Things That Scare My Husband

My husband has many admirable qualities; he’s intelligent and well versed in a myriad of interesting subjects, he’s well read, he’s hysterically funny, he’s thoughtful and kind and loving and tells me I’m beautiful countless times each day even when I’m quite patently not, like first thing in the morning, or when I’m full of cold or when I’m yelling furiously out the window at whatever has annoyed me at any given time. He’s also a diehard horror fan and zombie expert and you’d want him on your team come the zombocalyse. These are all, indeed, admirable qualities. However, he is also inclined to a certain skittishness that, while endearing, is still slightly less than entirely admirable. My husband is easily startled by certain things, rather like a small bunny on a motorway. In fact, in certain circumstances, I’m essentially married to Shaggy from Scooby Doo.


So, because I’m an awesome and supportive wife, let’s have a look at some of the things that scare my husband.

The Blair Witch Project (1999)

The Blair Witch Project’s simple brilliance took the horror world by storm way back in 1999. It took my husband by storm a little later than that, probably somewhere around 2001. It has been sporadically terrifying him ever since. His fear on the Blair Witch front can largely be seen as twofold – scary ghost witches and nature. The truth is we’re not country people, hiking, camping, even gardening, are things that happen to other people, other people who are clearly mad. We are definitely soft city folk, we like comfort and convenience and indoor plumbing. Immersing oneself in sundry flora and fauna is stuff best left to David Bellamy, or that pigtailed kid from Little House on the Prairie, it’s not for the likes of us. Needless to say the very premise of The Blair Witch Project is immediately the stuff of pure, primal horror in our house. For my husband, The Blair Witch is a nightmare from the outset in terms of location but beyond that, once the fledging filmmakers get lost and the spooky noises and flickering shadows start kicking off, he generally dissolves into the couch displaying all the spinal fortitude of a particularly cowardly mollusc. The enduring problem for him with The Blair Witch Project is the corner-staring screamy ending, it leaves him bereft and bewildered searching for answers that just aren’t there, like a small child who’s just been punched by Santa.

I always want The Blair Witch Project to end like an episode of Scooby Doo where we get to find out that the Blair Witch is really Mr. Jenkins the disgruntled owner of the local mill, I think this ending would help my husband to have the kind of closure he needs.

Paranormal Activity (2007)

I never liked Paranormal Activity. It sold itself to me as the scariest movie ever ever EVER and then was decidedly lacking. I wasn’t scared, I was annoyed, partly I was annoyed for not being scared, but mainly I was annoyed because even I, and I’m quite frankly lovely, like Anne Diamond, not only didn’t care if hideous things happened to the ghastly lead characters, but was actually actively encouraging of horrible things happening to them. My husband on the other hand was scared. While I was feeling downright let down by the whole cinematic event he was balancing on a razor edge of fear. Even early in the film, as Katie and the bafflingly named Micah are barely even entertaining the possibility that their home has a demonic squatter, my husband was already braced to the point of pulling several muscles for the night vision terrors that lay ahead. Paranormal Activity clearly plays on our most basic fears, the childlike certainty that monsters lurk in the shadows of our rooms and that every nocturnal sound is something evil closing in on us. I myself am a big fan of sleeping so even I can understand the unsettling building dread of having the sanctity of your sleepy time bower destroyed. My husband, on the other hand, finds the whole thing to be an exercise primordial terror; the expectation, the jump scares, the sinister sounds, demons, just generally, and thee eternal standing and staring. The last one there may be a little bit my fault, I do have a tendency for apparently creepy eyes open sleeping and sometimes, more alarmingly, singing - this has probably damaged him immeasurably.

Personally I found the scariest thing about Paranormal Activity to be the ghastly lead couple and their ghastly relationship, my husband would beg to differ, when he comes out from behind the couch.

Exorcist III (1990)

I think The Exorcist III is highly underrated, I think it suffers partly from the enormity and awesomeness of The Exorcist, but also from the fact that it has the number 3 attached to it. In most cases when the number 3 is attached to something it’s usually a bit rubbish – the obvious exception to this rule being Shark Attack 3 Megalodon, but for my money The Exorcist III is pretty snazzy; it has some great character actors, some brilliant dialogue and is, quite frankly more than a little bit scary.

Now while the whole concept makes my husband a little uneasy, it is that one bit that truly terrifies him. We all know ‘the bit’. ‘That bit’ makes him squeal like a small child. ‘That bit’ it is often used as a measuring scale in our little family to determine how scary something actually is. In testament to how enduringly terrifying ‘that bit’ is to him, we had never actually watched it together until just a few months ago, we hadn’t particularly not watched it because he was scared of it, but rather because he was frightened that ‘that bit’ would let him down and not be nearly as scary as his childhood self remembered it. Turns out he needn’t have worried, girlish shrieks still rang about our house at the moment in question and there was a moment after where he did momentarily debate having be accompany him to the bathroom, just in case.

I’d like to point out that this post was entirely my husband’s idea and that I’m really not pointing and laughing at him behind his back. Honestly. I do all my pointing and laughing to his face.

Hiding behind a small cat. Probably watching some scary ghosts

Other things that scare my husband include:

Clowns

Spiders

Escalators

Mushrooms

More from my husband’s grab-bag of miscellaneous fears later.