The Irrational Heebie-Jeebies
When I’m driving home from work in the middle of the night, there’s a stretch of Interstate 81 where I’m often the only car on the road. It’s where the highway splits-off, takes a sudden upward slant, and heads toward the Sno Mountain ski resort. And it sometimes gives me a mild case of the willies.
If there are other vehicles around I don’t think too much about it. But when I’m all alone out there I get a tad uneasy. It feels like I’m in the first thirty minutes of a horror movie, the part where they’re letting you get to know the characters – so you care about them once the slaughter commences.
Also, there was a (made-for-HBO?) movie several years ago, that often pops into my head when I’m traveling that road at night. It starred Meat Loaf, if you can believe it. Yes, good ol’ Meat drove around in an eighteen wheeler, picked up foolish hitchhikers and whatnot, and mutilated them inside the elaborately tricked-out rolling death chamber, hidden inside his trailer.
I remember making jokes about that flick when I first saw it, but it’s stuck with me – for years. I find myself thinking about it more often than the movie probably deserves.
And what if I break down on that desolate section of 81, and a “trucker” comes to my rescue? How will I know he’s really hauling Ritz crackers and/or medical waste? What if the pallets of tuna on the back of his rig are merely a façade, hiding an amputation laboratory with a blood drain in the floor?
Stupid Meat Loaf… he’s gotten inside my head, maaan.
But luckily, it’s only a few miles, and the uneasiness quickly fades. Once I reach the top of the “mountain,” everything returns to normal. That is, I start to see Pizza Hut signs again, and it’s not quite so Donner Party.
Is there a road, a house, or just a section of town or whatever, that gives you a case of the irrational heebie-jeebies? Tell us about it, won’t you?
And, while we’re at it, what movie that you know is retarded, has had an unexplainable lasting effect on you?
Use our fancy-pants commenting tool, and I’ll see you guys later.
Filed under: Daily
Texarkana, Texas. This is supposedly where The Texas Chainsaw Massacre happened. Growing up we used to drive from Michigan to Texas to visit family. For some reason, my Mom always picked rest stops in Texarkana to catch a quick catnap before finishing the drive. Dark rest stops at night, flashes of headlights, strange people always walking around…to this day that place creeps me out.
Urban Legend – definitely completely ridiculous, but repeatedly able to scare the bejesus out of me. When I saw it in the theater with my best friend, we were clinging to each other’s hands and crying. Pathetic, but the thought of someone slicing out my kidneys is freaking creepy.
Walking 250 yards to my tree stand at 4AM during deer season. This walk is through a vineyard…kinda like a hallway with no exits except 100 yards in front or behind… But then there’s rifle season when I’m carrying a 30-06 and almost hope something jumps out of the land of Spielburg. (not really)
The Abominable Dr. Phibes; I saw it when I was 7 and it scared the shit out of me.
Whereever there’s liberals.
fix the bunker cam and further evidence links!
Join AAA, I don’t think they allow mutating tow truck owners to be part of their network! Happy humpday all!
Wherever there’s conservatives.
That freaking clown in King’s IT. It’s been years and I can’t get him out of my head.
Duel with Dennis Weaver, that movie creeped me OUT! Generally, I try to avoid creepy movies, because they do stay with me.
The entire east side of Detroit weirds me out. The Mile roads don’t run east/west like they’re supposed to, but north/south and I have no idea in which direction I’m headed. I fixed the problem simply by not going to the east side.
I lived outside atlanta for a year training horses and we would ride in the woods often for their workouts. In those woods is where they filmed Deliverance. So I often rode with a friend and we would do the dualing banjos tune. And of course be in the lookout for any wandering hill billys.
Hostel creeped me out.
BTW, you should be packing heat. PA is very easy to get a carry permit. Lots of creeps wandering around out there.
Car breaks down on deserted interstate at 3:00 AM. No cell service. Another car pulls in behind. Huge guy approaches your car wielding an axe…..
I don’t know of any roads, but there is a room in my office. Our building where I work is over 100 years old, and there’s a room that’s is completely isolated from everything, no windows, no airvents, just a door way that is standard width, but its three foot thick. When I have to be in here late at night and everything is quiet, you can hear the quiet coming out of that room. It makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up.
#11! Yay!
shoot, hit send by accident.
My brain is like a sieve, so I can’t think of any stupid movies – are you talking stupid in general, or stupid, like, supposedtobescaryandyouknowitbutitstillscaresyou?
Creepy places. My own basement in the middle of the night. or for that matter, my own house if I find myself the only one awake at like, 3 AM
I originally thought you meant Dahmer Party.
Movie stuck in my head, Body Heat.
Nuthin’ like a .38 ridin’ shotgun on the passenger seat.
This is about as horrific as it gets for me: to this day, over two decades after the song wreaked its grisly havoc on the world, if I even so much as THINK about the song “Rhythm of the Night” by El Debarge, it gets stuck in my head for a week.
I know it’s not a movie, but as a periodic blooming stigmata it’s most definitely horrific, retarded, unexplainable, and lasting.
Also, on Saturday mornings as a kid I used to have to watch the Land of the Lost from behind the couch because those hyperreal special effects were so terrifying.
From the exit for the Lincoln Tunnell on I-80 to the end of the Cross Bronx Expressway (and vice-versa for the way back) when I’m heading out to visit the in-laws. The sphincter tightens hoping not to break down or get hit. Going to the garage to get work done is a hassle in NE PA. I can only imagine dealing with it in the NJ/NYC area.
Sunland Hospital for the criminally insane in Tallahassee, Florida. It’s in the far corner of Tally where the only way to reach it is by one lonely country road. The hospital used to be a tuberculosis clinic in the 50’s, then a mental hospital. It was closed and boarded up in ‘83 because of “class action lawsuits”. Driving that road at night, turning the apocryphal corner where you finally see the run down, overgrown tower section come into view over the trees will make you question the existence of god.
My friends and I decided to take a “field trip” to the hospital one night; alcohol was involved… We all parked in front of that crumbling monolith and the misery was palpable, making our skin crawl; it was like getting the shakes after waking up from a bad dream. It didn’t take much to imagine the anguished screams bouncing off the bare, unpainted cinderblock walls of the isolation ward. The paucity of graffiti is testament enough to its malevolent aura; even local punks won’t go near it!
We walked around the back of Sunland using the moonlight to guide us because we were too drunk and stupid to remember flashlights. As we got closer to a back door, one of our douchebag friends decided, unbeknownst to us, that it would be funny to throw a section of pvc pipe against the wall; it made a loud crashing sound that shattered the tense silence, causing everyone to scatter in a hail of profanity and animal sounds. Another friend of ours had to take a minute by himself to come down, because he was sure that if he actually brought his gun, like he originally planned but decided against it, the douchebag pipe-thrower would have received more than one bullet in his ass! A week later, the city erected a fence around the hospital.
Sunland has since been slated for demolition, but I will always remember with a shudder seeing that god-forsaken hospital with its broken Florida windows and crumbling stucco against the night sky.
For anyone interested in seeing what it looks like, go here: http://www.uer.ca/locations/show.asp?locid=20467
There’s a stretch of road out near an abandoned military base on the way to my cousin’s house that just seems to be the creepiest spot on earth…the road is four lanes wide, but there’s never anyone on it, and there are huge holes ripped in the military grade fencing from the base, not to mention huge whitetails and black bears that freely roam the area, probably just waiting to eat stranded motorists. And I completely agree with Bill in PA about the .38 riding shotgun, but I prefer my old trusty Colt .45
The move Wrong Turn….lost in WV mountains, cannibalistic disfigured mountain men…creepy. Hostel…disturbing!
I have to drive a lot of backroads to get to Dallas to go to the airport, and there is a wind farm that I pass through that is creepy in a cool way (sort of creepy/surreal). You drive right under one and hear a bid “whoosh” is the wind is right.
As for movies, I am still inexplicably creeped out by “The Ring” – don’t know why. Oh, and the “Exorcist”. I love horror movies so I should be desensitized, yet I can’t get past it.
Top 20 again
Meatloaf again!!!
Another update and in the top 25. This is a good day!!
Highway 144 between Timmins and Sudbury in northern Ontario. You can travel for hours and not see another human. Whenever I have to drive this stretch at night it creeps me the fuck out. Kinda reminds me of Earth Abides, an old apocalyptic si-fi novel.
Vanilla Sky has been stuck in my head since it came out. It’s a terrible movie: Tom Cruise is extra annoying and Penelope Cruz is tragically over-clothed, but for some reason I can’t help but watch whenever it’s on.
As a rule, I don’t do horror/suspense movies, but for some odd reason I’ve seen “Hitcher” with C. Thomas Howell and “Seven”.
“Hitcher” was just creepy overall. Can’t believe that its the same Rutger Hauer from “Ladyhawke”. The last scene in “Seven” comes to mind. Brad and Morgan are out in the middle of nowhere desert and a package is delivered. I think that place is somewhere on the road from LA to Vegas. while driving some stretch of the road, I’ll look over and see the high-tension electrical lines and . . . . eek. Creepy!!
Jeff, you do have a jack, jack handle / lug wrench and fully functional spare tire in your car, don’t you? Being as you travel by night, having a good flashlight can’t hurt, either.
I see people stranded on the turnpike quite frequently because their “donut” space saving spare tires are soft or flat.
“The Ring” is one of those movies that make me apprehensive.
“And, while we’re at it, what movie that you know is retarded, has had an unexplainable lasting effect on you?”
That would be the movie “Donnie Darko”.
It features allegations of Time Travel (or psychosis), Halloween & rabbit costumes, sabotage of the local High School , The Evil Dead & Patrick Swayze as a creepy motivational speaker.
Hitcher – creepy enough to be true and disturbing enough to make me never want to see another movie again for a good long time.
Yes, I KNEW it wasn’t a documentary and yes, I KNEW noone really got their arms ripped out of their sockets, and yes, I knew there was a whole cast and crew surrounding all that isolation but still – damn – that was one creepy-ass movie!
I went to a private high school…and the Arts building was actually a converted convent. The fourth flour was supposedly haunted by a nun who died there. I was fine walking around the halls during the day, but at night…when I had to stay late for rehearsals…and i was alone….very creepy. Dark shadows, cold corners, echoing voices. The whole nine-yards…
The Blair Witch Project still scares the ba-jesus out of me. I stayed up the entire night after seeing that….and when I was dumb enough to go see Part II, i walked out after the first scene.
Good Morning Surf Reporters…………..
growing up, I had a crazy cat lady aunt who lived way out in rural Bum Fuck, PA. The fact that she was crazy, isolated and had a house full of feral cats were definite ingredients for a big steaming bowl of heebie-jeebies……
the movie Eraserhead did it for me, especially when the horse fetus thing is crying / screeching and Henry says “Oh, you ARE sick”. (full bodied piss shiver and shudder)
Oh, and the scene in Pink Flamingos where Crackers is fucking the chicken(once again-full bodied piss shiver)
Nightmare on Elm Street. Damn Freddy Krueger (sp?).
I have intense dreams as it is and it didn’t help anything to have a razor-fingered monster introduced to me. :-\
Killer Klowns from Outer Space. I don’t know why, but the Cotton Candy Cocoons always screwed with my impressionable mind.
I live in NH so there are lots of creepy back roads that I seem to travel alot at night. Theres one road in my town that I try to avoid because there are no houses for miles, its all just woods and a very small very old graveyard. for some reason small graveyards make me more nervous then the bigger ones.
The Poltergeist movies will always creep me out
Yeah, the Blair Witch Project scared the shit out of me. I watched it with a bunch of friends who laughed at it while I was terrified and I felt stupid because I knew it wasn’t real, but still scared nonetheless.
The movie that aways gives me the heebies was called “The Lost Colony”. I will not touch anything floating in the ocean because of that movie and I stay away from seaweed. Alright, so you never saw the movie. The story line goes like this:
A freighter steam out of New York Harbor encounters a storm. As the night goes on, the storm grows in intensity and at one moment the captain gets worried because the somne of the cargo he is carrying reacts violently with water. The begins to shake violently and then every thing becomes still. After awaking from being knocked out from what ever the ship went through, the captain checks to see if any damage has happened to the ship. Nothing inside is damaged so he goes out on deck and sees he is caught in a graveyard of ships in some kind of seaweed. He looks out and sees a countless amount of vessels from every age caught in like flys in a glue trap. But he sees no crew aboard any of the other vessels. He eyes a small island in the center of all the shipwrecks and thinks if we can get to the island. We have better chance of survival. Did I mention the giant squid that attacks the ship and drowns a couple members of the crew before getting poked in th eyes and then it drops into the depths of the seaweed ocean? Ok, consider it mentioned. Thats why the captain thinks getting to the island would be safer. Besides also being attacked by a bunch of pirates that ran towards the island once they were fired at by the crew. So, in the attempt to get to the island, one of the crew members who was injured decides to jump overboard and swim for the island. Bad idea, the seaweed quiclky grabs him and blood squirts everywhere as his body explodes from the seaweeds grip. Hey, wake up out there, I’m tellin a story. They make it to the island and find a bunch of naked amazon women, oh, wrong movie. Ah, just go and find the movie and you will too fear the seaweed. It came out back in the sixties, thats as much as I can remember.
A house I used to live in back in Ohio. Totally balls-out haunted. And I didn’t believe such things until I moved there. You had your doorknobs rattling, knives flying out of their wooden holder, heavy footfalls on the stairs, shadow-like people running behind me when I looked in a mirror, the door slamming on me when I went down into the basement (complete with shadow passing under the door when I clawed my way to the landing), and, my personal favorite, two bullets casings and a creepy mask that I pulled out from the wall behind a sink in the bathroom we were remodeling. Yep, I’m glad to be back in good ol’ PA.
Two stupid 70s horror movies did it for me, I guess because I watched them as a kid. “Shockwaves” (underwater zombie Nazis rise up from the sea to claim their former leader, the cavernous Peter Cushing, and kill a bunch of clueless tourists; sort of “Gilligan’s Island” meets “Das Boot” and “Night of the Living Dead”, complete with creepy synth music) and “Squirm” (angry flesh-eating earthworms attack hicks in the deep South….but of course!).
Uuuuh, I think I meant “the cadaverous Peter Cushing”. I guess I was fixated on those hallow cheeks of his. Damn you Tarkin!
Deep southern Georgia, where the roads are pitch black and all around you are cotton and pecan fields. I just know one of these days a ghost is going to be pounding on my window asking me to save him from a plantation.
I keep a bazooka in my car because I’m scared shitless of being hacked to death by one of those huge ax wielding maniacs that routinely attack stranded motorists in my paranoid part of Pennsylvania.
The movie “Grizzly” freaked me out as a child. Damn bears hiding behind doors.
The movies Candyman, Dr. Giggles and the original Amityville Horror- Scary stuff.
Scariest piece of road? Any major road going through Watts and Compton. Couple of areas in DC are a bit scary too! I was once hitchhiking from Moblie, Alabama to Pascaguola, Ms and we ended up on a two lane road some 30-40 miles from our destination. It was dark, no moon and we didn’t see a car for at least an hour while walking. We finally came up to a gas station/shack that looked scary and dimmly lit. We went in and asked for directions and this bubba lookin guy said “kaypa garen yar 40 marels arn ya sey da hiware dat’l tar ya ta paskaghoular.” Just then a guy drove up to get gas and we offered him fifty dollars to take us to Pascagoula. He took the cash and said come on. When we got there, he said, “You boys were lucky I came through, couple of weeks ago they found a boy strung up in that county.” We all started beatin the shit out of the guy who suggested we hitch hike to save money. we thanked the guy who gave us the ride and he said, “Thanks boys, I got to go to work.” He pulled up across the street at the shipyard we were going to and stamped his timecard and went in the front gate. We again started beatin the shit out of the guy who suggested we hitch hike.
I LOVE a good scary movie. My DVD library contains pretty much nothing but – zombie being my genre of choice.
For some reason, the one scene that has always stayed with me is in the Evil Dead when the chick is sitting on the floor lauging maniacally. Crazy people freak me out.
Happy Wednesday, Surfers!
Keli – Where do pecans grow in fields? I’m a southern boy via New Jersey.
Don’t remember the name of the movie, but the killer only targetted people with disabilities. He’d see them MINUS the body part when he looked at them. Also? He hid in their closets.
Way to go, Mom and Dad, for letting me watch THAT movie when I was 6. Took me until I was 30 to not have to check the closet every damn night.
I love driving, so noplace really creeps me out.
And am I mistaken when I say that the new format of the WVSR also comes with shorter posts? I’m not certain I care for this development at all.
Knuckleheads scar is pretty damn scary!
A lame 80’s movie called April Fools Day, I think they did a remake here recently but the orginal has just stuck with me all of these years creepy, and what about that one that starts out with a boating accident and a twin boy is killed and at the end they show that it was really the girl that died and the parent made the boy be a girl for all of those years, I think it was called sleep away camp or some such, Fucking freaky. I never went to camp cause of that.
No particular stretch of road. But in the case of movies, the one that f-ed me up for life was “Chilren of the Corn.” I grew up in southern Indiana surrounded by corn fields. I was young when that movie came out and my sister was babysitting me and forced me to watch it. Then her and all her friends drug me out in a corn field and left me there. Very, very traumatizing event that I am still scarred by that movie.
Holy crap! I just looked it up and they are making a Movie called Return to Sleepaway Camp. I may not ever send my kids to camp either.
“The Grudge” and that creepy creaking voice boy.
*huzzzz*
Joe T. – I did break down on the Cross Bronx (or close to it) right near the City Island exit and some dilapidated high-rise buildings. At night. With my 2 cats. On my way home to Philly for Thanksgiving dinner. I was 20-something and my Dad came to rescue me. I waited in the a little convenience store – the kind that lock the customers OUT because the neighborhood is so rough. I have a vaguen recollection of getting high with the two clerks while waiting. With my 2 cats.
Driving across the New River Gorge Bridge always creeps me out. Low guardrails and a long drive over 865 feet of air atop a boulder studded canyon gives me the willies. But if I think about Richard Gere strolling through the real Point Pleasant in Mothman Prophecies I feel better.
Every Martin Luther King Blvd’s in the country freaks me out man!!!!
Salem’s Lot-thanks Steven King, you rat bastard, now vampires could come out of any wall, anywhere. I slept in a ball as far away from the wall for 2 weeks after seeing that movie at 12 years old.
For some reason I always feel safe in my car. However I do have this weird thing that happens when I get home late. I’ll get out of my car to go in the house and suddenly I’ll feel like something is chasing me. There’s been a few nights when I slammed the door behind me.
BTW, Laura’s right, the Grudge is awful man.
I saw a made for TV movie as a kid that has been w/ me for all these years. You should netflix it….good stuff. It was directed by Wes Craven (!) and it is called Stanger in Our House. Linda Blair was in it!
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0078330/
Oooh! Carlos reminded me of a road that creeps me out. Michigan Avenue down near old Tiger Stadium – actually, as long as I stay on Michigan Avenue, I’m fine, but if it’s even slightly evening-ish, I won’t turn down the street that leads to the old train station – that building freaks me out royally. Actually, if I’m being truthful, I won’t turn down that road during the day either, if I can avoid it. I’ll find another way to get to Mexicantown.
There’s this one scene in “Saving Private Ryan” that gives me the heebie-jeebies. This German makes his way up to a room where one US soldier ends up in a fight with him. They go back and forth and the German ends up on top of him and starts pushing a knife into his chest. The guy struggles and the German says, “Shhhhh, shhhhhh, it’s easier this way.” (or something like that). Gave me the frikken creeps.
There’s this one stretch of highway in Huntsville, AL where you’re coming down from an overpass that gives me some anxiety when it rains. The road isn’t drained properly (I guess) and small lakes form at the bottom of the hill. I’ve hydroplaned and almost hit the wall of death several times. The way I deal with it is to roll down my windows and speed through it while screaming, “Come and get me! Come and get me Mother F**kers!”
Driving Mrs. Daisy – makes me want to never take an old bag for a long car ride for fear of committing capital murder.
So, someone named Limey is busting my ass. Wow.
I believe it was The Craft where two girls are in a garage and the door springs come off and kill one of them. i am a little scared to open my garage door since. Stupid I know but I have that image in my head every single time. I don’t remember anything else from that movie.
CHUCKY CHEESE CREEPS ME OUT
I remember as a kid seeing one of those “Herbie” movies in the 70’s. There was some kind of dream sequence where Herbie (a VW Bug for those not in the know) opens up its front trunk, which is filled with crocodile-like teeth and chases some kids or something. Not too clear on the rest because I tried to run out of the movie theater at that point.
Also, my Mom foolishly took me to see The Shining in the movie theater. I was 10 and not at all into it. Went into the theater lobby for several extended periods.
oh, yeah. And really long bridges freak me out to cross.
And reaalllly windy roads.
And narrow roads with teeny-tiny guardrails and huge drop-off.
i didn’t have much fun in the hills above Palm Desert – I think it’s rt. 74 into the San Jacinto Mountains. :::shudder:::
Funny how that stuff comes flooding back to you.
Bazooka! Cool … huh-huh…
I can’t believe nobody’s mentioned The Shining yet. Gah. The twins were the worst.
The Ring put me off horror movies for good (so says I), but I love Shawn of the Dead and all the Evil Deads.
My gauge of movie goodness is how much I think about it the next day or two. Maybe your gauge is busted.
I’ve never been creeped out while driving. If I do get the jibblies, I just tell myself I’m the scariest thing in these parts, so whatever wants to jump out at me is gonna get a whuppin.
That, or a vision of a pasty balding man shitting himself. Either way, it’s going to be unpleasant.
Fields/farms, pecans grow on trees!
I need a bowl of corn a weiner and, oh, excuse me sir, I see you’re alone but I can tell you’re not lonely. Do you mind if I join you? Great!
Jeff,
You are just a piece of Man-ass waiting to be harvested on that road.
In st. louis they converted the old city hospital into condos. Me and the ex went and looked at the show model, to get there you had to walk down a creepy dark, dank hallway complety with dripping water. It was just eerie.
It reminded me of Session 9.
As a kid when I had to walk out to the garage to turn the light out at night I just knew that werewolves were going to get me.
When you hear a banjo (or more) playing, then start worrying.
I didn’t mention “The Shining” initially because I thought we were supposed to list bad movies. But yeah, empty hotel lobbies with o.c. levels of symmetry about them always give me the willies thanks to that movie.
Tilly: I had a home inspector once who kept punctuating his admonishments of what needed attention in the house with horror stories. For example, the washer connection had old hoses so he brought out the Wilfred Brimley voice and said something like, “1982. Larry Burman went on a ski trip for the weekend. His rubber hoses broke. He returned to a flooded house and a drowned hamster.”
You know, incredible stories like that which probably never happened. When we got to the garage he had this to say: “1992. Mary Waters. Had old springs in her garage door. One evening she raised the garage door for a smoke. The spring broke and took off her ear.”
I burst out laughing, of course. Which unfortunately killed the stories. But yeah, now I think of Mary and her ol’ ragged Van Gogh ear whenever I look at the garage door. Better replace them springs soon, I reckon!
As a child the Amazing journey 70’s ? where they injected miniature people into a guys body totally freaked me out! I was sick and frightened to death by it. Also Amityville horror, I saw a picture where Africans were eating maggots off of a dead body don’t even know the name of it perhaps The gate? was perverse to say the least, Also Hellraiser #1 was sooo bizarre.
Horror is my favorite genre, so good or bad, most “scary” movies don’t actually bother me. One of my wife’s favorites, though … “Beloved” creeps the hell out of me. Part of the movie revolves around the ghost of a toddler girl. You keep seeing the girl as how-old-she-would-be-if she’d-lived but she’s still got the baby mentality. A creepy, dead-eyed 20 something girl wandering around, moaning the baby-talk equivalent of ghostly wails. YEEKS ! Give me a good old fashioned zombie horde anyday !
Wherever there’s people who have McCain signs in their front yards.
And my scariest movie of all time that still freaks me out is either House of 1000 Corpses or the Texas Chainsaw Massacre. The old one. That guy in the van!! *shudder*