Who among us can claim to know what is the scariest? Oh, we all pretend to know. We invent scary creatures, or we put ordinary people in horrible, and yet familiar circumstances. Maybe we throw in some real-life folklore to give it a bit of realism.
But what is that, compared to truly experiencing fear for oneself? It’s a false equivalence, right from the get-go. The We I speak of, in this case, being the writers and hopefuls that create scary stories in hopes of evoking that visceral reaction that everyone here craves.
For me, and for many others, it was that reaction that inspired the urge to create stories ourselves. It was always a case of finding the most unnerving thing you could think of and throwing a relatable character at it.
This sometimes took the shape of a monster or a spirit. Something alien that plays to the basic fear all humans have of the monster under the bed. That which our parents told us would gobble us up if we didn’t finish the last of our broccoli.
For me, that was the man that lived in the manhole and would chase me around if I refused to clean my room. I know, my mother wasn’t particularly creative when coming up with ways of getting me to clean. The more enterprising parents even cooked up things like the nebulous boogie man, who does… Something? Presumably, he’s bad, and that unknown factor is enough.
These are far more visceral fears for most of us than those that we come across on Reddit or in books because they’re real. Not real in the same way that I’m real, maybe, but more real to each of us individually.
I imagine everyone has their own boogie man. Be it the boogie man itself, or some vague and terrifying creature dredged up from the startlingly evil and creative minds of the world’s parents. So then, you’re now probably thinking, “What the hell kinda story is this gonna be?” It’s going to be the real kind.
Now, I’m a writer, and arguably not a very good one at that, as I’m sure the comments will remind me. But, it does mean that I’ve got a little bit of practice thinking up all the little nasties that come from beyond the normal realm of things.
Creatures with long curling fingers that hide in the dark corners of your room, smiles that seem to go on forever, and faces that have no eyes and all that. These are scary to imagine of course, especially when described by someone who knows what they’re doing, but they only do so much once you’ve heard about the fifteenth smiling man or the hundredth long-armed gentleman with a habit of eating little kids.
It was scary to everyone here, once. It certainly was to me. But even the best of these stories don’t quite match up to the man in the manhole. Never has something unnerved me to the point where I still avoid it to this day, as I do the Manhole in my house.
So, we’re gonna take a different approach.
There’s no monster I can think up, no creature I can conjure, that will ever match what everyone already has in their mind. It’s pretty standard writing advice. Let the audience do the work for you. They know what scares them. And it’s absolutely correct.
The best writers can get you to imagine something so terrifying and vile that you’ll be sleeping with one eye open for a week, looking into every shadow in your room as you drift off to sleep. But, if I may ask, what are you looking for?
When you look out into the shadows of your bedroom, or maybe your living room, what is it you’re looking for? When there’s a movement in the corner of your eye in the dead of night, it’s always a quick glance to silence the errant thought.
What do you think is going to be there? That pile of washing that suddenly looks uncharacteristically wrong, for no other reason than the fact that you’re in a jumpy mood, what is it really? What are you afraid to see?
Logic dictates that it’s nothing, that it couldn’t be anything. When the lights go on, the questioning glances cease like clockwork, and the washing returns to mundanity. But when the darkness creeps in as you go to sleep, those logical thoughts certainly don’t stop you from having another look, do they? You’re not even sure what you’re looking for. It’s just wrong.
No movement, no strange sound. It’s the same as it always is. But another glance isn’t gonna kill you. It’s not like you’re really expecting anything to be there. It’s just to be extra sure.
It’s the same with doors. I never trust doors after I finished writing something scary. I always find myself rushing past them quickly, while subtly pretending I’m not jumpy as all hell when I do it.
I mean, can’t you just feel something behind you sometimes? When you rush into your room and quickly close the door, just making it away from whatever was behind you. What was it, do you think?
Not to mention the fact that all the doors need to remain completely open, or completely closed. It cannot be anything in-between. After all, when there’s that opening that’s not quite complete, you just can’t help but imagine something hiding behind there.
What’s it doing out there? Is it just watching you, waiting? Maybe it’s just walking around the house, and the second you push that door open a little bit more, you’ll be staring head first at everything you ever thought was gonna get you in the night.
Maybe it’s one of those dudes in a suit who’s perpetually smiling, and you’ll see his yellow grin casting a faint light into the night. It might even be the boogie man. That nebulous and yet undeniably frightening figure who’s finally come to spirit you away.
That’s why the door is always closed, or all the way open. You just can’t have something for them to hide behind. You need to see them. Worse yet if the opening is too small instead. A big but incomplete opening is bad. You just can’t help but wonder what’s behind the part of the door you can’t see. It’s just impossible not to imagine that something is on the other side of that blind spot, hidden away from you.
But when it’s too small, you just can’t help but wonder what’s going to come into view of the part that you can see. That little slot of darkness that peers out into the hall, or into the closet. You stare at it, wondering if an eye might just appear to look at you for a fleeting moment.
Perhaps a pale finger might just wrap its way around the door. Any number of things might happen, and that’s why you stare at that little line of darkness and remember for the future to always keep the door firmly closed.
That doesn’t get rid of the small line of darkness at the bottom of the door of course, but that doesn’t count. Unless you think about it too hard.
After typing all of that out it makes me wonder what the people who read this are thinking. What kind of things made their way through the door? What was the washing for you? For me, I thought of an old aboriginal folk creature. That is an Australian aboriginal folk creature. Gotta be specific, after all.
It’s called a net-net. It’s a tall, hairy thing. That’s all. It doesn’t have some crooked smile, or a meat cleaver, or anything like that. Apparently, it just watches you from afar, until it gets you.
My uncle told me about it when I was very young, and it always scared the crap out of me. He told me they (and yes, it’s a they,) took the kids that strayed too far away from the missions, those being re-education camps for Native Australians made by the white settlers.
He told me this while my family and I were staying at one such place, and my mind wandered all around the landscape as I looked for them in hopes that I would see them before they took me.
I had no clue what they would do when they caught me, or what I would do to stop it. I just couldn’t help but look at the horizon and wonder if I was far enough out that they’d get me. It was another boogie man for me, in a long list of many, in case you couldn’t tell.
Now when I look to the tree line, I just can’t help but think I’ll see a big hairy thing, sitting silently, ready to take me the second I get too far away from home.
Why do I always look? It’s the same reason everyone looks out into the darkness, I suppose. It’s just a natural urge to see it coming. Not that you really know what’s coming most of the time. It’s just it. Whatever boogie man might occupy your thoughts for the moment in question.
Even not knowing what it is, you just can’t help but look out into the darkness and try to see. Maybe if you looked away you would ignore it after a while, but at that moment, when you stare into the darkness of the unknown, you can’t look away.
If you look away, it’ll get you. You know it won’t. You know it for a fact. When you look away from the dark shape in your doorway, absolutely nothing will happen. But something instinctual tells you that the second you look away from it, it’ll get you. You’ll look away and before you know it, it’ll have you.
I wonder why that is? Maybe it’s some sort of instinct left over from the days mankind struggled in the grand game of evolution, or maybe it’s just some quirk that made its way into the human psyche by sheer accident. Who’s to say, though?
All of us horror writers want to write the scariest story, make the scariest monster, and illicit that dark nebulous fear that we all feel in the wee hours of the night. It’s why I write horror at all.
But sometimes words on a page are so distant. We hear of characters freezing when they encounter the things that all of us imagine, or we read about how the characters react in the moment. Their thoughts “stop in their tracks” they feel “like death has crept up on them” and all that good stuff.
All of it is meaningless. Unless the reader takes a moment to think, to genuinely imagine the things that have been laid out before the character, it means nothing.
There is nothing but fear for the character and a short-lived fear for yourself, except in the most extraordinary examples, and this post right here? It’s not one of those. It’s not meant to be. It’s a reminder of the boogie man. The little things that hide in the dark when you drift off to sleep.
It’s a reminder to stop when you’re reading for a moment, take a look around, and imagine. Look into the darkness outside your door and imagine the boogie man is waiting for you. Have a second glance at that pile of clothes. They might just move after all. Take a second and be scared. Let the horror become another of those boogie men. Let the horror become real.
This might be the horror fan in me speaking, but writing this I remember why I started reading nosleep articles in the first place. Every time I look up from my laptop I stare into the hall for a few seconds and damn myself for ever turning off a light in my life. I know that for the next month, there is no way in hell I’ll be able to sleep without closing every single door in the house.
Even in the day, I’m going to be questioning why I ever decided I’d write horror instead of something more cozy and warm. So I guess ill just thank everyone for reading through this, if you did, and I’ll try not to think about everything I wrote here. ever.