Moai

[poliphilo]

The Moai of Easter Island are huge statues, with elongated faces, jutting chins, heavy brows and ski jump noses. They look a bit like Richard Nixon and a bit like the Frankenstein monster.

There is nothing like them anywhere else in the world. These days we know something of the culture that produced them, but back in the 1950s no-one had a clue. I decided they were supernatural. Perhaps they came alive and stomped around their island when the sun went down.

They were just about the scariest thing I knew. As scary as ghosts. As scary as the very tall half-woman half-rabbit person I once saw in a dream.

I was afraid of them turning up in my bedroom. But that was bearable. I had a strategy all worked out. Obviously they could only appear on the left hand side of the bed. If I lay on my right I wouldn't see them.

Perhaps they were already there, looming up behind me. But that was bearable because it was seeing them that would do the damage. I didn't try to imagine what would happen after. Seeing them would be enough. One glimpse of those craggy, eyeless faces and I would dissolve in terror and cease to exist.

Comments

[halfmoon-mollie.livejournal.com]

When I was a little kid, we went to the movies to see...something. I don't know what, the movies were expensive and there were five of us (total. Probably paid less then than you do for one, now...) Anyway, one of the 'citing scences' was previews from "The House...on Haunted Hill" starring Vincent Price and Mary Roberts Rhineheart's "The Bat". I was pretty scared that night. But sleeping under the covers didn't work, because as soon as I got under there, I used to imagine the horrible creatures standing by the bed, ready to pounce on me.

We had cats when I was growing up, and I slept in the attic which was the reason my bedroom door was open. Open door, occupied bed = cat. The first time the cat jumped on my bed after that movie outting, I'm not sure who screamed louder....

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

When I first went to the cinema I was frightened by the size of the images on screen. There was a bronze Buddha in Around The World In 80 Days and they kept cutting to closeups of his head and I was absolutely terrified.

[jackiejj.livejournal.com]

I was five or so when I saw on my grandparents' television a diver in a diving outfit. In those times, the mask looked like an astronaut's helmet, a fishbowl sort of helmet, and I didn't know what to make of what I saw.

I just thought "monster."

I went out into the side yard, and I remember standing there transfixed with horror: the world had changed, because that monster was in it somewhere--anywhere.

[jackiejj.livejournal.com]

Did you ever see The Haunting of Hill House, based on the (truly terrifying) book by Shirley Jackson?

The movie was made in black and white in the 1960s, and it's all about psychological terror--much worse than ghosts floating around.

There's a moment--oh, even to think about it is horrible--when the heroine climbs a spiral staircase in the haunted library (and the music rises with her) and, just at the top, a FACE! And the music, of course, is going !!!!!!! at that heart-stopping moment.

I believe that movie is still around. It's worth seeing--but the book is even better, immensely creepy!

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Yes, a very fine movie. The director, Robert Wise, had worked with Orson Welles. It shows.