What have you found frightening on TV?

One Halloween when I was living in a Royal Navy married quarter in Rowner, Gosport, and my husband was away at sea, I decided not to watch the telly as I was so very alone, and I knew all the stuff would be scary.

So I put the radio on instead, and a nice rural radio play came on. Alas - too late - it turned out to be a satanic horror story, but so well done I stayed up and listened...and listened...and got terrified out of my mind.

When I went upstairs to bed, the distance between the light switch and the bed seemed so very far. I switched off the light and bounded to the bed, pulled the covers over my head, and lay there shaking for ages. The next morning when I woke up and remembered I felt right idiot!!

I read 'the flight of the heron' by D K Broster when I was about 11, I had nightmares after.

I was taken in by it too! I think a lot of viewers were actually quite traumatised by the programme.

Didn't something quite tragic happen that night as well? I seem to remember they got in a lot of trouble over the programme.

I feel a bit stupid for admitting to this one.

Does anybody remember when Sarah Green and Michael Parkinson did the 'spoof' haunted house. It was a good many years ago and I think it was on one Halloween night. I was a bit tiddly and I was taken in hook line and sinker because of the credibility of the presenters. It was on for hours and kept going back and forth between the 'haunted house' and the two of them in the studio. They were so serious I thought they must be telling the truth.

The acting was so credible and I honestly thought I was witnessing a haunting. The fact I was not alone in my stupidity saved the day.

FlicketyB as you mentioned the book Wychwood by John Buchan, it stirrred a dim memory and as he is a good writer, I bought it a few days ago for my Kindle. Well, it's a good book........ but, however did you manage to read it as a young teenager?It's full of broad Scots which even I had trouble fathoming, and also so much of Scottish history and politics not to mention being mainly written as a diatribe about the Scottish Kirk and their narrow religious bigoted views. RESPECT!
Back to this thread....... many things scare me [I scare easily] so am a bit careful about what I read or watch. Some years ago there was a very good Scottish drama on tv, a ghost story called [I think] A Govan Ghost Story. It was incredibly powerful and moving, set in a council tower block, and the ghost was a little girl.It was about redemption, pity and compassion the 'hero '[or anti-hero] was a man of about 60 who saw and felt compelled to help the girl. It was scary but thoughtful and stirred the emotions.

John Buchan did write Witch Wood, though I can't remember it myself. I read through most of his works when I was about 11.

Deedaa, could it have been John Wyndham and not John Buchan who wrote those scary books? JW wrote "Day of the Triffids" and "Midwitch Cuckoos" among many others, some of which I found a bit scary.
"The Fall" was truly under-your-skin unease, such a very pleasant man with such a dreadful secret life. "The Tunnel", an Anglo-French remake of "The Bridge" is proving really chilling, better than the original.
Met a Dalek lurking at the bottom of shadowy stairs in the "Museum of the Moving Image" (on the South Bank, no longer there) with my daughter, how we screamed!

I remember going to see Soldier Blue in the '70s. At the end no-one in the cinema (picture house) could move for a few minutes after seeing that the 'cowboys' were as bad if not worse than the 'indians' - the first time I can ever remember seeing a film where the cavalry were the baddies. Of course we all know different now. And I found A Clockwork Orange very scary. (I've moved onto films now after the Psycho chat. Sorry!)

When we were students, a friend and I went to see Psycho. All the way back from the cinema, we clung to each other and I, for one, slept with the light on.

Definitely Crimewatch since I've lived on my own. It scares the hell out of me to think that these are REAL things that REALLY happen!!!

Sorry, Perkins!!

Anthony Perkings in "Physco," the stabbing scene through the shower curtain and the accompanying music really made me jump and still does even though I know what's coming, I cant watch. Same with the first appearance of the shark in "Jaws." The whole cinema gave a collective gasp when that happened.

The Reality shows so popular now, TOWIE for example and the Kardashians - sad to say many young women aspire to be like these people. Famous for simply appearing on TV and letting us see how they live, doing nothing much.

Dr Who, the Daleks most of all. The Trollenberg Terror, also The Witchfinder General has left me with a fear of loft hatches ever since.

I'm another Quartermass person and A for Andromeda.
The ignorance of news presenters and the experts they have on the Newsdesk programme trying to defend the indefensible and that programme pretending to be unbiased!

And I am another. As a child I watched most television from behind the settee. I also cannot cope with programmes where someone is being emotionally abused or in distress.

Oddly enough I can watch a documentary about an emotional subject, but not a dramatization. I could cope, for example, with a programme about child abuse but not drama.

I am a total wimp. Any horror film - problem as my SIL1 makes horror films and I can't watch them. Plays about Unpleasant things like violence, blood, paedophilia. SIL2 was recently in a stage play called 'Bluebeard' about sexual violence and recommended I didn't go to see it. My family all vet films and programmes for me, I am so resistant to being exposed to unpleasantness. The list of what I can't watch on TV is endless. There is too much violence on TV and in films for me.

Yes, the Stone Angels on Doctor Who realised all my fears !

About Jo Brand - I admire her as an actor. She was brilliant in 'Getting On'. She is also a very strong woman, can be very droll and her language has toned down a lot.

Currently I find all the Christmas ads very scary.

Definitely the Daleks for me.

Nearly fifty years on, the sound of the Dalek voice saying "exterminate", still makes my stomach knots with fear!

Jeremy Kyle - now that's really scary.

Michael Gove's interview on the Andrew Marr show this morning. How has that man been allowed to force his own weird convictions on the education system?

I was watching some adverts last night on TV and X-box where advertising their new game and I nearly shot through the ceiling when a zombie type person lost part of his arm just think what the youngsters are watching when we are not because we can't police their viewing 24/7 they will be watching at their friends houses etc.very scary indeed.

The news, when they start telling us that gas and electricity prices are going up again!

I stopped finding The Fall scary when I realised there was going to be another series. But it was a few weeks before that happened.