This thread was being read by Mrs. D and I and we were wondering what things that looking back, are quite humorous now, but when you were a child, scared the bejeebers out of you?
When Mrs. D was a child, she was absolutely terrified of her grandfather because he had part of 3 fingers missing due to various feed grinding accidents. She figures she was about 3 at the time.
For me I remember being deathly afraid of the wicked witch of the west from the Wizard of Oz. Oddly enough I would still watch the entire show, then when I went to bed, I’d have nightmares about her. It’s quite silly now, but I still remember how scary she was.
There was a mde for Tv version of Alice in Wonderland made for…I think NBC, maybe ABC, back in the 80’s.
The Jabberwock scene. Holy. Living. Fuck.
I still, to this day, don’t know what happens in the movie after that point. once the mirror gets all freaky, and the lightning and shit started happening, I would stop watchng (we had it on tape.)
Since I decided I was brave enough to watch it…the tape disappeared and I have no idea how to obtain a copy. Though, truth be told, I haven’t looked.
My father grows a beard every winter, so that the wind doesn’t chap his face all to hell when he’s working outside. The first spring I was old enough to recognize him (about 20 months), after shaving it off, I screamed bloody murder when he came to pick me up and give me a whisker rub sans whiskers. It took him a good hour to convince me he was in fact the daddy I knew and loved. The next year, I got to watch him shave his beard.
When I was about 10 or so, I was convinced the ghosts of my mother’s parents lived in my closet and would punish me if I misbehaved. Don’t ask me why or how I believed this – I just did. I remember staring at my closet and being unable to sleep because I had taken an extra cookie after dinner without asking Mom first or because I had gotten out the second edition Bowdler’s Family Shakespeare and looked at it without permission. I eventually got over my fear of my dead grandparents. My mom still doesn’t know about this. Maybe I’ll tell her (very casually) over Christmas.
Tornado warnings/watches
Cows. I’m still rather nervous around them, which makes doing chores when I go home on breaks very, very difficult. There’s something about a ton of hamburger and having to wash off its quad-nippled boob that just freaks me right the hell out.
I had nightmares from when the ruby slippers were removed and her feet curled up and shrank under the house.
For me, for awhile, I was deathly afraid of electrical sockets. You know how sometimes you yank on the cord when it the appliance is still on and there’s a bit of a spark? I was convinced I was going to be electrocuted every time I plugged something in or pulled it out. My mother finally went Tough Love on me and forced me to plug in a vaccuum cleaner. I was crying and shaking the whole time, and demanded that she hold my hand, somehow thinking that if I was going to be electrocuted, so was she.
I was scared of the people who lived behind us. I don’t know why. My best friend lived across the street from them, so we would cut through their yard to visit each other. The house was owned by a cop and he rented rooms to other police officers. They were just a bunch of young guys, pretty quiet except for the occasional party, and they were hardly ever there. Still, we’d race across their yard as fast as we could and we were always too terrified to trick or treat there.
My husband was scared of search lights. His family used to go to the movies in town and when they rode back home in the dark, he remembers cowering on the back seat, scared to death of the search lights in the sky.
I don’t personally remember this, I was told of it. When I was, oh, four, my brother kept me from following him into the basement by telling me there were ghosts down there. Two days later, Mom told me to go to the basement to get something. Terrified, I said, “Noooooooo, Mommy! There are goats down there!”
Even in the fourth viewing, I found some reason to leave the room when then witch in The Wizard of Oz dismembered the scarecrow and threatened to burn him. :eek: Now, I marvel at Margaret Hamilton’s over-the-top wickedness. It takes a hell of an actress to be that evil. Has any present-day actress been that vicious?
One episode that starred William Shatner was about his trip to Venus, and his encounter with an alien. Scared me spitless.
I’ve seen the ep as an adult, and the alien is ludicrous now, but back then…boy howdy.
Other episodes gave me nightmares but the one above…shudder
Big dogs. Scared me shitless. And daddy long legs. Creepy little buggers made me want to run untill my legs fell off. Now I can just pick em up, and toss em across the yard.
A distant relative (my grandfather’s cousin?) had huge bushy white eyebrows. I was utterly terrified of him. Now I just feel bad because my parents say he loved kids and it really hurt his feelings that I was scared of him, but I guess that’s hard to explain to a two-year-old and he passed away before I outgrew that.
The dark. Until I was sixteen or seventeen, I had to always have a light on when I went to bed. Nowadays, I get annoyed if I have to sleep when there’s a light on.
When I was a kid, they used to show episodes of the game show Tic Tac Dough during the day when I was home on summer vacation.
There was some bonus round, and I think the contestant could pick an X or an O somewhere on the board, and behind one of them was a dragon that would cause the contestant to lose (my memory of this is pretty foggy). Anyway, the appearance of this goofy 8-bit-graphic dragon and the accompanying “roar” would scare the pants off of me.
Tornado watches and their sirens would scare me, too. And so would just about any 1980s-era movie or TV show about nuclear war.
