucked. I know it's unlikely, but the thought wouldn't leave my head the entire time.
And black-eyed kids. The whole idea of it."
From "The Engine", John Munger says:
"Stagnation.
It's not a flashy fear. It's not the fear of death or spiders. It's not some mythical event, like Rapture or The End Of The World. It's the fear of the long nothing.
I grew up in a working class Midwest neighborhood. The people there either had something I lack or lack something I have: more than willing to get a job they loathe, work sixty hours a week with people they hate, go to a family that doesn't please them, and die. Repeat as neccessary.
Partly its my fault. I have no working skills that pay well (I'd say writing, but we know that's not a great paying field), and whenever I look for work I realize just how banal my career choices are. I can imagine myself just giving up and going to work, telling people about all the cool ideas i have. When they'd ask why I don't write them down, I'd tell them that I'm just an 'idea man'. Then I'd go home and do nothing.
This terror drives everything I do. Sometimes it overwhelms me and I have to quit whatever job I have and hide from the mainstream for a while. And with each growing year, my tolerance for that lifestyle, that blase world, vanishes. Either I start getting paid for words, or I end up as the crazy homeless guy. Other options are dwindling."
From: penrobokai
2006-02-24 02:26 am (UTC)
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your dad's "fears" made me crack up laughing. such an asian dad answer.
reading the other comments here, i think all my fears are related to a sense of helplessness. going mad, for example, really challenges the idea that i am responsible for who i am. or that i even have an identity that is meaningful and stable. something microscopic in my head "A" could be receiving insufficient levels of chemical i didn't know existed "B", and bam! i'm a different person, and an insane one at that. everything i've worked for, everything i'm proud of about myself, is just gone. and it'd take a doctor to tell me how it happened, and how there was NOTHING I COULD'VE DONE ARRRGGHHH
buried alive has gotta be related to helplessness too. nothing you can do but lie there. ever read that junji ito short story with the holes in the mountain? imagine not even being able to move. and you know how the story ends. uhhhh.
i also don't like people talking about me behind my back. no-one does, but i think i actually fear it. i don't mind the same things being told to my face, because i can defend myself, if need be, or cop to it even. but behind my back? i don't even know that the problem exists. meanwhile it's festering ...
RD Hall wrote an article on this, at http://www.comicmonsters.com/modules.php?name=Sections&op=viewarticle&artid=17 Check out this quote from his articles. "Before I go and check all my locks, and turn on all the lights in my house, I’ll leave you with one of my favorite very, very short stories by Frederic Brown. It’s only two lines but it reeks of isolation: “The last man on earth sat alone in a room. There was a knock on the door………."
Interesting topic. ^_^
I'm easily scared by a lot of things. The dark, for one. If I'm alone at night, I tend to leave on a trail of lights illuminating my path throughout the house. Or if I'm outside and it's dark, I'm afraid bad people might be lurking in bushes or in dark shadows waiting for victims. Or when I'm in the shower, I don't like to keep my eyes closed for too long. It seems silly, but I guess I'm afraid of things lurking in the darkness that could jump out at me and do harm to me. For the longest time, even up through high school, I had to sleep with a night light to ensure that there was always some light. :)
Also, aliens (especially the white ones with the big black eyes) freak me out big time, as do dolls (the Victorian looking ones that can open and close their eyes.). I don't believe things like the supernatural truly exist, but on a visceral level they still terrify me. Brrr.
From The Engine, Kirk Elkins says:
"Well, I flinch at eye injuries, touching an eye, anything like that, and honestly, the fact that millions of people, every day wake up and press a small bit of glass or plastic right on their eyeball just freaks me out.
That and spiders, but it isn't spiders themselves, I had a tarantula (someone's pet) walk on my arm once and I was fine with that. It's the completely unknown danger of the unidentified spider lurking in the dark.
(I'm waiting for a episode of House where a patient will be discovered to have an egg sack in his eye. It's going to happen, I just have to wait for it)"
From The Engine, Scott Bieser says:
"Being buried alive; being stuffed in a box where I can't move my arms; kept in a prison cell where I can nether stand, sit nor lie comfortably.
The bit in the Tank Girl movie where she gets crammed face-downward into a tube which gradually fills with water just about made me run screaming from the room."
From The Engine, Eric Kim says:
"Obscurity. A selfish fear, I admit. However, I think ego is part of a reason for me doing comics. I didn't like working in large groups before, and I liked the idea of my own personality being imbued with the work.
I don't like the idea of never being noticed by history...ever. Any contributions I make, all evaluated as being worthless. All I've done is help kill trees, added to no enjoyment, no understanding of the world...nothing. Not even a smile.
Obscurity terrifies me, kicks me when I'm down. Adds a weight to my shoulders...possibly just the absolute end in loneliness, which is probably what it all adds up to. Being alone, because you were never noticed in the first place."
From The Engine, Andrew Garret says:
"Morris dancers and mimes.
Small things crawling into my orifaces (mostly the ones on my head, although other orifaces would be rather unpleasant too) while I sleep."
From The Engine, Bill Cunningham says:
"Sickness. Imagine a tumour in your body - living off of you. Feeding and growing inside you. Killing you from the inside out and you can't do a damn thing about it.
Because you don't know it's there.
Well, you may have a vague idea that something's wrong, but you think that it's just you getting old. Until the point when you know there is something wrong. But by then it's too late. It's taken over. You are not running your body anymore - it is."
Sounds like a bit of the "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" thing.
Parasites are frightening. The whole idea of something using, living off of, and possibly controlling you sans-permission.
Additionaly the I find the loss of mental faculties frightening. It's a loss of self, our mind/consciousness/sentience is what separates us from most other biological organisms. For this reason the ending of Transmetropolitan was far creepier than I think others viewed it.
From The Engine, Nick Papaconstantinou says:
"Different kinds of fear. Make me sick immediate repulsion?
Slices. Paper-cuts specifically. Eyeballs and genitalia are my least favourite area for such things... just imagining such things (and I'm prone to do so unfortunately) sends a shock through me that tightens all sphincters and winces both eyeballs.
Existential fear (one of the real ones, that's difficult to get away from)?
Dissapearing... dissolving. I guess it's a similar fear to loneliness, really, but quite a refined one. When I'm at a low ebb, and stuck away from people, it can get quite overpowering, actually... this general feeling that slowly, second by second, people are forgetting that you exist, and that childish reasoning that if people don't know you're there, you'll just kind of cease to exist.
There's a passage in Hi Fidelity that always catches me by surprise, where the main character is working through some of the things and fears he's never told his lover or anyone else; he says that sometimes he feels that he's so empty or inconsequential that without her to anchor him, he'll just float away forever. In the novel it's more lyrical than that, obviously. That bit always quite upsets me."
From The Engine, Rob G says:
"Sharks. i hate/fear them like nothing else and have reccuring nightmares about being eaten by those teeth-ridden twits. i saw one(a grey reef shark) while diving in the south-east pacific and nearly got decompression sickness when i pulled the emergency surface ripcord. they are my kryptonite."
I recommend "Jaws". :D
From The Engine, Chris Rice says:
"I have two massive fears. The first and oldest is cockroaches, which have freaked me out since I saw Creepshow. My 8 months in Austarlia were punctuated with horrific cockroach encounters, including being surrounded by the buggers at a restaraunt with a 30 foot prawn on the roof. I'm finding Exterminators to be remarkably cathartic, although my girlfriend, who's terrified of clowns & maggots couldn't even look at the new issue...
My biggest fear though is losing my sight and hearing at the same time. I really can't imagine anything worse, and it's the only thing that would make me consider ending it all."
From The Engine, Mitchell G Richard says:
"my own incompetence.
oh, i have the standard pallet of fears like anyone -- burning to death, rats gnawing away at my still-living flesh, the cancer dividing uncontrollably in my lungs -- but a lack of competence (and the failure coming from it) is my heaviest albatross.
who wants to fail? who wants to fail at a job? who wants to fail at a marriage? do you want to discover you’re not as talented, insightful, or intelligent as you think? do you want to spend a year writing a novel only to discover the work is no damn good, or so idiosyncratic no one wants to publish it?
it seeps into everything, colors everything, this suspicion everyone else is smarter, more on-the-beam, than you. the victories that should bring pride are viewed as mere flukes, happy accidents that aren’t repeatable…and you didn’t deserve them anyway. the failures cut deep. things others shrug off without thought, stick with you confirming what increasingly is apparent (to you anyway): you’re an idiot, a jackass, a loser.
first comes the fear of failure, the fear of discovering just how incompetent you are...then comes the indecision...then the inability to move in any direction or do anything.
all because a fear has you by the nuts and won't let go.
vicious cycle is what it is..."
From The Engine, Russel Lissau says:
"BUGS. And I have good reason.
When I was 7 or 8, I tripped over a log while hiking and fell onto -- yes, onto -- a yellowjacket nest. Lots of stings.
The summer I moved to Florida (I was 9 or 10), I was playing football, was tackled and fell onto -- yes, onto -- a fire ant nest. There were thousands of them, and the bites are horrible, and to get them off I had to be thrown into a swimming pool. (I could swim.)
A few years later, I was attacked by wasps.
No shit, people. This is my life. I once told a pscyhologist friend about all this, and she visibly recoiled.
My fear of bugs has gotten better, however. I can now kill spiders and other insects in my house without freaking out first. But I'm 34, and it took a loooooong time to get to that point."
From The Engine, Nikka Valken says:
"Sadly, i've attempted to answer this question a few times now, but i can't hit that post button once i'm finished. It turns out that my fear is of people finding out what i'm really afraid of and using it against me."
Interesting one.
From The Engine, Art Elliot says:
"Bad Teeth. Seriously. Teeth in general. They're the only part of the skull you can see when you're alive. Try looking someone in the face when they have busted teeth. One friend chipped his tooth so badly, basically snapped it in half - to the pulp, that the tooth bleed out the end.
Yeah, makes going to the denstist hard. Almost as hard as not going to the dentist."
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tired