What stupid things scarred you emotionally as a child?

[Qadgop the Mercotan]

Sock monkeys. I hate those things.

My younger but more boistrous/evil cousins had one when I was younger, and tended to use it as a weapon. When I visited them, they'd assault me with it. Separately I could handle them, but the two of them working in tandem to stuff it in my face after dark took its toll.

My quest to eliminate sock monkeys wherever I find them continues slowly, but it does continue.

sock monkey 1
Sock monkey 2

evil bastards.....

[Clothahump]

When I was 10 or so, I saw Vincent Price's House On Haunted Hill. It scared the living shit out of me. I had bad dreams and heebie-jeebies for weeks afterwards.

When I was in my 30s, I saw it come up on some late night creature-feature channel. I got my popcorn and soft drinks and settled in, all ready to be scared again.

It was one of Vincent's horror/comedy films. I could not believe how utterly cheezy it was. And to this day, I wonder what was going on in my life that caused me to be so terrified by it.

[needscoffee]

Originally Posted by Clothahump

When I was 10 or so, I saw Vincent Price's House On Haunted Hill. It scared the living shit out of me. I had bad dreams and heebie-jeebies for weeks afterwards...

Ooh, me too! That skeleton coming across the room scared the stuffing out of me! Also, the dead bride corpse skeleton in Twice Told Tales, another Vincent Price classic.

[orderfire]

Also, that episode of Gumby with the Kachina Dolls. That fucking freaked me out. The chanting and how they rose up in the dark night sky was so terrifying.

Apparently, "Spiders and their Kin" has a really big fan club. Remember that really horrible one that looked like a peanut butter and jelly sandwich?!?!

[california jobcase]

When I was four, I cried because I wasn't allowed to climb Stone Mountain in Georgia with the rest of my family. My dad said we'd ride the train instead, which brightened my spirits. Then the effing Indians attacked the train, scalped my dad (he was bald- they gave him a wig so he could be scalped) and I cried like a fiend again. I really don't remember the wig and scalping, but I definitely recall crying during the attack. I also remember watching them carving the Confederate graffiti on the mountainside and getting a slide whistle from the souvenir shop which made up a little bit for the terror.

[Dr. Girlfriend]

Donald Duck.

When I was a kid some well-meaning relative gave me a stuffed Donald Duck doll. I kept him on a shelf in my bedroom. One night I woke up in the middle of the night, and some combination of shadows and moonlight/streetlights coming in my window made Donald look completely evil. I freaked and started screaming. Mom comes running in and all I can do is point and Donald and shriek. Donald was removed, never to be seen again.

I don't know what happened to that doll but to this day I really don't like Donald much.

[Battle Pope]

Originally Posted by Noodles Fellicini

snip... We had gone a few feet and I was beginning to think I would survive it, looked up at my mother and ... it was a total stranger. I double freaked out and started screaming. My parents rescued me and laughed it off but that feeling of horror-filled abandonment had staying power.

Thanks for the flashback

Exactly the same kind of thing happend to me walking home from church. Though I was holding my mothers hand, looked up into the face of a complete (to me*) stranger - the memory of flinch/recoil/look around in panic for parents is still vivid.


*Mum & dad were just behind us & the woman who's hand I was holding was a friend of theirs, they thought I was just being cute.

Also the Seeds of Doom series from Doctor Who scared the bejeesus out of me when I was little. Not that it stopped me from watching the Doc (at least while it was Tom Baker)

[phall0106]

Originally Posted by benbo1

Oh God yeah, the famous Canadian safety PSAs - best is the guy getting blown up by the acetylene torch -
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MwCyVku1HvI&noredirect=1

Who knew Canadians could be so graphic & morbid?

Oh. My. God.

To hell with stupid things that scarred me emotionally as a child. These just scared me as an adult.

I cannot believe these were shown on television.

[benbo1]

Them wacky Canux. No wonder Alex Trebeck had a heart attack - he was probly watching a 'greatest hits' dvd of these PSAs.

[Infovore]

Originally Posted by phall0106

Oh. My. God.

To hell with stupid things that scarred me emotionally as a child. These just scared me as an adult.

I cannot believe these were shown on television.

Yeah, those were pretty creepy. The one that got me the worst was the chef woman upending the pot of boiling water on her face.

Reminds me of this article I saw on Cracked the other day. That last one (#1, The Finishing Line) was...yeah. I think the Canucks got it from the Brits. I could see this one scarring a few kids.

Remember...gentle pressure.

[salinqmind]

Originally Posted by orderfire

Also, that episode of Gumby with the Kachina Dolls. That fucking freaked me out. The chanting and how they rose up in the dark night sky was so terrifying.
!

OK. I just looked at that. I am waaay old, and that freaked me out. If I'd seen it when I was a kid....holy crap!

Sesame Street and the letter "H". Ominous black and white, flashing the letter "H" and a deep commanding voice repeating, well, "H" over and over freaked out a lot of folks.

[Darwinian]

When I was about 11 or 12 the other kids at school were into reading horror comics/graphic novels. I borrowed some and read them and they freaked me out completely. Many of them featured scenes with vampires sucking blood from the wrists of sleeping victims so I started sleeping on my stomach with my hands tucked under the pillow so the vampires couldn't get me. Only stopped doing that when I was 30 and pregnant and my pregnant tummy made it too uncomfortable to sleep that way!

Also around that time we lived in NSW for a while after Cyclone Tracy. Growing up in Darwin meant that I wasn't exposed to trains all that much as there weren't any up there and even now they are not a part of the regular public transport. We stayed with my grandparents and at the end of their street was the train line. I had a friend in the next street over who lived in a house on the hill overlooking the cutting that the train line ran through. Her house could be accessed from our street by a footpath that ran up the side of the hill parallel to the line, with the start of the path being a couple of feet from the rails. I had been told not to go too close to the line when a train was coming as it would suck me under the wheels. So I used to hang back and look and listen for a train and then run like the clappers until I was at least halfway up the hill so I couldn't be sucked under. To this day if I have to catch a train I stand as far back as possible from the edge of the platform.

[Feyrat]

The Gmork. The fucking Gmork.

I have showed clips of the Gmork (from Youtube) to friends from other countries who did NOT grow up with The Neverending Story, and universally their reaction (as adults) is "holy shit that's in a children's movie??" and shutting the clip off before it finishes because the Gmork is GODDAMN SCARY.

I own the DVD and have never watched it.

[LouisB]

I have a dim memory of a movie that had a human head that would appear in unexpected places. This was in the 1940s so i was still very young. I had nightmares about it for a very long time.

I saw the original The Thing (from outer space) when I was about ten or eleven; scared the living hell out of me.

[Antigen]

Originally Posted by Darwinian

When I was about 11 or 12 the other kids at school were into reading horror comics/graphic novels. I borrowed some and read them and they freaked me out completely. Many of them featured scenes with vampires sucking blood from the wrists of sleeping victims so I started sleeping on my stomach with my hands tucked under the pillow so the vampires couldn't get me. Only stopped doing that when I was 30 and pregnant and my pregnant tummy made it too uncomfortable to sleep that way!

That reminds me of another one! My Dad loved Star Trek and got me started on it fairly young. You know in the movie The Wrath of Khan, when they get those mind-controlling space bugs dumped into their ears? Thanks to that, I always sleep with a blanket over my head. It can be a zillion degrees out, and I'll still have a small blanket on my head just to be sure my ears are safe from bugs, earthly or alien.

[grude]

The Mouse And His Child movie has a scene that didn't scare me but blew my mind at age 5, the infinity in a label on a can of dog food scene.

[Icerigger]

Tweety Bird, when he was transformed into the monster version, OMG the Horror!! when I was seven.


http://www.animationartgallery.com/WBC/WBC52.html

[MegaBee]

Originally Posted by Eyebrows 0f Doom

Oh geez, I used to do the same thing!

For me it was the animated version of "Watership Down." There was a prologue before the film, The Tale of El-Ahrairah, and the scene of all the rabbits being killed and then the Black Rabbit of Death jumping at the camera freaked me the fuck out. I don't know how old I must have been. 7, 8 maybe? And then the scene showing all the rabbits being buried alive and cramming the warren tunnels, suffocating and dying, holy crap! Terrifying!

I should stop reading this thread.

[listedmia]

I was in the room while my grandpa was watching a movie. Maybe one of the Terminator films? I was probably about 4 or 5. Anyway, a character's leg got ripped off somehow and there was a bunch of blinking lights and circuit boards and stuff, and I was absolutely horrified. What if that happened to me??? Or what if lots of adults were secretly robots and they had that stuff inside them? I couldn't shake that image for years.

[Malthus]

Originally Posted by phall0106

Oh. My. God.

To hell with stupid things that scarred me emotionally as a child. These just scared me as an adult.

I cannot believe these were shown on television.

These ones are tame compared to the metal-splinter-in-the-eye one I remember from the '70s. That one was truly horrifying. The agony of having a piece of metal driven into one's eyeball was very graphically depicted. Or at least, that's my memory of it.

Not only were they shown on TV, for some reason they liked to show them during kid's programs after school.

[DeepLiquid]

Originally Posted by Malthus

These ones are tame compared to the metal-splinter-in-the-eye one I remember from the '70s. That one was truly horrifying. The agony of having a piece of metal driven into one's eyeball was very graphically depicted. Or at least, that's my memory of it.

Not only were they shown on TV, for some reason they liked to show them during kid's programs after school.

My lead paramedic instructor was a former combat medic and a current military PA. He used the same slides and films they used to train military medics for our class, all real life images from combat/MASH units/and rear hospitals. Absolutely horrifying.

[Malthus]

Originally Posted by DeepLiquid

My lead paramedic instructor was a former combat medic and a current military PA. He used the same slides and films they used to train military medics for our class, all real life images from combat/MASH units/and rear hospitals. Absolutely horrifying.

Was this class for paramedic adults?

[DeepLiquid]

Originally Posted by Malthus

Was this class for paramedic adults?

Yup... still scared the living crap out of me. Made us all feel very fragile.

[TruCelt]

On Nickelodeon a few months ago they were showing an anti-smoking commercial. An anti-smoking commercial which for reasons I am unable to fathom included a woman repeatedly stabbing a stuffed rabbit with a butcher knife.

Who the F*** do they hire to make these frickin PSAs?

[Mama Zappa]

I once, at about age 7 or so, was half watching a TV show that talked about nerve gas. I remember them saying that detectors emitted a beeping sound when they detected nerve gas.

For several years, I was *terrified* of any kind of electronic-sounding beep.

[Jack Batty]

I can remember when I was 6 or 7, my mother bought me a shirt. I don't remember a lot about the shirt except for the color which was sort of a dull, pea-soup/baby-shit yellowish-green. The color made me gag. I can't explain it, but I would just look at that color and I would start to retch.

She never made me where the shirt, but that color still throws me for a bit of a loop if I run across it. Especially if it's made of actual pea-soup/baby-shit.

[GreenElf]

The frost giant in Rudolph the Red Nosed Raindeer and the frost wizard in the other Rankin Bass Christmas special, and the Wizard of Oz wicked witch.

[Mama Zappa]

Originally Posted by Jack Batty

I can remember when I was 6 or 7, my mother bought me a shirt. I don't remember a lot about the shirt except for the color which was sort of a dull, pea-soup/baby-shit yellowish-green. The color made me gag. I can't explain it, but I would just look at that color and I would start to retch.

She never made me where the shirt, but that color still throws me for a bit of a loop if I run across it. Especially if it's made of actual pea-soup/baby-shit.

Huh - no baby-shit shirts here, but Catholic school uniforms. To this day, I swear the Vatican must mandate ugly plaid jumpers, because that's all I've ever heard of or seen, and they're still worn.

Ours consisted of a pleated skirt which zipped at the left side of the waist. The top back was plain fabric, the top front was open from neck to waist (we wore a white turtleneck underneath it). As the year went by, that special-order jumper started separating at the waist, and periodically I'd grab whatever ugly thick thread - of whatever color was at the top of the sewing box - and crudely tack it down.

At the end of the school year, I decided that burning it would be a bad idea (though oh boy did I want to!!) - it being polyester, it would just have melted and smelled awful. Instead, I took a seam ripper and pulled out the garish stitches - at which time the top COMPLETELY separated from the skirt. Yeesh. So not only did I have to wait for the damn thing to arrive, it was amazingly poorly made.

tl/dr version: Had to wear ugly plaid for 8 years of grade school. To this day, I STILL do not buy plaid clothing of any kind.

[salinqmind]

"This is a test of the Emergency Broadcasting System. This is only a test. EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" Now it only scares the cat.

[Jennshark]

My parents had a hardcover anthology of Poe stories, the cover illustration was the hounds (of the Baskervilles) that scared the bejeebus out of me. As a kid, I had to have the book's spine turned away from the front of the bookshelf.

Masterpiece Theatre's Sherlock's last ep of the season was an updated version of H of B; the big black hounds with red eyes looked just like the book cover that scared me as a kid and I had to turn it off.

When I was four I had a nightmare involved Spaghetti-O's (!); I awoke in tears and ran to my parent's room just as a car went by on the road outside and its headlights made giant O-like lights on the wall -- I became hysterical. And I have never eaten S-O's again!

Jane Eyre scared the crap out of me when I was eight or nine years-old. I read it at night in bed and was certain that the Madwoman in the Attic was coming after me. (Then I got scared by her again in grad school, thanks Gilbert and Gubar )

[Jennshark]

Oh, I forgot a scarring viewing experience that seems to be a common one: Darby O'Gill and the Little People. Screaming banshees? Flying funeral coaches? What sadist promoted this frightfest as a great kid's movie?!!

+ 2 million on the (original) Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. It was the first film I saw in a theatre and it frightened me deeply.

[SurrenderDorothy]

The Science Center here has a few different sections, one connected by a bridge over the highway and one connected by a tunnel. Now, the tunnel is not so bad- it's really just a hallway with some space stuff in it. It's got bright lights and some boring plaques and pictures and such.

When I was a kid, though, it was made up to look like a mine tunnel. It was very dark and enclosed. I think at one place, there was a cart that would sort of jump out at you. They played mine noises, which I found terrifying. And then the canary- I honestly don't remember if the canary they had was "alive" or "dead" but my dad told me the significance of the canary and that freaked me out even more. I really, really hated that mine tunnel. Even now, I'm glad they don't have that exhibit anymore. The idea of having to go through it still scares me.

[StuffLikeThatThere]

My siblings (all older than me by a decade or more) mostly made it their mission in life to scare me to death. Well, two if them. The one never did and the other was okay except for one really horrifying instance when he faked his own death.

Anyway, I can think of a few specific instances - one where someone was under my bed - but mostly I have a sort of collaged memory of staring down a dark hallway and knowing something was going to grab me.

As an adult, I still anything jumping out at me or touching me unexpectedly really upsetting, and I startle waaaay too easily. My husband has taken up the habit of narrating his progress around the house. "I'm coming down the hall now," - if I'm taking a shower, he sings while he comes into the bathroom. He finds it odd but better than hearing me shriek. Apparently I'm quite loud.

[benbo1]

Holyshit, this one's awful; scenes that make a Wes Craven movie look like Disney:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VB86F...eature=related

this driving one not too particularly graphic, just haunting
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u7fij...eature=related

[Dunkelheit]

Wow, did everyone have a copy of "Spiders and their Kin"? Even the cover creeped me out, and I used to keep pet jumping spiders. Jumping spiders are cute. The horrors in that book were not.

What really freaked me out was Mister Yuck. There was a Mister Yuck sticker on the fire extinguisher that hung on the wall outside my bedroom, and I was scared spitless to walk down that hallway at night because of it. Good thing there was never a fire, I wouldn't have been able to use the extinguisher!

[6ImpossibleThingsB4Breakfast]

"Trilogy of Terror" aged 11.

That fucking Zuni fetish doll scrambling around under furniture and stabbing at Karen Black's ankles with a carving knife had me too petrified to sit on a couch with my feet on the ground for months.

For years if I wanted to freak myself out, I'd just think of that.

[AaronX]

I find this thread very interesting. Can't think of any, maybe the villain from Who Framed Roger Rabbit.

[cwthree]

The movie Orca, specifically the scene in which the female whale, having been shot/mutilated/strung up, miscarries. The image of the grayish-pink fetus being pushed out of the whales body and plopping down onto the deck of the boat haunted me for a long, long time and ushered in an extended period of sleep disturbance (probably coincidental).

[jerryp8472]

I had nightmares for years after watching the 1990 version of Night of the Living Dead. I was in the 1st grade. Night after night I thought zombies were going to start banging on the house. For some reason, the part that freaked me out the most was when they went back to get Ben (played by Tony Todd) and he had those dead zombie eyes. I guess I was so sure that he was going to survive that it freaked me out.

The interesting thing it, I saw the Exorcist only a few weeks before this and it didn't really scare me that much.

[Imago]

The year I was in grade primary (kindergarten to Americans) was some anniversary or other of the Halifax Explosion (1917, munitions ship exploded in the Halifax harbour after colliding with another boat and burned/flattened most of the city) and, IIRC, also some anniversary or other of the Titanic. After months of being taught about it in a relatively age-appropriate way we went to some museum or other that I remember being full of very age-appropriate exhibits.

On field trips a lot of the parents who volunteered as chaperones used to habitually let me wander off, because I was really well-behaved and always showed up right beside them at just the moment you'd naturally start wondering where a kid went. But on that one trip, the chaperone got too complacent and took the group around a corner or something without me. I sat down and waited for them to realize I was missing and come back for me, and on the other side of the wall they were showing some documentary or other that I think was about the events aboard the burning munitions ship before it blew.

There was this one really traumatized interviewee going on about the burns on one guy's legs, in graphic detail, for several minutes. And the narrator was doing that ominous voice they do in documentaries to make history seem more interesting, and every ten minutes or so there was more about this one guy's legs!

I must not've been left alone for more than 40 minutes or so total, but it felt like hours. I of course had no idea what was even going on at that age, I couldn't figure out what this terrifying movie I was overhearing must be about but since we were in a museum I figured it must have happened. For years after I was terrified of fire, stoves, old or damaged electrical appliances, even the damn toaster.

Of course, than at the age of 11 we did a school play about the bomb dropped on Hiroshima (Sadako and the One Thousand Paper Cranes, I think) and I was introduced to the concept of a radiation burn. Saw pictures of radiation burns from Hiroshima on the internet, in fact. Pictures taken within hours of them being inflicted. I was one of those kids who looked up anything they were curious about on Google and so I read a lot of interviews of survivors too, almost all of them mentioned wondering why their shirt hung loose and burned off them and then later realizing it was their skin. One of them said something like, "The river became a sea of fire. The people who fell into the sea of fire died". Oh gods.

Wait... Remind me again why the hell I'm going to paramedic school?

At least it ain't firefighting school.

[Batsinma Belfry]

When I was about 6 the TVA was in the process of building a dam and reservoir in the neighboring county. My Dad along with most of the local communities thought it was the most wonderful thing ever! He took me out there almost every weekend and tried to explain how there would be a brand new lake for fishing and boating. I couldn't understand exactly where the lake would be. I thought it would be really neat to live in one of those houses down buy the dam. Then we wouldn't have to drive so far to fish on the amazing new lake. When he told me the houses would be at the bottom of the lake, I freaked the hell out!

On the news, I heard about the people from that community being relocated, including the cemetery. But I was afraid that a baby or elderly person, or someone's pet would get left behind.
I still get shivers when I hear the terms "man made lake.

[Kamino Neko]

We had a book called the Reader's Digest Book of Facts.

Little two or three paragraph bits on a whole slew of different things.

I loved that book.

Except for one page in the Greek Mythology section.

The one with the write-up on Medusa.

Because it was illustrated with a picture of this thing.

Freaked me the fuck out. Still gives me a bit of the jeebies to this day.

[PeacePlease]

The only thing that I have to share is my experience with the book "Helter Skelter". My mother swears that I read this book, against her wishes, back when I was in seventh grade...11-12 years old. And that I was infatuated with all things Manson after I read it. I have absolutely NO memory of this whatsoever.

In my my mind, the first time I read it was when I was 19. I was married and reading it while in bed before falling asleep. I remember it was the very, very beginning of the book...where the maid discovers the Tate victims. I wasn't particularly bothered but I fell asleep and when I woke up in the middle of the night I just KNEW that Manson was going to peek his head around my bedroom door. I was so frightened that I could not move. I couldn't even reach over to my husband for help. I laid there forever just knowing what was to come. Finally, I was able to move and touch my husband and felt better.

I was also terrified, abjectly terrified of the wind when I was a kid. I was so afraid that there was going to be a tornado. I used to sit on my bed, with the blinds open, staring at the palm tree that was outside my window making bets with myself "Well, if it moves any further, I'm going to wake up Dad and Mom", "It's okay...it's not bending that far". Now...I love storms...go figure! P.S. I grew up in Arizona...tornadoes are not a common thing here!!

[Count Blucher]

Cars with huge rust spots scared me as a child. I pictured that they were angry at how they were treated during the day and would go out at night in packs after bad car owners. I'm not sure where I got this idea from; possibly a dream.

Janitorial staff in department stores pushing those canvas-sided carts scared me. One of my siblings told me that if they could catch you, they would throw you in the cart, roll you into the back room and roast you alive in the furnace in the basement after the store closed.
And whatever was left? They'd make a mannequin out of, so you'd be stuck there on display for all eternity. Wearing a dress.

There used to be milk delivery services in my neighborhood when I was really young and they'd always drive these odd milk trucks. One of my siblings told me that if the baby died in the night, the delivery men would just shove it in a box and take it back with them out to the truck for disposal with the empties. I was told that it was bad luck to check the metal box by the door to see if it was "full".

An old rerun of Lost In Space gave me recurring nightmares for Years: the villians all had black derbies and faces covered with black material that had been bejewelled. I used to wake up in the middle of the night thinking that they were rising up out of the dark corners of my room to get me.

Originally Posted by 6ImpossibleThingsB4Breakfast

"Trilogy of Terror" aged 11.

That fucking Zuni fetish doll scrambling around under furniture and stabbing at Karen Black's ankles with a carving knife had me too petrified to sit on a couch with my feet on the ground for months.

For years if I wanted to freak myself out, I'd just think of that.

I'll never picture you bare-foot, squatting on the ground, holding your knees with one hand and stabbing the ground with a carving knife with the other while you wait ever again!

[Orionizer]

Originally Posted by DeepLiquid

The Exorcist. My older cousins thought it would be a fun movie to take a 12 year old to, I've never been so scared, I still freak out if I see a clip of it on TV.

Close to this, I was 6 or 7 and BEGGED my mom to take me to see Friday the 13th in the theater. I was freaked out for YEARS after that!

[Orionizer]

Originally Posted by Hampshire

Oh, and these guys.
They lived in my nightmares on a regular basis.

Oh yeah! I forgot about Sleestaks!

And another one I thought of: The Day After. Game me nightmares for about a year.

[egcg75]

When I was around 4 or 5 years of age, my parents had this pink voice box from some type of stuffed doll that would laugh when you squeezed it. It was just the voice box of the thing and they called it, "The Haha Man." It had the creepiest laugh I've ever heard. They used to screw with me by making the thing laugh because they thought it was funny. It used to give me such horrible nightmares as a child which lasted all the way until I was 10 or so.

[Orionizer]

Another one I just thought about. The Atlanta Child Murders.

We had just moved back to NC from Atlanta when I was 7 and this started happening. My best friend in Atlanta was a black guy named Michael. I was just SURE he'd been killed.

I kept begging my parents to let me call him, but they just told me to write another letter and back then, it'd be 2 weeks or so before I'd get a reply and during that time, I kept thinking "I'll never hear from him again!".

[Kenm]

Originally Posted by Tengu

Because it was illustrated with a picture of this thing.

Freaked me the fuck out. Still gives me a bit of the jeebies to this day.

It's the Etruscans' Alfred E. Newman.