== How creepy do you want it? = By Mark Morford

The famously eerie tale of nine dead Russian hikers, with all the bizarre details you can handle

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2008/02/27/notes022708.DTL&nl=fix

I admit only to this: I can get deeply creeped out, down to my very core, now and then and hopefully not all that often because, well, I still like to sleep at night.

Personally, I try to keep the creep to a minimum, not really wishing to dive down into that low, dark vibration much and hence I avoid most horror movies like the plague and I find slasher flicks and "torture porn" revolting and ridiculous and while monster flicks can occasionally be fun and thrilling, they're mostly just a cheap roller-coaster rides supplying no real nourishment of any kind. I know, that's not really the point. But still.

Ah, but the occult. The paranormal. The deeply weird, mysterious, unsolvable, disturbing. That can get to me. That has power. A good, deep creep-out, those unknowable things that get under your skin and crawl around and tug at the shirtsleeves of your fears, well, those are the things can last for years. Lifetimes. I love that. I hate that.

The final shot in "The Blair Witch Project." An oozingly possessed Linda Blair crawling down the stairs on all fours, upside down, backwards, in a full backbend, on her toes and fingertips, in the uncut version of "The Exorcist." The ending to (and overall creepy feel of) "Don't Look Now," the famous cult horror movie from the '70s with Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie and the creepy little midget in the red robe. Peter Weir's "Picnic at Hanging Rock," another classic '70s occult flick, chaste schoolgirls disappearing up a bizarrely haunted mountain — entirely fictional, but plays all too damn real. ...

The hikers' pictures are eerie so I closed the page right away.

Cue the Twilight Zone music.