"I Have No Mouth, And I Must Scream".
I realize most might just see it as unsettling, but I've known someone like AM. Obviously not a giant supercomputer, but with that much hate. With that much blind rage, that everyone around him must suffer for daring to exist. That would happily keep someone alive just to bring them more pain.
As much as I love that story, every time I read it leaves me a little more terrified, looking over my shoulder, waiting until I'm put in my cage because I dared break free, even almost 20 years later.
Ever play the game? It’s a 90s-era click-adventure, and Harlan Ellison himself plays the voice of AM! (It’s quite good!)
It’s currently available on GOG
I've read it this year for the first time. It's fantastic. So short and so powerful.
There was this short sci fi story I think about a lot. I forgot what it's called but it's essentially about some kind of particle (it's physics related) that floats around the universe and has the ability to engulf everything in it's path or something? The story is about the last few hours on earth when one such particle happens to stumble into our solar system. Ill have to dig it up.
Edit: Found it! It's called "the blue afternoon that lasts forever"
Sounds like a rogue black hole
Could also be a strangelet. Theoretical but not fictitious.
Yes, I just reread it. You're correct. Can detect them now?
Great story, thanks for sharing!
The story I am calling out referenced rogue black holes. But this is very interesting!
Well. My child is that age and I very much relate to the protagonist. Was not expecting a gut-punch this afternoon.
One of my favorites short sci-fi stories ever.
Longer than you think! Chilled me.
Playing Alien Isolation in VR. I couldn't get past the medical bay level level due to actual fear of death by heart attack.
Played it without VR. Felt the same. Maybe because I intentionally waited until late at night so it would be dark enough with the lights off. Awesome game.
Alien Isolation is seriously one of the best games ever made and it still holds up today. It was just a bit too long.
I tried to get into it, but there really was quite a lot of preamble.
The fucking needle-in-the-eye part from Dead Space.
Also, Scorn is kinda unsettling.
Scorn is extremely unsettling.
I can't figure out how to make a spoiler section in Lemmy so I won't say much, but the lore that describes some of the transformations in dead space was just so disturbing, still sort of sticks with me.
Dead Space is a good one, but the ::: spoiler spoiler bit with the people that are mutated into spewing poison gas, all of the lore around that was just so dang horrifying :::. Really fucked me up for a bit. I know that like, the whole game is basically just that sort of thing over and over but something about how they wrote and presented that was just too viscerally terrible.
Subnautica. Had to finish it in creative mode, it was a bit too much for me.
The first chapter of “The Ministry of the Future” because it is very likely going to happen soon somewhere on earth.
A wet bulb temperature event that kills thousands
I love horror and fiction since I was very young so it's very hard to make me feel uncomfortable but this short did it. I kept having nightmares about this for a week
It's like you know you're gonna die and there is nothing you can do but YOU have to give up.
Contingency, from Local58
Emergency broadcasts of any sort, fictitious or no, already put me on edge, but the idea of the US government having one ready to go, specifically to order people to commit suicide to spite some kind of existential threat, is especially chilling.
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Of course it's Straub.
The Road, the book, is the only book I've ever read that haunted me for a while after. Movie was a decent adaptation, but left some stuff out.
By a country mile the “best” book I’ve read. I think the film does an admirable job of staying within and delivering the message of the book without being “not suitable for release without cuts” in some territories. I mean the baby spit roast isn’t really something one can put to film and expect to get license to release everywhere around the world.
But funnily enough the book actually aims for, and IMHO hits, a completely different message than that of dread; for me, it makes me wholeheartedly appreciate the world, nature, and the good deeds we do for each other. It is also, and I’m aware I’m breaking no ground here, a treatise on love, fatherhood and courage. It makes me appreciate that, despite everything, we are still incredible blessed to live in today’s world.
It is quite simply sensational.
By the way, while very different in tone, Station Eleven really hit the same note for me; appreciate what you’ve got, it might just disappear.
Event Horizon is still mildly terrifying 25y later. Sunshine was pretty bananas too. Shout out to Alastair Reynolds Inhibitor series of books as well.
The Suffering on the original Xbox.
I know it's mainly because I played it way too young but it still gives me creeps playing it as an adult.
The bathrooms... beware the bathrooms...
Yes! Loved that game so much.
The segment in the original Creepshow where Stephen King is transformed into a plant.
Also The Fly.
That monkey in the teleporter…
For me it has always been the The Enigma of Amigara Fault ever since I read it.
It's just so unsettling to me I don't know why.
I love Junji Ito so much. That's not even his most terrifying story, just his most popular. Though I'm not complaining, it's a great story.
The Netflix show is actually pretty great if you haven't watched it. Though the first episode is the weakest.
Fwiw, I'm an artist and get a lot of inspiration from his works
Inescapable fate from 'Final Destination.'
Buddy Holly and Carole Lombard both decided to get in a plane at the last minute. Some tourist decided to go to the World Trade Center instead of the Metropolitan Museum. If you start thinking about it, it can drive you crazy.
Remember the Oklahoma City bombing? My uncle is a retired lawyer in OKC, so he was in that building frequently when it was still standing. If memory serves, it still blew out the windows in his office.
The stupid zombies in Thief. Just the first one you encounter. It's lying on the ground with flies flying above it. And every time you go near it it gives out this loud awful moan. I hate it!
But the game is too good not to play.
All of them, that's why I can't do horror.
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The deadlights in Stephen King's IT. ::: spoiler The scene where the turtle is dead hits me right in the existential dread. spoiler :::
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SOMA. There were sections in the game that were scary, but the entire concept is really a mind melt. It's not like it's not a common theoretical question, but going through it step by step is another thing. And if you go to the home page of it and read some of the short stories, it really adds to the whole experience.
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I saw the 1982 version of The Thing when I was, like, 6 on HBO and had nightmares for almost a year. I’m 45 now, and that film still freaks me out!
Have you rewatched it recently? It freaked me out the first time but after that it felt more campy.
No, and now I won’t. It was just so perfect that I don’t want to ruin it.
When you were SIX!? C’mere…
(((HUGS)))
awww!
yeah, it really fucked me up. my poor little brother saw Poltergeist around the same age, and it fucked him up for years...
I watched return of the body snatchers when i was around 8. The movie itself doesn't scare me anymore at all, but the feeling i had when i had when i had to run home at night still haunts me.
Signalis is a great game with a story that stuck with me for weeks. I wouldn't say it "terrifies me" but it's definitely both disturbing and heart wrenching.
GREAT game!
Supersize Me
Event Horizon
Warning! Spoilers! I'd use the spoiler tag, but no matter how I do it (correct or incorrect), it doesn't show up for me.
Perfect Blue.
Not for the conventional murder or bad things happening, but the whole structure of not knowing what's real and what is just an illusion and not knowing how much time has passed.
The three body problem/rememberance of earth's past trilogy keeps me up a night every once in a while.
The Zone from the STALKER games disturbed me for years, but I'm such a grizzled veteran of the Zone now that I enjoy being in it. Night is still a little terrifying, though, and I don't care to use nightvision. Kills the vibe.
I love the STALKER games, the atmosphere is absolutely top notch. The section where you have to go into the lair of the invisible dudes was terrifying. I remember meeting my first one, before going into the tunnels, and losing half my health in its first attack, I fought it standing on top of a tractor because they couldn't climb thankfully.
Hereditary really stuck with me after watching it—and I’m in my 30s. It would really get in my head when I was trying to fall asleep for at least 2 weeks. Would have to double check the corners of my ceiling.
The "Don t look up" movie was a little too real for me.
Soma
Not sure if this is what you were looking for, but this song is a masterpiece of horror manifest through audio. In fact the whole album is a piece of art, troubling and dark but so well crafted.
https://youtu.be/CwnxBWWLy9c?si=CAiSx58pHDkFMscQ
Edit: fixed wording
I thought for sure this was gonna be “Everywhere at the End of Time”.
If you’re not familiar, it’s a 6 hour audio piece that simulates the descent into dementia ending in the complete loss of oneself and eventually death.
Knowing what it is going in, it’s terrifying to listen to.
The whole thing is on YouTube, posted by the creator without ads, but I’m too lazy to go find it and don’t want the piped link bot to kill me in my sleep.
And while not quite the same, there's Blind Willie Johnson - Dark was the night...
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
Blind Willie Johnson - Dark was the night...
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://piped.video/CwnxBWWLy9c?si=CAiSx58pHDkFMscQ
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.
One that I really like is Dear David by Adam Ellis. And yeah yeah, I know that he's going for the usual "true ghost story" marketing shtick or whatever, but these stories that don't just use cheap jumpscares and instead build a sense of constant threat and impending doom are the ones that make it harder for me to sleep at night.
I heard that the movie is trash though 🙈Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.
I could never get past some levels on the Playstation 1 Spiderman game because all the villains aside from Rhino and Mysterio creep me out.
The Bible
Wayward Pines.
The Borderlands (2013) starts out as a regular found footage paranormal movie but the ending is just so... horrifying. It's simple but well done, something about it unerves me.
Man in the high castle.
The Purge
I never finished resident evil 7 in VR.
Wildbow has written some freaks doing freaky shit. Like, proper body horror.
In 2003 I watched the Exorcist movie that came out. It freaked me out so much my pupils dilated enormously like I was tripping, and then they stayed dilated for three days afterward.
I couldn’t be alone at night for over a week so my girlfriend came and stayed with me to keep the monsters away.
