Movies That Genuinely Scared The Pants Off Of Me

My first memory of movie terror was at the tender age of five or six. “You’ll like it,” my mom assured me with a huge smile. “It’s a scary movie about aliens.”

No, Mom. It was not just a scary movie about aliens. It was the scary movie about aliens. It was ALIEN and it terrified me on so many levels I couldn’t even entertain the idea of watching that movie, or any of its sequels, until my mid twenties. Kane seemed fine, my ass! The second that thing burst from his chest at the dinner table, five year old Boo screamed and ran from the room in tears.

I am glad I manned up and watched the film later in life though. It is a fantastic flick, a true horror/sci-fi classic.

Before I divulge the title of the next movie that genuinely scared the pants off of me, I must tell you all a secret. As a child, I had this very bizarre fear that somebody was always watching me. It was a fear that made me close every curtain in the house as soon as it was too dark to see outside.

When I was six, I was positive things lurked outside my bedroom window. The fluffy clouds and rainbows curtains were only a brittle illusion and failed to distract me from the terrors that lay just beyond. For a long time that imagined terror was in the form of rabid dogs, black hellhounds with frothing mouths and red eyes. As I grew older, rabid dogs became rabid men, bedraggled and sinister with gaunt faces and rotted teeth.

No, I wasn’t abused as a child. If anything, I was abused by my morbid imagination, which has always been too vivid for my own good.

But I digress.

When I was about ten or eleven, my cousin told me to read this book called Watcher in the Woods by Florence Engel Randall. I loved this book. It was a ghost story and that’s totally my thing. And then Disney made the movie. My cousin and I decided to watch it at my grandma’s. In the woods. Where there isn’t another soul for miles. In the dark.

The next day, my cousin and I were traipsing through the seventeen acres of wooded land of my grandma’s property. After a while, we both stopped and faced each other. The only sound, wind rustling the leaves. The occasional creak of a swaying tree limb. He looked as scared as I felt.

“Um, I’m kind of creeped out. Go back to the house?” I asked. My cousin nodded emphatically. So we ran as fast as our little legs would carry us, too terrified to look behind us and see that there was nothing there.

Yes, all from a Disney movie.

When I was about thirteen, I stayed at my cousin’s (the same one as before) for a week that summer. He and my aunt lived in this old, brick Victorian in Marshfield, Wisconsin. And we had recently discovered the house was once a funeral home. Great. It was here my cousin introduced me to a little ol’ film called Evil Dead. My cousin, clearly not the scared little boy he was in the woods years ago, howled with laughter through the entire thing. I just desperately wanted that crazy bitch to stop giggling.

Afterwards, I made my cousin sit outside the bathroom door while I peed. I mean, you know, just in case the former funeral home had some demonic spirits or something. And that night, I slept with my head under the covers despite the summer heat, too afraid I’d see those milky white eyes and deranged smile if I removed them.  

And I’ll admit – to this day, I still can’t watch that movie alone.

The Exorcist. Need I say more?

The first Saw. I haven’t watched any of the others. Nor have I watched the original again. I had to sleep with the closet light on after watching that movie. I don’t like creepy shit in my closet. And I definitely don’t like creepy little hospital orderlies sneaking around in there, either.

The Descent. Theater screams. Dudes in front of me couldn’t stop laughing, because I was screaming every ten seconds.

Paranormal Activity. I slept with the lights on for a few nights in a row after watching this movie. Finally, my husband was like, “Hey, you keep leaving lights on at night. What gives?”

“Don’t judge,” I pleaded. “I got scared, okay?”

Dead Silence is another movie that touches my primal fear. It might be the sickeningly creepy ventriloquist dummy. Or it might just be the terrifying amount of absolute and utter genius contained within that wonderful little gem of a movie. The sheer brilliance, let alone the suspense, makes me shriek when I watch that movie.

James Wan and Leigh Whannell should feel honored. Not only have they genuinely scared the pants off of me with Saw and Dead Silence, they hold the crème de la crème of ghost stories: Insidious. Not only did this movie elicit a series of legendary theater screams, one of which was SO loud I was positive one of the other theatergoers would throw something at me, it made my post-movie bathroom trip a harrowing experience.

I was alone. Washing my hands. One of the stall doors groans as is it swayed shut. I bolted without even bothering to grab a paper towel to dry my hands. As I barrel out of the bathroom, my husband gives me a WTF-are-you-doing kind of look.  “I don’t want to be in there alone!” was all I could say.

Even though I saw that move a week ago, it still gets to me. I woke up at three this morning, thought about that movie, and was too scared to get out of bed to go to the bathroom. Instead, I tossed the blankets over my head, assured myself that my bladder wasn’t going to explode, and tried to think of fluffy clouds and rainbows instead.

Sans the rabid things behind them, of course.