Veni Vidi Vivi

Okay, here it is. The night before Halloween and Viv's biggest fear. For reals. This is what really, really scares me.



( Brrrrr - .gif under cut )

Oops. I was too busy with Halloween revelry yesterday - and then too sleepy when I got home - to post!

Consider this a Things That Are Scary" combo.


You've probably noticed that everything on this countdown has been a real thing. Even Crybaby Bridge is a real place and a real urban legend to experience. There is very little in the fictional world that truly scares me. Zombie shows and movies are intense, but I know that the makeup is well done. I think the Gentlemen from Buffy are fiendishly delightful. The little girl from didn't scare me because all I could think of when I saw her onscreen was that she got onset tutoring like every other child actor in the world, and that blew the illusion. Mannequins, ventriloquist dummies, and creepy dolls are all just props. Come on, I love Voldemort for heaven's sake.

There is one exception. There is a version of a fictional character that gives me shudders and creeps me out so badly that I don't even want an image on my computer to upload for this post. I feel silly even admitting it, because, uh, this villain should be on my list of bulletproof tropes.

( Nope. Nope nope nope nope nope. )

Okay, on to something that is REAL (more or less) and much easier for me to look at!


Ghost lights can be found twinkling on and off all over the country. The Marfa Lights in Texas are probably the most famous, but there are many sites like this one devoted to lesser known ones. The folklore is common - tragic death, either from battles or from railway or car accidents that leave spirits to wander, trying to light the way.

The stories that spook me the most are the stories of ghost lights chasing cars.

There is a good write up of one in Florida on Greenbriar Road. An uncle of mine used to tell a story of being chased by lights on a rural road near Lawton. I think it was a GREAT story, and only that, but it always gave me shivers.

The best footage I've found of ghost lights is from the Brown Mountains of North Carolina. ( Cut for embedded video )

I am certain that there is an explanation for these and the other ghost lights on record. I am also certain that while it is fine to look at pictures and Youtube videos, I never ever EVER want to see ghost lights in person. NOPE. NOPE NOPE NOPE NOPE.

Glowing eyes in the darkness

This is one fear that comes straight from a book I read as a kid. See, back in the day, a trip to the library was a weekly occurrence. I plowed through every single book on the Salem witchcraft trials, UFOs, ghosts, and other paranormal material (alongside my ‘research’ on scary animals and fiction reading). Any time I went to a new library, I looked for hose sections first.

When I moved back to my hometown at age 11, my grandparents took me to the library out on Ft. Sill. A new library! OH BOY! I found a book that had a chapter on phantom black dogs with glowing red eyes. There were illustrations.

From then on, when I’d walk into the kitchen at night, I’d glance out the window and freak myself out by thinking “what would you do if you saw red eyes looking back at you?”

Trufax, I do that to this very day when I look out windows at night. I am not sure I have an answer. What would I do?

Crybaby Bridge

I'm going to bet that everyone here has known of a Crybaby Bridge or something like it. I know Anime Girl and her high school friends talked about one in the country somewhere east of here. The story goes there was a horrible car crash that killed a mother and a child, and on quiet nights if you sit out at the spot, you will hear the baby crying and crying. There are variations on the story, of course, but we KNEW it was true because my BFF’s dad worked for the newspaper and he told my BFF it happened in the 1960’s.

So my friends and I made a few pilgrimages out past the city limits and down Deyo Mission Road to the creepy bridge over the dry creek. I never heard any babies cry, but I got hyped up and screeched at shadows and looked for signs of Satanic worship at the eerie and isolated Deyo Mission Chapel where older friends INSISTED their car had stalled suddenly while passing and they saw STRANGE LIGHTS in the churchyard.


Scroll down for an article on the actual place!

What can I say? It was more entertaining than going to beer bashes, and it took about the same amount of gas as cruising around the main teenager locations on a Friday night. This was life before the Internet.

There was another house in the country that we looked and looked for. It was known as Zombie House, and I can’t find anything on Google about it, so it seems to be a lost urban legend. Legend had it that medical experiments had taken place there, and strange people wandered around causing havoc. I asked my grandfather who grew up in the area if he knew anything about it, and he laughed and said he thought it was probably a place in the country where convalescents stayed in the mid-twentieth century.

CONVALESCENTS OF MEDICAL EXPERIMENTS PERHAPS!

Urban legends are fun.

I love urban exploration. Well, not actually doing it, but seeing others' pictures of expeditions. While most places evoke sadness - farm house with faded curtains, once grand hotels flaking with decay - some are just plain creepy. Asylums... You know the suffering that happened inside them, the innocent people who had a curable illnesses who were trapped there.

They are creepy as hell. is still one of my very favorite episodes because of this creepiness.

This is Danvers State Hospital.


It was built in 1874, closed in 1992, and demolished in 2006. There are LOTS of explorations documented of this site, but I found some evocative and creepy as hell pictures from a site called Opacity.

( Spookiness within )

GAH.

( CENTIPEDES - which are too terrifying to see )
See this sucker? Texas Red Headed Centipedes are SCARY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

They move fast and they have big pincers and... EEEK. I was a Girl Scout camp counselor in eastern Oklahoma, and these monsters showed up all the time in the closest latrines. I walked the extra distance to the slightly less terrifying lit bathrooms on the far end of camp.

SHUDDER. They eat mice. No, seriously. ( LOOK AND BE TERRIFIED )

After the success of Jaws, I quickly learned through pop culture that everything in nature was out to get me. It is really no wonder I ended up playing inside for the majority of my childhood.

There was a movie called Swarm, you see, and it was based on TRUE EVENTS. I didn’t see the movie. Mom learned the lesson of inappropriate movies from Jaws. I just saw the commercials on TV, which stirred up my fear into a frenzy.

Here is a still from the movie! That's a kid. With a lollipop. Dead from bees. On the school playground.


GREAT MOVIE. THANKS!

Some of my fear was well-grounded. There were swarms of killer bees killing people in the US, just as there are now. I was allergic to many things, including, the doctors suspected, bee stings. They never tested me, since on the testing day, I was nothing but one giant welt from all the other substances I reacted to. They warned my mom to be prepared for anaphylactic shock if I ever got stung. They probably thought I was too young to know what that meant. Uh, I got the gist, doctors. I was a smart kid.

Being covered in bees is not always funny. Especially Africanized honey bees. Gah.



So my shark books from the library were joined by bee books. Bees are very cool! As long as they stay a long, long way from me.

Don't get me started on hornets or wasps, though. They should all die in fires.