FEAR THAT MAKES THE HEART BEAT FAST
mother of tears
I had a vivid nightmare—it involved a member of my nuclear family turned into a little person with a suction cup mouth. The mouth had tiny teeth around the inner rim. The family member was coming to hurt me and grab me with its little hands. I thought Why did he ever buy the new mouth? because I knew that installing that on his face was what had changed everything. And I had to go up a narrow tower staircase and close a trap door behind me.
I woke up raining sweat. I was literally vibrating. The feeling of authentic fear was also a kind of exhilaration. Related to the feeling of having escaped.
(Is there a word, perhaps a German word, for the vertigo one feels when waking up from a dream and realizing it wasn’t real? That is, the terrible disappointment of waking from a dream of finding millions of gold doubloons buried just under the dirt of your back yard and realizing you’re still broke—or the glorious relief of waking from a nightmare of losing limbs or being humiliated, only to realize it never happened—or the guilty rush of waking from a dream of murder to think: Whoa… I got away with it. Because I’ve had all of those.)
I realized I hadn’t had that feeling in a long time—hadn’t had a nightmare that felt so real it scared me. I saw my heart beating fast through the skin of my chest. People pay money for that feeling. Then I realized I hadn’t been scared, genuinely scared like with a quickened heart rate, by a book or a film in recent memory.
Do you lose that susceptibility as you age (and read/watch more)? Because I know it happened to me more often as a young reader. Off the top of my head I tried to make a list of Shit that Actually Scared Me:
Shit That Actually Scared Me
Books
- The Between, Tananarive Due
- Ghost Story, Peter Straub
- The Bridesmaid, Ruth Rendell
- House of Leaves, Mark Z. Danielewski
- The House on the Borderland, William Hope Hodgson
- Teatro Grottesco, Thomas Ligotti
- Helter Skelter (nonfic), Vincent Bugliosi
Films
- The Shining, Kubrick
- Night of the Living Dead, Romero
- El Orfanato, Juan Bayona
- Wait Until Dark, Terence Young
- Paperhouse, Bernard Rose
- The opening of Rubber Johnny, Chris Cunningham
I wish I could think of more, or find new ones. I want to see my heart beating fast through the skin of my chest.
Tags: dreams, horror, horror movies
This has been on my mind recently because I just finished reading Tom Bissell’s amazing essay about Resident Evil, but I realized I’ve had more terrifying encounters with video games than film or literature over the past decade. Bissell argues it’s because video games offer something film cannot: direct interactivity and cause and effect. The game manipulates the player, and of course, the player has no true freedom and is more like a mouse in a maze. But because you have direct control over an avatar and lose yourself to it after a few minutes of playing, any shocks are much more powerful because there’s a bizarre feeling of existing in the digital world.
In my own experience the Resident Evil games always provide the kind of jumps slasher films are known for. But have any of you guys ever played Silent Hill 2? It’s utterly frightening on the physical and mental levels. It just exudes dread.
The original Texas Chainsaw Massacre — starting at about the point where Leatherface noisily shuts the door to his abattoir, and running thru to the end — does it for me.
I agree here–I think games have more potential to drop dread into your brain because you know that the outcome of some spooky event isn’t as inevitable as it is in a novel or a movie–what happens next depends to some degree on your actions, and thus you have a different type of anxiety working into your muscles. You have to not only be ready for the monster to step out from the shadows, but then also ready to dodge and whip out your shotgun or whatever.
That said, I haven’t got this feeling from a video game in a long time, sadly. I even picked up the latest RE game last year on the hope of feeling something like that, even though it had been a number of years since I’d played a horror game, and it didn’t really work.
Danielewski and Romero both successfully freaked me out as well. I read House of Leaves in a few long days in my dorm in college when my roommate was out for winter break and my brain started working in unusual ways. By the time I was reading the letters at the end it was like 4 am on a Thursday or something and I was sure the floor would drop beneath me.
Poppy Z. Brite’s Exquisite Corpse spooked me, but less in a traditional horror way and in a man, that would be an awful way to die way.
The short story (and much more effective) version of Stephen King’s Lisey’s Story that ran in the McSweeney’s anthology a few years ago also made me not sleep for a while.
The recent DVD release Julia, though not a horror film, gets some good anxiety going.
You and I read House of Leaves under almost exactly the same circumstances.
Yeah, actually, the first time I saw it I had a similar feeling. Also, I wonder if I should have put MARTYRS on this list. That… did something to me.
man now i want to reread Helter Skelter. gotta go dig that up
a few books that really stirred me hard: The Sluts, The Wavering Knife, Molloy, Christine Schutt’s story ‘The Blood Jet’, The Fifth Child,
films; the first 45 minutes of Lost Highway, some of the Strangers (though didnt care by the ending), some of both of Gaspar Noe’s first two films, something about certain shots in Satyricon, and Solaris, need to think more
Excellent points, thank you for bringing this up. I’ve never been much of a gamer, I think in large part because I fear having huge chunks of my time sucked up–I fear the that moment of self-loathing that will come when I put down the controller after hours and hours of mutilating demons etc. But sometimes I regret having stayed away–it’s clear that video games are one of the dominant creative media now and that great creativity goes into them. Interesting I once saw Danielewski talk and he said something to a similar effect–that movies are already on the fast decline and video games are the next thing.
Good call on the Strangers. Brilliant first 40 minutes, then tedium of running and screaming by the end.
such a disappointing way to end that, but man, it really got me freaked in the best way for yeah at least 40 minutes.
have you seen House of the Devil? it’s one of the better new horror movies i’ve seen in a while too
Les yeux sans visage, dir. Georges Franju. I can’t watch it a 2nd time.
The Strangers chilled me straight through because you just didn’t know what was going on. It was the mere implication of something horrific and I think that movie really does a good job of terrorizing the audience by turning our imaginations against us.
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Dead Space was surprisingly scary, but pretty much in the same way Resident Evil is scary I suppose (I’ve never played RE though).
i’ll second House of the Devil. nicely stylistic, too, which can be rare.
Dead Birds is pretty strong horror, set during the civil war.
the american version of The Descent is scary for the first 3/4 i think, but then there are too many monsters and it gets silly. that movie would’ve been great, imo, if there’d would been like two, three monster-humans, not an entire army.
i found The Stranger’s vaguely scary. i mean, i liked it well enough, i suppose. it was a fun ride, but i don’t know. I’m also one of those people who loved Paranormal Activity. both movies rely on the stupidity of the main characters to get by, but there seems to be a bigger stupidity in The Strangers that began to seem silly to me. also The Strangers seemed kind of like the stupid/americanized version of Funny Games.
i dont think ive ever experienced fear in book form that i remember. if i have in movies, it was when i was like ten and it was never like a movie that was intended to scare, but rather something unintentionally irrational (to me) going on. when iw as a kid i had nightmares about the movie incredible shrinking woman with lily tomlin. something about the nonchalant reaction from everyone about what was going on was horrifying to me. like no one was really that concerned about this thing that was happening, and they made it a comedy. a comedy about a woman shrinking slowly toward nonexistence. also i was really freaked out about the ide aof santa clause. i had nightmares where i was like sleeping and this giant fat santa clause standing motionless in my room in the dark watching me sleep. also once i woke up and swore that lobsters were eating my legs. that’s the history of my nightmares by darby larson. the end.
haven’t seen House of the Devil, will do. have heard radically conflicting things on it — am intrigued.
Dead Birds, never even heard of that. great title. i’ll check it out.
I’m on it. I’m embarrassed for not having seen that.
This has been on my mind recently because I just finished reading Tom Bissell’s amazing essay about Resident Evil, but I realized I’ve had more terrifying encounters with video games than film or literature over the past decade. Bissell argues it’s because video games offer something film cannot: direct interactivity and cause and effect. The game manipulates the player, and of course, the player has no true freedom and is more like a mouse in a maze. But because you have direct control over an avatar and lose yourself to it after a few minutes of playing, any shocks are much more powerful because there’s a bizarre feeling of existing in the digital world.
In my own experience the Resident Evil games always provide the kind of jumps slasher films are known for. But have any of you guys ever played Silent Hill 2? It’s utterly frightening on the physical and mental levels. It just exudes dread.
The original Texas Chainsaw Massacre — starting at about the point where Leatherface noisily shuts the door to his abattoir, and running thru to the end — does it for me.
I agree here–I think games have more potential to drop dread into your brain because you know that the outcome of some spooky event isn’t as inevitable as it is in a novel or a movie–what happens next depends to some degree on your actions, and thus you have a different type of anxiety working into your muscles. You have to not only be ready for the monster to step out from the shadows, but then also ready to dodge and whip out your shotgun or whatever.
That said, I haven’t got this feeling from a video game in a long time, sadly. I even picked up the latest RE game last year on the hope of feeling something like that, even though it had been a number of years since I’d played a horror game, and it didn’t really work.
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Danielewski and Romero both successfully freaked me out as well. I read House of Leaves in a few long days in my dorm in college when my roommate was out for winter break and my brain started working in unusual ways. By the time I was reading the letters at the end it was like 4 am on a Thursday or something and I was sure the floor would drop beneath me.
Poppy Z. Brite’s Exquisite Corpse spooked me, but less in a traditional horror way and in a man, that would be an awful way to die way.
The short story (and much more effective) version of Stephen King’s Lisey’s Story that ran in the McSweeney’s anthology a few years ago also made me not sleep for a while.
The recent DVD release Julia, though not a horror film, gets some good anxiety going.
You and I read House of Leaves under almost exactly the same circumstances.
Yeah, actually, the first time I saw it I had a similar feeling. Also, I wonder if I should have put MARTYRS on this list. That… did something to me.
man now i want to reread Helter Skelter. gotta go dig that up
a few books that really stirred me hard: The Sluts, The Wavering Knife, Molloy, Christine Schutt’s story ‘The Blood Jet’, The Fifth Child,
films; the first 45 minutes of Lost Highway, some of the Strangers (though didnt care by the ending), some of both of Gaspar Noe’s first two films, something about certain shots in Satyricon, and Solaris, need to think more
Excellent points, thank you for bringing this up. I’ve never been much of a gamer, I think in large part because I fear having huge chunks of my time sucked up–I fear the that moment of self-loathing that will come when I put down the controller after hours and hours of mutilating demons etc. But sometimes I regret having stayed away–it’s clear that video games are one of the dominant creative media now and that great creativity goes into them. Interesting I once saw Danielewski talk and he said something to a similar effect–that movies are already on the fast decline and video games are the next thing.
Good call on the Strangers. Brilliant first 40 minutes, then tedium of running and screaming by the end.
such a disappointing way to end that, but man, it really got me freaked in the best way for yeah at least 40 minutes.
have you seen House of the Devil? it’s one of the better new horror movies i’ve seen in a while too
Les yeux sans visage, dir. Georges Franju. I can’t watch it a 2nd time.
The Strangers chilled me straight through because you just didn’t know what was going on. It was the mere implication of something horrific and I think that movie really does a good job of terrorizing the audience by turning our imaginations against us.
Dead Space was surprisingly scary, but pretty much in the same way Resident Evil is scary I suppose (I’ve never played RE though).
i’ll second House of the Devil. nicely stylistic, too, which can be rare.
Dead Birds is pretty strong horror, set during the civil war.
the american version of The Descent is scary for the first 3/4 i think, but then there are too many monsters and it gets silly. that movie would’ve been great, imo, if there’d would been like two, three monster-humans, not an entire army.
i found The Stranger’s vaguely scary. i mean, i liked it well enough, i suppose. it was a fun ride, but i don’t know. I’m also one of those people who loved Paranormal Activity. both movies rely on the stupidity of the main characters to get by, but there seems to be a bigger stupidity in The Strangers that began to seem silly to me. also The Strangers seemed kind of like the stupid/americanized version of Funny Games.
i dont think ive ever experienced fear in book form that i remember. if i have in movies, it was when i was like ten and it was never like a movie that was intended to scare, but rather something unintentionally irrational (to me) going on. when iw as a kid i had nightmares about the movie incredible shrinking woman with lily tomlin. something about the nonchalant reaction from everyone about what was going on was horrifying to me. like no one was really that concerned about this thing that was happening, and they made it a comedy. a comedy about a woman shrinking slowly toward nonexistence. also i was really freaked out about the ide aof santa clause. i had nightmares where i was like sleeping and this giant fat santa clause standing motionless in my room in the dark watching me sleep. also once i woke up and swore that lobsters were eating my legs. that’s the history of my nightmares by darby larson. the end.
haven’t seen House of the Devil, will do. have heard radically conflicting things on it — am intrigued.
Dead Birds, never even heard of that. great title. i’ll check it out.
I’m on it. I’m embarrassed for not having seen that.
House of Leaves is the only book that really terrified me.
A ton of movies. With you on Night of the Living Dead (saw at 5yrs old, ruined me for about 7 years, scared of dark), The Shining, opening of Rubber Johnny (jesus), and also: Blair Witch (need to rewatch, only saw once at about 10yrs)
Oops, duh: Antichrist.
House of Leaves is the only book that really terrified me.
A ton of movies. With you on Night of the Living Dead (saw at 5yrs old, ruined me for about 7 years, scared of dark), The Shining, opening of Rubber Johnny (jesus), and also: Blair Witch (need to rewatch, only saw once at about 10yrs)
Oops, duh: Antichrist.
Tantaleiserlichsingerkeitung.
Tantaleiserlichsingerkeitung.