Comic #456 was a question about the Second Scariest Thing Ever, and since I didn’t have an answer quite at the ready I decided to brainstorm and make a list of whatever popped into my head as something scary. I thought readers might be curious and/or amused to see this list, because if the internet was created for a reason it is probably in order to reveal your inner fears to strangers.

• weird old men that try to tell you things about the weather
• horrible ghost children that peer into your windows
• robot snakes
• any robot version of animals that are already deadly
• parents that you didn’t realize were waiting up for you late at night
• pedestrian crosswalks that were flashing but you didn’t stop for and didn’t realize until afterward
• people in hospital or clinic waiting rooms
• situations where you feel like you’re the only normal one
• shaving close to sideburns
• that Large Hadron Collider thing that might kill us all
• “Killer Klowns from Outer Space” (Klowns might be spelled with a C, I don’t remember)
• your own imagination
• things from the uncanny valley
• that bit in “One of These Days” by Pink Floyd where the guy says he’ll cut you into little pieces
• the idea of things living under your stairs that will try to grab your ankles
• scorpions, dude
• when you’re riding the bus and the windows are really foggy and you suddenly don’t know where you are at all
• falling asleep on the bus and waking up across the street from the Scientology centre, and the bus is empty save for the driver
• that door in my parents place that creaks open as I walk toward it
• the bathtub part in “Eternal Darkness”
• being friends with a doctor and learning about all the hideous things that can go wrong in your own body
• recordings of numbers stations
• my dumb older brothers
• changing lightbulbs, no joke
• crossing the border back into Canada
• time’s inexorable onward march
• that part in the US version of “The Ring” when she crawls out of that TV and then WARPS TOWARD THE GUY
• that stupid hospital in “Resident Evil 4”
• the 3DO version of “Alone in the Dark”, back in the day
• that time I was flipping through channels as a child and saw the end of “Raiders of the Lost Ark”, where their faces melt
• basically anything with stingers of any kind
• that stupid plant near the stairs at my parents’ place (longish story)
• leeches
• bad dreams
• streetlights that go out when you walk by
• new jobs
• the basement at my great-aunts’ place
• empty factories
• empty factories in which you are playing Pink Floyd on the weekend while cleaning up
• empty factories in which you are playing Pink Floyd and the song “one of these days” (see above) is playing very loudly as you work
• whatever is standing behind you right now (seriously, don’t look)
• big spiders. not like, mutant big, like Shelob or anything. Tarantulas. That sort.
• the audio version of reCaptcha codes (google recaptcha, go to their website, listen to the audio version. spine-chilling!)