Okay, let’s set things straight right from the start. When I say television’s scariest moments, I’m not just talking about movies or TV shows here. What I’m breaking down is some of the weirdest, creepiest things that have ever been seen by your beady little eyes on the small screen, and there’s a bunch. Put it this way, if this column could be as long as I wanted it to be, you might be here until your butt is numb and your beer is flat. Yikes! We better get started.

Michael Jackson’s Thriller

C’mon, how can this one not be on the list? Debuting on MTV in December of 1983, this 14-minute long music video (and I use that term loosely) directed by John Landis, was the most expensive of its time, costing a whopping $500,000.

It had a former Playboy centerfold in the form of Ola Ray, and featured everything from dancing zombies to a rapping Vincent Price. Vincent Price rapping, man. How can that not be scary? For raising the bar of music videos, featuring a black Michael Jackson, and for showing us that zombies can get jiggy with it, Thriller makes the list as one of televisions scariest moments.

Alien Autopsy Video

Admit it, you thought it was real. I did, and so did millions of Americans who tuned into FOX on August 28, 1995. The 17-minute long film was supposedly shot by a U.S. military official after the Roswell, New Mexico crash of 1947. How a London-based video entrepreneur by the name of Ray Santilli got his hands on it is anyone’s guess, but he pimped that sucker all over the world as the genuine artifact. That is until 2006, when Santilli admitted that the video was not ‘authentic,’ but rather a restoration of a film he viewed in the early 90’s. Either way, the Alien Autopsy Video definitely stands out as one of the freakiest things ever broadcast on the small screen.

L.A. Riots

When a jury acquitted four Los Angeles Police officers on April 29, 1992, in the beating of motorist Rodney King, all hell broke loose, and CNN was all over it. The verdict came down at 3:15 p.m. and by 6:45 p.m., crowds outside the LAPD headquarters started looting and attacking vehicles, and for the next six days, it was splashed all over the cable news channels. The media held nothing back, showing beatings, bloody bodies in the streets and fires all over the city. It was a pretty gruesome sight for television. Some called it sensationalism, some called it good reporting and others, well, they just shut off their televisions. Nothing says scary like something that’s real, and the L.A. Riots was as real and scary as it gets. Almost…

9/11

Pretty much everyone in the world can remember where they were for this one. September 11, 2001 in New York City was where it all went down, and by 9:03 a.m., viewers were watching on all the cable news networks as United Airlines Flight 175 flew into the South Tower of the World Trade Center. What was most terrifying about that day was that no one seemed to really know what was going on. Were we under attack? Was it Armageddon? The end of the world? Viewers, not just in their homes, but in the workplace and on the street, were glued to the small screen. At 9:59 a.m., we watched as the South Tower collapsed, and again at 10:28 a.m., as the North Tower fell. It wasn’t a Hollywood effect; it was real and without a shadow of a doubt, the scariest thing to ever be seen on television.

I could go on, but I think I’ll stop there and let that sink in some. I tend to write about fake horrors, like those seen in movies or television shows, but as they say, fact is oftentimes stranger than fiction. I didn’t forget about the JFK head shot, it’s there like the rest of the real life horrors we see on television everyday. Haunting us as we lay our heads down at night. Yes, dear reader, I have seen the monster, and he looks a lot like us.