Strange it is how a few changes to a picture can turn it from something beautiful into something deeply disturbing. Take for example the picture of the girl on this page. I ripped it off the web and only modified it slightly; I altered the eyes (obviously) as well as the shape of the mouth. Now it's...well, disturbing. (Hover over the first two images in order to see the original.)

Visual media of course isn't alone in this regard - audio falls into this category as well. Take the audio of someone talking and slow it down, and now it sounds demonic. Even a higher pitch can be creepy (Think Color of Night starring Bruce Willis).

Sometimes a change of the media isn't even necessary; merely a change in it's normal environment - or 'natural habitat' - is all that's required. For example, take the sound of a child laughing on a playground. Nothing disturbing there, right? Not unless you've been walking in the dark woods for hours, lit only by a waning moon, miles from civilization, and you hear faintly hear that same sound...

Things can be disturbing by association. A slowly rotating fan blade isn't much to cause any shivers. But after watching the recurring theme of the spinning blade in a movie like Angel Heart, it now becomes something rather sinister.

Inanimate objects become another area of distress when things move when they normally shouldn't. In the pilot for the television series Night Gallery, Roddy McDowall plays an unscrupulous character who murders his uncle to inherit his fortune. After the deed is done, however, he notices the painting which portrayed the house now has the addition of a freshly dug grave in the backyard. Subsequent views reveal more changes of the painting.

Stephen King's book The Shining differs quite a bit from Kubrick's movie version. One area in particular is the grounds of the Overlook Hotel. In the movie, there is a huge maze made up of hedges. But in the book, it was a topiary. When Danny is outside playing in the snow, he notices the animal-shaped hedges start to take on a slightly different form. Looking back from time to time, he notices they start to appear closer and closer. The video game Condemned features an area where mannequins appear to surround you every time you turn around, even though you never actually see them move.

Dolls that start to take on a life of their own deserve their own category. From the Zuni Fetish Warrior doll from Trilogy of Terror, to the clown doll in Poltergeist, to Chucky from Child's Play, these miniature moving mannequins evoke terror in just about everyone.

Of course people will ask, "Why all the scary, spooky stuff? Why not pretty things?" I like beautiful things. I draw and paint people and animals and lots of interesting, beautiful things. But those are things people look at and say, "Hmmm...very nice." And then it's probably forgotten in five minutes. But when you make something disturbing, it evokes such emotion in people. And it's something that will stay with them for a very long time.

Case in point: as a child there were books that I would look through that were my grandparents and such. There was one in particular that I can vividly remember to this day. I couldn't even tell you anything about any of the other books, except for this one particular book. It was a thick, white hardcover book, that looked quite inviting. It was Hans Christian Andersen's Fairy Tales. What other kind of book would be more inviting to a child to look through than that?

However, whatever genius they put in charge of finding someone to illustrate that book obviously didn't feel the need to run the first few copies by any children, anyone who had children, or anyone who was a child at one point. There were watercolor illustrations that are burned into my mind to this day. One was of a completely black ant-like half-human creature reaching a thin, black hand towards a child in a crib. Another was of demons flying and tormenting a man and woman falling through the sky in some kind of chest, while the woman is holding her face in her hands in anguish. It took me years to work up the courage to open up that book and look at it again.

As much as that kind of emotion is something I absolutely hated as a child, it's something I yearn for now. Why? Maybe because it takes so much to scare me now. I know there is no monster under my bed anymore. I know things don't just manifest themselves just because it's dark. I know there aren't such things as ghosts. I know everything that is 'scary' has a rational explaination behind it. I haven't had a full-blown 'nightmare' in quite a few years. So just like any other kind of adrenaline-inducing activity is fun, so is being scared. Which, incidentally, is why most people enjoy roller-coasters.

And of course, it's just as much fun to scare others, not just yourself. Who doesn't get a huge thrill from scaring someone out of their wits? And as much as they have hated it at the time, when it's over they will have actually enjoyed it (well, usually...)

In the same vein, drawing or making things that are disturbing is fun because it evokes such emotion in others. It's thought-provoking. Some people think just because you come up with these images and create them you are somehow 'warped' or 'disturbed.' Not at all. I choose to meet my fears head on instead of hiding from them. I like to drag them kicking and screaming into the light for all to see. Others may be offended but it's because they haven't come to grips with their own fears; they may still require a light be on when they sleep.

So I'm not looking to win any type of popularity contest. If I was I'd have pictures of Disney characters plastered all over it. Well actually no I wouldn't since Disney would promptly sue me for doing so, but you get my point. If others enjoy it that's great. If not, at least it's something they'll remember.