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That Vaguely Un-Nerving Feeling....

MercuryCrest

MercuryCrest

The Severed Head of a Great Old One.
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Mar 24, 2003
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...You get when a certain song creeps you out for no apparent reason.

Right now it's "Pumped Up Kicks" by Foster The People. For some reason it gives me the galloping shudders.

When I was a kid, it was this other song whose name escapes me (Edit: Found it. "Around The Way Girl". The plugin keeps crashing, but the part I hate is right after the chorus). They used some sort of vocal modulation for the backup singers and in my head I pictures these horrible little round beasties singing. Not very dissimilar to a pale white version of The Langoliers, if you've seen the movie.

So what do you find vaguely un-nerving that you come across in life? Not phobias, mind you, just unusual reactions to things....
 
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The Terry Gilliam big-face-small-body people in, I think, the Monty Python opening sequence.

I am not going to look for one but it's fine if someone else does!
 
I had that song on repeat for most of one day when I first heard it. It's fairly hypnotic, with its regular rhythm.
 
Perhaps that's why I don't like it. Maybe it's tripping an alarm bell deep in my subconscious.

There also a Muppet that I found utterly terrifying as a kid (and since I still do, I won't be looking for his picture, but it was Dr. Teeth).

I actually had a dream that he was in my Tonka crane, driving it around my room. I leaned down and asked him, "Are you my friend?" And he snarled, "No!" and drove off.
 
Pumped Up Kicks is about how great it would be to shoot up a school, so it's perfectly reasonable to be creeped out by it.
 
GNC, yeah, as the chorus was going through my head I finally realized what they were saying. Eeesh.
 
Is it????? :eek:
I thought the lyrics were just nonsense.
 
MercuryCrest said:
...You get when a certain song creeps you out for no apparent reason.

Right now it's "Pumped Up Kicks" by Foster The People. For some reason it gives me the galloping shudders.
Click to expand...

Well, that "ruuuuuuuuun run run run ruuuuuuuun...." bit certainly doesn't help. Sounds like something you'd hear in a nightmare. My nightmares, at least. No one shouts "run!" in a normal tone in my dreams, it's alway "ruuuuuuun...."

I've had my own weird experience with the song, mentioned here;
Unexpected Lyrics

As disturbing as it is to have a perky tune with such grim lyrics, I figure this was a case of musician's humor. I've heard lots of musicans, including my own spouse, do this - make up some appalling lyrics to a cheerful tune. In Foster The People's case, their song went viral, and then they had some 'splaining to do...:p

Weezer did an excellent, significantly less creepy-sounding version of it in concert. If you need to exorcize the original version from your head, try giving that one a listen. The title on youtube is "Weezer- Pumped Up Kicks (Costa Mesa, CA).

So what do you find vaguely un-nerving that you come across in life? Not phobias, mind you, just unusual reactions to things....
Click to expand...

There was also a muppet that terrified me, but this may be a phobia on my part - I dare not say its name lest it come calling, much like Bloody Mary or that owl-human hybrid of Tejano legend, who we usually just refer to in these parts as "you know what" just to stay on the safe side. ;)

But un-nerving things that aren't ordinarily thought to be un-nerving? Hmm...

Huge ships on the horizon, especially when the sky is grey and the water's grey, and the silhouette of the ship is grey and misty. They seem monsterous, for some reason.
Hence the song "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald" always made me uneasy, too.

The way sunlight looks when it filters though live-oak leaves. The whole atmosphere around live-oak trees in general makes me uncomfortable in a way it's hard to describe, but especially the sunlight through the leaves. Also particularly when there are spider webs among the branches that catch the light. It's not a light-potentially-causing-seizure issue, BTW, it's just an overwhelmingly negative feeling.
I don't like magnolia trees much either, even though the blossoms smell heavenly. They are dark, sprawling, messy and foreboding, and I have a vague sense that they are bad luck.

Some types of humming sounds. Years ago, there was a store we used to visit with my aunt that had a strange "hum" inside - probably from the air-conditioning system. The sound made me very uneasy, and I didn't know how other people could stand it, but it turned out no one else in the family could hear it! :eek: Another "hum" that disturbs me occurs at one point in the Led Zeppelin song "Four Sticks". It feels like it hits me right between the eyes, but other people I've asked are untroubled by it. (this kind of thing caused me to wonder about potential for seizures, but I've been tested for epilepsy and it came out negative.)

Department store mannequins. They cause an unnerving uneasiness in me that creeps into fascination.
This might not be too rare, though - there is an episode of the Twilight Zone about mannequins*, so maybe Rod Serling found them unnerving, too.

*Ooh, freaky! I just got up to turn the tv channel and that episode was playing on another station.
Weirdness ahoy!
 
MercuryCrest said:
Perhaps that's why I don't like it. Maybe it's tripping an alarm bell deep in my subconscious.

There also a Muppet that I found utterly terrifying as a kid (and since I still do, I won't be looking for his picture, but it was Dr. Teeth).

I actually had a dream that he was in my Tonka crane, driving it around my room. I leaned down and asked him, "Are you my friend?" And he snarled, "No!" and drove off.
Click to expand...

As a youngster, watching Wurzel Gummidge gave me proper scary nightmares, and it was a family show.
 
Ulalume said:
Well, that "ruuuuuuuuun run run run ruuuuuuuun...." bit certainly doesn't help. Sounds like something you'd hear in a nightmare. My nightmares, at least. No one shouts "run!" in a normal tone in my dreams, it's alway "ruuuuuuun...."

Huge ships on the horizon, especially when the sky is grey and the water's grey, and the silhouette of the ship is grey and misty. They seem monsterous, for some reason.
Hence the song "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald" always made me uneasy, too.
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For me, I don't find the song cheerful at all (though I will have a go at the Weezer cover). I think it's the repetition of the chorus that messes with me. I find the tune to be vaguely sinister.

As for the "Huge ships" thing, I found a few links that you may or may not want to look at. There's a thing called "submechanophobia" which is a fear of machines and such underwater. There's also "Thalassophobia" which is a fear of open/deep water. Seriously, there are some subreddits dedicated to these:

Submechanophobia
Thalassophobia
The Depths Below

I thought about making a thread about these and just never got around to it. Some of those images truly are terrifying.
 
There is something that may be related to the "Uncanny Valley" idea, well maybe not very closely but anyway...

In some horror films, the monster is frightening because it is an all-too-believable thing, like the monsters in Aliens look like thoroughly convincing killing machines, sleek powerful creatures.

But there are other monsters, like the "Id Monster" from Forbidden Planet, that look impossible and distorted, with bodies that simply should not exist because they make no visual sense, mismatched parts insanely jammed together, things that look like they couldn't even move and would tear themselves apart if they tried.

Or like this creature that made a very brief appearance in the 1978 version of Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

** Trigger Warning: Anyone who is freaked out by mere Muppets should definitely not look at this. **

 
davidplankton said:
Oh dear, I remember that well. :eek:
There was something similar in a film with Malcolm McDowell. Was it Lucky Man or Britannia Hospital?
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Could have been both, though BH gets even more nightmarish, but you're probably thinking of the "sheep-man" in the bed in OLM.
 
I have a real problem with music at too slow a speed. It may be from childhood cassette or open-reel days. I don't mean in some hifi snob way, I mean it can genuinely make me feel sick and uneasy.

Was it on this board that there was earlier discussion about ASMR? Noises that can stimulate or even floor someone completely...cf 'whisper porn' (no, really....well, I'll only properly believe this if @Loquaciousness says it's all true)

Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response (ASMR): a flow-like mental state

https://peerj.com/articles/851/


ASMR, a.k.a. “autonomous sensory meridian response,” a.k.a. (in some quarters, at least) whisper porn, is a subject of much fascination but little concrete understanding. As Jessica Roy explained “The sound of whispering, for ASMR enthusiasts, produces a warm, tingly sensation, something like the frisson you might feel while listening to intense music.“ It’s a subtle euphoria that lulls those who experience it into an almost trancelike state of relaxation, telegraphing spinal shivers and spreading goosebumps across their skin.

ASMR enthusiasts may spend hours searching for ASMR videos online, as I can personally attest — my own habit was kicked off by a very relaxing voice on a guided-meditation cassette my mom gave me — but no one really knows why. Science has so far turned up approximately zilch that can explain, for example, why some people swoon when they hear the crinkling of wrapping paper, while others get chills only from a soothing voice like Bob Ross’s, and others appear to be immune to ASMR effects altogether.
 
I feel the same way about slow-speed songs, but more-so children's nursery rhymes:

The kookaburra sits...in...the...old...gum...tree....
 
One un-nerving thing I've had to experience an awful lot this year is the kind of day when the weather feels like it's the wrong season. I don't even mean days that are "unseasonably" warm or cool, but those days that, by way of temperature, humidity, scent, quality of light, etc. could have been swapped directly from the opposite end of the year.

I find this unsettling at any time of the year, but a spring and autumn swap is the worst. All week long it's been warm and sunny, but today....whammo, there's that distinctive Autumnal damp chill in tne air. It gives me this awful, creeping feeling, as if the year is dying all over again.

Used to be this would only happen once or twice a year. Now, it seems like the seasons are becoming more and more jumbled.
 
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Going back to creepy songs:

I've mentioned this before, sorry, possibly in an old thread called something like Songs you Hate, but I really hate The Little Drummer Boy.

It was on t'wireless a lot at xmas when I was a child, notably performed by the Ray Conniff Singers. Always made me shudder. An un-Christmassy, dreary dirge.

I found out much later that one of the Moors Murderers' victims had been killed while the song played in the background. This was proved when a tape was found of the actual murder. The killers had recorded themselves torturing and strangling a 10 year-old girl on Boxing Day 1964 with the Ray Conniff Christmas LP as a soundtrack.

This all happened a couple of years before the song was released as a single and became really popular, and I didn't know about the murder connection until I read a book about the case as a teenager. I'd still hated the song all that time though and I do now, and was especially appalled when Bowie recorded it with (of all people) Bing Crosby.

An upbeat version of the song was played in an episode of The Sopranos set in the Bada Bing! strip club at xmas. The strippers danced to it wearing nothing but g-strings and Santa hats. Seemed suitably sordid to me.
 
MercuryCrest said:
...You get when a certain song creeps you out for no apparent reason.

Right now it's "Pumped Up Kicks" by Foster The People. For some reason it gives me the galloping shudders.

When I was a kid, it was this other song whose name escapes me (Edit: Found it. "Around The Way Girl". The plugin keeps crashing, but the part I hate is right after the chorus). They used some sort of vocal modulation for the backup singers and in my head I pictures these horrible little round beasties singing. Not very dissimilar to a pale white version of The Langoliers, if you've seen the movie.

So what do you find vaguely un-nerving that you come across in life? Not phobias, mind you, just unusual reactions to things....
Click to expand...


I agree about the Pumped Up Kids thing. To indulge in a bit of self-analysis - I think that what gives it that slightly creepy ambience is the fact that the band look (and sound) like a Serious Rock band who ought to be pumping out some weighty grungy type material - instead they are knocking out something which could be aimed at 8 year olds ( it is almost reminiscent of `Bob the builder`). That studied nonchalance seems almost as though they are making a nihilistic point of some mocking kind.

Speaking of matters grunge (and still on topic) - I have always found the music of the band Nirvana to be uniquely unsettling. Now don't get me wrong- I'm used to listening to all manner of dark rock, miserabilist rock and Darkwave ( eg Slipknot, Numan, Peter Hammill,to name but a few) but none of them are quite authentically dispiriting and life denying as Nirvana were.As a consequence I have never doubted that Cobain killed himself: it's all there in his songs.
 
Zeke Newbold said:
I agree about the Pumped Up Kids thing. To indulge in a bit of self-analysis - I think that what gives it that slightly creepy ambience is the fact that the band look (and sound) like a Serious Rock band who ought to be pumping out some weighty grungy type material - instead they are knocking out something which could be aimed at 8 year olds ( it is almost reminiscent of `Bob the builder`). That studied nonchalance seems almost as though they are making a nihilistic point of some mocking kind.

Speaking of matters grunge (and still on topic) - I have always found the music of the band Nirvana to be uniquely unsettling. Now don't get me wrong- I'm used to listening to all manner of dark rock, miserabilist rock and Darkwave ( eg Slipknot, Numan, Peter Hammill,to name but a few) but none of them are quite authentically dispiriting and life denying as Nirvana were.As a consequence I have never doubted that Cobain killed himself: it's all there in his songs.
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System of a Down have always been creepy to me .... it probably doesn't help that a house share mate used to get drunk and play it full pelt wen I had work in a few hours time, the lead singer's voice is troubling aka crap.
 
Zeke Newbold said:
...instead they are knocking out something which could be aimed at 8 year olds ( it is almost reminiscent of `Bob the builder`). That studied nonchalance seems almost as though they are making a nihilistic point of some mocking kind.
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I think that's spot on. I didn't realize it at first, but it's a gentle feeling song. It's soft and that makes it eerie. I've never seen the band and know nothing about them other than this song.

As far as Nirvana goes, they never creeped me out but I really didn't get into their music.
 
drbates said:
I hate that 'If I had a hammer' one as well.
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That song used to puzzle me. I come from a large extended family of DIYers who owned every tool known to Man and a few more that they'd made themselves.

So who the hell DIDN'T own a hammer? Or half a dozen, in various sizes and finishes, for different jobs? o_O
 
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I haven't counted, but I may have around 20 hammers of different types.
 
GNC said:
Could have been both, though BH gets even more nightmarish, but you're probably thinking of the "sheep-man" in the bed in OLM.
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It's worse than that I'm afraid. It was...well, watch the clip below if you're sure you want to. It's not pleasant and I'm sure it made me actually jump backwards in my seat and utter shocked noises the first time I saw 'O Lucky Man!' It's a weird film and well worth a look.

Note to self: must have a go at 'Britannia Hospital' sometime.


Returning the the theme of slight unease, particularly provoked by music, I decided that it might be a good idea on Christmas Day 2015 to suggest watching 'Mary Poppins' - as it's traditional TV fare of the season and I've never watched it the whole way through.

I was drunk off my arse in a perfectly good mood, and yet found the whole film quite creepy (the weirdly glassy-eyed Midwich Cuckoo children are a given, of course). Aside from unexpectedly erotic thoughts about Julie Andrews - which you'll be relieved to hear I am not yet ready to share with the world - it became a slightly disconcerting experience. Possibly this was down to fatigue and a surfeit of rich food? Who knows...but I found the closing number, 'Let's Go Fly a Kite' extraordinarily sinister, oppressive and depressing, and still do when it chooses to haunt me almost daily - it's something to do with the repetition of the ploddingly insistent chant-like melody coupled with almost hallucinogenic tweeness and the fact that the tune is so unimaginative that the joy on everyone's faces seems like a parody of human emotion as though they're marionettes or automata going through the motions of being real people - an impression reinforced by the presence of their (kite) strings tying them to the sky, and that kind of mechanised choreography that you encounter in such films.

At that time, and even now when it troubles me in earworm form, I hear it treated as per the old horror film cliche of the sinister nursery rhyme (multi-tracked to create discordant harmonies and those kind of slowed-down bell-tree effects). It would be perfect for the videogame Sad Satan II..assuming it doesn't take as long as 'Duke Nukem Forever'.

I imagine I am completely alone in this. Which is fine.

(Mod Edit: previous youtube link could not be found. This is the best we could do:
 
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let's go fly a kite? Uuurgghh. I hate that song! It doesn't really creep me out, I just f'ing hate it. :mad:

Fourth grade music class we did Mary Poppins and had to rehearse that song again and again. I'm still resentful.

Maybe it is kind of unnerving, if it still has the ability to bug me this much after all these years.
 
Ulalume said:
let's go fly a kite? Uuurgghh. I hate that song! It doesn't really creep me out, I just f'ing hate it. :mad:

Fourth grade music class we did Mary Poppins and had to rehearse that song again and again. I'm still resentful.

Maybe it is kind of unnerving, if it still has the ability to bug me this much after all these years.
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The two songs that unnerve me the most are 'Frankie' by Sister Sledge and a song by BROS that was included in a genuine nightmare I had where the volume kept getting louder.
 
Andy_X said:
as though they're marionettes or automata going through the motions of being real people
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Something about the children's faces at 0:18 seconds, I assume it must be make up, makes them look really, really old. The boy in particular, see also 1:51.

I'll not bother with the O Lucky Man clip just yet, but thanks for posting it.
 
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