Make your selection.

I don't write horror but I like horror movies. After watching "Darkness Falls" I couldn't turn off my lights for two days. I still try not to think about the movie when I go to sleep.

I voted psychological. Anyone going crazy is a scary thing guaranteed to keep me up at night.

I voted ghosts - the idea of seeing one has scared me since childhood, but it also fired up my youthful imagination.

If I were allowed more than one choice I would also vote "psychological", as films and ficton with a psychological theme are the only ones that still scare me as an adult.

I had to go with "other"... the idea of aliens scares me to death, it always has!

Ghosts got nothing on aliens! And I'd take a bucket full of spiders over either one! lol

I've seen Darkness Falls. The idea and special effects were good but the script was horrible along with some of the acting.

My pick was psychological. Although, unseen ghosts are pretty frightening too.

The mind job gets me every time.

__VeNoM__ said:

One other thing pickman. It's interesting that you find ghost's more frightening when seen. I would have thought it would be the other way around.

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Unseen ghosts can be more easily explained away as something mundane. Footsteps on the landing are just creaky floorboards, that sort of thing. To me the most terrifying stories of ghostly encounters are the ones where people actually see them - not only does it completely shake up your sense of reality, but it is more in your face and you have to deal with it.

As for whether or not I believe in them, that's a difficult question. As a kid, I had experiences that appeared to be ghostly phenomena - as in I could not explain them away as anything else, and they scared the hell out of me. Looking back, I see some of them as hypnagogic images coming about on the onset of sleep, and other things which my young imagination interpreted as something more sinister. But it doesn't stop me having nightmares about it as an adult.

Ok, now I'm interested to know exactly why you'd find seeing a ghost frightening (in an interested way, not a critical one).

I vote Unseen, by the way. I'm sure I've said this before, but anything that can be seen can be labelled and rationalised and, more importantly, watched from a distance. Not seeing what's hiding under the bed allows your mind to fill in the blanks, and there's nothing scarier than the scariest thing you can imagine.

three seven said:

Ok, now I'm interested to know exactly why you'd find seeing a ghost frightening (in an interested way, not a critical one).

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I think I more or less anwered that in my last post. Or maybe not. Hearing ghostly voices can be explained away and ignored as hallucination for example. But if you see a shimmering apparition suddenly appear in your room, there is no way you can explain that (although plenty of people will try to, and come up with "rational" explanations that are so weak that the idea of ghosts existing seems more plausible). I guess its a case of the supernatural intruding on everyday reality and completely shaking you up.

I hope I put that across clearly, although I very much doubt that I have.

I'll rephrase the question.

Why are ghosts scary?

If you want to get skeptical, seeing an actual ghost could be easily dismissed as just an hallucination too. How do you rationalize an object moving by itself? If something flies across the room, what possible explanation is there for that? I don't doubt that some things that people claim to have been caused by ghost can be explained, but I believe there are some things can't be.

Seen or unseen, it doesn't really matter to me. They are both pretty frightening. I would have to choose unseen over seen as being more frightening because if something touches you and you turn around and don't see anything, that's pretty scary yet your mind is also trying to rationalize that. Some people take something like that and automatically assume it was a ghost and others just dismiss it as being a figment of their imagination.

I think what makes ghosts scary is the unknown. There are so many questions that can't be answered. I think it's frightening that some ghosts can possible cause harm to you and there's really no way to fight back except for leaving. It's all about control. Once you've lost it and don't know how to get it back, that can be scary for some people.

I voted for unseen. I can deal with and rationalize with things that I see and things that seem unexplainable. Things unseen have a way of playing with an imagination. If you can't see what you're dealing with, a scenario of terror can follow.

I hope so, otherwise I may as well quit writing.

In 1984 isn't that how Big Brother got the protagonists to turn against each other by making them believe their worst fear. The male MC's greatest fear was getting eaten by rats. In reality he wasn't getting attacked at all. Big Brother just made him believe he was. Therefore it was real in his mind. Now that's scary.

I've seen ghosts and they don't frighten me a bit...

On the other hand, Giger's Alien scares the sh*t out of me.

Willie
http://www.willie.meikle.btinternet.co.uk