What Scares You?

I’m not an especially big fan of horror movies, but if I end up watching one, I’m the person hiding behind the covers the entire time. And, to be completely honest, my wussiness extends past horror— there are several Harry Potter movies I still can’t watch. (Something about the soul-sucking dementors, two-faced Quirrell, and the entire second movie terrifies me to this day.) Some people, however, actually enjoy being scared—so in honor of Halloween, I asked some fellow New Americans what terrifies them most. Check out their responses below.

Samantha Webster

When I was a child, I dreamed after watching Chicken Run about these evil claymation ducks attacking me in my room. I ran into the hallway to escape and made it to the kitchen, where my mom was. When I got there, I saw my mom sitting in a chair and approached her from behind. She slowly turned around and, instead of my mom, I saw a duck! I woke up terrified and checked my room, which thankfully had no ducks. I went down to the kitchen, where my mom slowly turned around and WAS A DUCK! Then I woke up for real.

Joe Wilkes

Overcooked steak. And also clowns. If your child is having a birthday party with a clown involved, please don't invite me. (I would also suggest not inviting the clown and sparing your child from that horror.)

Roselyn Miller

It must have been just past 4 am, since the sound of screaming crows echoed and bounced through otherwise muted streets. My head was still fogged up and heavy, and the only evidence that I’d actually slept that night was the thin line of drool pooling on my pillowcase. I tried to wipe my cheek, but cold gravity pushed my arm further into the mattress. My legs wouldn’t kick, my shoulders wouldn’t lift, and after a frantic second, I realized there was a strong pressure on my chest stopping my lungs. This was how I’d die, under my pink-and-yellow hula girl sheets, at 8 years old.

If I could see anything, I wouldn’t be so scared. My eyelids seemed to be sewn together, but I could feel black fur poking into my eyes through the holes between stitches. If I could open my mouth and inhale quickly, I might live long enough to know who—or what—was doing this to me. I pulled at dry threads of air, but the only thing that filled my nose and throat was more black fur—and then a sharp thorn hooked into my skin. The slow drip of blood was too much. I shot up.

Bright sunbeams diffused the ethereal magic of dawn, car horns replaced cawing crows, and my fat cat sulked away—annoyed that I had disturbed her precious napping spot on my face.

Autumn McDonald

I did fifth grade at an alternative (some might call it “hippy”) school in Cambridge, Massachusetts. My teacher Harvey (we called all our teachers by their first name) would read a book to us for about 15 minutes every other day; the whole class would listen, enthralled, until he finished it. One Halloween, we read this book I can’t remember the title of—but that haunts me to this day. The protagonist was this man tormented by a little dude in his head—not his own voice, but an actual little parasite-like fellow who took over and started controlling him and driving him mad. His name was something like Enic, and he was a diabolical tiny devil, literally living in the guy’s head and coercing him into committing terrible deeds. I’m not sure where Harvey found this not-appropriate-for-fifth-graders tale, but it’s the scariest story I’ve ever been told … and the school lice epidemic the following week didn’t help.

Rina Li

When I was nine, I dreamed I was riding and, for some reason, steering a rollercoaster—hooray, yay, so fun :) But all of a sudden, Martin Luther King, Jr. is standing on the tracks? And I'm hurtling uncontrollably toward him at, like, twenty billion miles per hour?? And, then, because it is obviously not ideal for a nine-year-old to be driving a whole rollercoaster, I RUN OVER MARTIN LUTHER KING!!! JR!!!!!!!!!

In my defense, I’m pretty sure I had a raging fever + we’d been learning about MLK in school + I woke up screaming and sobbed for like 10 minutes to my mom about how I'd just killed Dr. King, so I definitely felt (and still feel) bad about it. Anyway, some people dream of an end to systemic racism and oppression, and others dream about running that person over with a rollercoaster. America, I'm sorry.

Fuzz Hogan

My dad actually provided the scary on Halloween. He was generally seen around the neighborhood as the super-strict, don't-make-him-mad father who was always working around the house (but also the hyper-capable guy that other parents turned to in an emergency), so the neighborhood kids expected to find my mom or one of us 8 kids at the door. Instead, it was, as far as they could tell, a straight-up goblin with a guttural growl (actually, my dad with a stocking over his face, a pillow to make a hunchback, and one of those old-fashioned candles like Scrooge used). Bullies and their lackeys from all across town turned tail and ran away screaming—reminding me that not every tough guy is so tough, after all.

Narmada Variyam

When your co-worker nags you at the last minute for help on the Halloween roundup she’s working on for the Weekly.