Scariest Single Lines in Movies, TV, Comics and Literature?

**Gail Simone** · 01-07-2011, 03:55 AM

What single sentences gave you the creeps or chills from any fiction?

I was rewatching Twin Peaks last night and one of the lines that scared me a LOT when I was little was...Agent Cooper is having a dream, and a beautiful dead girl, Laura Palmer, is in it. While creepy jazz plays in the background, the murdered girl says, "Sometimes my arms bend back."

That still gives me the shivers!

**Ziggy Stardust** · 01-07-2011, 04:05 AM

Hannibal Lecter had me creeped out. It was as much the delivery as the line, but....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iVlkZVAw8Gc

**SidekicksRevenge** · 01-07-2011, 04:53 AM

It's lost virtually all of its impact and become such a part of the culture as a punchline that it will never affect anyone the same way again, but "No...I am your father" was not just a jaw-dropping reveal...it was a little bit frightening. Then again, I was about 5 when I first watched Empire.

**BriRedfern** · 01-07-2011, 04:58 AM

Here's Johnny!

**Alan Lynch** · 01-07-2011, 05:01 AM

It might be cheesy as hell once you see it a few times and Donald Pleasance is chewing up scenery the whole time, but there are some pearlers in the original Halloween. There's one where he looks at the remnants of Michael Myers' hideout and mutters "He came home" in such a dead way. Great stuff.

**t.c.johnson** · 01-07-2011, 05:19 AM

Originally Posted by BriRedfern

Here's Johnny!

Ed McMahon was a scary, scary man.

**RobStaeger** · 01-07-2011, 06:23 AM

There's a line in Nick Cave's song "The Curse of Millhaven" -- really horror fiction in verse -- in which Lottie, the tweenage killer, says "Like my eyes ain't green, and my hair ain't yella, it's more like the other way around." Gives me chills every time.

**FunkySithLord** · 01-07-2011, 06:49 AM

"Return the slab..."

**Tom Stillwell** · 01-07-2011, 06:49 AM

"We all float down here." - Tim Curry as Pennywise The Dancing Clown from Stephen King's IT.

**Basque** · 01-07-2011, 07:23 AM

There's this Stephen King short story I read when I was a kid. It's called The Jaunt and is collected in the book Skeleton Crew.

(spoilers)

The story takes place in the future, where teleportation has become possible. The way this technology works is that people have to be unconscious before they teleport, otherwise they emerge on the other side and either die instantaneously of a heart attack or go insane. It's not really clear why until the end of the story, but the reason is that while the jump happens in a fraction of a second, to the conscious mind it feels like eternity.

At the end of the story, the protagonist's son holds his breath when administered sleeping gas in order to experience the jump while conscious. As the father wakes up on the other side, he hears the boy screaming. His hair has turned white and he's clawing out his eyes. He turns to his father and says: "It's longer than you think, Dad." Or something like that.

It's horrifying. I read tons of Stephen King stories when I was younger and this was the one that made the biggest impact on my impressionable young mind.