Clowns
Whoever decided clowns should be used to make children happy at the circus made a terrible mistake. When has a child ever laughed when seeing a clown for the first time? Clowns have extremely disturbing face makeup – their blank white faces and huge, dark eyes are so scary, they almost make your heart stop. Clown costumes and decorations are being seen now more than ever with the remake of Stephen King’s “It,” but the creepiness of clowns extends far and wide into other horror films and haunted houses. They’re everywhere. No matter how many times clowns are introduced to us, they still never fail to give us the heebie-jeebies.
Summer camps
Summer camps are for fishing, s’mores and making new friends, right? Well, in the case of “Friday the 13th,” summer camp should be focused on teaching survival skills. Watching helpless teens run away from Jason can make wooden cabins and murky lakes seem a lot less innocent and a lot more frightening.
Dolls
In general, the older you get, the more you lose the sense of seeing dolls and toys as fun, and the more they start to creep you out. I believe the infamous killer doll Chucky and the terrifying demon trapped inside Anabelle might have had something to do with giving us this change in perspective.
Basements
Basements are supposed to be a fun den for your kids to play board games with their friends, but of course, scary movies had to turn them into the place where ghosts, demons and psycho killers hide. Good luck staying calm next time you have to walk into a dark basement.
Animatronics
The unsettling images of a suited furry mascot can be found in the horror classic, “The Shining,” and once seen they can ruin your view of mascots forever. This concept gets elevated in “Five Nights at Freddies,” a horror game where you have to fend from animatronics with sharp teeth that are trying to kill you. It essentially makes walking into Chuck E. Cheese a full-blown nightmare.
Tricycles
“Saw” really messed us up with this one. The eerie, squeaky noises Jigsaw’s tricycle makes as he rolls by in it are so chilling, especially when you find out what he does to his victims in each movie. After watching any of the “Saw” movies, it’s hard to look at tricycles the same.
Puppets
Jigsaw isn’t the only famous horror puppet. “The Boy,” “Puppet Master,” “Dead Silence,” “Goosebumps” and even “Toy Story 4” all have creepy puppets in them. It’s almost like we are conditioned to believe puppets are not to be messed with from the get-go, since they’re portrayed as scary in children’s books and shows. Whenever you see one, it’s hard to look at without getting the chills.
Cornfields
“Children of the Corn” was one of the first films that started this trend, but there are lots of newer movies that send their main characters into cornfields, like “Sinister 2” and “A Quiet Place.” The fact the characters can’t see anything around them and are blocked from whatever is chasing them creates a panicked feeling for the character and the viewer of the movie alike. Now when adults go to day-time corn mazes that are supposed to be fun and playful or take their kids to them at pumpkin patches, they feel that creepy, “someone’s following me” vibe.