I remember being young and home alone - what an unusual, beautiful circumstance, one to be taken advantage of! - flipping through TV channels. The guide told me that Buffy the Vampire Slayer was about to start. It must have been 8 pm and Buffy must have still been on the air. I'm home alone, I thought. Vampires are cool. I want to watch this.

I hunkered down, wrapped in a blanket and already anticipating the delicious spine-tingles of fear. This was so bad of me. My mother would never let me watch Buffy if she was home. Heck, she didn't even like me watching Indiana Jones.

Buffy was about to start! I don't even know if they got past the theme song when the standard Buffy/slightly-scary-TV-show warning came on:

Parents Strongly Cautioned This program contains material that parents may find unsuitable for children. Parents are strongly urged to exercise caution against letting children watch unattended. This program may contain one or more of the following: intensely suggestive dialogue (D), strong coarse language (L), intense sexual situations (S), or intense violence (V).

I had never seen this warning before, and I was a bit of a serious kid at times.

Parents strongly cautioned.

Material may be inappropriate...

And long story short, I got so spooked by the warning that I changed the channel, and then I went a step further, and I turned the TV off.

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I had some trouble coming up with a movie at first and then I remembered: Stephen King's Rose Red. Which I watched for the first time, rented from a movie rental place, and which was so long it was on two videotapes. Yes, kids, two. Like The King and I and I think Gone With The Wind. Anyway, there's a scene in there where Emory, the mostly-annoyingly-awful kid trapped in the haunted mansion with the others that we like more, is in bed trying to sleep. Out of nowhere first one, then another woman appears in bed next to him and start trying to seduce him. He resists. The camera focuses on Emory and one woman. Suddenly, the woman on his other side reaches her hand up to stroke his arm...and it's turned into a dried-out, skeletal, brown bony thing.

The special effects are laughable in this day and age but then, I was terrified.

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I love horror movies and being scared.

In college I went on a spree of renting B (and C and D) movies. There's one I'll never forget called "Rest Stop." It is truly terrible, I grant you that, and the plot is missing a lot of sense. But at one point it plays on a deep-seated fear I'd nursed, at that point, for several years: of being in/entering a restroom stall, sitting down to do my business, and then having some previously unseen/unperceived terrifying supernatural creature reach out from under the stall next to me and grab my leg. Emphasis in order to try and convey the feelings of these fears.

So if anyone's afraid of shit like that I'd totally recommend that movie.

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P. S. dudes, my birthday is on Halloween. Love getting scared. Last year I watched so many horror movies (and American Horror Story episodes) that I gave myself nightmares. Didn't stop. Can't stop. Won't stop.

c: