All animals are hyper alert while defecating. You're exposed and immobile and it makes you easy prey for predators. Humans aren't immune to this instinct and many cultures around the world associate toileting with fear, even some of the more isolated cultures. It's also a rather surreal place. It's wet, possibly mouldy and smelly and tiles make everything echo.
Lot's of cultures have developed tales about monsters thag prey on people when taking care of their business. Like that ghost in japan (that the hand from Majora's mask is a clear reference to) that asks you to choose between a red and blue roll of toilet paper, and both are correlated to how it will kill you, and choosing a color not listed has it drag you to the underworld.
Steven King said the whole reason he wrote Dream Catcher was for the bathroom scene because bathrooms are so scary in real life. Along with what you said about suicides, slip and falls and the others, he noted that the bathroom is where you usually make the discovery that your body is failing in some way, such as noticing a new dark spot on your skin or blood in the stool.
I'm way late but on the topic of Stephen King and her use of IT clips in the video,,, like, a lot of shit happens in bathrooms in that novel and its film adaptations, damn. Like, as you mentioned, a suicide.
This is a great point. Also, if you've ever cared for elderly people, the bathroom is the most challenging part of giving them care. Whether it's helping them onto the toilet or helping them into the bathtub, it can be hard to the caregiver to see watch a loved one decay to the point where basic necessary tasks are now very difficult and know that this will be their own future one day.
I was a maid at a hotel for a summer. A closed shower curtain or bathroom door was pure anxiety inducing. It always felt like the opening scene of Law & Order where the dead body is found.
As someone with intense anxiety, bathrooms are like a second home to me. Seeing them in horror movies, games, etc. is extremely effective because when I see bad stuff happening in them, I see a place that I consider a safe spot be tainted. I usually find horror hilarious but bathroom horror terrifies me. Thanks for making this video, it's fun to be scared every once in a while!
I live in Australia. My life literally is that scene from "Arachnophobia". No joke. We've had spiders under the toilet seat, in the shower, on the lights, behind the mirrors. I had one straight up drop on me from the roof while I was showering as a kid. I didn't need movies or games to make me scared of the bathroom.
Indeed, sorry, I should have made it more obvious I was agreeing with that point in the video. Though, that being said, movies and games have certainly helped reinforce that fear :) And that thing about checking the toilet bowl? That's pretty much necessary life skills here. You do not want to know the creepy crawly things I've found living in the toilet bowl.
I moved from the US to Australia a few years ago, and holy shit! I hate huntsman spiders and golden orb weavers. I once came across a golden orb weaver with an abdomen bigger than my thumb and legs wider than my spread open hand while working in an orchard. Thinking about it still gives me the shivers.
Heavy Metal Collector hahahahaha oh man, look, you honestly do kinda get used to it. Especially the little ones. But huntsman spiders definitely still creep me out. At least they're not super venomous. We get a lot of orb weavers, too. There's a big bastard made his web outside our kitchen window. But at least he keeps the flies out
we had a detached laundry/dunny and I remember as a kid I peed my pants because I refused to use it while the inside one was taken there was always more than a 50% chance it would be covered in redbacks
The hand in the toilet thing from Majora's Mask is actually a reference to a Japanese myth. There is a ghost called Aka Manto and he will ask "red or blue paper" if you say red he will cut you to ribbons, if you say blue he will strangle you, and if you pick another color he will drag you to the afterlife. The only way to escape is to say "no paper".
I can't help thinking that walking backwards up dimly lit stairs holding a candle and a mirror runs a pretty good chance of falling and breaking your neck. Like it's a rather vicious prank maybe?
I had a similar thought. Only for me, it was tripping and lighting yourself on fire. There's also dropping the mirror and cutting yourself. Perhaps the odds of physical harm/death are what the grim reaper truly represents there.
As a kid I also remember going to slumber parties and being told to do the "Bloody Mary" thing. I flat out refused because I fully believed in demons and wanted no part in inviting one around. To this day I still completely avoid looking in mirrors at night for fear of what I may see lurking there (even if it's just a figment of my own tired imagination.)
In some prisons, inmates will take one leg out of their trousers while on the toilet. This is so if they are jumped they will not trip themselves if they have to react.
I got bored one day and started reading about prison stuff XD Some dude made a crossbow in solitary confinement... Shit that can happen there is insane.
This is honestly one of your best videos. I've always loved your retrospective vids but this is maybe one of the most exhaustive ones you've done! And it really got my brain a-buzzing about why bathrooms/toilets are so scary. For me, it's because they usually only have one exit. Usually no windows either so if the light goes out it's pitch black. That's nightmare material! I'm from Finland and we have a sauna in almost every house, attached to the bathroom. The times I've seen saunas used as a bad place or scary place is exactly once: in a Finnish horror movie. I'm kind of surprised it's not more of a trope: saunas are small and cramped and have low visibility, the heat can make one anxious (especially if it becomes too hot), the hot stones are basically begging for someone to fall over on them and be burned badly. In our culture saunas are deeply deeply symbolic and seen as a place of truly becoming clean (and it's true - the feeling of cleanliness after a sauna is completely different than after a shower or a bath). Saunas are almost like churches, there's a holiness to them. In the past women gave birth in saunas and the dead were washed there. Maybe that's why they haven't been disturbed or tainted with horror imagery.
I love the original content. I was hoping to hear something about Candyman. A lot of bathroom scenes in that one.. especially the urban legend about the boy who gets his penis cut off my candyman and it's found floating in the toilet.
Can confirm, Ghostbusters Tub had terrified me from proper hygene. Im not gonna lie, i'm 29 now and get regular showers but it took me over 12 years to get over my fear of showers and baths from the grudge and ghostbusters. I honestly was terrified and had to be forced to take a shower, thanks for the analizing, this helped even more! I'm happier to take showers now~
1. My friend told me that the mirror thing with vampires was because mirrors were backed with silver, which was seen as a pure and good metal, which conflicted with the vampire's tortured and different nature. 2. The bathrooms suck because you can't be armed while taking a shower. Unless you stuck a crowbar to the panels using one of those suction cups.
I've never been afraid of bathrooms really. I don't look behind the shower curtain, I don't close the door when I walk by; I just always find solace in a bathroom. Growing up in my grandparents' really old farmhouse, I experienced abuse from a family member. The house had dimly lit... well, everything. Everywhere that wasn't a main living space was dark, creepy, and smelled. I would generally hide in the bathroom or in the closets because I found comfort in being able to lock doors (yeah, closets with locks... on the inside?) Seeing scary bathrooms in film or video games always made me wonder why. I assume now that seeing as my childhood was different than what media portrays, I get why I never developed that fear.
I actually had a somewhat similar thing. I was bullied a lot at school, and my high-school had small rooms as toilets intead of stalls. I spent many breaks there hiding from the world. The black-coloured walls mumbled the voices of people, and I felt like I could be myself there. To this day I prefer small dark rooms when I'm feeling anxious, and might go to the bathroom just to have a moment of peace and quiet.
Reminds me of how occasionally I would hide in the changing rooms at my elementary school for comfort, under the benches. I'm claustrophobic, but since it's open enough not to feel trapped there, I found something very comforting about that small, tucked-away space. Also, I do close the bathroom door when I walk by, but only because I know one of my roommates prefers it to be left closed.
You knew I was gonna come here. You know. IN THE BATHROOM 1:44 7:15 8:37 10:12 11:14 12:53 14:14 P.S. Scariest bathroom scene is definitely What Lies Beneath!
OH my giddy aunt. I just literally finished watching the last video I had lined up for the day, and thought forlornly, Gee. I really hope PUR uploads that toilet video soon.. 12 minutes later... I'm in youtube pleasure town
The thing that always scared me as a kid was the sound of the toilet flushing. It's so loud, like a monster. Or so loud it will get the attention of the monsters. I can still remember the feeling of my heart racing as I would flush the toilet and run back to my room and under the covers as quickly as possible
I'm here late, but let me tell you my toilet fear as a child. After I saw that arachnophobia toilet scene as a teeny tiny child, I had to check my toilet for spiders for YEARS. I always had to lift the seat and check to make sure it did not have any dang venomous spiders hanging around! And I really did do this for a couple of years. The funny part is that I live in an area that does not have a SINGLE venomous spider species around. Kids are dumb. Well, at least I was dumb.
I was around 8 years old at a rest stop when a woman and her two daughters open my restroom stall started at me for a good second then closed it. I already had anxiety about doors either locking me in or not keeping people out. So yeah that was fun.
Paltheas I’ve pretty much always had a cat in the house, so I tend to leave doors cracked open a bit to allow feline exploration, but I might occasionally seize up in the bathroom if I take a shower at an atypical time, that is not first thing in the morning. I’m not sure why exactly it has to be later in the day to freak me out by being mostly prone and naked and in an inescapable water closet, but that’s my life. Maybe ,y imagination has time to wake up and suggest things that aren’t there through the shifty glass of the shower door?
Usually I prefer the doors not to be closed. Probably some very slight claustrophobia. The door to my bedroom is always closed, otherwise my dog would poo and pee on the landing in the middle of the night. She never makes a mess in the bedroom. Proving that she can wait until morning, and that she is just an opportunist, I love her so much :D
i was bulimic from age 9 to 20 or 21, and that was the main thing i had in my mind this whole video. thank you for mentioning your experience with it! i know it's silly but it was nice to have that association validated!!!!!
I remember one time when I was extremely sick, and after long sitting and shitting in the bathroom - my stomach hurt so much that I was genuinely afraid to find an internal organ float in the toilet!
I'm really glad you made this video because I've always been scared of bathrooms, especially bathroom mirror and for a long time, years even, I used to have really bad anxiety when I was in the bathroom and I couldn't take long showers or just be in a bathroom for too long without panicking, especially at night. I never had a way to explain it, except for kids in elementary school doing Bloody Mary stuff (which I'm still scared of today!!). I've gotten over it mostly since most of my paranoia occurred when i was a kid, but when I play games with bathroom mirrors, even stuff like Gary's Mod, I get super anxious that something creepy is going to happen. Thank you for making this video, as its something i can show people when I don't know how to explain why I'm scared of bathrooms!
I was actually expecting her to bring up clock tower when talking about mirrors, since if you inspect the mirror in the bedroom, a hand reaches out and chokes you to death. But I guess that's a less prominent scene than entering the bathroom, so I understand.
I remember Silent Hill 3 had a few scary moments in some of the public toilets, as well as a scary mirror in the hospital level. Still to this day, that mirror room is one of the scariest rooms I've ever been in.
You make a good point about the bathroom being a terrifying place in real life, too - I used to self-harm fairly frequently in the bathroom (although I live alone, it was purely easy clean up) and, although I still have my struggles with pills, I haven't marked my skin in almost a year now. But when I was dyeing my hair red the other day, and I was rinsing it out, and it was all over the bath, and my hands, and my wrists, and my arms (I'm not exactly neat and tidy when it comes to any chore!) I found myself panicking and flashing back just a bit to that time in my life, and it really shocked me what a hold it had over me. Not as bad as certain things that make me remember things I'd rather forget, but one that certainly came out of no-where and one that not everyone can understand, even if I do think we all have (ir)rational fears of the smallest room.
Thanks for adding the creepy toilet from 'Look who's talking'. That thing definitely was a major reason for me to be scared to go to the bathroom at night. (And we did have those plushy covers back then as well! The 80s/90s were wild!) In horror movies you expect something creepy lurking in the bathroom, but that toilet abomination in a kids movie totally came out of left field for me. My dad always obsessed over potential rats coming out of the toilet and so he really made sure that we learned to always close the toilet lid down! So those dudes who claim it's too hard to put down the SEAT after peeing really get no sympathy from me! Appreciate the short clip from Van Helsing, it's so campy, colourful and fun. (And I really love Drac in this!) Maybe a film to cover in the future, or do some general break down/ranking of vampire content as a Halloween special?
Not afraid of bathrooms. Then again I wasn't really exposed to any frightening stories or situations featuring bathrooms. Growing up as a kid, though I did develop a fear of death and dead things. Especially birds. One experience I remember is when I rode my bike down to the park. While riding around near the trees, I saw a bird that had its chest ripped open. Just thinking about it now 19 years later freaks me out.
When I first started watching this, I instantly thought of the scene in the 1990 version of It, where Beverly sees all the blood in her bathroom sink, but her father can't see any of it. Spooked me out like crazy. Great video!
And now that I'm done watching the video, and done eating my snack, I need to go use the bathroom... At 3 AM. In the basement bathroom that only has one dim light.
I often think of the scene in A Nightmare on Elm Street where the girl is falling asleep in the bathtub until claws start coming up through the water. That image creeped me out.
I think media made the bathroom creepy. As you said the bathroom is something really private, most people feel very comfy in their bathrooms but defiling that place making into something scary is super contrasting to the comfy private zone/safe space feel most people associate with their bathrooms and thats why its a good setup for horror. Its the same concept that makes the monster under your bed scary. Edit: I love my bathroom, broke multiple Tetris records while sitting on the pot :D
Man, this reminds me of a book I read a while back before I left school, I don't remember what the book was called, but I can remember what it was about. People accidentally discovered an endangered animal species in Mexico; extremely viscous and would attack on sight, the creatures hid in drainage pipes and attacked by lunging out of sinks, toilets, etc. The scene I remember clearest involved a young woman and her mother, who had blocked the toilet with her sewing machine and taped it shut, saying something was trying to emerge and attack. After the daughter went out (before she left, she heard water splashes and wrote it off as nothing, she'd also taken off the tape and the sewing machine), the mother blocked the toilet up again, and the scene ended with the mother being in bed again and seeing something in a corner. Once the daughter returns, she goes back upstairs to find her mother's neck torn out, and then is also attacked by this mystery creature. One of the very few horror novels that actually gave me chills, I'd love to read it again.
The scene that sticks out to me didn't happen in a bathroom, but did involve a sink. When The Blob sucked that dude down the drain, I was scarred for life. Great video as always, Roses!
All my childhood fears of bathrooms stemmed from that trailer I lived in for the first 13 years of my life. A trailer where there was, quite often, the possibility of finding a two-inch long cockroach behind the toilet, crawling on the wall, jumping out from the medicine cabinet, crawling by the tub, coming out of the shower drain, et cetera. I was petrified of roaches as a kid. Also, the weaksauce toilets which inevitably clogged instilled me with a gruesome fear of the toilet overflowing and flooding the entire place. I'd often have brown-out nightmares involving the toilet overflowing while my legs stuck to the ground, unable to escape the oncoming flood, only able to move in slow motion. ...Also, there was this clip on AFV I saw once around the same age where someone stuck some prank creature in the toilet which would pop up when the prank victim opened the lid. Thanks to that, I was scared of creatures coming up from the pot for waaaaay longer than I wanna admit, lol. I have no current bathroom-associated fears. ...I still have weird filthy bathroom dreams though. I've always wondered what sort of wack "bathroom dreams" people had before the invention of the modern toilet. Or "brownout dreams" before the invention of the common lightbulb. Anyway... off topic. :P -Cy
When I was a little kid I was afarid of getting sucked down the drain of the bathtub because of an episode of rugrats where one of the characters had vision of getting sucked down the drain. Good news is that my fear only lasted a year.
I still say one of the scariest bits in Eternal Darkness was the bathtub hallucination. It's one of the few times I've actually found a jumpscare kind of respectable. I'd argue that the grossness of bathrooms is a major part of why they're used so often for scary scenes. The vulnerability aspect is important too (probably more so), but the thought of how unsanitary they often are can really enhance a scary scene. The thought of someone getting cut up or whatever is made even more unnerving by seeing it happen in some moldy, shit-encrusted, fly-infested room. The fact that so many bathrooms are so cramped adds even more since it makes the dirtiness feel even more all-encompassing and inescapable. Plus, let's be honest, a bathroom is just one of the least dignified places to die.
Man PUR’s vidjas r soo good! My scary bathroom memories come from silent hill 2&3 (those really creeped me out) and the naked lady scene in the shining. (Thanks for the reminder btw XD)
As a kid who loved baths Ghostbusters 2 was horrifying, especially when I reached the age where my parents no longer monitored my baths. But while I would always check my bathtub and linen closet for monsters while growing up, I was really terrified of the hallway at about 8 in the morning when no one in the house was awake. I would dart between my room and the bathroom and not feel truly safe until I was back in my room with the door locked. I was always afraid that a Gremlin would be in my house, watching me.
As a wee bairn, toilets at night became a thing of terror thanks to that demonic toilet from "Look Who's Talking, Too". That level of horror had no business being in an otherwise fairly wholesome family film about talking tots.
When i watched E.T. for the first time, there was a scene, where the boy shows E.T. around the house, and when he get's to the bathtub, he opends the faucet and says something like "Water comes from there. and sometimes bugs" and I never forgot. and it still freaks me out even though I know it won't happen. Not scary. Just gross
i used to be scared of the sound of toilets flushing. once in 2nd grade i literally ran out the school bathroom with my pants down my ankles. always fun to remember that 14 years later
It doesn't bother me. I lift the lid, I look and then I sit down. Rather simple interaction. If something is in there you close it and flush, weather it's a rat or much MUCH worse, someone else's feculence.
i live in a very old condo complex. not only is the bathroom the only room without a window, it's also the tiniest, and our building has a RIDICULOUS amount of centipedes. i was never scared of bathrooms (besides showers, which are hella scary) until i moved to my current place. (also i can't shower anywhere that has an opaque shower curtain bc i watched psycho wayyy too young. it has to be at least semi-transparent, thank you very much.)
Nah bathrooms don't scare me. What scares me I blame jurassic park and this park I went to that had dinosaurs noises and realistic sculptures when I was little. So my greatest fear comes in two forms both similar in feeling. It starts off in a jungle or a forest the sky gets dark, thunder rumbles and lighting is the only light source you got you start hearing the low growls and calls of raptors, Dilophosaurus, Carnotaurus, and pterodactyls around you and in the air then sudden a flash of lighting shows a T-rex feet in front of you. It gives out its roar foot steps coming your way... now the other has the same weather but it's in the middle of the ocean on a raft and seeing glimpses of a mosasaur, plesiosaur, or a Megalodon swimming around the raft
Great video, and I feel 100% the same way about the Ghostbusters 2 and Arachnophobia scenes. We must be around the same age, because this touched the exact same things from my childhood. For some reason, I can't wrap my head around you actually being afraid.
Not exactly a bathroom fear, but I have always been creeped out by pipes making noises in the walls. Creakes, knocks, burbling or screeches always sent my mind into places it shouldn't be. Great video.
i Adore you. ive been binge watching your videos lately, you are so nice and well-spoken and intelligent and pretty!!! i love your videos and analysis. i know im commenting this on your bathroom video 😳 the rush of appreciation for your content came to me here 😔 but i think compliments in the bathroom just hit different 💕💕
Genuinely great analysis. This is something I've been thinking about off and on for years ever since not just seeing "Psycho" but also listening to the Mitsfits song "Psycho '78" and the Samhain song "Mother of Mercy". And, of course, I very vividly recall the Bloody Mary legend from childhood. Despite all that, bathrooms are mostly comforting for me as places of escape in public places, refuges at noisy parties, etc.
Oh, man, it's great to see a nod to Killer Klowns from Outer Space. :) And Clock Tower? Nice! Eternal Darkness on the Gamecube also has probably one of the best bathroom jump scares I've ever experienced. Regarding bathrooms, I'm not generally afraid of the real thing (though I can get a bit apprehensive when walking past one in the dark to go to bed - it's a little pocket of darkness that has its own little pocket in the form of a curtained bathtub), but video game bathrooms are awful. I think I can only think of maybe two games where bathrooms aren't actively out to get you (Penumbra and White Day), and even in White Day, if you're being chased, then the bathroom may not necessarily be a safe place to hide. This is a fantastic video. Bathrooms really are scary in almost every movie or game they're in, and it's cool to see not only why, but also a comprehensive set of examples. Great job!
Well in the recent remake of White Day there is a scare where you hear something slowly but surely check all of the bathroom stalls, banging each door open, until it comes to you, which is a bloody girl with a wide grin who practically falls to the floor when she finds you. Scared the crap out of me!
When I was very young I happen to see a scene in Highway to Heaven where no one believed this old lady that there was a snake in her toilet. The angel convinces his buddy to look anyway and holy cow there it is. Even after almost 30 years I still sometimes double check before sitting down.
Another awesome vid Roses. I was getting ready for work and then saw your video. And I had to go back and forth to my bathroom lol. The only thing I am afraid of is spiders and since I live in a basement apartment it’s even more scary. Keep up the great work
Ok wow, this video brought back some memories. When I was a kid there was a period in 5th grade where the story of Bloody Mary had taken over the school and the older kids liked to scare the younger kids with it. I remember being in the bathroom with two of my friends talking about Bloody Mary when two older girls turned off the lights as they left the bathroom, so of course we panicked and ran out screaming. I also remember a day when my friend was at my house and we tried to summon Bloody Mary in my parents' bathroom, counting on our fingers all the times we had to repeat her name. As we got closer to the end we gave each other this look like, "oh shit, what have we done?" When I was maybe 5 or 6 I was afraid of the bathrooms at Target because the toilet flushing was so loud. And at that age, I was afraid of anything that was loud. My house has three bathrooms, the one attached to my parents' room, the one in the upstairs hall, and the one in the basement. I've claimed the basement bathroom as mine and that's where I shower. It's a very small bathroom complete with a medicine cabinet, dim lights, and a shower the size of a broom closet. To get to this bathroom I have to walk down a dark narrow staircase, through a long dark hallway, in a very old house that creaks a lot. A few years ago I heard the story of Kashima Reiko for the first time. And if the story of a vengeful ghost who's missing the lower half of her body isn't scary enough. The story basically ends with telling you that Kashima will appear to you after you hear the story and you have to answer her questions correctly or else she will kill you. And of course, she's said to appear in bathrooms. One night I was taking a shower with the thought of that story in the back of my mind. I can't really hear anything above the sound of the water and the bathroom fan but I heard a voice in the hallway and a knock at the door and immediately froze. I don't quite remember what happened except hearing the door being forced open and noises in the room while I stood frozen in the shower thinking I was going to die. A few minutes after the noises stopped I felt brave enough to open the shower curtain and I saw the medicine cabinet and the door were both open. I guess this was all a horrible coincidence as one of my family members needed something from the medicine cabinet at the same time I was thinking about bathroom ghosts.
Part of fear is being vulnerable. When you're in a bathroom you are either naked or with your pants down almost every time. You are at your most physically vulnerable.
So this video is fantastic and I'm so glad you feature the IT miniseries as an example here. I was no older than 5 when I first saw that tv movie and it scared the living daylights out of me. Along with a healthy distrust of clowns, drains in tubs, sinks and on curbs terrified me for YEARS. I just knew Pennywise was gonna come out of a drain and eat me.
26 years ago when I was six, I would be terrified of Bloody Mary and the bathroom mirror. Bloody Mary is very famous here in Brazil. I also saw a movie I can't remember what it was, where the shower sink would have a creature pull a guy in and blood splatted everywhere. I would never close the door while in the bathroom, and when it started I would ask my mother or my father to be in the bathroom door waiting for me to finish my shower.
1. Let me just say how much I love your videos. 2. We throw an epic and over the top Halloween party every year, it takes weeks to set up and takes over the entire property. Cops have been called, pretty sure we are the reason our neighbors moved, ect. A big part of the decor is the bathroom! We have actually had to dial it back because people were too uncomfortable using the bathroom or using it with the door shut. The last really epic design is what drew the line with our friends. Even our large burly friends were unsettled. We have an old house with high ceilings so we suspended mutilated barbies from the ceiling at a high that you didn't see them unless you looked up, which you don't really do until you have already sat down. We also had blood everywhere, a dead body in the tub that looked like a spooky sacrifice, and bloody writings on the wall. Frankly it spooked me and I'm the one who set it up. The isolation of being alone in a small space makes the bathroom a great place for scares. 3. As a young person i went to a party that had when you walked in a "spooky" bathroom. Very basic, hand prints on the curtain ect. I thought to myself "how cute." But as I sat there doing my business the light started to flicker and they had their mirror rigged to show a spooky face and honestly my pants weren't even allnthe way up before I was out of that room!
Actually, the reason Vampres aren't able to see themselves in a mirror, is because in the olden days, mirrors had a layer of silver, and vampires aren't able to interact with pure metals.
This was a great analysis. Bathroom horror has always been fascinating to me, too. For what it's worth, in dream analysis bathrooms are commonly interpreted as the need to release emotions you've been holding inside for too long. Subconsciously bathrooms could be seen as places of trauma.
The fire drills during college while in the shower is a real thing, it happened to me two years in a row! I had to book it outside, into the freezing cold winter night! Unique &well put together video as always, Roses!
This stuff, especially the mirror related mythology...yeah, it creeps me so much! I often have to check behind the shower curtain when I wake up in the middle of the night. I like watching this videos though because I still believe it's good to face fears and be rational. Great video and intriguing topic.
I remember when I was a kid (maybe 5, 6 years old) I was absolutely terrified of being sucked down the bathtub drain because of an episode of Rugrats where Angelica tells Tommy and Chuckie that it was indeed possible to get sucked down the bathtub drain.
Bathrooms have always been a place of discomfort to me. As a child I lived with an abusive stepfather who refused to allow us to lock the bathroom door under any circumstance. The constant fear of someone coming in for nefarious reasons was crippling. As I got older it became a place where I could hide and self harm, and to be honest even in my 30's I still struggle with it. The bathroom became a place to hide and cry when postpartum depression came crashing down. It's still a place to hide and cry when I'm having a hard day and don't want my husband or toddler to see.
When I was a teenage I often saw an eye looking at me from the crack made on the hinge side of the door when it is slightly open. It was a towel hanging behind the door and my mind was playing tricks on me. But no matter how many times I saw it and realized what it was it still scared me the next time.
This reminds me about the one and only time I went to camp. My roommates decided to summon Bloody Mary. I told them that they were fools and I wouldn't take a part in it, because she obviously wouldn't come, and went to sleep just as they sat in the center of the room, surrounded by candles, chanting, and staring in the mirror - really went all out. Next morning, I found a note under my pillow - I forget the exact words, but it was a threatening message of the "you are cursed and I'm going to get you" kind, allegedly written in blood, red, dried, and chipping away. Other guys cheerfully proclaimed that by bowing out of the last night' ritual, I'd pissed Mary off and she would come after me soon. ...and then I promptly tasted "the blood" on the note and told them that they shouldn't have used the red honey watercolor.
I'm honestly super surprised you didn't end up including the toilet scene from Silent Hill 2, that one is one of my definitive bathroom scenes in a video game for sure. Also there has been a lot of discussion about that game starting out in a public bathroom and what it means for a horror game.
When I was a kid my mom rented arachnophobia. There's a scene with a spider in the toilet bowl and the shower. It made me check before I used either for along time. However Candyman made me scared of the bathroom for years. That bathroom scene is wild.
I remember watching the remake of 13 ghost when I was very little kid. In the movie this girl gets ripped to shreds by a ghost in the bath tube. That moment scared me so much for almost a year I had to check the shower/bath tubs to make sure a ghost wouldn't come out and kill me.
I wasn't wearing my glasses, and when that Roses-Sim popped up sitting on the toilet, I thought it was actually you!!!! Not a very pleasant shock!! Another great video, these really help when I am feeling stressed out, which is all day every day.
I just discover your channel with Clue movie video (an awesome one by the way) and this one is really good! O have subscribed and looking forward to more vids, anyway i have so much to see on this channel, cheers from Argentina and keep the good work!
Excellent video, I think you’re really cool for talking about personal stuff about yourself sometimes and I love your work on point and click adventures the most, your love for them really comes through, lol I wet my face in bathrooms to sooth my nerves sometimes too
I am honestly afraid of going to the toliet at night when all the lights are out and everyone is asleep. When I found out two years ago that _CREATURES_ can crawl up the toliet I became even more terrified of it
Yeah, my first experience with bathroom horror was when I saw, "A Nightmare on Elm Street" when I was around 8 years old. Also, funny that your hair color is the same as the pink slime from Ghostbusters 2. Haha!
I had nightmares for years about being walked in on in bathrooms/changerooms. In one nightmare it would be my bathroom, in another it would be the family bathroom, in another it would be the change room at the middle school, etc. Most of them have ceased, but occasionally I still get one. For me, that fear from the nightmares comes back any time I see a bathroom in a video game or even a film. Like even in something like Fallout 3, many of them are jumpscares, and I would just see the bathroom and go "NOPE!" and keep going. Despite yes, this being a game with zombies and mutants and other body-horror things in it, it's seeing a poorly lit bathroom that gets me to skip it. The least scary bathrooms in video games were the ones in Leisure Suit Larry. Yes you can die in it, but it comes from a place of absurd comedy (eg the toilet overflowing and filling up a sealed bathroom.) Both Gone Home and Phantasmagoria had the same effect when walking into the bathroom, despite the former pretty much being an anxiety of something bad happening, while the latter was marketed as being horror, and you know it's something bad is coming because it's in the opening video.
