I’m not saying I was scared when that pale hand came rising up out of the calm, moonlit water. 

I’m just saying that it seemed like a good idea, at the time, to watch the rest of the scene through splayed fingers and with a blanket pulled up a little closer under my chin. 

That’s right, boys and girls. The very first time I recall being scared by a movie was during the ending scene in “Deliverance” when I was 7 or 8 years old. 

Mind you, I didn’t find the movie itself very frightening. When bad stuff started happening to poor Ned Beatty, I felt mostly sympathy and more than a little confusion — why did those toothless hill folk insist that poor Ned Beatty crawl around the forest floor in his underpants, anyway? Did pants offend them in some way? 

For me, horror only came in that final scene when the hand came out of the water to haunt Jon Voight’s bad dreams. To me, that hand was unspeakable. It meant that any time at all, dead folks could appear where dead folks don’t belong and what’s a boy supposed to do with information like that? 

This boy tried to sleep with the lights on that night, but a certain evil older brother kept shutting it off. 

“Oh, no,” he whisper-screamed across our shared bedroom. “I think I see that hand sliding out from under your bed! It’s gonna get you! Here it comes!” 

And you people wonder why I’m warped. 

A short time later, some fool convinced me that I should watch “The Exorcist,” which had come to cable television. 

“You’ll like it,” my brother told me. “Nothing scary at all.” 

By the time poor Reagan MacNeil’s bed started jumping up and down on her bedroom floor, I was completely undone. That demon-possessed girl was about my age and for many terrible nights to come, I would lay in my bed, wide-eyed and horrified, absolutely certain that at any moment now, my bed was going to start bouncing up and down to announce the arrival Pazuzu, the demon that had so recently departed Linda Blair. 

And of course, at every opportunity, my $%!#@! brother would elbow crawl across our dark bedroom to kick the leg of my bed just to hear me scream aloud. 

There was a made-for-TV movie called “The Legend of Lizzie Borden” back in the day that left me rattled, and I’ve never been able to figure out why — my fears as a young lad tended to orbit around ghosts and demons and those sorts of malevolent, unseen terrors that could appear anywhere at any time. 

A woman with an ax? Please, bruh. I could have taken her down with my slingshot. 

Yet, for nights after watching that movie, every shadow that appeared on my bedroom wall would take on the shape of a buxom woman coming toward me with her ax slung over a shoulder and God help me, I’d left my slingshot in the backyard. 

I don’t recall where I first watched the movie “The Changeling” for the first time, but I remember vividly how long that one stuck with me. George C. Scott, whom I’d always regarded as a sort of a tough guy role model, had utterly betrayed me and I’ve never quite forgiven him for it. 

After watching “The Changeling” as a boy, I developed a lingering fear of long stairways, piano music, bathtubs, shallow graves and balls of any kind, which really made backyard Wiffle ball games awkward. I still regard that movie as one of the finest ghost stories ever brought to the screen. 

When “My Bloody Valentine” came out in 1981, I should have been beyond the level of terror a movie could inspire in a younger mind, and yet when I came home from the theater that night and found myself alone in the house, I refused to take off my coat, hat and boots just in case I had to flee from some deranged miner, whom I could swear I heard creeping up the basement stairs about 20 times that night. 

And speaking of basements, I refused to go into mine for about six months after watching “Psycho” for the first time. It wasn’t Norman Bates I feared — that dude would be no match for my Wrist-Rocket slingshot, either. 

No, with “Psycho” fresh in my mind, I worried that a trip into the dark, musty cellar might reveal the grinning, mummified remains of Norman’s mother and friend, I wanted nothing to do with that action. 

I was scared almost to the point of madness by a lot of horror movies as a kid and yet some of the classics didn’t scare me at all. 

“Halloween?” One of my all time favorite movies and yet I never feared that Michael Meyers was going to get me due to the simple fact that I could easily outrun that lumbering weirdo. 

“Friday the 13th?” Same deal. I spent much of my childhood being chased through the woods by the angry brothers of my various girlfriends. If Jason (or Jason’s mom, depending on which version you were watching) thought he was going to run me down in the woods and do to me what he’d done to all those stupid teenagers, he was badly mistaken. I was as fast as a fox in the woods and twice as crafty. 

Neener, neener, neener, Jason or Jason’s mom. You’re never going to catch me. 

And while I’ll never experience the kind of soul-deep terror that a kid feels when sitting bug-eyed for a scary flick, I do still enjoy a good spine tingler; so much, in fact, that I spent the past year watching nothing BUT horror movies. 

With that in mind, I bring you a new, gore-streaked list of movies you might want to watch as Halloween draws closer.

“REC.” It’s a horrible name for a movie and yet this one is a must see. “A television reporter and cameraman follow emergency workers into a dark apartment building,” goes the IMDB description, “and are quickly locked inside with something terrifying.” Of all the malignant terrors presented in this movie, some of the scariest are old people. They trouble me even though I could probably outrun them in the woods. Probably. 

“Gonjiam: Haunted Asylum.” A masterfully done found footage movie, I gave this one a rating of HOLY !$#@!! “The crew of a horror web series travels to an abandoned asylum for a live broadcast. It soon encounters much more than expected as it moves deeper inside the nightmarish old building,” goes the official description. There are so many horrifying scenes in this movie, I went out and bought a new slingshot. 

“The Devil’s Doorway.” In some ways, this one conjured up a sense of terror in me quite reminiscent of “The Exorcist,” which I still regard as the mother of all terrifying movies. In this one, a pair of priests visit a home for “fallen women” in order to investigate a reported miracle. It does not go well at all. If you watch this one, keep a crucifix and some holy water on hand. 

“The Innocents.” This, my friends, was my favorite movie of the year. In it, a group of children reveal their dark and mysterious powers when the adults aren’t looking. I wouldn’t call this one scary as much as disturbing. Truly disturbing. The movie explores the hidden world of children and as we all know, children are just creepy by nature. 

“The Atticus Institute.” Couple demon possession with secret government experiments in mind control and here you are, watching a movie with your hat, coat and boots on just in case you have to flee. 

“Grave Encounters.” Another found footage flick. You’d think film crews exploring old insane asylums would get boring after a while, but nope. This one really brings it. 

“The Tunnel.” The 2011 one, that is. Another film crew, this time in the abandoned train tunnels beneath Sydney Australia, getting mauled by … But I don’t want to spoil anything. 

“Trick ‘r Treat.” Some lighter horror here, but there are genuine spooky moments. Here are five scary stories all taking place on Halloween and all coming together in the end. This one features a pint-sized scarecrow who’s one of the scariest I’ve ever seen. And I’ve seen some scary scarecrows in my day, let me tell you. 

“Willow Creek” and “Exists.” I’ve always though Bigfoot was a little too goofy to be taken seriously, but both of these movies make the hirsute one terrifying again. “Willow Creek” features one of the most unnerving camping scenes of all time. 

There are plenty of others, but I’ll leave you with this short list in hopes that you’ll use it to get your Halloween thrills this year. If any of these movies don’t get you quivering enough, let me know and I’ll send my brother over to kick the foot of your bed in the wee hours. 

It really helps.