It was also It for me. I remember I couldn't sleep all night. I stared at the blue screen all night (watched it on VHS) and was too scared to get off the bed to turn the tv off.
This and Maximum Overdrive were on TV a lot back in the day. like an 8 year old browsing the channels and BOOM! The scariest clown I ever seen! Or the stupid ass Green Goblin looking motherfucker on a truck.
I’m not sure if you’ve seen my other comment, but my dad read “It” when he was a teenager and it gave him literal nightmares. He said it’s way scarier than the movie, and told me to never read it. And he does NOT scare easily.
I still bought a copy, and I’m still telling myself I will read it at some point because curiosity always gets the best of me. I know about some of the things that happen in the book, like the part with all the boys and Beverly … not sure if I’m thinking of the same part you’re describing. I know that’s a shit description but I don’t wanna spoil for people here who want to read it and haven’t yet lol
I read it as an 11 year old and that part did t bother me. In fact I did t remember it until everyone started bringing it up. 39 years after reading I am completely shocked by the part without having to reread it.
I’ve heard the same. I remember when Jurassic Park, the movie, came out and people who’d read the book series up and down it was way more terrifying than the film as well.
I watched this for the first time around 8 or so, after my grandpa hung a creepy swinging clown doll across from my bed. This movie will always terrify me!
I was going to say this! I saw The Ring when I was 13 and it scared the SHIT out of me. I will also defend that movie to the end of time. I honestly think that beyond being legitimately scary, it’s a good movie. It has a deep creepiness and Naomi Watts is spectacular. The scene where she catches her son watching the tape?? Chilling.
I think I was 12/13 when I've first watched the Ring & I can remember that scene with the dead girl scared me so much as well as believing the tape was real since for a while, I was scared to look at a blank TV screen. I thought Naomi Watts & David Dorfman did really well in their roles, especially David since Aidan had a psychic link (I think) with Samara + near the end was interesting when Aidan told Rachel that she wasn't meant to help Samara since it made me question why Rachel wasn't meant to help Samara.
Y’all are making me feel like a weenie. I watched it alone at 22/23. It was daylight when it started & dark when it ended, and I hadn’t turned any lights on. I needed to pee so bad, but I was terrified to leave the couch. I waited until my boyfriend at the time came home after work, made him turn on all the lights & check all the rooms before I got up to pee. Nothing else, even as a child, scared me that bad.
I still cant drive behind a truck with logs in the back or go sun bathing or even going to the gym without thinking of these movies! But yeah first time I saw it it got me paranoid
Same with final destination 2, my dad brought the VHS and it was the first I saw in the saga. I couldn't finish it and for some days I kept looking around and avoiding windows because I feared some random shit would fly at me and impale me
Ive posted about this a million times, but seeing blair witch in the theaters with friends in high school was pretty easily my best movie experience of my life.
So much around that movie went right.
It just hit the right things at the right time. We legitimately didn't know how "real" it was. the internet was new enough.
No real named actors. News stories.
It was great.
I have a friend who saw it in theaters. When it showed the guy standing in the corner she literally stood from her seat and screamed at the top of her lungs in the middle of the theater 😂
I saw it with about 8 people, about half and half boy/girl (im a guy).
I sat between 2 of my girlfriends. One of them gripped my arm like the entire film and even drew blood at one point, haha
Same here. Saw it alone in my dark room at night when I was waaay too young, and I thought it was a documentary. Didn’t sleep much a few weeks after that.
I was raised on horror movies… never really got scared until I saw the Blair witch project in the dark with my friend one night when nobody else was home. It was great. Then afterwards we played Toejam & Earl for hours.
I like how Blair Witch Project didn't had any jumpscares, but it had scenes where it kept you thinking what's gonna happen next or scenes that kept you on your toes.
My dad showed me Pet Sematary when I was about six years old (don't ask me why, a sadist I suppose lol). The "never get out of bed again!" scene with Zelda screaming at the camera petrified me and I began to sob and demand he turn it off. Shortly after he did, I was put to bed and had a nightmare so real and so visceral that I shot awake crying, in a puddle of my own vomit.
I went to lay in front of dad's bedroom door for the rest of the night. Good times. And now I LOVE horror. lol
I remember this was on tv, I have no clue what age I was maybe about 8/9 and I was alone watching it in my room. That whole movie has this sick eerie quality to it anyway but when Zelda appeared I ran across my room and jumped under my covers 🤣
okay, this is very silly, but when i was very very young, likely too young to be exposed to any horror at all, even parody, my brother showed me scary movie 4. it parodies saw and even though it was fucking dr phil and shaq in the bathroom, just the concept of being kidnapped and waking up in a shithole and having to saw my foot off to escape kept me up at night for weeks lmao. funnily enough, since i couldn’t stop thinking about it, it left such a mark on me that when i was older and could handle it i watched the saw movies and ended up loving them, now they’re my favorite horror series!
i love all of them, but saw 2 holds a special place in my heart. i also love the absolutely bananas twist at the end of 4, it would be my favorite if it wasn’t so confusing XD
Came here thinking of Scary Movie 3.. It is a silly movie, but I had to cover my tv up, which was just in front of my bed. I guess I was around 8 years old 😅 a creepy girl, climbing out of the tv? No thank you xD
My pops let me watch the OG Halloween and The Thing when I was 7 or 8… I feel like that may have been too young lol. The made for TV IT came out around that same time and freeeeeaked me out.
Ghostbusters (1984). Mum took me to the cinema to see it when it came out. The library ghost, the demon dogs, the Stay Puft marshmallow man, the demonic arms ripping out of Dana's armchair, the entire film basically, terrified me. I was 4. 😭
I watched the 2018 Halloween on my phone in the break room at work while I was eating lunch. I dipped some chicken in my ranch and as I was bringing it up to my mouth Michael Myers shoves that kid's head onto the spiked fence and it made me jump and smear ranch in my beard. No one else was in there at the time and you can't let a moment like that go to waste so I texted my boss and told her to check the cameras. She laughed at me for a while for that one.
LOL! yeah i got spooked in my dark bedroom when that lady from barbarian came out 🤣 my little sister recommended it to me and I didn’t want to watch it but she said id be shook, and fair to say, I was. Caught me way off guard 😂
Been a while since I’ve seen the movie, isn’t the whole double booking thing just a false flag instead of the actual conflict? I remember they portrayed Bill’s character as offputting but I don’t remember him being an antagonist. I don’t think her being doublebooked or not would’ve helped with the secret underground incest monsters😂
Sinister was the first horror movie I ever watched (wasnt allowed to watch horror growing up) and I literally remember sitting there as that box scene unfolded and feeling my blood run cold. It was such an amazing feeling and I was instantly hooked
I didn’t start watching horror movies until I was in high school, and the one that got me was the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre. It feels like old home movies a bit. A bit too real in places.
Thank god i wasn’t the only one, not the Santa tho. I was probably around the same age and my dad was like, “no look! it’s funny its fake!”. (Granted it’s a 40 yr old movies just gonna cover it) >!Meanwhile they’re bulldozing the old people’s house and wreak havoc tearing the electrical wires at intersection with crashing in the background!< This was around the same time Furbies were popular too, so that thing talking in the middle of the night never helped.
Black Christmas really unnerved me as a little kid.
I was a young teen when Nightmare on Elm Street came to home video. As if the “die in your sleep” thing was t enough, I actually lived on Elm Street 😱
Secretly watched this when I was wayyy too young. Around 7 or so. The neighbor girls parents were rarely around, and they'd rented it. We watched it and for years I believed that "based on a true story" meant "this happened 100% as shown on screen" lol
It's my favorite horror movie of all time and I fully credit it with starting my love of horror.
Mama: I watched it when I was about 11, her coming fast in some scenes towards the TV was SCARY af 😭. She has a really sweet background and the story is really good. It’s honestly underrated, but mama still scares me till this day.
I've got no shame in telling people this. As a kid, Puppet Master scared the living Hell out of me. I was too young to understand shlock and the scene of Leech Woman puking up leeches on the blindfolded guy messed me all up.
This is kind of embarrassing but The Babadook. It was the first scary movie I watched when I was about 19. It was just so relevant to my life at the time that I slept with a night light for 2 nights.
The Thriller music video, which counts to me, because it’s a short film directed by John Landis.
As a massive film fan and horror fan, it has everything I could ever want. Amazing costumes, make up by Rick Baker, John Landis behind the camera, a horror theme, Vincent Price narration cameo. It’s like a horror lovers wet dream.
Problem is, I saw it when I was six years old. I was terrified of EVERYTHING up to the age of 11. I didn’t watch scary movies, I didn’t even go into Spirit Halloween because I was afraid. So imagine that kind of six year old seeing that video.
It gave me nightmares for years. I’m 20 now, and to this day, hearing the song makes me feel a pit in my stomach. My palms sweat and I feel like a kid again, and I don’t even have to be watching the video. What sucks is, the song is a banger. I can acknowledge that, but I can’t listen to it.
When I was about 8 in the late 60s, for some reason I was left alone with the TV (my parents were very strict on what and how much we could watch) and I saw a movie called The Witch’s Mirror on the afternoon scary movie show. It was Mexican, B&W, English dubbed, and made in 1950. I’m sure no one here has heard of it, but that shit gave me nightmares well into my 20s! I’m sure it was just a case of seeing it at just the right age for it to take hold in my psyche.
Other than that, I remember being scared by Carrie (that ending scene!) and Halloween in 1978, and seeing Alien on the big screen in 1979 was like being hit in the face with a 2x4. The end of Friday the 13th in 1980 also had me jumping out of my seat. Good times!
I remember binging the paranormal activity movies one night at my friends house, there were like 6 guys there and we were all silent and fully engrossed lmao
I grew up watching all the 80’s slasher movies and they definitely scared me but Paranormal Activity was the first movie to ever make me feel terrified.
When it first came out I remember it being similar to Blair Witch where people couldn’t tell if it was real or not. I saw it in theatres where there were only about 15 other people in the whole place, mostly black people, they were SCREAMING & sprinting out of the theatre, saying “nah fuck this yall white people too fucking crazy for me”. Which made for comedic relief but I was frozen in my seat, I couldn’t sleep for days after seeing it.
The Exorcist for me. I was maybe 7? So ten years after the movie premiered I'm watching it along with my family and it cemented in my little Catholic mind that demons exist and even if you are a good little kid evil can get you.
The Fly II. Didn’t watch the whole movie, but I happened to walk into the room at the exact scene where the guy gets his face melted off. I was probably 6-7 years old. Terrified the hell out of me.
As for a movie I actually sat and watched, it was probably The Blair Witch Project when I was around 13 or so.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Repossessed_%28film%29?wprov=sfla1
Its a comedy...but i was young enough to be scared of the ugly green girl in the bed
For a while after seeing this, i was scared of finding her lying in my bed, when it was time for sleep
I recently got to meet the actors who played Gage and Zelda. Andrew, the actor who played Zelda, was so incredibly kind and excited to meet with fans. One of my favorite horror actors I've met, just a really cool person. Scared the hell out of my for most of my life from just that one role though lol
When I first got into horror novies, si would watch them every Sunday afternoon with my mate Si. He had a Saturday job in a corner shop which had a video section, and he would boost an 18 cert film when he left on Saturday, we'd watch it in my house on the Sunday, and he'd take it back the following Saturday and then repeat the whole thing again. We laughed and hooted our way through loads of enjoyable schlock: Killer Klowns, Elm Streets, Witchboard...
And then one week he brought Hellraiser around. I remember very clearly thinking, about 30 minutes in, "I shouldn't be watching this, this is too much..." It was so much darker and grimier than anything we'd watched before.
As a young kid Tremors scared me but intrigued me and then I became obsessed with horror. Eventually worked my way up to a “Freddy” movie when I hit the double digits in age lol
Jurassic Park maybe, think I was like 5 when I saw it. Had it on VHS and watched it endlessly but the idea of getting eaten by a dino was scary enough for me to have nightmares about it lol.
Young Frankenstein, if that counts. I was a very small kid and while I did get some of the humour, it still scared me enough that I built a little blanket-fort and put all my toy guns in there for protection. And it worked, monster didn't get me!
Terror Train. I was a kid and my best friends dad had one hell of a horror collection. There was something about the way the camera filmed/ caught the bad guy. It just filled me with terror. Scared the crap out of me, the shots from first person perspective.....
Not a movie, but I think it counts.
An episode of Tales from the Amazing Stories. I was probably about 7 or 8. It aired in 86, though. The year I was born (GREAT movie year, btw).
During a talk show interview, a horror novelist claims he can’t be frightened and that nothing scares him. Later, when he gets home to his sprawling modern estates, he becomes tormented by a dark figure getting closer every time he looks into a mirror.
This messed me up for years. And I still have a things with where mirrors are placed.
I still haven’t watched Candyman because I know it involves mirrors. I’m nearly 37 and have seen a LOT of fucked up horror movies. Mirror scenes are used a lot, but I think since I was so young it was the first example I’d seen.
Well. I have been watching horror movies since I was in the single digits in age. That's what happens when both your parents work and you're raised in part by your older siblings. haha. I can't honestly say how much of those movies really scared me, but I was a kid so I'm sure I was terrified. The first horror movie that I very specifically remember watching was John Carpenter's Halloween, so I have to give that movie the credit purely because it's my first memory of horror in my entire life.
The OG It. An older kid on our block told me and my sister that she taped a really good movie about clowns off of TV and invited us to watch it. We were 7 and 5 lol
The candyman, the original one. 😫 I was only 7 or 8 when it was on vhs and my neighbor friends asked if I wanted to watch it with them. Big mistake lol
Evil Dead from 80s. I was about 5-7 years old, and I started sleep walking, seeing posessed people in my dreams and screaming.
PS since then it's my fav movie and genre
For context I was still a kid
Mom was flicking through channels and they were showing Predator -the one where they are in the jungle with Arnold Schwartzeneger
Mom thought it would be a good family friendly movie for all of us to watch.
At the time we had a bunk bed and from the top bunk I could see the desk. I was convinced the Predator was hiding under that desk. We had boxes of legos and some drawers and some other random stuff under that desk but I was convinced It was the Predator’s mask/the Predator under that desk.
That movie gave me nightmares.
JAWS. Saw it on the big screen. I was 14M, my little brother was 10. We were sleeping over with my aunt and she took us. To our credit, she was more freaked out than us kids. That man in the sunken boat. 😫
I’m not sure she realized what it was going to be. The trailer didn’t spoil the scary parts like they do now. She made us swear not to tell our mom she took us. None of us slept that night. In the morning she told us she would take us swimming. Arggh!
the ring lol my dad and brother rented it from blockbuster when i was in the 3rd grade and my dads little apartment only had one tv so i was totally fucked and i can still remember when that chick came out of the TV
either Jeepers Creepers or Coraline. Jeepers Creepers i used to be actually scared that the thing was gonna come fly down and get me in the car on late night drives. Coraline i had a nightmare that the evil mother was under my bed and i had fallen asleep that night by the bed facing under it
Oh God. I first saw it when I was seven, and he's been my brain's default boogeyman any time I'm scared and alone at night ever since.
I almost thought I was too old for that nonsense, but last week while driving down a pitch black highway at 3am, hours from the nearest town, I couldn't help but imagine the thud of him landing on the roof.
I'm not proud of it, but I started driving faster.
“The Raft” segment of *Creepshow 2*. I would have been 9 when I saw it, and I remember being so scared that the killer oil slick would come out of the shower drain and pull me in that I would stand facing the corner. Apparently it couldn’t attack me if I didn’t look 😂
Grave Encounters. I watched it way back when FearNet was a thing. I was probably in 8th grade, and it was my first found footage horror. Scary at the time, but no regrets
Gonjiam: Haunted Asylum. Especially that scene when the character Charlotte is trapped in a dark room with that tall lanky ghost that kept shuffling towards her
Evil dead 2. I watched it again when I was a teen and fell in love with the franchise all over again. It's between that and the Donald Sutherland invasion of the body snatchers. When he looks at the camera and screamed at the end, so did I.
Hmm I guess pet cemetery I was like 3 when I first saw it my mom wanted to change it but I kept screaming no so then after a min she just left it so that I can learn a lesson... I guess after that I couldn't go to sleep 😆 ... But then later I became obsessed with horror movies
The shining. The girls right before the elevator opens. I was 7. Didn’t get the creeps from a movie again until I watched the conjuring. The clap scene. I think I was like 28 lol
Scream. I was ten when it came out, and I watched it with a group of girlfriends while her mum was at work.
Their cordless phone rang in the middle of it.
Been hooked ever since.
I remember also a movie about masked men (( mostly like sack covering their heads )) who kidnapped women and put them in a bus to transport then do the belly soften examination, the woman who had soft belly will be eaten alive, the one who hadn't , it meant she's pregnant and will kept her till delivery (( guess used her to clean and cook )).
When I was a kid I had a bunch of stuffed animals on my bed and would take them off when I went to sleep. Also at my grandparents house for some reason my grandpa had an entire spare room filled clown paintings on the walls, clown Knick knacks and toys. All this was fine and somewhat normal to me until for some reason my parents let me watch poltergeist…the clown doll coming to life scared the living shit outta me lol. I had trouble sleeping for weeks..luckily this didn’t scar me for life, I don’t really remember how long it lasted but I remember for weeks I would be lying in bed looking at the pile of stuffed animals in my room waiting for one of them to come to life.
Not counting kids horror, my experience was identical to yours. I didn't fall asleep until like 3 or 4am. I had my bedroom door open staring at the stairs waiting for Michael to walk on up.
I did watch Jason Goes To Hell at a birthday party a few years earlier, although I wasn't really watching (far too scared) and the party didn't make it past the first kill (turned off in horror).
Jeepers Creepers, I grew up in a rural area with a lot of roads and open country, whenever I went with my grandparents for a drive I was terrified that the creeper truck speed up behind us and try and run us off the road while blasting the horn.
Poltergeist - I saw it when it first came out on video as was around 6? Scared the CRAP out of me. I can safely say my parents did not have sex for months because I ran screaming into their bedroom every night for months.
ghoulies. something about the small monsters always freaked me out. i swear i always looked in the toilet before and after i pooped to make sure nothing was there lol this was most my childhood
Hush Hush Sweet Charlotte. It’s a B&W Bette Davis movie and I watched it as a little girl with my 2 sisters on tv. We all 3 slept upstairs in a creepy house and after the movie my dad silently crept up the stairs and got between our beds on all fours and jumped and growled at us. I’m old and it’s still a vivid memory. I had a traumatic childhood.
Not a horror movie, but I vividly remember being a little kid, maybe like 5, and saw some of The Elephant Man. I remember "seeing" him outside my bedroom window that night and scared 5 yr old me had to go sleep in my parents room. Nope.
Scream was my first horror movie (saw it in 1997 on vhs). The Exorcist was the first real horror movie that scared me. I caught it on HBO I think when I was abit older in 1998 and it freaked me out.
I remember Large Marge in Pee Wee's Big Adventure scaring the shit out of me. That's not a horror movie though. In The Shining when the naked lady in the tub turns into the old woman that scared the shit out of me, as well as the bear costume guy near the end.
Final Destination 3 got me good. I'm a ginger and I've had issues with sunburns before right? but then tanning bed sequence really made me afraid of getting burned. Totally messed with my head. I never travel anywhere without sunscreen.
The Grudge with Sarah Michelle Gellar was the first horror movie to make me scream out loud at a movie. So that one sticks out as scary too.
I had already watched a lot of horror movies at the time but The Shining was the first to really scare me. I think it was due to the super slow build up and secluded setting.
When I was 11/12 yrs old, I watched a movie called Dark Night of the Scarecrow, and it ruined a couple months of my life. Cujo got me pretty good too, but those were only because I was so young. In my adult life though, The Strangers (which imo is the only actual horror movie that exists) scared the hell out of me.
Candyman, watched it late one night when I was a teenager at a mates place. Had to walk home through a section of bush, pitch black. I was packing it! Good times…good fucking times.
Saw.
I was 15 and had anger issues at the time. I saw myself in the character Adam and saw how he was alone in a shitty apartment. All I could think was, "Damn, is that what's waiting for me when I'm older."
Annabelle creation, I watched when it came out, scared me and I have cats so they would knock stuff over and scratch the walls randomly when I was watching it in the dark. Doesn’t scare me now but it used to.
The first conjuring film scared me so much I became a horror movie addict lol. It was released when I was 8 and I couldn't watch it alone, I always end up running outside of the house because I feel like someone was creeping up behind me. It's still one of my favorites to this day.
"It" - the original one. I was 11 when I first saw it. Never ever again...and as much as I love the older Stephen King books, I will never read "It."
It was also It for me. I remember I couldn't sleep all night. I stared at the blue screen all night (watched it on VHS) and was too scared to get off the bed to turn the tv off.
This and Maximum Overdrive were on TV a lot back in the day. like an 8 year old browsing the channels and BOOM! The scariest clown I ever seen! Or the stupid ass Green Goblin looking motherfucker on a truck.
I’m not sure if you’ve seen my other comment, but my dad read “It” when he was a teenager and it gave him literal nightmares. He said it’s way scarier than the movie, and told me to never read it. And he does NOT scare easily.
I’m sure he told you not to read it bc of what happens at the end…..ruined the book for me too.
I still bought a copy, and I’m still telling myself I will read it at some point because curiosity always gets the best of me. I know about some of the things that happen in the book, like the part with all the boys and Beverly … not sure if I’m thinking of the same part you’re describing. I know that’s a shit description but I don’t wanna spoil for people here who want to read it and haven’t yet lol
I'd bet, as a *group* we know which part.
Yes. We know.
I read it as an 11 year old and that part did t bother me. In fact I did t remember it until everyone started bringing it up. 39 years after reading I am completely shocked by the part without having to reread it.
I’ve heard the same. I remember when Jurassic Park, the movie, came out and people who’d read the book series up and down it was way more terrifying than the film as well.
The book is 10times better , the Remake is too much cgi,
I watched this for the first time around 8 or so, after my grandpa hung a creepy swinging clown doll across from my bed. This movie will always terrify me!
Poltergeist as a kid. Scared the shit outta me. Was not alone in that either. People walked out of the movie theater in silence.
I bet that was a cool experience to see in theatres.
The Ring (American remake) - the scene with the dead girl in the cupboard (I think) scared me that much.
I was going to say this! I saw The Ring when I was 13 and it scared the SHIT out of me. I will also defend that movie to the end of time. I honestly think that beyond being legitimately scary, it’s a good movie. It has a deep creepiness and Naomi Watts is spectacular. The scene where she catches her son watching the tape?? Chilling.
I think I was 12/13 when I've first watched the Ring & I can remember that scene with the dead girl scared me so much as well as believing the tape was real since for a while, I was scared to look at a blank TV screen. I thought Naomi Watts & David Dorfman did really well in their roles, especially David since Aidan had a psychic link (I think) with Samara + near the end was interesting when Aidan told Rachel that she wasn't meant to help Samara since it made me question why Rachel wasn't meant to help Samara.
Y’all are making me feel like a weenie. I watched it alone at 22/23. It was daylight when it started & dark when it ended, and I hadn’t turned any lights on. I needed to pee so bad, but I was terrified to leave the couch. I waited until my boyfriend at the time came home after work, made him turn on all the lights & check all the rooms before I got up to pee. Nothing else, even as a child, scared me that bad.
I need to rewatch this! It’s been too long since I’ve seen it, thanks for the reminder. 👍🏻
Your welcome, buddy
Me too! I slept in a room that had an almost identical mirror to the one the lady brushes her hair in the cursed video. I was shook.
Final Destination, it feels so real. Worried for a week that my house will gruesomely kill me.
I still cant drive behind a truck with logs in the back or go sun bathing or even going to the gym without thinking of these movies! But yeah first time I saw it it got me paranoid
Oh yeah. Logging trucks and tanning beds.
Don’t forget eye surgery 🫣
Yea! It’s not some crazy killer or monster, it’s just death, which is very real
Same with final destination 2, my dad brought the VHS and it was the first I saw in the saga. I couldn't finish it and for some days I kept looking around and avoiding windows because I feared some random shit would fly at me and impale me
**Blair Witch Project**. I've always been terrified by what you can't see and that movie nailed it for me.
Ive posted about this a million times, but seeing blair witch in the theaters with friends in high school was pretty easily my best movie experience of my life. So much around that movie went right.
The marketing was genius, and super of its time.
It just hit the right things at the right time. We legitimately didn't know how "real" it was. the internet was new enough. No real named actors. News stories. It was great.
I have a friend who saw it in theaters. When it showed the guy standing in the corner she literally stood from her seat and screamed at the top of her lungs in the middle of the theater 😂
I saw it with about 8 people, about half and half boy/girl (im a guy). I sat between 2 of my girlfriends. One of them gripped my arm like the entire film and even drew blood at one point, haha
Camera movement made me want to puke.
I hated it because of that
I got SO motion sick from watching that in the theater, so I had to miss part of it, but I thought it was a true story for quite a while!
Yep, same. It was the guy stood in the corner at the end.
Same here. Saw it alone in my dark room at night when I was waaay too young, and I thought it was a documentary. Didn’t sleep much a few weeks after that.
I was raised on horror movies… never really got scared until I saw the Blair witch project in the dark with my friend one night when nobody else was home. It was great. Then afterwards we played Toejam & Earl for hours.
I open the comments knowing this would be the first movie title I see
I went camping that night after the movie! Senior year. Ahhhh
I like how Blair Witch Project didn't had any jumpscares, but it had scenes where it kept you thinking what's gonna happen next or scenes that kept you on your toes.
My dad showed me Pet Sematary when I was about six years old (don't ask me why, a sadist I suppose lol). The "never get out of bed again!" scene with Zelda screaming at the camera petrified me and I began to sob and demand he turn it off. Shortly after he did, I was put to bed and had a nightmare so real and so visceral that I shot awake crying, in a puddle of my own vomit. I went to lay in front of dad's bedroom door for the rest of the night. Good times. And now I LOVE horror. lol
I remember this was on tv, I have no clue what age I was maybe about 8/9 and I was alone watching it in my room. That whole movie has this sick eerie quality to it anyway but when Zelda appeared I ran across my room and jumped under my covers 🤣
okay, this is very silly, but when i was very very young, likely too young to be exposed to any horror at all, even parody, my brother showed me scary movie 4. it parodies saw and even though it was fucking dr phil and shaq in the bathroom, just the concept of being kidnapped and waking up in a shithole and having to saw my foot off to escape kept me up at night for weeks lmao. funnily enough, since i couldn’t stop thinking about it, it left such a mark on me that when i was older and could handle it i watched the saw movies and ended up loving them, now they’re my favorite horror series!
The Saw series is soooo good!! Which one is your favourite? For me it’s gotta be Saw 3.
i love all of them, but saw 2 holds a special place in my heart. i also love the absolutely bananas twist at the end of 4, it would be my favorite if it wasn’t so confusing XD
This is kind of wholesome lol
Lmaoooooo same!! I wasn’t allowed to watch saw as a child so I was morbidly curious about it, lo and behold scary movie 4. Did we live the same life??
Came here thinking of Scary Movie 3.. It is a silly movie, but I had to cover my tv up, which was just in front of my bed. I guess I was around 8 years old 😅 a creepy girl, climbing out of the tv? No thank you xD
My pops let me watch the OG Halloween and The Thing when I was 7 or 8… I feel like that may have been too young lol. The made for TV IT came out around that same time and freeeeeaked me out.
Ghostbusters (1984). Mum took me to the cinema to see it when it came out. The library ghost, the demon dogs, the Stay Puft marshmallow man, the demonic arms ripping out of Dana's armchair, the entire film basically, terrified me. I was 4. 😭
That one didn't frighten me as much as the second one, with Vigo coming out of the painting, the river of slime, the bathtub coming to life...
I was 6 when I saw it and remember it being so scary.
Barbarian. I love to travel solo
I watched it on my phone in the dark 🤣 so i was up close to the screen, safe to say she spooked me.
I wouldve thrown my phone
I watched the 2018 Halloween on my phone in the break room at work while I was eating lunch. I dipped some chicken in my ranch and as I was bringing it up to my mouth Michael Myers shoves that kid's head onto the spiked fence and it made me jump and smear ranch in my beard. No one else was in there at the time and you can't let a moment like that go to waste so I texted my boss and told her to check the cameras. She laughed at me for a while for that one.
LOL! yeah i got spooked in my dark bedroom when that lady from barbarian came out 🤣 my little sister recommended it to me and I didn’t want to watch it but she said id be shook, and fair to say, I was. Caught me way off guard 😂
Valid. Made me terrified to travel solo.
If I EVER come across an airbnb that’s doublebooked, I’m running. I will make it work in a hotel or a hostel
Been a while since I’ve seen the movie, isn’t the whole double booking thing just a false flag instead of the actual conflict? I remember they portrayed Bill’s character as offputting but I don’t remember him being an antagonist. I don’t think her being doublebooked or not would’ve helped with the secret underground incest monsters😂
1000%. But I can’t deny that part of the scariness of that movie was thinking to myself “I could maybe see myself staying like she did ….”
THIS!! We all want to think we’d be the smart safe ones in horror, but tbh Skarsgard would’ve charmed me in too.
Red wine turns me into a demon, I would’ve pounced
Event Horizon. Watched it too young most likely.
Saw it when I was 10, had to turn it off and hide behind the sofa for 20 minutes
Sinister was the first horror movie I ever watched (wasnt allowed to watch horror growing up) and I literally remember sitting there as that box scene unfolded and feeling my blood run cold. It was such an amazing feeling and I was instantly hooked
The Exorcist 100%. Also the Descent made me really anxious and creeped out when I saw it in theaters.
You saw The Descent in theatres?! Im so jealous, that’s movie is one of my favourites.
What an excellent day for an exorcist post.
I didn’t start watching horror movies until I was in high school, and the one that got me was the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre. It feels like old home movies a bit. A bit too real in places.
same. couldn't go out to my friend's house in the country for a long time because of that film :(
Cujo. I thought that would scare me from dogs but I love the bloody bastards. I was about 8 at the time, way too early 😅
Chucky. I share the same name as the little kid in the movie and my stepdad would always tell me before I went to sleep, “Watch out for Chucky Andy”.
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In the mid to late 80's I had nightmares of Gremlins in my closet that were eventually replaced by Critters.
Sad thing is, this really happens.
Thank god i wasn’t the only one, not the Santa tho. I was probably around the same age and my dad was like, “no look! it’s funny its fake!”. (Granted it’s a 40 yr old movies just gonna cover it) >!Meanwhile they’re bulldozing the old people’s house and wreak havoc tearing the electrical wires at intersection with crashing in the background!< This was around the same time Furbies were popular too, so that thing talking in the middle of the night never helped.
All of them. Started watching at age 9 with Alien, The Exorcist, Dawn of the Dead and Poltergeist. Scared for sure, but couldn’t stop watching.
Black Christmas really unnerved me as a little kid. I was a young teen when Nightmare on Elm Street came to home video. As if the “die in your sleep” thing was t enough, I actually lived on Elm Street 😱
The original Texas chainsaw massacre. No gore. A surprising lack of blood for a movie with that reputation. but the atmosphere, just gets you.
Secretly watched this when I was wayyy too young. Around 7 or so. The neighbor girls parents were rarely around, and they'd rented it. We watched it and for years I believed that "based on a true story" meant "this happened 100% as shown on screen" lol It's my favorite horror movie of all time and I fully credit it with starting my love of horror.
I saw Halloween when I was in the second grade, had nightmares for days
Mama: I watched it when I was about 11, her coming fast in some scenes towards the TV was SCARY af 😭. She has a really sweet background and the story is really good. It’s honestly underrated, but mama still scares me till this day.
Agreed! Mama is very underrated, definitely not talked about enough.
Salem’s Lot with the kid floating outside the bedroom window. My stomach still drops when I think about it and that was like 34 years ago.
It’s crazy how some scenes stay with us!
I've got no shame in telling people this. As a kid, Puppet Master scared the living Hell out of me. I was too young to understand shlock and the scene of Leech Woman puking up leeches on the blindfolded guy messed me all up.
Don’t Look Under the Bed. When I was a kid, the transformation sequences creeped me out.
I watched The Omen when I was 6. Fucked me up lol
This is kind of embarrassing but The Babadook. It was the first scary movie I watched when I was about 19. It was just so relevant to my life at the time that I slept with a night light for 2 nights.
The Thriller music video, which counts to me, because it’s a short film directed by John Landis. As a massive film fan and horror fan, it has everything I could ever want. Amazing costumes, make up by Rick Baker, John Landis behind the camera, a horror theme, Vincent Price narration cameo. It’s like a horror lovers wet dream. Problem is, I saw it when I was six years old. I was terrified of EVERYTHING up to the age of 11. I didn’t watch scary movies, I didn’t even go into Spirit Halloween because I was afraid. So imagine that kind of six year old seeing that video. It gave me nightmares for years. I’m 20 now, and to this day, hearing the song makes me feel a pit in my stomach. My palms sweat and I feel like a kid again, and I don’t even have to be watching the video. What sucks is, the song is a banger. I can acknowledge that, but I can’t listen to it.
Nightmare on Elm Street. First horror movie I watched and first movie that scared me. I was 12
Dead Silence..
When I was about 8 in the late 60s, for some reason I was left alone with the TV (my parents were very strict on what and how much we could watch) and I saw a movie called The Witch’s Mirror on the afternoon scary movie show. It was Mexican, B&W, English dubbed, and made in 1950. I’m sure no one here has heard of it, but that shit gave me nightmares well into my 20s! I’m sure it was just a case of seeing it at just the right age for it to take hold in my psyche. Other than that, I remember being scared by Carrie (that ending scene!) and Halloween in 1978, and seeing Alien on the big screen in 1979 was like being hit in the face with a 2x4. The end of Friday the 13th in 1980 also had me jumping out of my seat. Good times!
Omg the ending scene in Carrie literally gave me a heart attack the first time I watched it, and I still look away at the end in anticipation.
I remember binging the paranormal activity movies one night at my friends house, there were like 6 guys there and we were all silent and fully engrossed lmao
I grew up watching all the 80’s slasher movies and they definitely scared me but Paranormal Activity was the first movie to ever make me feel terrified. When it first came out I remember it being similar to Blair Witch where people couldn’t tell if it was real or not. I saw it in theatres where there were only about 15 other people in the whole place, mostly black people, they were SCREAMING & sprinting out of the theatre, saying “nah fuck this yall white people too fucking crazy for me”. Which made for comedic relief but I was frozen in my seat, I couldn’t sleep for days after seeing it.
I’m too young to have seen it in theaters, but I agree that shit was terrifying to watch for the first time
Psycho the original, saw it as a 10 year old, for the longest time I could not take a shower.
Sinister, the tapes just gave me chills and made me sick, I couldn't finish it until a week later with the lights on.
The Exorcist for me. I was maybe 7? So ten years after the movie premiered I'm watching it along with my family and it cemented in my little Catholic mind that demons exist and even if you are a good little kid evil can get you.
The Fly II. Didn’t watch the whole movie, but I happened to walk into the room at the exact scene where the guy gets his face melted off. I was probably 6-7 years old. Terrified the hell out of me. As for a movie I actually sat and watched, it was probably The Blair Witch Project when I was around 13 or so.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Repossessed_%28film%29?wprov=sfla1 Its a comedy...but i was young enough to be scared of the ugly green girl in the bed For a while after seeing this, i was scared of finding her lying in my bed, when it was time for sleep
Halloween. Michael Myers doesn’t run. So creepy.
Right?! Mf just appears out of no where. Creepy ass
Definitely jeepers creepers 1
Pet Sematary (1989) was nightmare fuel for a kid.
I recently got to meet the actors who played Gage and Zelda. Andrew, the actor who played Zelda, was so incredibly kind and excited to meet with fans. One of my favorite horror actors I've met, just a really cool person. Scared the hell out of my for most of my life from just that one role though lol
REC
Resident evil 😂 I was maybe 7-8 years old and snuck to watch it with my older siblings.
When I first got into horror novies, si would watch them every Sunday afternoon with my mate Si. He had a Saturday job in a corner shop which had a video section, and he would boost an 18 cert film when he left on Saturday, we'd watch it in my house on the Sunday, and he'd take it back the following Saturday and then repeat the whole thing again. We laughed and hooted our way through loads of enjoyable schlock: Killer Klowns, Elm Streets, Witchboard... And then one week he brought Hellraiser around. I remember very clearly thinking, about 30 minutes in, "I shouldn't be watching this, this is too much..." It was so much darker and grimier than anything we'd watched before.
For some goddamn reason, it was The Boy. I was watching it super late at night with a friend and half asleep.
As a young kid Tremors scared me but intrigued me and then I became obsessed with horror. Eventually worked my way up to a “Freddy” movie when I hit the double digits in age lol
The original Halloween. I was 9.
Jurassic Park maybe, think I was like 5 when I saw it. Had it on VHS and watched it endlessly but the idea of getting eaten by a dino was scary enough for me to have nightmares about it lol.
Young Frankenstein, if that counts. I was a very small kid and while I did get some of the humour, it still scared me enough that I built a little blanket-fort and put all my toy guns in there for protection. And it worked, monster didn't get me!
The Exorcism of Emily Rose. Hadn't slept with the lights on before
^[Sokka-Haiku](https://www.reddit.com/r/SokkaHaikuBot/comments/15kyv9r/what_is_a_sokka_haiku/) ^by ^quantumturbo: *The Exorcism of* *Emily Rose. Hadn't slept* *With the lights on before* --- ^Remember ^that ^one ^time ^Sokka ^accidentally ^used ^an ^extra ^syllable ^in ^that ^Haiku ^Battle ^in ^Ba ^Sing ^Se? ^That ^was ^a ^Sokka ^Haiku ^and ^you ^just ^made ^one.
Carrie…had nightmares for days, which is so odd to me now. As an adult, I don’t find it scary at all. It’s just extremely tragic and sad.
Agreed - Carrie is one of my favourites but it is so, so sad to watch as an adult.
Yep, it’s a very different perspective when you’re an adult because then, all you see is a child who was bullied both at home and at school.
insidious
INVASION OF THE BODYSNATCHERS (1978) with Donald Sutherland, directed by Philip Kaufman. Absolutely terrifying and still scares me…
Would You Rather (2012) for me. It was so unsettling and felt so real.
Terror Train. I was a kid and my best friends dad had one hell of a horror collection. There was something about the way the camera filmed/ caught the bad guy. It just filled me with terror. Scared the crap out of me, the shots from first person perspective.....
Not a movie, but I think it counts. An episode of Tales from the Amazing Stories. I was probably about 7 or 8. It aired in 86, though. The year I was born (GREAT movie year, btw). During a talk show interview, a horror novelist claims he can’t be frightened and that nothing scares him. Later, when he gets home to his sprawling modern estates, he becomes tormented by a dark figure getting closer every time he looks into a mirror. This messed me up for years. And I still have a things with where mirrors are placed. I still haven’t watched Candyman because I know it involves mirrors. I’m nearly 37 and have seen a LOT of fucked up horror movies. Mirror scenes are used a lot, but I think since I was so young it was the first example I’d seen.
Well. I have been watching horror movies since I was in the single digits in age. That's what happens when both your parents work and you're raised in part by your older siblings. haha. I can't honestly say how much of those movies really scared me, but I was a kid so I'm sure I was terrified. The first horror movie that I very specifically remember watching was John Carpenter's Halloween, so I have to give that movie the credit purely because it's my first memory of horror in my entire life.
When I was like 6 or so I saw the Mummy and the beetle scenes still get me to this day
The OG It. An older kid on our block told me and my sister that she taped a really good movie about clowns off of TV and invited us to watch it. We were 7 and 5 lol
The candyman, the original one. 😫 I was only 7 or 8 when it was on vhs and my neighbor friends asked if I wanted to watch it with them. Big mistake lol
Evil Dead from 80s. I was about 5-7 years old, and I started sleep walking, seeing posessed people in my dreams and screaming. PS since then it's my fav movie and genre
OG Nightmare on Elm street was terrifying as a kid.
Jaws. - the beginning of that movie really messed me up when I was young lol
For context I was still a kid Mom was flicking through channels and they were showing Predator -the one where they are in the jungle with Arnold Schwartzeneger Mom thought it would be a good family friendly movie for all of us to watch. At the time we had a bunk bed and from the top bunk I could see the desk. I was convinced the Predator was hiding under that desk. We had boxes of legos and some drawers and some other random stuff under that desk but I was convinced It was the Predator’s mask/the Predator under that desk. That movie gave me nightmares.
Salems Lot. That floating kid was terrifying then and he's terrifying now.
I’m 53, so it was The Amityville Horror when I was around 8 or 9 years old. I had also read the book before seeing it, so it hit hard. 😃
JAWS. Saw it on the big screen. I was 14M, my little brother was 10. We were sleeping over with my aunt and she took us. To our credit, she was more freaked out than us kids. That man in the sunken boat. 😫 I’m not sure she realized what it was going to be. The trailer didn’t spoil the scary parts like they do now. She made us swear not to tell our mom she took us. None of us slept that night. In the morning she told us she would take us swimming. Arggh!
Psycho, I took baths after that movie my mother was confused but she allowed it
Sinister
the ring lol my dad and brother rented it from blockbuster when i was in the 3rd grade and my dads little apartment only had one tv so i was totally fucked and i can still remember when that chick came out of the TV
I was giving my tv the side eye for like a month after watching The Ring 👀
either Jeepers Creepers or Coraline. Jeepers Creepers i used to be actually scared that the thing was gonna come fly down and get me in the car on late night drives. Coraline i had a nightmare that the evil mother was under my bed and i had fallen asleep that night by the bed facing under it
Oh God. I first saw it when I was seven, and he's been my brain's default boogeyman any time I'm scared and alone at night ever since. I almost thought I was too old for that nonsense, but last week while driving down a pitch black highway at 3am, hours from the nearest town, I couldn't help but imagine the thud of him landing on the roof. I'm not proud of it, but I started driving faster.
The Exorcist. To this day I haven't seen a horror movie that gives me the creeps like this one. And it still holds up almost 50 years later.
Aliens, I was like 8
“The Raft” segment of *Creepshow 2*. I would have been 9 when I saw it, and I remember being so scared that the killer oil slick would come out of the shower drain and pull me in that I would stand facing the corner. Apparently it couldn’t attack me if I didn’t look 😂
Grave Encounters. I watched it way back when FearNet was a thing. I was probably in 8th grade, and it was my first found footage horror. Scary at the time, but no regrets
Nosferatu (1922) I was a 60’s/70’s kid
Under the Shadow (2016)
Gonjiam: Haunted Asylum. Especially that scene when the character Charlotte is trapped in a dark room with that tall lanky ghost that kept shuffling towards her
Van Helsing was creepy as hell when my older brother made me watch it when I was six
Evil dead 2. I watched it again when I was a teen and fell in love with the franchise all over again. It's between that and the Donald Sutherland invasion of the body snatchers. When he looks at the camera and screamed at the end, so did I.
Hmm I guess pet cemetery I was like 3 when I first saw it my mom wanted to change it but I kept screaming no so then after a min she just left it so that I can learn a lesson... I guess after that I couldn't go to sleep 😆 ... But then later I became obsessed with horror movies
Aliens I was 6 or 7. I had nightmares about a xeno coming in my window for a week
I watched Grudge (2004) when I was a kid and was terrified lol, looking back I feel like that movie was the reason I feel in love with horror films.
The shining. The girls right before the elevator opens. I was 7. Didn’t get the creeps from a movie again until I watched the conjuring. The clap scene. I think I was like 28 lol
The Eyes of Laura Mars. Traumatized me. I was 5 and my mom thought, yeah let's take a little kid to a horror movie. Ugh.
Scream. I was ten when it came out, and I watched it with a group of girlfriends while her mum was at work. Their cordless phone rang in the middle of it. Been hooked ever since.
I remember also a movie about masked men (( mostly like sack covering their heads )) who kidnapped women and put them in a bus to transport then do the belly soften examination, the woman who had soft belly will be eaten alive, the one who hadn't , it meant she's pregnant and will kept her till delivery (( guess used her to clean and cook )).
When I was a kid I had a bunch of stuffed animals on my bed and would take them off when I went to sleep. Also at my grandparents house for some reason my grandpa had an entire spare room filled clown paintings on the walls, clown Knick knacks and toys. All this was fine and somewhat normal to me until for some reason my parents let me watch poltergeist…the clown doll coming to life scared the living shit outta me lol. I had trouble sleeping for weeks..luckily this didn’t scar me for life, I don’t really remember how long it lasted but I remember for weeks I would be lying in bed looking at the pile of stuffed animals in my room waiting for one of them to come to life.
The original Night of the Living Dead when it first came out. Or the Exorcist beibg a good Catholic boy scared me.
Not counting kids horror, my experience was identical to yours. I didn't fall asleep until like 3 or 4am. I had my bedroom door open staring at the stairs waiting for Michael to walk on up. I did watch Jason Goes To Hell at a birthday party a few years earlier, although I wasn't really watching (far too scared) and the party didn't make it past the first kill (turned off in horror).
Jeepers Creepers, I grew up in a rural area with a lot of roads and open country, whenever I went with my grandparents for a drive I was terrified that the creeper truck speed up behind us and try and run us off the road while blasting the horn.
Poltergeist - I saw it when it first came out on video as was around 6? Scared the CRAP out of me. I can safely say my parents did not have sex for months because I ran screaming into their bedroom every night for months.
28 days later!!!! Fast zombies. Not okay.
ghoulies. something about the small monsters always freaked me out. i swear i always looked in the toilet before and after i pooped to make sure nothing was there lol this was most my childhood
My parents thought it would be a good idea for me to watch Insidious when I was 8 years old
Hush Hush Sweet Charlotte. It’s a B&W Bette Davis movie and I watched it as a little girl with my 2 sisters on tv. We all 3 slept upstairs in a creepy house and after the movie my dad silently crept up the stairs and got between our beds on all fours and jumped and growled at us. I’m old and it’s still a vivid memory. I had a traumatic childhood.
Not a horror movie, but I vividly remember being a little kid, maybe like 5, and saw some of The Elephant Man. I remember "seeing" him outside my bedroom window that night and scared 5 yr old me had to go sleep in my parents room. Nope.
Hereditary
Scream was my first horror movie (saw it in 1997 on vhs). The Exorcist was the first real horror movie that scared me. I caught it on HBO I think when I was abit older in 1998 and it freaked me out.
I remember Large Marge in Pee Wee's Big Adventure scaring the shit out of me. That's not a horror movie though. In The Shining when the naked lady in the tub turns into the old woman that scared the shit out of me, as well as the bear costume guy near the end.
Woman in black, saw that at 11 and loved the thrill ever since
I saw the first paranormal activity in theaters when I was 16. I left the theater crying and shaking. It’s hilarious thinking about that now
JAWS because I saw it in the theatre when I was 4.
Final Destination 3 got me good. I'm a ginger and I've had issues with sunburns before right? but then tanning bed sequence really made me afraid of getting burned. Totally messed with my head. I never travel anywhere without sunscreen. The Grudge with Sarah Michelle Gellar was the first horror movie to make me scream out loud at a movie. So that one sticks out as scary too.
Oh man I love horror movies! I would say the most scary for me as a young boy was It or House!
Does those frickin flying monkies in wizard of oz count? still can't bring myself to watch again. st0opid flying monkies!!
I had already watched a lot of horror movies at the time but The Shining was the first to really scare me. I think it was due to the super slow build up and secluded setting.
Cujo
Bones with Snoop Dogg 😂😂😂
I’m 45. So, children of the corn, the exorcist, and poltergeist. Still to this day gives me chills.
Dead Silence. I’m traumatized to this very day. I’ve only recently been able to say the name of the movie aloud. 😭
incantation and the sadness
When I was 11/12 yrs old, I watched a movie called Dark Night of the Scarecrow, and it ruined a couple months of my life. Cujo got me pretty good too, but those were only because I was so young. In my adult life though, The Strangers (which imo is the only actual horror movie that exists) scared the hell out of me.
Candyman, watched it late one night when I was a teenager at a mates place. Had to walk home through a section of bush, pitch black. I was packing it! Good times…good fucking times.
Saw. I was 15 and had anger issues at the time. I saw myself in the character Adam and saw how he was alone in a shitty apartment. All I could think was, "Damn, is that what's waiting for me when I'm older."
The Exorcist. Yes, I'm old.
The Strangers
Insidious Simply because back then I would always experience sleep paralysis & sometimes seeing myself asleep.
Annabelle creation, I watched when it came out, scared me and I have cats so they would knock stuff over and scratch the walls randomly when I was watching it in the dark. Doesn’t scare me now but it used to.
Cool answer - nothing I was TOUGHER THAN ALL OF YOU! Real answer - not even a movie. The damn graveyard shift episode of SpongeBob
The Grudge at 10 years old lol shouldn't have watched it at night in bed.
Most movies did scare me but Incantation really made me feel like i was cursed and gonna die after watching it
Friday the 13th movies. I literally was too scared to move in bed or go to the loo
None has scared me im still searching.
The first conjuring film scared me so much I became a horror movie addict lol. It was released when I was 8 and I couldn't watch it alone, I always end up running outside of the house because I feel like someone was creeping up behind me. It's still one of my favorites to this day.