[ SECRET POST #4276 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #4276 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

01.



__________________________________________________



02.


__________________________________________________


03.


__________________________________________________



04.


__________________________________________________



05.


__________________________________________________



06.














Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 01 pages, 19 secrets from Secret Submission Post #612.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

As someone whose grandparents lived in the woods, I can tell you that it's really damn scary to realize you've wandered away too far and don't quite remember the way back. You can get lost in cities too, but you can usually go into a store or something and ask someone for directions. You can't exactly ask a fox or a bear for directions and there's zero cell reception where they live.

[(Anonymous)]

As someone who grew up in a rural area in the middle of a forest, a bear is a lot less scarier than a serial killer. And I would think ghosts and paranormal stuff would be MORE likely in urban areas with more bodies.

[(Anonymous)]

Bears are awesome but they're not great at giving you directions when you're lost. There's a basic kind of terror in being cut off from civilization and not knowing how to find your way back.

Also, there's no real rule about where ghosts show up. They're ghosts.

[(Anonymous)]

But you don't get lost when you know the woods.

[(Anonymous)]

Seconding the rural upbringing: it's really not that scary. I grew up in the woods and never got lost in them because they were familiar.

Also, bonus: you get used to some weird-ass sounds out in the woods so that thing that city people think sounds like a demon? It's just an owl/fox/deer/rabbit/coyote/etc. It would have to be a truly bizarre sound for me to be scared.

[(Anonymous)]

OK, but what if you were in some woods you didn't grow up in?

Like, the protagonists in this subgenre of horror aren't usually natives of the place, right? And there's some complicated tension to unfold there (as there is in most horror genres tbh) but it's still effective as horror.

DA

[(Anonymous)]

*shrug* I've never been lost in unfamiliar woods. I grew up in a pretty isolated area and used to look at the sky to orient myself. Sunset/sunrise, the evening star, the full moon, the constellations - all very good markers for direction. And if the sky is overcast, there's the direction of the running river, or the side of the trees where the moss grows, etc.

[(Anonymous)]

ayrt

I'm not saying it's not effective as horror, because of course it is. I'm just saying that as a rural person, rural-type things are way less scary to me, whereas walking alone in a city at night terrifies me.

[(Anonymous)]

The fear doesn't come from whether or not you feel familiar with the area, but from isolation, whether physical or psychological. You can feel isolated in your own house if you can't escape or no one believes you that something is wrong.

[tabaqui]

I grew up in a house on land that had held a Civil War camp/hospital, and my neighbors routinely found bullets, buttons, and other Civil War stuff in their land and the little creek that ran along the bottom of their field.

So...plenty of ghosts in the woods.

[(Anonymous)]

That sounds really cool and also like it'd be haunted as fuck.

[tabaqui]

Right?
As a kid, I spent tons of time in the woods, alone or with my siblings, and we did hear some odd stuff in the daytime and the night, that wasn't readily obvious as an animal.

And i had two really creepy moments in our house, plus the four of us loathed the basement, and going upstairs? Was terrifying, because you were 100 percent sure that there was *something* behind you.

Every friend i ever had that came over thought our basement was creepy, without me ever saying a word. And this was a finished basement, with a bathroom and living room, a bar my dad built, a workshop, office, store room, laundry and sewing area...lots of light and space but...yeah. Everybody was like 'it's so creepy down here'.

[greghousesgf]

I've stopped asking people for directions. 90% of the time they didn't know, didn't understand or lied.

[(Anonymous)]

Tbh I'm really bad at giving directions because I don't really remember, like, the names of things. I just navigate everywhere by feel or memory.

[greghousesgf]

a damn postal worker was unable to tell me where a street was that turned out to be TWO BLOCKS AWAY!

[(Anonymous)]

You won't ever hear about all the post you have lost.

[(Anonymous)]

Yeah, I've lived in a big city my entire life and it's just... not scary at all. If I were being chased by someone or something, I could just run three blocks to a busy street that always has plenty of traffic. There's a fire station about two minutes away and a police station a couple of minutes past that. The only way I could see horror working in an urban area would be something like Silent Hill or the Walking Dead.

[rosehiptea]

Also if you're in an urban area then either the ghost/monster/whatever has to attack the whole city or they have to explain why it isn't attacking the whole city. And you have to have a pretty big special effects budget to have it attack Los Angeles instead of a farmhouse in the middle of nowhere.

[cbrachyrhynchos]

I think a lot of urban horror centers on issues of psychological isolation, since we all have heard of a little old lady died and was eaten by the cats, the weird guy in the apartment who just wasn't right after that thing we don't really talk about, or how that business downtown seems particularly shady and cult-like. It seems to come and go in waves. The Exorcist, Poltergeist, Rosemary's Baby, Candyman, and Susperia are all urban. There was an Asian wave with Dark Water, Ringu, and The Grudge. And then, the Saw movies. In between, I suppose you can do suburban horror: Halloween, Nightmare on Elm Street, and Christine.

I suspect there's a political dimension behind those shifts.

[rosehiptea]

Urban horror can be done well. (I don't watch that much horror, but I would add the original Japanese version of Pulse.) I just think it sometimes has to rely on different tropes and plot points, because you've got to explain why they didn't knock on the neighbor's door or why no one heard them screaming. (These can be explained, especially when it's something supernatural, but still, I think it's easier to make a horror movie in an old abandoned house in the woods.) What kind of political shift are you talking about though? That sounds interesting.

[cbrachyrhynchos]

I think there are ways around the "screaming" issue. Cities can be notorious for "not my problem," for example.

I think a lot of urban horror is based on the premise that cities are scary places filled with groups who will harm you or seduce you into evil. A lot of post-modern vampire movies are urban for example. The 70s urban horror trend existed with the 70s urban vigilante: Dirty Harry and Death Wish for example.

Suburban horror focuses on the idea that the "safety" of the suburbs is an illusion, and people tend to cover-up their problems rather than deal with them honestly.

I suspect rural horror may have some connection to fear of the dark sides of rural culture.

[(Anonymous)]

I think there are ways around the "screaming" issue. Cities can be notorious for "not my problem," for example.

So true. That's why the police suggests you scream "Fire!" and not "Help!". The latter gets ignored all the time, the former panics people into attention.

[(Anonymous)]

John Carpenter also did Prince of Darkness and They Live, both of which could be described (to a certain extent) as horrors of urban decay.

I mean, it would be a highly idiosyncratic description, but not an untrue one.