The draw of a great horror movie is its lingering effect on its audience, the way a scene can creep up on you again when you least expect it. Some forms of evil, terrifying haunts, and mysterious beings crawl into the deepest folds of your memory and make a home there.
Scary movies are meant to be just that — scary, and if you can think back to a spooky film that impacted you, chances are, it lives rent-free in the minds of others as well. A Reddit thread addresses that very idea as an original post shares a spine-tingling scene from Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark. Of course, others who loved the movie were equally as spooked by the same series of moments.
The viewer’s response to the pale lady scene isn’t one we’re ultimately shocked by. There is something truly frightening about the way it all plays out. She’s eerie, she’s ever-present, and there’s no escaping her in the depths of an already spooky setting; the pale lady is the cherry atop the sundae we never asked for.
Another horror-lover notes that the pale lady is actually an old trope used in the genre so that it’s not out of the range of “normal” that it would elicit that type of reaction in viewers.
Several fans of the books and the film note that Stephen Gammel’s drawings are part of why the iconic draw of the stories exists.
Again, the very idea behind the scene is terrifying; it’s everyone’s worst nightmare; being trapped in the midst of inescapable fear on several levels.
While the pale lady is unsettling, another horror fan notes that in the books, she was initially sent to warn of impending evil or doom.
The entire point of the movie is to creep you out, but the pale lady, that’s a scene that sticks.
Now, we’re not trying to salt a wound or make something more terrifying (or are we). However, a comment shares that the pale lady’s scene was filmed in a location close to them, which they know a lot about. It’s not just any location, but a shut-down psychiatric hospital — so the unnerving just got worse.
If that wasn’t bad enough (and it was), she went on to say that her mother and some of her coworkers had spooky stories of things that happened to them while at the hospital.
Needless to say, we’ll be thinking of that every time we watch the movie. If you want to relive the horror, especially with the added bonus of the last few comments, you can now watch Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark on Netflix. Happy haunting!
