Scared Silly

I am in freak-out withdrawal.

Here it is, 2 days before Halloween, and I haven't seen Halloween yet this year. I bought a DVD copy two Halloweens ago, needing to replace my old VHS copy that was so worn from yearly viewings, and it's still in the cellophane.

The last scary movie I saw was The Descent but that was months ago. There was that whole bicycle video someone sent me that made me startle pretty good last week, but my heart beat is back to normal. It's the freaky season, and I need a good freak.

So here's how I am spending my lunch today. I am going to troll the Internets looking for some of my favorite scary scenes from some of my favorite horror movies and shows. I will post them below in no particular order. And hopefully at the end of my lunch I will be good and scared (I could probably satisfy my lunch-scare need by getting the cafeteria's "chicken" nuggets, but I value my intestines too much for that.)

Enjoy!

1. The Psycho shower scene
2. Laurie Strode in the closet from Halloween. Appeals to my claustrophobia and one of the most nerve-wracking scenes in cinema history. How many of you find yourself screaming, "Run, girl, run!" at the screen at the end of this clip?
3. Joachin sees the alien in the amateur TV footage in Signs. When we saw this in the theater people screamed like little girls at this moment. I just learned that it's a little more startling when you are studying the screen very closely with the sound muted.
4. The sheriff meets the Peacock boys in the X-Files episode "Home."
5. Mulder and Scully meet Mrs. Peacock in the same episode. Yes, that ep is so good I featured it twice.

Side note to #5: A group of friends and I were playing the classic party game, "Death is Not An Option" one evening. If you've never played, it's a game where you give a person a really terrible choice between "getting with" two people you wouldn't want to contemplate for one reason or another; that person HAS to choose one, because death is not an option. We were having fun with choices like, "Rush Limbaugh or Michael Moore?" when I gave the following choice to a friend: Your mom, or the lady under the bed from that X-Files episode? That proved to be the trump card; the men in the room decided that, without doubt, the lady under the bed would never be the winner and the other choice would have to be the road taken, as horrifying as that other choice might be. The game lost its challenging aspect after that.


6. The opening scene of Scream.


There are some others I would love to find, but alas, I cannot find. The scene in The Sixth Sense where Cole is going to the bathroom with his back to the hallway and a shadowy figure crosses between him and the camera. The climax of The Exorcist where the demon is driven out of the girl and you see it ever so briefly in its winged form. The moment in The Descent when the creature's face pops up behind the girl's shoulder.

What did I miss? What are your favorite Halloween-mood inducing moments?