A character, whether due to mean or mischievous personality, educational purposes, or a traditional occasion such as Halloween or a camp out, has decided to scare someone with a story. And to make it extra scary, they make one or more details hit eerily close to home.

The most common approach is to make the character(s) in the story seem similar to the listener(s). Specifics such as hair colour, interests, number of people, job, etc will be the same as the listeners'. For added freakiness points, the storyteller might pretend to mull it over, then look directly at the listener (e.g. "There was a woman who had... I dunno... long, dark hair *looks directly at