Disturbing Channels to Creep You Out at Night, and One Close Encounter with the Deranged Kind
At this point, I can’t quite point to when exactly I started enjoying Horror as a genre. I suppose at my core, I always have. As a child, I was into ghost stories; still am.
I was just never into the whole horror serial killers, blood and gore, violence, and just general crazies for the sake of crazy. I think some of that biases against those tropes are changing… not all, but some.
I’ve been listening to a range of horror-esque podcasts via Youtube. It’s easy listening, especially for the ridiculous and bad, while I’m doing some admin tasks for my business or for clients.
Here are three of my favourite channels.
CreepsMcPasta with the story I sold my Soul for a Used Dishwasher, which was surprisingly entertaining and told in two parts. I’m waiting on the next part. I like to listen to his 1hr to 3hr compilations while I work. Most stories are meh, but they scratch a certain itch. Sometimes he shares a really good one.
My father turned me onto to Bedtime Stories. My favourite ones are about ghosts, but he dips into alien stories from time to time. The most recent one I enjoyed was: Tulong : The Extremely Haunted Malina Film Centre. There’s nothing quite like an ambitious tyrant who drives her works to death to serve her ambitions then follows up with some hard earn comeuppance.
The third channel deals in reddit stories, which has become a guilty pleasure of mine lately. They focus on ‘real world’ creepy stories. The collection I’m sharing with you today is actually what got me thinking about the lens through which my appreciation of Horror has evolved. Don’t think too hard on these stories though, there’s really nothing much too Mr. Nightmare’s 3 Disturbing True Instagram Horror Stories.
If I’m honest, alien abduction stories (or at least well told ones) scare the bejesus out of me, but for the most part, I’m mostly sad when those stories come up on tv. I say sad because the ‘victim’ is clearly in distress and needs help. It’s pains me to know this piece of their personal story, is something they will not let go of. No matter how painful. It is THE THING that makes them special.
I think this is how my perspective of horror has changed. It’s less about jump scares, and more about the inner workings of the human condition. The demons that haunt us. The fears that drive us. Our limited control over the animal that wants to destroy everything we’re built for ourselves. The more civilized we pretend to be, the bigger the threat? Or is it the otherway around? Are we all just pretending?
I would rather pretend to be civilized, rather than succumbing to my base-urges. I’m frustrated a lot of the time, and I don’t know how that might manifest by just giving in to it. I know civilized me backs away, and isolates. I fear uninhibited me. It’s probably an unfounded fear. She probably would just lock the door and login to player 2 and join me for video games as we decompress from the things that are outside of our control.
With age, my experiences with the unhinged has grown. With age, I can contextualize better. Having endured the mental degradation of a close late family member who believed themselves to be a medium, healer, and other worldly being, who had attracted the special interest of foreign agencies… I have a special connect with these stories, and their hidden messages.
For me, a ghost story isn’t about a lost love returning from the dead to offer one last good-bye. It’s about grief and being unable to let go, the fear of the future without these people, and the guilt associated with moving on.
A vengeful spirit isn’t there for shock horror, although that’s how the vast majority of ghost stories on film and television go, it’s about justice, repetition, patterns of behavior. New beginnings, and the hostile nature of a new place that’s not quite home.
That’s the thing about horror. It’s horror seeps into your pores with time. As I grew into adulthood, it’s not the impossible imaginary monsters who lurk under my bed that freak me out, but the man on the street on my way to work one morning whose erratic movements speaks to a recent act of self-medication of their favorite narcotic, whose toxic mix simultaneously drives them into a euphoric state while upping their fear and paranoia.
I keep a cautious eye on him as he jerks in the opposite direction. I cross the street, widening the distance between us. I don’t know how long he’s been addict. I don’t know how long the drug has been eating at the nerves of his mind and body, unravelling the walls between my reality and his. Together, several yards apart, our terror grows.
He screams. I jump, hasting my pace, and cast a quick but cautious glance at him. He’s not looking my way. Thank god, I didn’t make eye contact with this animal. He devolving. His scream are gargled, his language a mix of words that don’t quite belong together. Either way, he’s shouting the security cameras on the outside of a beer store. No doubt decorative, even for this end of town. Why did my employers think that hooker row was a great place to set up a studio? Cheap rent. Of course. How could I be so silly? I’m just an employee. I’m replaceable should the worst occur. I need a new job.
As adults, we learn pretty fast that real life is plenty scary without the help of ghosts and goblins.
As for that man…
I made the mistake of stopping by the coffee shop to pick up some breakfast. I thought I would be safe. I thought because there were other people and that he was currently engrossed in his tirade with the security camera that he clearly had more important things to occupy his attention.
The line in the coffee shop isn’t bad, I’m served pretty fast by this shops usual standards. I’m waiting on my tea and sandwich. Only a couple of minutes wait. I tuck myself into wait line, and in comes our man. Twitching erratically toward to counter.
“Do you need help?” the concerned cashier asks, but the way she aged by 30-years in a sentence spoke volumes to her experience with this situation. A situation that his end of town is just rampant for.
He yammers something unintelligible. We’re all watching, like rabbits waiting for the sign to bolt, but all too afraid to slap our foot down to send the signal.
The manager, a large man, with tattoos on his knuckles comes out. He’s pleasant, but most importantly calm, telling the young clerk to pick up where he left off with his chores, while he attended this looming unpredictable threat.
He all just want our coffee. We’re all too afraid to move. To breathe, less we trigger the clearly deranged animal in our midst. “May I take you’re order?” the manager says, boldly making eye contact.
The man has stopped twitching as though considering the hidden meaning of the request. His head slowly wobbles upward, his eyes darting from the manager to the menu about him and back.
He places his order, once again incoherent, but coffee is somewhere in the mix.
“That’ll be $1.25,” the manager replies. There this moment where his expression softens, relief that all that needs to happen is the exchange of cash and someone will sacrifice their coffee to get the rabid animal from the space with far too many people in it.
There was a stabbing just last week. A shooting the week before. My god, I need to get another job!
We all release our held breath when the man flourishes his debit card and strikes the pay pad.
His jittery movements doesn’t allow for the pad to register the card.
With the patients of a saint, the manager repeats the process. He doesn’t offer to help, lest this kind gesture is perceived as an act of aggression.
As someone who has insulted people with an ill timed “Hello”, I understand first hand the emotional instability of even the sane. This is like watching a game of Russian roulette.
The man tries again.
There’s a moment of consideration on the part of the Manager before he says. “I’m sorry sir, but your card isn’t working.”
This was followed by a flurry of curses - literally. We were all cursed to have ‘pox‘ and ‘plague of locus’ upon us. I’m pretty sure there was something about a blood sun, but by this point a burly man had stepped in front of me, gently hiding me behind his bulk.
While the silliness of the curses disarmed part of the threat that this man held over us, we maintained our silence and our stillness. No sudden movements, while calculating the distance between us, him, the door, and our competition. We’re Canadian… who was going to be the first to open the door and endure the exit of the six other customers.
It is weird to note that I don’t think anyone else entered the shop during this time? I don’t think anyone did. There were plenty of eyes on the situation. The people looking in were probably waiting for the threat to exit and wander off in whatever direction before coming in for their morning joe.
The man twitches and screams obscenities at the manager, at us, at God for dying him is God-given-right to a morning coffee. He twitches angrily from the shop.
We don’t breathe. We watch him like one herd. We’d rightfully be called ‘sheeple’ as we mentally guide him to the correct door, furthest from us. He exits. We don’t breathe. He’s pacing along the front entrance.
That’s okay. We have a second exit, but we need to know which direction he’s going to head off to. We’ll all be late for work, not that our man cares. Was the coffee worth it? Our bosses will no doubt blame us for not thinking our coffee addiction through. “What will you do about this situation in the future,” my team lead will reprimand in a her fake, proactive way. That’s fine (not really). I’m not coming here again.
The man demands money from the delinquents lurking at the entrance. For delinquents, they’re good enough not to bother anyone, beyond speaking loudly at one another about how the government has yet-again fucked them over. But they leave well enough alone.
I don’t know if it’s bravery or stupidity that has them chase off the man. They could well be so accustomed to the behavior that it doesn’t register as abnormal or that it’s a threat. Either way, I’m grateful to them for chasing him away.
We peer through the distant frost covered window from our vigil across the shop. The man is walking away, up some steps, toward the bus station.
We peer through the distant frost covered window from our vigil across the shop. The man is walking away, up some steps, toward the bus station.
Crap.
That’s my next stop.