Brands of creepiness

Apr 17, 2009 14:23

Looking at the American version of creepy. I got about halfway where I wanted, forgot what I was trying to say, and left off.

Rambling pedantic cut )

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khronos_keeper April 18 2009, 02:11:48 UTC
it's hard to pin down creepiness in America, because of all the blending of cultures and different regions.

Yeah, which is something I kind of echoed above, and I totally agree with. I suppose I was deriving the basis for this kind of stuff sometime after 1900, where there weren't such stark divides between separate parts of American culture?

But you're absolutely right with some of the older ghost and goblin stories, how they're all different according to region. And yeah, Northern NY ought to be pretty different from Florida- but I would like to know just how much. :D

Mostly the kinds of stories we have here are.... kind of weird- some of them don't even have solid stories. Just rumors- like the White Ghosts, where if one sees you, you should never try to outrun it, because it's always faster than you, and it's spit bruns like acid. Then there's the Schellgeist (thank you Germans ew).

There was this one story I read from a book that scared the piss out of me when I was young- it was a story about a girl who heard a voice calling from the stairwell at night. It would say, "Tilly, I'm on the first step," and each night would see the voice calling out a higher step number. Finally, she would hear it say, "Tilly, I'm in the hallway," and then next night, "Tilly, I'm in the bedroom." Finally, it was Tilly... I've got you."

DD: ENDLESS DISMAY

I mean I think sourceless voices are the creepiest thing ever. Sourceless intelligent voices. (On a related note, something like this did happen to me once, when I was reading in bed one night. I thought I heard two people talking in my room, but just low enough so that I couldn't decipher what they were saying, just a rapid murmur. It startled me enough, and my brain recognized it as speech enough, that I looked around for the people in my room. Serves me to sleep in the same room where my great grandmother died, wtf.)

ANYWAY

I really like the Southern ghost stories, if only because they're so different from the brittle and cold stories from up here. And also, it reminds me of Pendergast. :D Can you just imagine Special Agent Pendergast just scaring the shit out of himself listening to ghost stories told by Cajuns and such from the Bayou?

STORY TIME SAM GIVE ME AN EXAMPLE OF SOUTHERN GHOST STORIES GO GO GO

Also, that last quote of yours- I don't like coyotes in my front lawn, but I like the complete silence of my 175 year old house less. For understandable reasons.

OH OH OH also, adding onto that last quote, my Dad (who believes in ghosts but refuses to talk about them) use to threaten my older sister that if she didn't come home before it got dark in the winter, the wolves were going to come across the frozen Lake Ontario and eat her. :DDD (It was his way of making sure she wasn't going to get kidnapped by pervs. D:)

I have totally lost all relevance. :D

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