And I thought I was the only one with a latex balloon phobia.
Mylar (the shiny silver ones) isn’t so bad since they rarely pop, but latex…shudder.
Ack! Yes, totally. I could not finish watching that clip, between the audio warble and the fetal tomato ooze.
The Tangerine Dream album Phaedra, I think. I was about 4 and my older sister would play it and it would send me into a complete panic.
Really old paintings where the varnish has crackled creeped me out as a kid. I remember one in particular of George Washington they showed us in the second or third grade that bugged me. Ugh!
Reminds me of wind turbines, the way they march along the hilltops in southeastern Washington and northeastern Oregon, where there isn’t anything taller than a barn (and very few of those) for miles and miles. There’s something ominous about them that creeps me out. However, I think they’re cool, too.
Shadows on my wall when I was lying in bed.
The space under my bed.
Walking by a painting or photograph of a person’s face and feeling like the eyes were following me. That was a big one for me.
Does the name Phaedra still freak you out? Have you ever met a Phaedra?
Freaked me right the hell out for years!
Another one I just thought of…
Back in the 70’s when they had the old bumper cars with the huge pole on the back? My grandmother told me one of those fell on her head one time! :eek: About the only ride I would get on, too! I’d constantly stare up at the pole while I was on it.
Water sounds in the dark. If I had to use the bathroom in the middle of the night, I would not immediately flush the toilet. I would wash my hands first, with the water barely on so as to not make a sound - if I wasn’t too freaked out that night to skip washing all together, that is. Then I would flush and make a bee-line for the bed, diving in from afar. I wasn’t afraid of under the bed per se, but I could not bear to step next to it or have any body part hanging over the side at night.
I was never bothered by drains though, because I did not use them at night.
The Beatles song “Here, There, and Everywhere.” I loved “Revolver” when I was five or six, but that song scared me.
Now I know it’s because Paul’s voice was so closely miked by a very young recording engineer named Geoff Emerick. It makes it sound like Paul is right there in the room with you.
To this day I don’t like to go into rooms with mirrors, in the dark. I don’t like to see my reflection in a mirror in a dark room.
When I would go on the Pirates of the Caribbean ride at Disneyland, I saw a bedroom with a skull - and - crossbones escutcheon over the bed headboard! I can’t imagine anyone sleeping in a room with such a thing on the wall.
How were you with pool drains?
I was always scared that the pool drain would suck me down into it.
The movie ‘Them’ was one that would show up in my nightmares a lot when young.
Cooters.
No, not those kind of cooters, you pervs. These kind.
My mom had brown plastic hair rollers, and I had a nightmare once where the all formed up and marched on me, fading out just as they reached my bed. For some reason, I decided they were called “cooters”, and lived in the basement. (And I never heard cooter as a slang term for the female pudenda until I was an adult, so no Freudian subtexts, mm-kay?)
My mom told me the only way to conquer the cooters was to go into the basement and confront them. So I gathered my courage, screwed myself to the sticking point, marched into the basement and beat bloody hell out of those cooters. And I never had a nightmare about them again. Evidence for Terry Pratchett’s contention that the best way to treat a child who thinks she is being chased by a monster is to give her a chair and a big stick.
I once saw as well an abandoned railroad bridge over, I think, the Ohio River. It had been a moveable bridge, for barge traffic; but instead of raising, either end swung parallel to the river, allowing boats to pass.
When I saw it, the swinging tracks at either end had been removed and dismantled, leaving only the middle span…which didn’t connect to the banks at either end. Caused a few nightmares, that did.
So you finally found out it was them? I was thinking it was Summer Madness by Kool & the Gang since that featured oscillating synthesisers, and I’m pretty sure your sister would listen to Kool & the Gang.
When I was 3 or 4, my parents took me for a trip up the coast of New England, and into Maine and the Maritime provinces.
In Maine, they had lobster at almost every dinner, and the sight of cooked lobsters on their plates TERRIFIED me. I wouldn’t eat much besides grilled cheese sandwiches on that trip.
We’ll check on you again in 2018. 
E.T. , the 1980s space alien. I was terrified at age 5-7 or so; thought it was a horror movie.
I’ve never seen the movie.
Oh, yes! When he was all grey in the…was he in a chest freezer of some sort? All I know it I was terrified of our deep freeze for years, because whenever I saw it, I thought of ashy deadish E.T.
And since I didn’t notice this reply last time:
Oh, probably until about 8 or 9. My television watching was strictly controlled until high school. My mother thought cartoons would rot my brains, so they were off the menu unless I was at a friend’s house. Ditto comic books, although she let me read any traditional book I wanted. But back then, comic books were trash to the general population, so nope. First comic I read in its entirety was Promethea, in my 20s. Blown away would be an understatement.
My parents didn’t believe in having television in a house with a small child, so until they finally purchased one when I was 12, tv was a strange and unusual thing that only entered my life on visits to the grandparents or friends. When I was little, Captain Kangaroo was considered to be salutary for children to view, so my grandparents would turn it on for me. I was terrified of the character Banana Man. It was the voice. He spoke in a strange high-pitched sing-songy voice that made the hair on the back of my neck stand up.