I’ve always had an ambivalent relationship with the macabre – even as a kid, scary stories and creepy urban legends fascinated me, but come bedtime, they would haunt my mind and make sleep impossible. Not much changed when I grew up, as I still am both insatiably curious about, and have an aversion to, any kind of nightmare-fuel. But over the past few months, I’ve been working on getting over my fears, and it’s been successful =D So this Halloween, I wanted to delve into the horror anime, scary games, creepy stories, and other things I’ve come across on my journey to conquer my fears!…
I was really interested in scary stuff and the like as a kid. I used to love reading the Goosebumps book series, as well as watching the TV show. Even though most of those stories didn’t scare me, there were a few that did lay on the insomnia; one such story was about a subtly sadistic teddy bear that tried to kill the girl he belonged to. I also like the original Twilight Zone TV series, and again, most of the stories were more fascinating than scary, but a few did deprive me of sleep. One in particular that they played in the auditorium at my middle school one Halloween was about a talking doll getting revenge on the mean step-father of the girl she belonged to. Apparently stories about dolls or toys coming to life and being creepy is something that freaks me out!
Various Goosebumps books
Even though I liked scary stories and TV shows occasionally, I’ve always steered clear of horror movies. As a kid I knew I was too young to watch such movies, plus they would scare me too much anyway. But I did have a friend in elementary school whose parents I guess didn’t think she was too young for those movies, and she would tell me full synopses of the Chuckie movies and Steven King’s It, much to my young curiosity. Most of her stories would keep me up at night, but I was still strangely addicted to them. If anyone’s familiar with the Bloody Mary urban legend, that was also popular when I was in elementary school – my friends and I actually did the ritual in the school bathroom! I remember being so scared that night that I couldn’t sleep and woke my mom up in the middle of the night to watch cartoons XD
When I got a bit older, I occasionally watched less-gory horror movies from the 50s-60s that my mom recommended, like Alfred Hitchcock movies and similar ones like Rosemary’s Baby and The Bad Seed. Not the best idea as I was again stricken by insomnia after watching Psycho and Rosemary’s Baby for the first time. This was also around the time the Internet was starting to boom and I had gotten my first computer. Every now and then I’d encounter some creepypasta stories or get one of those scary chain letters in my email which would again haunt my mind at bedtime. Eventually I decided to just stay away from this stuff altogether as it’s not worth losing sleep.
Rena from Higurashi no Naku Koro ni
When I got into anime not too long later, you’re probably thinking that I had to avoid scary anime too. But strangely enough, out of the now 400+ titles I’ve seen, not a single anime has ever scared me to the point of keeping me up at night like the other things previously mentioned. I think there’s a few reasons for that, the main one being that most anime series are just not scary. Even ones classified as “horror” like Higurashi no Naka Koro ni, Another, Elfen Lied, Shinsekai yori, and Tokyo Ghoul, are more gory and suspenseful as opposed to nightmare-fueling, at least for me. Over the years I’ve found that what makes something scary for me isn’t a lot of blood and gore, but subtly creepy characters or scenarios that leave impressions of ambiguity. Vsauce made a great video about what exactly makes something creepy to people, and ambiguity is a major factor: things that are creepy, for example, a teddy bear with a full set of human teeth, aren’t obviously life-threatening things like a gun pointed to our face, so they don’t trigger a full fear response, but they’re strange and vague, which makes us sort of see them as a threat and sort of trigger a fear response, but sort of not…that’s what getting the creeps is and that’s what makes something scary to me personally. I rate scary things not by how much they horrify and scare me at the moment, but whether they still linger in my head at bedtime and won’t leave, making me unable to sleep. Luckily none of the aforementioned things I’ve encountered have ever given me nightmares, but that’s because they either weren’t scary enough to, or they were so scary that I couldn’t actually fall asleep that night in order to have nightmares in the first place!
From the Pokemon creepypasta game, Lost Silver
After years of diligently staying away from scary stuff (except for having to watch a Korean horror film for one of my university classes…luckily it wasn’t too scary), sometime in 2010 I briefly let my curiosity for creepypastas (including some Pokemon ones) emerge again, and once again it caused me to lose a couple nights of sleep. So then I said for sure that I would never touch creepy things again…until just a few months ago when some friends of mine who love horror games convinced me to watch Lets Play videos of one particular game: Five Nights at Freddy’s. This game that has since set me on the course of overcoming my fears is a relatively simple Indie horror game where you play the role of an overnight security guard at a Chuckie Cheese-esque pizza place that has creepy animatronic robots that come alive during the night. Your goal is to keep them from entering the office that you’re in by shutting the doors, turning on the outside lights, and checking your cameras, all of which requires electricity that you have a limited supply of.
The three main animatronics: Bonnie, Chica, and Freddy
Something about that game grabbed me. Maybe it was the fact that it placed perfectly at my limit of scary stuff – being creepy enough to be fascinating to me, but not creepy enough to keep me up at night. Next thing I know, I’m spending the next few weeks watching tons of Lets Plays for Five Nights at Freddy’s from a bunch of different YouTube channels, and then I actually bought the gave for $5 on Steam and played it myself. I got creeped out and paranoid while playing, sure, but at the same time I had fun and…I was able to get over it at bedtime and I didn’t lose any sleep =)
As I got more into Five Nights at Freddy’s, I thought to myself, “If I can handle this game, maybe there’s other horror stuff I can handle too?” I decided to try watching Lets Plays of other horror games and found myself hooked. Since then I’ve watched tons of playthroughs of tons of horror games, including Outlast, Neverending Nightmares, Among the Sleep, Alien Isolation, various Slender Man games, the Silent Hill PT, Vanish, Kraven Manor, and currently The Evil Within, from many different YouTubers such as PewDiePie, Markiplier, Game Grumps, and Rooster Teeth among others. I even looked up some more creepypastas and watched the many creepy list videos from YouTuber Danger Dolan. While some of these things made me flinch or had moments where I had to look away, I’m happy to report that none of them have deprived me of sleep!
I’m really glad that I’m overcoming my fear of creepy things =) As I said, I’ve always loved this stuff even as a kid, but have had to stay away for my own good. But now I can enjoy them again without having to worry about losing sleep. There’s plenty of real-world things to be afraid of, so fake scary things should be enjoyed! XD
Anyway, hope you all have a happy and safe Halloween~! Since Halloween involves two things I dislike – candy and going out late at night – I’ll be spending it at home relaxing and doing homework…and watching Lets Plays of horror games! :3
When I was a kid I used to love horror movies, especially older films like Creature of the Black Lagoon, The Mummy, and some others. Oddly enough, I’ve kind of “grown out” of the whole horror theme as I’ve gotten older.
I agree with you, in that, every horror themed anime that I’ve watched hasn’t really been scary in the slightest. I did love Higurashi, but it wasn’t really scary…ok well, the first season was a bit spooky but that was because Oyashiro’s curse was still an unknown and kind of ambiguous. I do remember when they were in the shed during the festival, and they claimed to hear Oyashiro’s footsteps, that was extremely creepy to me for whatever reason.
But yeah, fictional horror elements don’t really bother me, it’s the horrific real-life instances that are truly scary (murders and the like). I used to watch Unsolved Mysteries with my dad when I was a kid and THAT was nightmare fuel for me XD But I applaud that you on overcoming your fears, and acknowledging that you actually HAVE fears (since many people like to claim that they’re not scared of anything). Great post, though, and Happy Halloween!
Yeah, anime like Higurashi can be unnerving when you’re watching them, and of course, they have their many shocking, disturbing, and utterly horrifying (or just plain gross) moments. But no anime has freaked me out after the fact. I’m also thinking that maybe the 2D art style of anime just doesn’t lend itself well to truly scary, ghoulish imagery.
I’ve heard of/read some real-world creepy stories, and while a few have made me uneasy, they’re not quite the same as the fake horror stuff because they usually involve things that are mysterious and unexplainable, but not necessarily life-threatening things, like monsters trying to kill you =P
Thanks for writing this post – I found it quite interesting and personal.
Yeah, it’s often been said that “there are no good horror anime”. I’ve heard from some that Shiki is the exception to this, and others that it isn’t, so it’s on my list to watch and judge. Actually, Yami Shibai is not bad.
Manga is where it’s at when it comes to horror, though. I could never get into Uzumaki by Junji Ito, but it does seem to be his most popular and well-regarded one, so I’d recommend that as a starting point if you are interested.
Oh, but, if you haven’t, you should watch the anime Pupa. It’s fantastic.
Glad you liked the post =)
I’ve heard good things about Shiki, so I’ll have to add it to the ever-growing “Plan to Watch” list (along with Pupa too I guess).
I know that there’s a much larger variety of manga in Japan than anime, so I’m sure there’s some good horror ones ;)
We do not celebrate Halloween here much, so no candy, and not much of going out at night I guess :P
I personally do not like horror books, or movies. I’m not really scared of them, I just find it a bit… Pointless?… So I do not look for movies, anime, or books in that genre. I do love suspense though, movies like “the 6th sense” for example are fascinating, They have a nice sort of tension and buildup that I like. But horror… No idea, I have never been attracted to it I guess as a genre. So not something I would lose any sleep over :)
Hmm, I guess Halloween isn’t as international a holiday as others =P But yeah, I always liked creepy, supernatural stuff more than raw horror and gore…though my recent interest in watching Lets Plays of horror games might indicate that my interest is changing XD Still don’t care to watch horror movies though. I think I like horror games better because of the interactive aspect – players can control what’s happening and you won’t know if they’ll pick the wrong thing to do before it’s too late!
Nice amd interesting post as always!
I think I had similar outlook to you in regards to horror stuff when I was a kid. It was fascinating yet still would scare me enough to have trouble sleeping. I watched most of the classic movies like true horrors such as ‘Exorcist’ and slasher ones like ‘Nightmare on Elm Street’. As an adult now though I’ve almost completely lost interest in those but still enough to watch “horror anime” like Another or the like. And I agree, the medium that is animation makes it very difficult to get that scared reaction from people as opposed to movies or games.
My mom keeps telling me that I should watch the Exorcist XD I’ve seen parodies of it but not the real movie. But with the exception of my new interest in watching playthroughs of horror games, I still don’t care to watch horror movies and TV shows…unless they’re more on the psychological side like Twilight Zone and Hitchcock films. And the occasional horror anime is fine too since they’re more suspenseful than scary ;)
I always thought there are two ways to deliver horror – visual and psychological, and you touched on it very nicely here. I think it just personally depends on which type you feel scarier, the “visual” type where the medium makes no attempt at making things subtle? Going full frontal with it’s “horror” visually? Or the subtle types which slowly creeps up your mind slowly, gradually and psychologically? I had gotten pretty “immune” to horror nowadays but if I were to pick, I think the psychological type would scare me a bit more, if not, slightly.
You’re right about the two types of horror…don’t know why I didn’t describe it like that XD But I love psychological horror the most. Visual isn’t my thing unless there’s a good story behind it or it has psychological elements. A good blend of both can be especially scary though!