What are you afraid of?

I love horror gaming! One of our favorite games is Bluebeard's Bride, and it has a "squirm" mechanic called "Shiver from Fear." Whenever the player (not the character, the player) "squirms in her seat, shudders, or utters words of discontent" the mechanic is invoked. So, needless to say, we spend a lot of time trying to make each other other squirm with discomfort, and wow have we had some wonderfully uncomfortable sessions.

My problem is, that is so much easier for me to do in person than it is in PBP. I'm sure it is a failure of my writing, but it is also a failure of creativity on my part. Whenever we do horror in PbP, I feel like my stuff lacks punch. I put my fingers to the keyboard and nothing interesting comes out. I don't think anyone is squirming in their seats.

So, help me out. What are you afraid of? Share as much as you are comfortable sharing. I'll take words, images, anything (that is in keeping with the forum posting guidelines). I just started hosting a horror game here, and my creative juices need a jump start.

Bathophobia. That's mine. I'm not afraid of the water. I live near the ocean, and swim in it all the time. I also live on a river and love swimming and boating. No problem. But deep deep water is terrifying. The thought of being out on the ocean and the water below being unimaginably deep, crushingly deep, pitch black deep. It feels like you would sink forever. Ugh. Shivers

I remember being very young and sneaking out of bed while my dad was watching Master and Commander. I saw the part where they were trying to find out who was the "Jonah." That guy figured it was him, so he grabbed a canon ball and jumped over the side. I started crying and my dad put be back to bed, but my brain could not stop thinking about how far he must have sunk. And what it would have been like to stop seeing the surface. Then all the lights went out, but he just kept on sinking. To this day I can't watch that movie. :D

Here's another pic. It is huge so I'm not embedding it.

https://www.jooomshaper.com/data/out/4/IMG_36997.jpg

Suffocation of any kind. Especially drowning.
And rats.

Yup, this. Being buried alive, slowly suffocated while the walls press in.

Real horror in gaming is tough; real horror in PbP gaming is tougher.

Here's a question for you: Do you read horror fiction? If so, who are your favorite horror authors? Obviously, most of us are not world class literary writers, but you can learn a lot from reading those who are. My GMing and PbP writing has been influenced by Michael Shea, Stephen King, Thomas Ligotti, John Tynes, WH Pugmire, Ramsay Campbell, Victor LaValle, and many more.

(Looking at my list, I'm realizing that I am at a complete loss in terms of great female horror writers. If anyone has any leads for me in that regard, I'd love to hear them.)

As far as horror in gaming goes, I'm going to quote the singular Dennis Detwiller here:

"What makes a scenario a horror scenario? Uncertainty, risk and a lack of control. Without these essential elements, any scenario, involving even the most terrible creatures, is simply a bug hunt. In fact, that’s what most games are: go here, kill this, and take its stuff.

Horror is not about that. So, at the highest level, as a game master, this is what you must consider. Is your group content with the bug hunt?1 If they are, then horror, and the possibility of failure, might come as a bitter and unwelcome pill. If they’re open-minded or have experience in playing horror games, let’s talk."

Actually, you know what? Here. Read the article yourself. The back-end, where he talks about how to actually build a scenario, might be less useful for you - but the first few sections are crucial, in my opinion, for running a good horror game. And they're applicable to both IRL and PbP gaming.

In my PbP games, I do everything I can to keep my players in the dark about as much as possible for as long as possible. I use TONS of notes to this effect, never give more info than I have to, and do my best to never ever let them get closer to their goal without a risk or a cost. I don't know if this makes my players squirm - maybe it just frustrates them - but to me, squick is just a small part of a much bigger machine that really revolves around players not knowing what the f*** is going on and constantly second guessing, putting themselves even further into danger as a result.

Mary Shelley. If you want a suggestion on a woman who writes horror, you might try the author of Frankenstein. Body horror from a stitched together corpse, existential horror on what the nature of life and death is, brutal descriptions. It's got a lot to offer.

I've read Shea, King, Tynes (RPG stuff only), and Campbell, and none of them, except for early King (IT and Pet Cemetery), really do much for me. I mean, they're fun, and they are solid writers, but they aren't scary. I've never felt the revulsion of genuine horror trying to read them.

I tend to find a lot more horror and dread in the writings of Chuck Palahniuk, Bret Easton Ellis, and Cormac McCarthy. Our recent Bluebeard's Bride and Dread games were a lot more like Lullby and American Psycho than they were like "The Dunwich Horror."

For more reading suggestions, I did just reread Dan Simmons' Carrion Comfort. That is a terrifying book. Nick Cutter's The Troop is also pretty hard to get through in places, so I loved it. :D I love Clive Barker, especially his earlier stuff.

Some of the best lady horror I've read recently: The Beauty by Aliya Whiteley and Broken Monsters by Lauren Beukes (very "police procedural" in places, so not for all horror readers). Also, if you like some "weird" with your horror, check out Octavia Butler's short stories ("Bloodchild" is the best) and Alice Sheldon's short story "The Screwfly Solution."

I liked that quote above and the article. And I agree, that's why we don't really bother much with Cthulhu and Delta Green type gaming. It is "weird" at best, and the published scenarios are rarely anything approaching "horrific." That said, the Scooby Gang type stuff in Cthulhu investigative games can be fun, and they are great games to introduce people who are new to RPGs, because they are pretty tame content-wise.
I am jealous there. You are a better GM than I, because I've never gotten that to work over more than one session. Usually, they just get bored or frustrated. :( So, I tend to take the opposite approach. I like to let them see what's coming down the road for them, and I try to make it so nasty and horrible and repulsive that they players (not the characters, the players) will do just about anything to avoid it. In fact, our games usually end up being very collaborative, and we steal the Bluebeard's Bride mechanic for all our games—When we reach a tense moment, and the players look to me to see what happens, I'll usually ask them, "What's the worst possible thing that could happen here?" They answer, and then I try to make it so much worse.

Hence the point of my post here. I'm looking for inspiration, meat for the grinder as it were.

If you like psychological horror - particularly when the protagonist becomes increasingly affected and unreliable over the course of the narrative - then I highly recommend Shirley Jackson, particularly The Haunting of Hill House (nothing like the recent Netflix series) and We Have Always Lived in the Castle, which I regard as truly amazing.

Jackson is good. I liked Castle better than Hill House, even though it is isn't really horror. I liked the Netflix "Hill House" series too. The jump scares were fun. Something like that would make an excellent DramaSystem pithc if you have the right players. Playing the adult victims of childhood trauma and abuse ain't for everyone.

The Haunting of Hill House is my favourite Netflix show so far. I don't know why but haunting house concept is scaring me so much since I was a kid. Also it's kinda weird but I must admit that old women are scaring me. When I was 7 years old my parents decided to buy an apartment in Budva, Montenegro. There was an old woman living upstairs and in the night I was hearing water sounds all the time. I was imagining like this woman has a pool in his living room and chained people inside of it. I was calling it death pool :). When I think about it now I feel like it's a good story for a horror book :)

I ran a horror game last night that was a supernatural bug hunt. We played by candle light, and I had four mason jars with live bugs in them set around the table, one for each player. They were covered with black cloth, and when a character caught their first glimpse of the creatures, I uncovered one of them. They hissed and buzzed even louder once the cloths were removed. We took a break in the middle of the game, and I served snacks. The players did not enjoy the live props nearly as much as I did.

Haha, that's epic props-ing

I'm a simple man i have an arachnophobia

See, now Cay is underselling those bug jars. That crap was God-awful.

So, we played out on the screened in porch, around a wobbly card table. It was dark and hot and damp (deep, deep south gaming FTW). And we were crammed around this table with these jars covered with black cloth covers. And every time someone would bump the table the jars would wobble and hiss and buzz. And she wouldn't let us remove the covers. Then when my character saw the first critter up close, she told me to take the cover off the jar. And it was filled with roaches. The big flying kind. Nopenopenope. Then one by one the covers came off: a jar full of worms, a jar full of angry-ass wasps (complete with nest), and a jar full of gnats and mosquitoes and nosee'ems.

Shit was bad.

Then she served us food. I have some pictures. I'll try to get them posted later.

That sounds horrible and amazing at the same time.
Should I be worried about what I've gotten myself into with the FATE game? xD

I hope you are at least a little bit worried. Apprehension is an important part of horror. :-D

I had this afternoon off, so I was working on getting set up for my game on Friday. I was told by the other people who live in my house that under no circumstances would jars of bugs be tolerated again. It was a bit of an intervention.

And I already started catching moths to set up next to my laptop :(

If you looking for something that turns simple scenery into horror could I suggest "The Yellow Wallpaper" by Charlotte Gilman, it’s excelent writing.

For me fear is an easy emotion to evoke, in my self atleast. Any interaction with people creates an amount of fear, depending on the method of interaction and the number of people involved. Motor vehicles will turn my anxiety on instantly and of course my panic sometimes just activates for no good reason at all.

But if you want to know what truly makes me uncomfortable, there are only a few+things (all of which could be aplied in a game), I fear losing control of my own body; I’m already subject to amnesia and depersonalisation, I fear that someday I. At e tee a fugue state and somebody else wil be incharge of my body. I fear that I may become trapped in my own body, unable to exist outside of it, things like Werner’s Aphagia and paralysis. And of course a personal fear of mine, loosing the power to decide that existence is too much of a burden p. Obviously not too aplicable as I think this is only a dyeing person thing but still, you asked...

The Yellow Wallpaper ruuuuuuuuules

Thanks for sharing! There's a lot there. I appreciate your transparency. I hope to get there one day.

I had to read "The Yellow Wallpaper" twice before I appreciated it. The first time I read it, it was with a teacher who was convinced that it was primarily about Gilman's (predictably horrible) views on race. I know that is a growing school of thought, and I am not qualified to make a judgment on that. But, personally, once I read about the more traditional interpretations and the story of Gilman's life and then reread the story, the story really really resonated with me. It is a terrific story in its own right.

Hmm...an interesting conundrum. For the longest time, the original Exorcist film scared the hell out of me. The main impetus for this was that when I saw it the first time, I was running a high fever and hallucinated Ms. Reagan at the foot of my bed worshiping the idol of Pazuzu. Once I got over that, very little scares me.

What occasionally gives me the creeps now is not what is there per say, but what could be there. If you think about how different dimensions overlap one another, what could we be sharing space with? Thinking about that long enough starts the chills running up the spine and the images in the corners of the eyes.

This is going to sound weird, but I'm afraid of bee/wasp/hornet stings. Not because I'm afraid it will hurt, I mean I lived through a kidney stone for fuck's sake I think a sting will be a walk in the park compared to that, but because since I was never stung in my life I have no idea if I'm allergic or not.

Real life is kinda terrifying....

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7371789/Cops-mummified-human-remains-home-man-accused-sexually-assaulting-teen.html

Freaking. Turbulence. And for someone who's flown as much as I have, you wouldn't believe I still have a phobia, but I just suck it up, take my tranqs and fly.

I am terrified of flying, mostly because I have never flown. I guess I am afraid that I will be afraid of flying. How's that for weird?

I don't think any piece of media has ever terrified me more than Junji Ito's Layers of Fear. With the combination of regret and body horror, it almost feels personally targeted to scare me

this reminds me of another pretty disturbing story... I can't find the news were the actual murder was described anymore but basically, a couple of 14 yo teenagers decided to kill a woman for the sake of it, sneaked in her house and stabbed her in the neck while she slept (and then her daughter), went back home, shared a bath, had sex and watched four Twilight movies as if nothing happened. The original descriptions were really visual...

Disclosure and Horror, I like it

I detest horror. I use the word hate a lot but not the word detest. I have a long and varied medical history where I was always in a state of fear, not danger, just fear. So I never did roller coasters, or thrills, or daredevil things. I try to not go into the dark, not because of any fear, but I just hate tripping.

I live in New Orleans. So metaphysical horror and/or vampires either makes me yawn or infuriates me (I laughed when my wife tried to get me to watch true blood. Twenty years in New Orleans and ten years of D&D before that, I imagined D&D monsters eating the cast of true blood). Nawlins Voodoo? I explored the dungeon underbelly of that life here in Nawlins, it is a copy of a Afro-Caribbean religion, some serious homage to gods they don't understand. No thank you. And I was an Anthropology major.

So there ya go. No horror. I'll storm Ravenloft and poke the Curse of the Strahd, but horror, me? Negative, Captain.

But real fear? The movie Alien desperately scared me to oblivion. As a kid I couldn't even watch the commercial. When it came out on cable ages ago. I went quite quite mad with fear.

I was 8 when E.T. came out. That goddamn alien gave me nightmares. I still don't understand how people can find that fucker cute!

As a kid I couldn't watch past the Pig-Scene in Spirited Away, and always would stop there. And that movie was running at least twice a year on german childrens TV at the time.
Nowadays, I love the movie (I mean pretty much all of Studio Ghibli's work is awesome), but I still get the chills in that scene...

I thought for sure your next word was going to be "Deliverance."

Speaking of terrifying . . .

The dark (well, what COULD be in it, my imagination is pretty active and usually actively trying to scare me)
Water (Mainly the idea of drowning or not having ground beneath me)
Fire
Suffocation/holding my breath
Being forgotten
Someone close to me committing suicide...
etc
etc
etc

hey man very interesting question.
As i get older mans propensity for cruelty (to himself and others ) freaks me the fk out. I've always considered myself a civilized person, polite to others, giving people a chance to redeem themselves etc. but there have been moments when disgust has completely overwhelmed me.

Living in za ("Mandela", "Apartheid") and working in construction has put me in very close proximity to the poorer members of our society (both black and white if you must know) and the thing with poorer ppl (they don't exist in the way i mean in the US) is that they don't have the means to hide their problems.
one of the earliest memories of this overwhelming disgust with humanity or a raw confrontation with humanities baseness was in a place called Marabastadt, its in pta, a collection of close together shops mostly Asian (India not far east).
we were on a rooftop looking down at the "taxirank". i saw a blanket strung between 2 walls (on a corner). I thought maybe they were drying the blanket. one of the guys i worked with "socks" sidles up to me and asks if i knew what i was looking at. I answered that the refugees have probably washed their blankets. he explained "daai is njatsies" (those are prostitutes/fun girls) "hulle verkoop die P**s" (they sell themselves) "fyf rand" (5 rand - current exchange about $0.33 - a go) and as i watched a customer arrived.

I had 3 brothers working for me. the 1st got sick (sores on his tongue) he asked to go home to get better (homelands - a remnant of apartheid group area act) he died, his mother was paid out R50k ($3.2k). A few months later the second brother after a visit home came to me with the exact same tongue sores, he asked to go home - went home, and died. his mom was paid out R50k (insurance we take out for the guys families). when the 3rd brother came to me with the sores, my mother (a matriarch of Irish temper) asked for mothers number, she phoned up the mother and said plainly to her "do you understand me? excellent! If you kill this son i will call the police!" - the last son is still alive.

Then there's the tortures of the farm attacks, you can google them yourselves.

An unrelated personal horror: at the coast (witsand - google it, its a piece of windy heaven!) there's a river, about a km wide that runs into the ocean. We have the largest bull sharks in the world, a lovely lady weighing in around 5-6 hundred Kgs (https://kiteforum.com/viewtopic.php?t=2354575) - interesting story: after tagged, her daily rounds included visiting boats (we call her the "taxman" - 22kg cob heads landed) checking out the shore fishermen(busy wading) and swimming underneath the women that swims across the breede every day for the last 40 years (wonder if anyone has told her yet).
anyway we went to the Infanta side by boat, beautiful! water is as calm as the Med. i took my spinning rod and swam across to the island, not thinking i swam across the channel! looking down with goggles its the fkn abyss (30m on my dodgy depth finder, and swimming it, it looks black and and like it wants to swallow you. i could imagine a tentacle snaking up toward me. made it across unmolested, and began fishing into the mouth. the tide turned and as the water began getting higher (about 1m over the island on high tide) i decided to swim back, my mind was all on sharks and tentacles. i reeled in, put everything away and was just preparing to swim back. As i turned i just about shat myself... behind me was a poor innocent sand shark looking for crabs, but my mind screamed SHARK!!! :)

Anyway hope this has given you some inspiration.
Reading through your game, the section with tony swimming, had that squirming effect you are looking for. very uncomfortable situation.

looking forward to the rest. enjoy!

For me it would definitely have to be mirrors. Not so much just during normal circumstances but like in the dark. If I am in a room with a mirror and I know it is there and the lights turn off, it scares the living shit out of me. Not being able to see the reflection makes me question what is really there. Or more specifically, Who is really there. What if there is another world in the mirror that we don't see. What if that other world can see us. I shutter thinking about it.

I remember there was a horror movie with Kiefer Sutherland about mirrors. I think it was even just called "Mirrors". I don't remember if it was any good, though...

The first two years of high school I lived in the school dormitory, far away from my parents. This wasn't easy for a 12 year old kid who'd never spent a significant time away from home. Anyway, on each floor of the dorm, we had two communal bathrooms, one in each wing. I slept later than most, well after lights out. Whenever I went to brush my teeth, all alone, in the dead of night, the hairs on the back of my neck would stand on end each time I looked in the mirror and glimpsed the dark hallway through the door behind me. Still creeps me out when I remember. Curiously, any similar setup now doesn't bother me at all. Maybe there was something about that building, and those mirrors.

Sharks and wait more sharks. Grew up by the ocean and saw Jaws when I was way to young and had one too many close encounters.

So you wouldn't want to go to that beachfront showing of Jaws in Texas where the audience watches from innertubes?

Clowns. The first person I ever remember punching was a clown because this was the 80's and it was normal for clowns to try and hug children without warning back then. He tried to hug me, I freaked out, punched him in the eye and he started yelling and now I hate clowns.

Now I want to create a character named Punchee the Clown. It works on multiple levels.

hehe, yes. do it

I'm not afraid of anything that walks, crawls, swims, or flies with one single exception. I do, however, have great respect for a number of creatures. Not fear, just a healthy respect for their power.

I think for me it is the thought of anyone changing very quickly. One minute you are talking to what seems to be a reasonable person and the next they just snap. In fiction it could be anything from personality disorders to supernatural things but I think just getting caught in a huge change of personality is scary. It’s like being teleported to another world but with a person instead.

For various reasons I will not go into why I get people fear. But what most people fear is a 'something'. A scratching at a door, a ticking clock that is slowly ticking slower, a shadow within light to cast it and a light making no shadow. It is the lack of control when we are trapped in a room with no visible exits or when we are trapped in a ship in the void or when we are trapped in a repeating day with no way to break free(ps this is why asking for help is hard for many, it is confronting our personal weakness and mortality). We are afraid of that which we do not understand, the hallway that never ends yet your destination is always almost near, the moment when something strange corners you in an unfamiliar place, the darkness of the depths reaching up to you.

People fear clowns because it is close enough to what our brain understands yet completly off. (Read more about the uncanny valley).

Fear lives and breeds in the tension, but you need to give it room to grow. Give an oasis of safety and then force them back out of it. Give them light but make it fading. Give them time, but make it count down(as all our time is counting down).

There are other ways tou can manipulate fear, most of which are more brutal and possibly harmful and triggering, but I think that paints a bit of a picture.