50 Things More Frightening Than Vampires

Stores are already pushing Christmas merchandise. That can mean only one thing: Halloween season is here! Yes, we know it's still September, but the smell of candy corn in the air has us all excited. We have creepy crawly posts in the works for October, but we just can't wait any longer to kick things off. Let's begin with our list of fifty things that are scarier than vampires!

Is this a jab at the Twilight phenomena? Only in part. From The Vampire Diaries to True Blood, we're fed up with the universal cute-ification of the once-frightening monster. (In folklore, vampires were bloated, ugly hag-like creatures.) The current crop of vamps are about as frightening as cotton balls, and just as interesting. We can think of thousands of things that are scarier than these vampires, but due to space restrictions, we limited ourselves to only fifty:

1. Cats that stare at the wall expectantly.
2. Werewolves.
3. Spiders.
4. Zombies.
5. Evil robots incapable of reason.
6. Jack from any Jack-In-The-Box toy. (Not the restaurant.)
7. The smell of the dollar store.
8. The box art from old boardgames. (Those happy families were too happy. Something is not right.)
9. Pennywise the Clown.
10. Hannibal Lecter.
11. Cthulhu (Or any monster created by the nutty H.P. Lovecraft).
12. Aliens.
13. Opossums.
14. Pillows with a blood stain from an unknown source.
15. The guy from that episode of The X-Files who had a tumor, but it wasn't a tumor. It was his twin brother!
16. Ghosts.
17. The Kracken. (Not the one from the Pirates of the Caribbean movies. The real Kraken that has yet to be found.)
18. Howler monkeys.
19. The Joker.
20. Sharks.
21. Gnomes.
22. The Pale Man (a.k.a. The demon from Pan's Labyrinth with eyes in his hands.)
23. The dark.
24. Michael Myers.
25. Janice Dickinson.
26. Dolls.
27. Bigfoot.
28. Lady Gaga.
29. Toilets that don't flush, and then begin to back up and overflow.
30. Rosemary's Baby.
31. Ventriloquists' dummies.
32. Ventriloquists.
33. Flying monkeys.
34. Talking ravens.
35. Farmers who look like they're up to something.
36. Beth (Dog the bounty hunter's wife.)
37. Leprechauns.
38. Voldemort.
39. The Twins from The Shining (movie) or the topiary from The Shining (book).
40. Overenthusiastic sports fans.
41. Things that dwell under bridges. (People or trolls.)
42. The Minotaur.
43. The Statue of Liberty's cold, dead expression.
44. Gremlins.
45. Vans with curtains.
46. Lobsters.
47. Nurse Ratchet (From One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest).
48. The Jolly Green Giant.
49. Child prodigies.
50. Woodstock from The Peanuts comic strip. (But maybe that's just me.)

What else is scarier than vampires?