Unquiet
Things

Most nights around 11 p.m., I’m watching a stranger’s scalp get massaged in extreme close-up. Fingers working through wet hair, nails scratching patterns across skin, the soft scrape of a wooden comb. Or I’m watching someone’s spine getting adjusted, the therapist’s hands finding each vertebra, that moment of pressure before the crack, the satisfying pop of joints realigning. Or a woman named WhispersRed is tucking an invisible person (me) into bed, smoothing imaginary blankets with deliberate strokes, whispering that everything’s going to be okay while fabric rustles and pillows get fluffed.

Sometimes it’s ear cleaning videos where tiny tools scrape and tap inside silicone ears. Sometimes it’s someone slowly brushing their hair for thirty minutes, each stroke amplified to an almost obscene degree. I cycle through my favorites, zenheads, tokyo asmr massage, mondragon chiropractic, itsblitzz’s gentle massage work, asmr twix, little me carmie. I guess I’m hunting for the off-switch my brain doesn’t have, and these videos are the closest thing I’ve found.

I’ve been doing this for years now. ASMR videos, those autonomous sensory meridian response tingles that start at your scalp and travel down your spine when you hear certain sounds.

A lot of ASMR is someone tapping their fingernails on objects for twenty minutes straight, or whispering directly into a microphone in a dark room. That doesn’t work for me. I need the sounds to be part of something, incorporated into an activity. The click of scissors trimming hair. The squelch of shampoo being worked into a lather. The snap of a fresh towel being unfolded. The rhythmic scrape of a pumice stone on a heel. Sounds that happen because someone is doing something – usually care or grooming related – not just performing sounds for their own sake (which I’ll agree here with the haters, this is actually kinda annoying and obnoxious.)

Then, a few months ago, I stumbled across a clip from John Waters’ Serial Mom while scrolling late at night. I am pretty sure you know the scene: Beverly Sutphin is watching her son’s friend’s family through their window, eating a roast chicken dinner. The camera zooms in on wet mouths tearing at greasy meat, lips smacking, tongues working over chicken skin, throats swallowing audibly. Sounds designed to be absolutely revolting.

And I thought: …wait. I’m kind of into this?

That’s when things started to click, and all the lightbulbs went on, all at once. A cascade of realization!

Those Serial Mom sounds were the same ones putting me into a trance every night. And then: oh god, how many horror movie sounds had I been responding to this way my entire life? Freddy’s finger knives scraping metal railings. Michael Myers’ breathing behind his mask. Shower curtain rings sliding. The rhythmic tick of a clock in an empty house. Every creaking floorboard in every haunted house.

Horror had been doing ASMR before ASMR had a name.

Once I saw the connection, I couldn’t unsee it. I started making mental lists of horror sounds that gave me tingles and began to wonder if other horror fans experienced this too… or if I was just weird and freaky? I started thinking about how horror directors have been manipulating intimate audio space for decades, long before YouTube ASMRtists figured out the same trick. And that’s when I knew I had an article for Rue Morgue!

I’m not going to give it all away here – you’ll have to pick up the issue for the full deep dive. But I will say this: if you’re a horror fan who also watches ASMR videos (or vice versa), you’re not alone!

P.S. The header image for this post is from a 2018 video I wish I had stumbled across when I was doing research for the piece – Lucy Hale (Aria from Pretty Little Liars, though if you already recognized her I probably didn’t need to tell you that) doing ASMR recreations of horror movie sounds to promote Truth or Dare. She stabs a pumpkin for Halloween, types “all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy” on a typewriter for The Shining, rubs lotion on her hands for Silence of the Lambs. PLL AND ASMR! Total dream come true! Someone at W Magazine understood the connection between horror and ASMR way before I did. Dangit!

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