10 Reasons Why Bathrooms are the Stuff of Nightmares!
Here at Plumbworld we obviously love bathrooms. We’re a bathroom company and it would be a bit silly to sell bathrooms if we weren’t at least quite fond of them!
However, bathrooms can also be a place where unseen horrors lurk, and we’re not just talking about what Uncle Geoff left in the toilet or the incredibly bad bathroom design your grandma has that hasn’t been updated since the 1970’s. Those are two great reasons, of course, but there are a raft of other reasons that may or may not be entirely fictional.
With Halloween coming up, I decided to take one for the team and take a look at what can horrify us in a room that’s supposed to be relaxing. Just make sure you horrify your family by trying these Halloween bathroom decoration tips as well.
Spiders
I don’t know what it is about spiders and bathrooms, but they seem to linger in the one room we want to escape from reality in far more than other rooms. They sit in the bath, unable to climb up the smooth sides. They sit in the basin and mock you for wanting to wash your hands. They appear suddenly when you lift up the toilet seat, shocking you and almost ensuring you no longer need to use the toilet. They also get up into those corners you can’t reach and stare at you while you’re trying to have a bath. The fact of the matter is that most of us just don’t like spiders!
After going to the bathroom one time late at night, I opened the bathroom door to be faced with a spider dangling in the upstairs landing. Now, obviously this wasn’t within the bathroom itself, but I became trapped in the bathroom because I couldn’t get passed the spider to get into my bedroom. It was just hanging at face level without a care in the world. Why couldn’t I just duck under it? I could, but I had to turn the landing light off before I went into my bedroom and my bedroom door was currently shut. For the few seconds it took me to get across the landing and through the bedroom door I wouldn’t be able to see a thing and I was worried it would drop on my head. Eventually, I braved it and got into my room without a big spider tangled in my hair, but this situation shows how irrational a fear of spiders can be. I am a giant wuss.
Moths
You can almost guarantee that whenever you happen to have your bathroom window open and turn the light on you will be graced with the presence of a moth! The reason moths bother people is because they get hyper whenever you switch the bathroom light on and flit around the room at blazing speeds. I’ve lost count of the number of times a moth has flown into my face, and it’s happened so much that I often go to the loo with the light off if I know a moth is already in there. When a moth is sitting on the wall minding its own business they’re fine (at least for me, my partner would say otherwise), but as soon as you turn the light you have to start a game of dodging the hairy hyper thing. Even when you try to shoo them out of the window to their freedom they don’t want to corporate; although, to be fair, they’ll probably be eaten by a predator when they go out there anyway. No wonder they like to hang in our bathrooms!
Dinosaurs
So how did we get on from simple spiders and moths to long-extinct dinosaurs? Well, I did mention that this list isn’t going to be overly serious! I’m not talking about walking into your bathroom to find a Stegosaurus behind the shower curtain, taking a leisurely soak in your bath, as that might be a little amusing after the initial shock of wondering how a Stegosaurus managed to fit into your tiny bathroom. Oh, and wondering why something that’s extinct suddenly isn’t, of course. I’m not talking about this cute little guy either…
No, I’m talking about a situation that I alluded to in my ‘6 brilliant bathroom scenes in films’ in which we discovered that a Tyrannosaurus Rex has a sweet tooth for wimpy lawyers.
I’ve said this once and I’ll say it again:
DON’T HIDE IN A FLIMSY WOODEN TOILET WHEN A T-REX IS ON THE LOOSE!!!
Zombies
I refer you to the 2004 remake of Dawn of the Dead for this one. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find a clip (pesky copyrights!) so you’ll have to make do with the comically bad zombie picture above instead. But if you haven’t seen the film, I’ll give you a quick run-down of how the opening involves a bathroom.
Ana, a nurse, has just returned from a long shift as a nurse. Things at the hospital have been getting a little weird, but she has time for a date night with her husband anyway. Unfortunately, that means they miss an emergency news bulletin while getting kinky in the shower. In the morning, a neighbours child wanders into their bedroom, which is weird in itself, but it’s even weirder when they realise half her face is missing. Her husband goes over to help her and gets pounced on, who subsequently gets back up as a raging zombie and chases Ana who, after a brief fight, high tails it into their small ensuite bathroom. Now she doesn’t have much choice here, as zombie kid is banging on the bathroom door, but she quickly makes a big mistake. Realising she can’t get out the small window, she braves going back to the door instead. What does she do next? Stupidly attracts zombie husband’s attention by calling out his name. He subsequently says hello by shoving his head through the bathroom door and trying to bite her. So she retreats and realises that she’s been opening the bathroom window all wrong (IT’S HER HOUSE, HOW DID SHE NOT KNOW?!?). As she clambers through he tries to grab her leg, so she gives him a swift kick in his zombified face!
I suppose the lesson to learn from this story is that zombies like to put their heads through bathroom doors.
Psychopaths
If the world of film is anything to go by you can definitely get stabbed while you’re having a shower. You can also have your crazy husband smash down the door with an axe while you pull one of the most horrific faces ever seen on film.
Norman Bates, of Psycho fame, was our original bathroom psychopath and stabbed someone in the shower. Unfortunately, it wasn’t Vince Vaughn for having the cheek to star in the same role in the terrible remake. Instead, a woman called Marion gets offed alongside the jarring screech of a now classic theme. It seems like 1960’s US censors didn’t mind much about a woman getting stabbed multiple times in the bathroom, as it was the shot of a toilet flushing away bits of paper that got them all riled up. From this, we can learn that if you flush anything other than toilet paper or your leavings down the toilet then you may get stabbed in the shower. But don’t worry, it was only chocolate syrup!
Our other loveable psychopath was tormented author Jack Torrance from The Shining, brilliantly played by Jack Nicholson. In a scene that took 3 days to film (Jack had smashed his way through 60 doors by the end of it), Jack chased his wife Wendy (Shelley Duvall) through the hotel they’re staying in. Unfortunately, like our friend Ana the nurse, she decided to hide in a bathroom. Her only means of mistake was a window blocked by snow. Trapped, she could only scream a terrible eye-piercing cry while Jack chopped down the door with an axe, before sticking his head through the hole and uttering the immortal line ‘HERE’S JOHNNY!’.
Wendy managed to survive, so maybe the lesson her is DO run into a bathroom when getting chased by a psychopath. However, when you DON’T know that a psychopath is in there with you then, sorry, but I’ve got no advice for you there!
Poo
That scene in Trainspotting. It’s probably best we leave it at that.
Ghosts
Incredibly, ghosts seem to be such a regular thing in bathrooms, horrific bathroom ghost stories that Japanese youths pass around the schoolyard. These Japanese ghosts flush your head in the toilet, rip the skin off your back and even kill you for having the cheek to use the toilet like any normal human being would.
The lesson? If you don’t want to see a bathroom ghost then don’t go to Japan. Or don’t say one word three times in the mirror. Or do, because it’s likely nothing will ever happen.
Trolls
Trolls only appear in your bathroom if you happen to attend Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. If you do attend that school then you are immediately awesome and going into a bathroom with a troll in it should definitely be done. It’s likely a guy with glasses, a goofy ginger kid and a know-it-all will save your life anyway. However, if a troll is in your bathroom at home then that’s a different story.
The lesson: RUN LIKE HELL!
We wrote more about this scene, and other great bathroom scenes in films.
Alien Worms
There is a scene in the underappreciated 2006 film Slither (only because it has Nathan Fillion in it!) where an alien slug climbs into a bath being taken by a teenage girl called Kylie. Unfortunately, she’s listening to music with headphones and has her eyes closed, so she doesn’t see the worm swimming towards her. Thankfully she opens her eyes just in time and manages to get out. It’s only small scene, although the film’s poster depicts it a bit more drastically.
The lesson here is, don’t listen to music in the bath and don’t close your eyes because you might not see an alien worm trying to suck your brains! I’m never sleeping in the bath again.
Running out of toilet paper.
Forget dinosaurs. Forget ghosts. Forget bloodthirsty zombies. Even forget poo! Running out of toilet paper is clearly the worst thing to happen out of all of these, and probably the most realistic if you take out spiders and moths. Always check there is sufficient toilet paper left before you sit down to do your business, otherwise you may end up having to run around the house with your pants around your ankles to get some more from the downstairs toilet. That totally didn’t happen to me. Honest!
For more spooky Halloween content take a look at our Halloween Decoration Ideas for Bathrooms and Kitchens.
Have a happy Halloween!
If you found this post interesting, you might also like - 20 Gutterly Bizarre Things Found in Sewers - 10 Things You Never Knew About Bathrooms - Famous Brands That Released Weird Products.
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