More Cheap Tricks for Scary Things

Okay, surely you didn't think it was just little girls, doors, and animals, right? There's alot more to that list. In addition to the previous three, let me add a few more:

Dolls: There is something just downright chilling about a little doll. In, in fact, the more life-like the doll, the scarier it tends to be. Think about it. Which is scarier, a porcelain doll with a pale face, whose eyes open and close? Or a cabbage patch kid?

Sometimes, a life-like doll isn't what scares us but a doll with something a bit odd about it. The monkey with symbols what was forever immortalized by the book Skeleton Crew looks like a monkey...except for that weird grin. If a doll isn't going to look life-like, then there needs to be just one thing wrong about it.

One person said this a while ago, and I have to agree...there is something all to "knowing" about a doll's eyes. They seem to look for forever, with a hidden wisdom about a world which we do not know.

Masks: Going along with our doll theme, masks tend to scare us as well. Think about some of the great horror movies of all time: Halloween, Friday the 13th, Scream...all of these films feature an antagonist with a distinctive mask. Heck, even V for Vendetta's protagonist is given a creepy vibe with a perpetually smiling Guy Fawkes mask.

Masks tend to unnerve us because they take away our ability to see someone's expression. We don't know what the person is really saying or doing, making the masked person mysterious. Even frightening.

Things in the Distance: Let's think about it. When something is up close, you can see it. You can take it in. You can understand it. However, what makes all those bigfoot pictures with that furry man in the distance scary is the fact that we are looking at something that could be. We're not sure if what we saw is right.

Think about this. Let's say you woke up to hear the sound of laughing. You look out of your window to see that something is on a far hill, watching you. It's look at your house. And you could swear it's looking into your window. In the distance, you can only see a thing silhouette. That's freaky, right? Because you can't see it. You can't reach it. And it's threatening you, even from that far place.

Old Places: The haunted house is always old, right? It's always falling apart. The boards are always splintering. The cobwebs are always in the corner.

Why? What is it about Old Places that really pushes our buttons? Old places have a history. And many times that history is hidden from us. It makes us wonder, making our imaginations run wild. Or worse, the history is revealed. We learn that a terrible crime was committed in the Old Place, and this stirs our imagination even more.

S'all for now.