Stuff Watching Horror Movies Has Made Me Afraid Of
Don’t talk to strangers, don’t talk to Anthony Hopkins and especially don’t talk to an island-based cult of women who worship bees.
By 
Nico Lang
Crossing the street.
Because there are a lot of Final Destination movies, they’ve scared me out of many things, like cooking, driving behind a logging truck, going to a barbecue, performing gymnastics, flying to France, being around other people or watching any more Final Destination movies. However, none of these deaths is more vivid or real to me as the thought of a bus crashing into me as I walk across the street. I think this is a highly logical fear. Buses are much bigger than me and might not even notice that they accidentally have another passenger on their hood. I live in Chicago and the buses here can be a little reckless. So I’d prefer not to find out.
Walking next to a car or a train.
If you’re in a FD movie, a train can easily hit a giant piece of metal and cut off your head, but elsewhere, men in scary masks under cars seem to be the major issue. In general, people jumping out at you is scary, because you don’t know what they’re jumping out at you with. Even someone jumping out at you with a feather duster would be terrifying. (Unless you’re happen to be in an attic or just very dusty that day.) This is why it’s best to live in a city where you aren’t required to drive anywhere, ever.
Eating pea soup.
I can’t prove that eating pea soup caused the little girl from The Exorcist to get possessed by the devil. However, I don’t have any evidence as to the contrary either. That and I don’t like pea soup enough to risk having a demon take over my body and inserting a crucifix into my vagina. Pass.
Hanging out with Neve Campbell or Jamie Lee Curtis.
Seriously, why do they still have friends? You can’t go to prom with them, use the garage door in their presence, make a horror movie reference or try to use the phone around them without dying. And if you survive to adulthood, Jamie Lee Curtis is just going to insist on switching bodies with you. (Which is, like, totally annoying.) And, sure, Neve Campbell is beautiful and effortlessly ethereal, but the moment you try to have sex with her, you’ll just end up trying to kill her. Or you’ll be killed by the sexy guy from Justified and Rosanne’s sister, Jackie. Either way, not my idea of a fun Friday night.
Camping outdoors.
In no situation is this a good idea. Horror movies (especially the Friday the 13th and Sleepaway Camp films) have nothing but bad things to say about summer camp or camping in general. All that happens is that you end up crying in the woods with major sinus drippage, and you won’t even survive to see that clip of your witch-induced breakdown become a viral phenomenon on YouTube. Seriously, what’s the point of becoming an internet celebrity if you can’t go all Rebecca Black and secretly make a ton of money off of it? Laughing all the way to the bank is a little difficult when you’re dead.
Also, relevant: cabins. In general, nothing good has ever happened in a cabin. This goes doubly if that cabin is owned by Sam Raimi or Joss Whedon.
Going backpacking in Europe or Brazil.
Really, this is just common sense, and I didn’t really need Hostel to tell me it’s not a good idea. I’m tiny, naïve, incredibly gullible and neither my foreign languages nor my common sense are that great. Either I’d be tortured in Roman Polanski’s basement as part of a sinister Eastern European sex ring or conned into drug smuggling. Not all of those end in death necessarily, but having the cops find drugs in your bag and/or your rectal cavity isn’t much better.
Centipedes.
I know that, like Soylent Green, The Human Centipede was made of people, but I’d prefer not to take my chances. The price is too damn high.
Socializing with pagans, clowns, leprechauns, hillbillies or mutant hillbillies.
Basically, horror movies (and The Wicker Man) taught me that you shouldn’t talk to anyone you don’t know. Don’t talk to strangers, don’t talk to Anthony Hopkins and especially don’t talk to an island-based cult of women who worship bees. You will just wind up in a bear costume punching Leelee Sobieski and demanding to know how your daughter’s doll got burned, before being burned alive in a giant effigy and ruining your career. This drone plans on living.
Tanning.
Not only could you get trapped inside and slowly be fried to death, but you could also get skin cancer. I prefer to be pale and sickly, as God intended.
Not knowing the answers to trivia questions.
Maybe the opening sequence of Scream is really a life lesson: Intelligence pays off, and having a catalog of useless trivia stored in your brain is especially important. It might just save your life—or at least keep you from being chased around by Matthew Lillard, while wearing one of the fakest-looking blonde wigs in movie history.
Also, if you call into a radio trivia show to win a trip to Brazil and they ask you the capital of Brazil and you say Rio de Janiero, maybe you deserved to die for not paying attention during Geography class, Jennifer Love Hewitt. (I had a hot Geography teacher, which made this much simpler.) Personally, I am now terrified to get any question wrong ever, lest the son of the guy who tried to kill me in the last movie still knows what I did last summer. This makes multiple choice tests pretty nerve wracking.
Swimming.
Can’t anyone just go for a casual, relaxing swim anymore? Either a giant shark is trying to eat you, Betty White wants to feed you to her pet alligators or piranhas want to chew off your genitals in three dimensions. I long for the days when the scariest things about swimming were shrinkage, getting waterlogged, peeing in the pool and dying only because you never learned know how to doggy paddle.
Being Macaulay Culkin’s cousin or trying to rob Macaulay Culkin’s house.
Okay, so one of these was The Good Son, a movie it’s best that everyone forgets about, and the other was Home Alone, which technically isn’t a thriller or a horror movie. However, it’s still something worth mentioning, as the idea of messing with any child that freakishly intelligent is pretty terrifying. If you try, you’ll get hit with a paint can, covered in feathers and torched by a flamethrower.
Moral: Don’t mess with the Culkins. I shan’t try. 
