Okay, I know people have debated this before, either on this site or the old one, but let's finally get an actual, definitive count of the votes. What's the best, most haunting, creepiest, Twilight-Zone-esque Bradbury story out there?"The October Game" from Long After Midnight"Zero Hour" I think from The Illustrated Man"The Veldt" also from the Illustrated Manthat one in Driving Blind about the garbage disposal machineOther (post entry)

I love the garbage disposal story, but the one I was thinking of is The Skeleton (I think that was the title) from October Country. The one about the guy who's convinced that his skeleton is trying to kill him. What a great metaphor!

I'd vote for "The Crowd", "The Wind" or "The Fruit at the Bottom of the Bowl".

"The Handler" was his grossest story, but I don't know if by creepy you are going for atmosphere or other effect rather than the gross-out.

Yes, I should have defined creepy a bit... Perhaps I should also not have put out this poll when I haven't yet read every R.B. story. Still, thought I'd get a rough idea of peoples' opinions.
When I said creepy I had in mind not only a visceral impact (The October Game) and overall effect (the garbage disposal) but also lasting Bradburian images (the African imagery and metaphor in The Veldt).

New fave. "On the Orient North."

"The Small Assassin" ?

My question is: How do you set the poll up?
Ignorant yo-yo that I am, I have no clue as to how you would do that, although I suppose that exploring this neat new web site might help. But who has the time?

Hey biplane1, that's quite easy: look just above the first post on a page and you'll see a button marked "new". Click on it, select "Poll", and bob's your uncle***.

(***I assume this expression is familiar to non-Brits!)

Wow, philnic! I even have a British sister-in-law, and I've never heard that phrase! Please clarify.

"Bob's yer uncle" is sort of like the American "faster than you can say Jack Robinson", though I haven't heard anyone use that expression for many moons...

Phil,
I am familiar with the phrase, but only because it's something we say when we're pretending to be Brits! I think we have a fascination for British words, or at least I do... words like "pram" and "lorry" and whatnot. I've also taken to abbreviating the word "because" as 'cos. I don't know if that's really a British thing (or chiefly Brit. as the dictionary says) but I've seen it spelled that way in books. Most Americans (at least people my age) spell it cuz or coz, but I like the apostrophe 'cos it just looks cool.

Oops, we're heading off-topic again with my strange Briticisms! Braling II is right about "bob's your uncle" - there's some information on the etymology here: http://alt-usage-english.org/excerpts/fxbobsyo.html

(I thought some Americans knew the phrase, because I heard it discussed on KPBS's "A Way With Words" the other week (I listen to it on line), one of my favourite radio shows.)

groon, 'cos is rather British I suppose. We seem to use a lot of apostrophes when transcribing our speech. Especially northerners, who say things like "t'internet".

Going even further off topic: groon's post has a little symbol next to it which is different to all the other posts. What on earth does it signify?

Don't know what groon's icon is for, but if you click it, your screen will blip out and then look the same as ever, and it will then take 2 clicks of the "back" button before you can get out of the thread. I think it must have some sort of bookmarking function.

I think the British 'cos is much preferrable to the American cuz as it avoids the confusion of looking like a vernacular version of "cousin."