The Shining is often cited as being the scariest film ever made. It’s interesting to note that the most frightening moment in the movie isn’t the rivers of blood flowing out of the elevator of the Overlook Hotel. It isn’t Scatman Crothers getting murdered by axe-wielding maniac Jack Nicholson. The scariest moment in the scariest film of all time consists of: two English girls… talking.

Little English girls, with their posh accents, morbid nursery chants and ghost-like complexions are pretty much the most frightening things in the world. With Halloween just around the corner, I’m not going to bother analysing how or why they got this way, I’m just going to try to avoid them. There’s just one problem with that plan- one of them lives in the same house with me.

Let me give you an example of English schoolgirl creepiness at work. At my daughter’s school, there is a tradition that involves the smallest children at the school reciting a nursery rhyme that ends with these lines:

Here comes a candle to light you to bed,
And here comes a chopper to chop off your head

And then the children mime the act of a “chopper” chopping off the heads of their classmates. I shit you not! And after this grotesque spectacle, one of the perpetrators of this faux-massacre has the nerve to follow me home and ask me “Dad-dy, may I have my tea? I’m a bit peckish.” <shiver>

On second thought, maybe I can analyse this -it probably is the accent. Pretty much anything that a blonde six year old English girl says comes across as kind of creepy. Don’t believe me? Here’s some examples of things my daughter might say to me that may seem harmless, but somehow become sinister because of the way in which she says them:

Maybe you’re thinking, ‘oh that’s not so bad.’ But how about listening again to a slightly tweaked version:

And then just the other day, she said the following to me, which is guaranteed to give you nightmares:

At some point I’ve got to move this kid to America… because everybody knows that there’s nothing scary about a Long Island accent.