does that keep you from going to McDonald's?

Wait -- do you mean that you read IT when you were a child??

are you a boy or girl?

I refuse to eat in McDonalds, only go through the drive through. No I saw the movie IT when I was like 3. My uncle was watching me and didn't see anything wrong with me watching it. I'm a girl.

I know clowns are a common fear; there's something psychologically disturbing about how their make-up hide their true faces and feelings, I think. And I know the horror genre works best when it plays with common, relatable fears, like the clown coming to life and the evil tree trapping on the window in Poltergeist. But in the case of infamous movie monsters like Pennywise in IT and the shark in Jaws, I have to wonder: are they scary because the villians are things we're inherently afraid of and already distrust? Or are people my age mostly afraid of clowns or sharks after seeing them in a scary context as kids? I'm just noting this because I've heard a lot of people say they hate clowns because of that movie. I wonder if they'd have the same reaction towards something less stereotypically evil, like an acrobat.

Personally, I was already scared of clowns before I watched/read IT. It just made it worse. I can't imagine watching the movie at 3, I would have been absolutely terrified. D:

I'd like to think that my fear of clowns is a true deep down horror, only because I think I traced it to an origin. Before ever seeing IT, my mother hired a friend of her's, who is a little person, to be a clown for my first birthday. In EVERY picture that he is near me, I'm screaming my head off. I'm still a little freaked out by little people too. So I like to pinpoint my first birthday as the root of these incredibly irrational fears.

Actually, just realized I was 5, but it still scared the hell outta me! Remember how they were in the sewers, the chick hears the voices from the sink drain, etc? To this day, if I step on the drain when I'm showering, I still think of Pennywise! I can't even brush my teeth without keeping my eye on the drain!

Why do your parents have a stuffed clown in the basement?

I'd be cool with Alphonse Elrich in my closet. I'd get him to teach me to transmute things! Fullmetal is awesome!

haha. i lol'ed(:

the next pedophile

Ghost, demons and monsters are completely different things. Demons are real, evil creatures who do horrible things to people and animals. Monsters are like the Boogieman, vampires and the like. Ghosts are spirits who cannot let go of this realm. Ghosts are usually harmless, unless it's a poltergeist. It's disrespectful to confuse them with each other.

All aboard the crazy train!

Freeze, it's a pretty crowded ride, apparently. I was reading about this for a book club recently; almost 40% of Americans believe in ghosts of some type. Another survey said about that percentage in the UK base their religion on a belief in ghosts or UFOs. O.O The UK poll was a little shady and less reported, though, so who knows. 67: So which category do cryptids fall into?

Cryptids actually are a category all their own. As I see it, until I see reasonable proof, beyond a shadow of a doubt, I believe in cryptids, demons, and ghosts. (I have a harder time with monsters) I come from a family in which, all the females especially, have experiences with the supernatural. As a very small child, my imaginary friend was actually the spirit of a young man who had killed himself in our house before we bought it. And in our current house, my dad and I both have described a black ball of energy that runs around our living room. I never told him and he never told him, but we both described it the exact same way to my mother. The spirit world is real.

You can't really disprove the existence of something that doesn't exist. Keep waiting for your reasonable proof...

For the record, Honesty, I do believe in the spirit world, though maybe not ghosts per se. I tend to view our world as having parallel planes of existence, and those aren't always ruled by our understanding of time. That just makes sense to me when thinking about some prophecies and "fortune-telling" (most can be explained culturally or are just common sense, but some can't and aren't), or past events affecting a present location. It's impossible *not* to believe in the spirit world if you're a spiritual person, as I consider myself to be (I hate the connotations of "religous"). But unlike your experience, ghosts don't really have any effect on how I live my life, so I don't really have many set beliefs or judgements about them, or about people who do. I do think certain cryptids either did exist or do exist now. After all, until recently, the giant squid was a cryptid. The reality of them is probably much simpler than their legends make them seem, though. And the only monsters I believe in are the human kind, ala Idi Amin and Ted Bundy.