When I was little, my bedroom had a 4 way outlet which looked kind of like [::] , with 4 black recepticles with a peeling, yellowing white
face plate. We lived in an old house, so many of the outlets were decades old and lacked a third
prong. Anyway, the light was usualy kept on
in the hallway at night, and just enough light came through the closed door that you could just barely see it. Wheneever I looked
at it, the outlet appeared to dance and morph, and this scared the •••• out of me when I was
a kid. One time, I was watching it in terror,
and it appeared to turn into a very wild looking checkerboard, and I freaked out. I had to cover the outlet everynight just so I wouldn't get scared to death! Funny thing is, stuff like
this still scares me sometimes,

Around the same time, I had a Speak and Spell.
One time, I was playing with it when the batteries
ran down. It started crackling, and in a very high, very evil voice,
it started going "ELF! ELF! E! E! E! E!". The display also became erratic. I tried to shut the thing off, but it wouldn't (soft power), and the battery case was child resistant. So I
freaked out and chucked the thing accross the room *hard*. Amazingly, it worked fine
aftwerards (with new batteries, of course ,
but that little episode caused me many nights
of staying awake , terrified :|

I would be afraid of the dark inside only. A dark room would be bad news for me. But outside on a pitch black night I would be perfectly fine. I don't understand it and outgrew it but it still is confusing.

When the lights went off, the thing that scared me was a Raggedy Ann and Andy coatrack. They had creepy eyes, man. I forget how many times my mom had to cover it up with a blanket at night before she decided it would be easier to just get rid of it...

A couple years later, the thing that scared me most was the Large Marge sequence of "Pee Wee's Great Adventure". Well, not so much that sequence, but the anticipation of it, and when my brother would quote it at night.

One of the kids in the movie was just featured on America's Most Wanted this past Sunday 8-0

When I was in elementary school, they used an electronic bell for the school (a simple ocillator/tone circuit). One day, the thing malfunctioned, and the principal tried
to fix it. When she sounded the bell, it made a very weird noise, like it was rapidly changing pitch at random. This scared the stuffing out of me and I had trouble falling asleep for a long time after that.

Dear R, back in 1998, we moved to california. We temporarly moved out stuff into a large indoor storage complex. The building was kind of layed out like this.
-----solid walls------
|[] [] [] [] [] [] [] |
|'''''''''''''''''''''|
|[] [] [] [] [] [] [] |
|'''''''''''''''''''''|
|[] [] [] [] [] [] [] |
|'''''''''''''''''''''|
|[] [] [] [] [] [] [] |______stairs, other stuff
|'''''''''''''''''''''
|[@@@@[][]a bunch of fence/cage like units here,
doors, etc

(sorry for the bad ASCII diagram)

the []'s wound be large blocks of storage rooms
from floor to ceiling, with corridors running on all 4 sides of them. The lighting was on timers, where you would walk the corridors, and switch any dark sections you had to through, but turning a knob simaler on an egg timer. The lights would automaticly shut off in 30mins to an hour. Anyway, as we were unloading, I decided to check the place out, and I encountered many dark sections, and the horozontal abyss I was staring in scared me. I tried to play chicken by running through one of the dark sections, and let me just tell you I was scared ####less after I did! :}

it didn't show up right in my diagram, but basicly,
the storage blocks were surroned by 3 solid,
windowless walls, with the cage storage units and
loading docks, etc at the bottom of the diagram.

Its Taz Doom 2:
you need to change the font using the \fixed{} command. Here is your diagram using that command:
-----solid walls------
|[] [] [] [] [] [] [] |
|'''''''''''''''''''''|
|[] [] [] [] [] [] [] |
|'''''''''''''''''''''|
|[] [] [] [] [] [] [] |
|'''''''''''''''''''''|
|[] [] [] [] [] [] [] |______stairs, other stuff
|'''''''''''''''''''''
|[@@@@[][]a bunch of fence/cage like units here,doors, etc

That place would have freaked me out as a kid but sounds neat as an adult. One of the places I used to work at a security guard had us having to walk through the basement to check on the heating/cooling/generators/etc...

Since most of the time the stuff worked ok we left the lights on automatic with the motion sensors so that when you walked under a light they turned on and off when you left or if you stood still too long. That got kind of freaky to some people as you would be walking along in a pool of light surrounded by darkness with all kinds of machinery noises going on. Right out of many horror movies.

Oh and that reminded me of a practical joke we played on a newbie at that site one night. One of the guys hid down there dressed as Jason with one of those small chainsaws (We did take the chain off the bar, we just wanted to scare the guy as he was a punk not actually hurt him.)

I was walking with him and got a call on the radio to go up to the first floor (appropritely timed of course) so that left him alone. Ihid until he went in the basement and then listened at the doors. From what I understand went on it is a good thing he wasnt armed because the jason came out of hiding kicking the saw on just as the newb got to the halfway point. I heard him scream like a little girl all the way back to the doors after the newb threw his flashlight at our Jasonese guy. Newb raninto me coming back down pulled himself together and told me we had an intruder. I put out a call on the radio and our jason hid the saw and mask and "met" us coming in from the other side. It was hard not to laugh our arses off.

We finally did tell the newb about it after he calmed down and stopped being such a punk and it was his turn to help initiate the next newb.

Jason does not use a chainsaw!!!!

Come on, it's a good story. :-)

When I was a kid of about six or seven - Rod Serling. He once did a plug for To Tell The Truth that scared the pants off me.

Come on, it's a good story. :-)

Come on, it's a board about nitpicking. :-)

I had to do it!

The checkerboard thing isn't as weird as you think. A couple of years ago, I had what I guess people call a "waking" dream, where you are half awake, but your visual field is still being influenced by your dreaming. There was an air vent in my bedroom of the apartment my family was staying in at the time. The room was very dimly lit, and it had a blue glow from the outside, like you see at dawn or dusk. I looked up at the air vent, and it seemed to take the form of a very ratty checkerboard flag, like the kind used in Nascar races. But it was extremely tattered and very EVIL looking. I was terrified, and I tried to scream, but I could only get a pathetic squeak of a scream out. The weirdest part was, I don't even know if I was fully asleep, partialy awake or not, because I remember the ambient audio had a pretty ragged sound to it, like an old phonograph record, or an AM radio. When I woke up normaly, the room still was dimly lit with a blue glow, but the vent looked normal.

I am a bit of an arachnaphobic, so spiders have always given me the creeps.
But when I was really little, I was scared to death to go to a certain section of Wal-Mart, where they kept the fishing poles. To me, all the poles sticking up looked like the legs of an enormous upside-down spider.
Mom said that every time we passed the aisle, I started crying. Shopping with me was NOT a pleasure.

About that outlet,
we moved out of that house in 1994. when i last saw the house,it
was 1998. the new owners remodled the house, so hopefuly, they sent
the [::] straight to h*ll. :>

[::] = /-\

[=][=][=][=][=][=]{----San Bernardino Cabooses

If a glass had even a drop of water in it, I would absolutely not drink milk from it. I didn't like skim milk at all, and wouldn't tolerate water in milk. I'm slightly more tolerant now, but I still don't like skim milk. Not scary, but icky.

When I'm in my bedroom and it's dark, a vehicle passes by and its headlights shine through the window and makes a "reverse shadow" which moves across the walls of the bedroom, it's scary and spooky--I still don't like it.