Here’s my post from an earlier thread: http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?p=1124736&highlight=thriller#post1124736
When I was little, my brother told me that when you flushed the toilet you would be sucked into the toilet. I was scared to death by this. My father flushed the toilet for me at a rest area once. I ran screaming out of the rest room. My father was mortified.
I was never frightened of this as a child, but oddly enough, I am now, sort of. When my PBS station ends their broadcast at 1 am I have to turn it off before they make the announcement, since the idea of TV not being there is sort of scary and sad.
It’s scary and sad that you find it scary and sad!
I find that particularly amusing in a Far Side kind of way.
I used to be terrified of clowns. I still find them oddly disturbing. I think it’s the way that they have these great big cheary faces painted on, but underneath they’re not smiling at all, but rather, watching, waiting, plotting.
My parents tell me I had some very strange irrational fears as a child. I was an only child so I think the overactive imagination had something to do with it.
I was afraid of burritos. No reason behind it whatsoever. My dad ordered one at a restaurant once when I was 2 and I looked it and started crying, saying “I scared of dat.”
I was afraid of lobsters. Again, my dad ordered one at a restaurant (what was the weird fear of foods for me?), I took one look at that thing on his plate, screamed and in one motion swept it off his plate and onto the floor.
Remember the show Land of the Lost? I loved that show except for the ending of the credits when the dinosaur would turn to the camera and roar. I had to hide behind the couch every single time. For YEARS.
Someone mentioned their dad growing whiskers and being afraid of him. I had the same problem except opposite – my dad was a whiskery guy who decided one day to shave his whole face. I wouldn’t go near him for weeks.
Grandma’s vacuum cleaner
and
Sammy Terry
If you weren’t scared of Sammy as a kid, you must have been made of stone. Or maybe he’s just a local character, nonetheless, Muahahhahahaha!
I lived in Cyprus as a child and next to the driveway of our house was a little patch of waste ground upon which there was a clump of wild onions or leeks of some kind; when they flowered, the stems were over a metre tall and topped with enormous greenish spherical flower heads - for some reason, I found them terrifying.
Now, though, I’m generally rather fond of allium flowers.
Conversely, as a child, I could confidently and rapidly climb a tree of any height, even to the point where I would be swaying back and forth on the whippy, uppermost branches; nowadays, I try it and after I get about ten feet above the ground, I am almost paralysed with trepidation.
I was quite scared of chickens because they would charge me at eye level.
Now, of course, I’m too tall to be so scared.
My grandparents had two little pictures of cherubs in their guest room. They weren’t just drawings or paintings, though. These were posed photographs of some child dressed as a cherub from a very long time ago. The eyes in the pictures were really serious and almost angry. They totally freaked me out. When I would stay with them, I would have to take the pictures down and cover them because they scared me so much. A few years ago, I saw the exact same pictures in a catalogue, and they’re still kind of creepy, but not like when I was a kid.
Sesame Street used to have a thing about the letter I that featured it standing alone like the monolith from 2001, with that same music playing. I hated it. I had to change the channel every time it came on because it terrified me.
[Chris Griffin]
The evil monkey that lives in my closet.
[/Chris Griffin]
Before there was a Sesame Street, the Muppets used to make regular appearances on the Ed Sullivan show, which, being a typical American family of the time, we watched every Sunday night. The Muppet sketches usually started out with Kermit (the proto-Muppet) singing an innocuous pop-song, and eventually being swallowed whole by a monster Muppet.
As soon as I saw Kermit, I had to hide behind my dad’s recliner until it was over.
I recently saw one of these sketches on a PBS special. Still kind of creeped me out.
I was afraid of grown-ups. I thought they had some type of secret life that was unknowable to me, a mere child. You never new what they were going to do… they often seemed to be scheming, lying, cheating, always ready willing and able to hurt children in some way…
My grandpa wore toupees and he usually had a couple different styles as spares. When he wasn’t wearing them he’d put them on those plain styrofoam heads, which sat in his basement workroom. Those heads scared me half to death, especially when the wigs were on them. If we were visiting and I had to pass that room, I’d run as fast as I could past it.
Return to Oz was pretty creepy, actually. The head-changing witch was scary to me too, but I think the guys with wheels for hands and feet creeped me out the most.
I used to be afraid of toilets when I was 4 or so. Not actually using them, just them in situ. I thought that when you weren’t using them, they were some kind of brooding monster. Especially the one at our house in the Eastern Townships. I got over it when I was reading one of Dad’s home renovation books and it said, “Don’t let a toilet scare you!” (I swear to Og, that’s what did it.)
My brother was deathly afraid of ceiling fans and would freak out if there was one in the room.
Geez, it would have freaked you out at my house. To prevent me from flushing over and over too soon (to let the resevoir tank fill back up), my mom used to tell me that after every flush “the toilet needs to rest.”
So when I heard the hiss of the resevoir filing up I would say “Shh. It’s resting.”
:eek:
I’m sorry, I always thought it was really cool, and fascinating.
I was scared of Santa, though, the first time I saw him.
How big do the chickens get in your part of the world? :eek:
I was on vacation once with my dad and the hotel room we were staying in had a leaky faucet. My dad told me that it was called Chinese water torture. So naturally I thought the dripping water was a warning sign that the Chinese were on their way to torture me. I don’t remember when I finally figured out what it actually meant but I was scared of leaky faucets for a while.
Also, I remember when I was a kid riding around in the back seat of the car I always looked back when we stopped at a stoplight and was sure the car behind us was going to run into us. Every time.
I remembered another one today. Michael Jackson’s “Thriller.” I don’t know if it was the video that scared me first, but I know I was scared of the song, too. To the point that my sister would call me into her room and she’d start playing it and just those first notes would send me screaming back to my room.
He wasn’t always evil!
I was plenty scared of tornadoes and tornado watches/warnings. When my family moved into the house I grew up in, we started with a tour of the house and ended up in the den. The previous owners pointed out the line of molding that went around the room, about a foot down from the ceiling. “See that line there? That’s where the tornado tore the roof off of the house about a year ago.” For years I would never go into the den during a storm.
Also, I had a bizarre fear of escalators. I was convinced that my shoelaces were going to get caught in the grate and I’d be pulled under the steps, somehow. I refused to go on them and made the 'rents take me on an elevator whenever an escalator was around. I can still remember the big Sid & Marty Krofft Theme Park that opened in the Omni in Atlanta; I kept seeing ads and wanted to go more than anything else in the world, because it just looked like the greatest thing ever. But then my brother showed me a picture of the entrance and the two giant escalators leading up to it (the tallest in the world at the time, I believe), and there went another childood dream, dashed on the rocks of irrational phobias.