Welcome back to Top Ten Tuesday! Once hosted by The Broke and The Bookish, it is now hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl. It’s a weekly book feature where a topical list-prompt is posted and readers respond with their top ten for that prompt. Yours truly tends to go over ten, but hey, what can a passionate reader do?
This week’s topic is: Halloween Freebie!
So, as you’re able to find out in this post, I don’t read any a lot of scary books, whether they are horrors or just a thriller with horror elements. No matter how terrifying whatever element that is meant to scare me within the book actually is, my brain makes it 100x worse and then I can’t sleep for the next three days without the light being on, my entire body on the bed and under the covers while listening to Disney soundtracks. So for my freebie this week, I thought I’d describe what exactly does scare me within the genre, even though I wish it didn’t, so I could get more into it.
**Special apology for the special bombardment of all caps, the italicizing/bolding and the cussing. I just can’t talk about horror without using all these features to express myself**

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Mirrors: I usually don’t like mirrors simply because I’m not the biggest fan of my own appearance, but when you move but your reflection doesn’t? And then tries to come out of it at you? Yeah, fuck that, no thank you.

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Clowns: Not even really sure where this fear came from, but I am absolutely NOT HAVING IT. And now, with IT being remade into a new film series and everyone had a phase of dressing up as clowns and running around our campus with knives to scare people and I work until midnight and have to walk ten minutes to my car!? Ohfuckyeahnothankyouneveragainplease.

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Jump Scares: I’ve seen a handful of scary films, thanks to peer pressure and because I really did honestly want to like them (which I discuss a little bit more in-depth with this post). But what scares me more than whatever is on the screen is the fact that I know something is going to pop out and scare me and I HATE THEM (and the music so does not help).

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Disease: This one is unique in the sense that, if you asked me to list the scary things that terrify me off the top of my head, this one doesn’t really make the list (ironic, I know, since it made this one). But reading Stephen King’s The Stand, I don’t think I’ve ever read something that, when I sneezed as I was reading it, I was so freaked out that I had to stop reading and go take a shower.

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Things I Can’t See: One of the films I was forced to see watched was Paranormal Activity, where you can’t see the demon thing that’s haunting them, so they set up a camera (nope) and are able to see it approaching the bed by leaving flour on the floor and leaving tracks (double nope), even though YOU CAN’T SEE IT?
I want to throw up just thinking about it.
Also, when animals can see something but humans can’t? Yeah, the amount of times I’ve tackled my dogs or ran out of the room because my cats wouldn’t stop staring at the corner of a wall is not exactly a few…

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Zombies/Ghouls: This is another one that isn’t a “normal” fear for me, like I mentioned with diseases, even though it’d freak me the hell out if they were real, but it really cemented after playing Fallout 4 and the ghouls would move really slowly, until they saw you, and then they’d MOVE REALLY FAST right at you.
I think I almost broke a couple of controllers trying to panic fire at them before throwing them away (screaming so loudly that my boyfriend, who was outside of our apartment, rushed in to see what was wrong), so fuccccccccccck me, nope.

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The Dark: Lame? Potentially. But do I feel a lot safer when my brain starts thinking about any of these subjects head on if I turn on the light? You betcha (my bed covers are also an exceptional defensive mechanism).

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Being Stuck/Trapped: I don’t like situations where you can’t get out, but this one ties in more to a film (Scream? When a Stranger Calls? I can’t remember) I saw when I was a teenager (again, why did my friends force me to watch these!?!?) and someone was on the phone calling for help and then someone else was like, “The call was coming from inside the house.”
Yeah, nope. *throws up and passes out from fear*

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Possessed Dolls/Children: The GIF honestly describes everything I feel on that matter.

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I have no doubt there are definitely more elements that freak me the fuck out, which is why I don’t usually read horrors or watch any scary movies. It’s a genre I wish I could get into more, because I know it’s fantastic and I’m missing out. But my own brain is probably what I should be afraid of most, because it is what takes these elements above and magnifies them to sleep-depriving proportions. So, even though I love Halloween and have a lot of respect for the genre, I’m going to stick with my epic fantasy and regency romances, thanks. I just love sleep too much.
Also, special shout out to Supernatural for coming in clutch in the GIF game so I didn’t have to look up actual examples from all of these elements. *shudders* (Also also, to further the irony, I actually watched the first six seasons of this show and loved it. I just didn’t sleep much the next few days after watching it.)
Cheers.