When I try to think of things in my writing that are scary I often  sit at my keyboard for a moment and think hmmm..what would scare ME  if I were reading it.   Now for me its not the Freddy Krugers, or the Jasons or the Michael Meyers. They never did it for me. To me it was the psychological stuff or the sinister things in nature or the things that cut closer to home that got me scared.

So here are my 6 top things that at first Don’t seem to Scary then scare the hell out of you later!

1.  TREES – You say whaaat Philip? Trees? Really cmon! Think about it.  Trees have been used in so many movies to scare the hell out of children. My first experience as a little kid was ‘Wizard of Oz’  when those fuckin trees  came alive and got pissed off at Dorothy for picking the apples off the tree.  That freaked me out as a five year old! Then there’s the  tree in ‘Poltergeist’ that reached into the kid’s room  and grabbed his ass out through the window and tried to eat him.  Let’s also not forget the young woman in ‘Evil Dead’ that was almost raped by a tree. So yes, Trees ladies and gentleman ..those fuckin Trees.

2. WATER – Now water is one of those subtle fears.  For me, when I first saw the movie ‘Jaws’ it wasn’t the shark that scared me it was the water., 75% of this planet is covered by water and most of it unexplored. You know how much crazy shit we haven’t run into yet in the ocean? Forget Bigfoot. He’s got nothing on all the things in the big blue. Let’s not forget movies like the first ‘Final Destination’, which so eloquently portrayed water as the villian in the story,  Death wanting its just dessert. I never looked at water the same again after that movie. It’s a sneaky bastard…

3. Semi-Intelligent Animals that Stare too Much – Okay, you all know what I’m talking about here. You have a pet, be it a dog, a cat, a bird, or a flipping guinea pig.  There comes a time when your just sitting there minding your own business. Maybe you’re watching tv, reading a book, or even sleeping and you feel you’re being watched.  You look up and you see these eyes staring directly into your soul. Why is it staring into your soul. I don’t know but leave it alone. It’s mine.  I love my pets but I don’t trust  them. Don’t turn your back on them my friend, they are just waiting to pounce…

4. People That  are Just too Nice –  Why is it that I cringe inside whenever someone smiles at me, or acts like they are my best friend after only knowing me for a just few minutes? Is it because I’m anti-social? Possibly, most people do annoy the hell of  me in a short amount of time. But that’s besides the point. It just creeps me out man. How many movies start out with the “nice guy”, or  the “congenial man”,  and you just know he’s the one who’s doing all the killing around town. It’s not usually the town dick who’s doing all the killing, he’s just  the distraction for the real culprit Mr. Green Jeans.  Remember  Norman Bates in ‘Pscyho’, John Lithgow in ‘Dexter’ as the Trinity Killer or the Sheriff in ‘Along Came A Spider’.

5. EVP or Electronic Voice Phenomenon – You would think EVPs would be scary right off the bat, but they’re not.  I have watched many epsiodes of Ghost Hunters and all the other fly by night wanna be paranormal shows.  Most of these “investigators” can’t recite the alphabet and they are supposed to convince me that they can discover otherworldly phenomenon by asking its name, only to run like a pussy down a dark corridor because a mouse or raccoon was scuffling around in the night.  I have never really  heard  an EVP with a concrete message in it  that wasn’t either garbled so badly you could make up anything you wanted or that is was suspect to contamination by the surrounding idiot investigators. Well my family and I had  had seen enough of these so called professionals. My wife, son and I ventured out to a well known site  where a boy had been killed many many years before and where his ghost was said to have been seen and heard on several occasions.  We brought along a voice recorder for EVPs and a digital camera . Before we went out we established rules of conduct for the investigiation.  The most important was that when doing the EVP no one was to say a word after a question was asked on the recording, That way we would know it was a clean recording for sure and also take note  of any background noise at the same time. Well after our outing we saw nothing on the pictures, but when we played the recorder back on one  of our questions directed to the dead boy, we all distinctly heard “Put that away!”  To this day we cannot explain it. It is not any one of us on the recorder . Creepy.

6. Cute Children who Either Worship Some Creature in the Corn Field and will kill you on site if you’re over sixteen or Very cute kids who have perfectly coiffed blonde hair and glowing eyes with deadly  mind powers or a  young innocent little girl who laughs and is like any other normal girl until she gets possessed by a demon and her head does a 360 spin while buckets of vomit spew from her all the while cussing  like a sailor. (Yeah, I know it was long title for the  last one on my list) –  Basically any seemingly innocent looking child that is evil or turns evil freaks me out…for example the little kid in ‘Pet Semetary’, or even the the kids in ‘Lord of the Flies’ when half of them go postal.  Or McCauly Caulkins as the ‘The Good Son’.  I could go on and on.  Take this as a serious warning more so than even for your pets….watch your kids closely, very closely.

Yes don’t be fooled by this cute face….or it may be the last thing you see.  Is there anyone out there that would like to add to this list above?  Remember it’s the not something that should be obvious right away.

I was gonna add Old People to the list but I didn’t wanna be accused of ageism. 

Remember the creepy old guy in Poltergeist that came to the screen door…or the little old Lady in Legion that jumped like a Amazon Toad on the walls of the restaurant?  Ok you twisted my arm so yeah definitely Old  people also. So here you go  Number 7 below…:)