[Legate of Amon Lanc]

Originally Posted by radagastly

Have to include the Watcher in the Water. Clearly life-threatening, and yet, nobody sees it! Except for a tentacle or two. Of course, he might be included with the "Nameless things" under the Earth. That seems to be where he came from.

I never thought about the Watcher as about one of these things (and, just as a funny thing aside, one of my friends long time ago didn't know LotR much and knew somewhat Dungeons and Dragons and concluded that Watcher in the Water = a Beholder). But maybe also partially thanks to the movie, which made him just a silly octopus, and what more, a CG octopus, I don't see the Watcher as that scary anymore.

The creepiest thing is not knowing . . . !

Well, that's the constituing point of all fear, ultimately

Originally Posted by Thinlómien

Also, Moria itself is a rather scary place and the Book of Mazarbul is just thrilling...

Ah yes, that's something I should have mentioned, too... especially these pits in Moria, and the "cannot get out" and "drums in the deep" parts are pretty scary.

8. Mirkwood. Not the spiders, not the presence of Dol Guldur, not the river, not even the Elves (although Thranduil is quite scary in a way)... it's just the atmosphere. Something magical and somewhat unsettling, the dark, the eyes and the lights of the Elves.

Hmmm... Mirkwood, actually to me, is not scary at all. I really like it a lot, and not even the way I may like some scary things. The atmosphere is magical, but not scary for me.

Sauron (mostly for the really ugly Eilinel&Gorlim thing

Yes, actually, I was about to write "dead Gorlim" or something like that into my list, because the beginning of the tale of Beren is just a very horroresque thing and really, really scary and as you said, ugly. Anyway Sauron is really scary especially in there, then at Tol-in-Gaurhoth, at Númenor and then in LotR when talking to Pippin in the Palantír.

Originally Posted by Lommy

4. The Oath of Fëanor. All the bloodshed and madness it creates. Or actually, maybe I should nominate Silmarils instead. Scary things, anyway. (But again, very fascinating...)

Now depends what definition of "scary" we use. Most of what I wrote meant simply "causing horror, as when watching a horror movie" (although even horror movies have their kinds... lots of them may be just disgusting, and that's not what I call "scary")... my replies were "what causes fear in you" or such. And the fear does not come to me like that...

Originally Posted by Nogrod

Or just Fëanor and all he represents and where it leads to. The pride, the relentless pursuit of honour and right, the uncompromising souls... That is something that really scares me.

I mean you can come up with monsters of any sort but Fëanor and his tribe are really scary! Not the least because you can admire them at the same time. Maybe it's indeed just because of that?

...because, well, I understand well what you mean here, it's more or less the thing that when you say "scary", people don't usually imagine the scary things which come up from attitudes, thoughts, or even from people as themselves, but usually something alien, or at least alien people (now thinking about all kinds of scary stories from the ancient times about "behind river X, there live horrible people who eat their children and will come and eat our children too" and such. Even when you think about the description of let's say Haradrim in LotR, especially the one on the Pelennor fields... okay, that's maybe for another topic... although maybe not).
But, in any case, even in RL, I think these things don't make me afraid... they make me... well, wary, or something like angry at most, or how should I best describe this feeling. But not really afraid, no, that's not it (I am inclined to believe however, that had I let's say gone personally through the rise of Hitler or whatever, it might be different).

As for labeling "scary" all Galadriels, Gandalfs or whatever, I think that's going along the same lines as when Gandalf tells Gimil that Fangorn is dangerous as much as Gandalf or Gimli himself are dangerous. But there are just things a person usually does not feel as "scary", or at least won't tell you that f.ex. Galadriel is what he would imagine under the word "scary" in the first place. I think at least for me, it's the similar reason for why I don't consider the Ring scary, or the Silmarils or whatever. It's also why, I think, basically it's unusual for people to imagine something like Galadriel as evil (now I'm intentionally recalling on the episode with her and the Ring in the chapter Mirror of Galadriel). And hey, speaking of that, I even think Tolkien mentions something like that himself in the essay "On Fairy-stories", saying something like that in a story, a castle of an evil ogre is nasty&such, while a beautiful place is hard to imagine as "evil", and yet it may be so - I would have to look up for the particular part in there. But, well, I think I at least outlined what I wanted to.

EDIT (x-ed with Lal's post):

Originally Posted by Lalwendë

I might have to revise my list, there's so many things that I'd left off it...

...like the inhabitants of the Paths of the Dead, especially when I read in a copy of Vinyar Tengwar about what they did to Baldor:

Huh, indeed! Now how could I have forgotten them - the Paths of the Dead themselves, even just the way they are described in LotR, are pretty scary.

Hmm, going along these lines, what about the Pukel-Men? Or Ghan-buri-ghan and his folks just like that? Although this may be just one of the cases of "xenophobia" (cf. above in this post my point about children-eating people), because why should they be more scary than let's say Rohirrim - I mean, had the story been made from the perspective of Ghan-buri-ghan, surely the Gondorians and their stone cities would have been the thing described as "scary". Anyway, not that I would consider Ghan worth taking post in my top 10 ladder, but just mentioning it as it may be worth some attention.