Things that CREEPED you out as a kid

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
21

Oh no…your post just reminded me of a building that terrified me out of my mind for years!

It was an outdoor revival type building. A building, not a tent. You could see straight into it from the road. It had virtually no front, just several posts to hold up the roof, and a couple of walls on either side. Very easy to see inside. I can’t remember the denomination (although it is still there, but has been reconstructed and is a normal, church-type structure now), and they had many services at night. For some reason I had it in my head they were sacrificing PEOPLE in this place, because from the road you could see nothing but the bright lights pouring from it down onto this huge lawn, and I thought it was fire inside the building. A huge barbeque pit or something. And of course, there were always many people going up the hill and going inside in what I considered a hypnotic state.

I used to beg my father or grandfather to drive past this place as fast as possible; I was so scared I would eventually see someone being roasted alive if I so much as glanced in its direction. My grandfather, not realizing I was on the verge of a complete breakdown, made the comment once as we passed, “Oh those folks are crazy. They speak and tongues and handle snakes.”

That clinched it for me. I started crying and blubbering, screaming for him to please go past it NOW and of course, he had no idea what the hell I was tripping out about. My mother thought I had lost my mind. Even as a teenager, I never drove past that place after 3pm. It took years to get over that fear. I had forgotten all about that til I read your post! Geeezzzz…

And one more thing that scared the yell out of me. And my own post reminded me of this.

That part in the movie “The Time Machine” where that horrible noise is being sent out to the humans so they will go inside the mountain and become those awful monsters’ dinner. (Dammit, I can’t think of what those monsters’ names were.) It’s like an air raid, and everybody just drops what they were doing and go right inside, like doped sheep. I hated that part of the movie…it always scared me shitless.

Great. Now I will be remembering things that scared me all day long. Things I THOUGHT I had forgotten all about!

22

I used to read lots of vampire/werewolf/occult “who knows how it happened” type books when I was, say, 9-12 y/o. Talk about masochism. We lived out in the country (i.e. no street lights) and I’d have to walk home from the house up the street (where we played hide-n-go-seek) by myself and it was all I could do to not run screaming home because I thought something was coming up behind me.

Looking up the attic stairs (walk up attic - door off in the summer to let the heat rise) and swearing that we saw the boots of someone at the top of the stairs. Had to walk by the attic to get to my bedroom, silently muttering “avert eyes, avert eyes!”

23

You know that part of “Silent Night” where the lyric is “Holy Infant so tender and mild”? Well, the only thing I knew of at that time that was advertised as tender and mild was sausage. So I figured that someone was going to eat the baby. I knew I must be wrong, nobody would write a song about that, but couldn’t figure out why.

And there was a movie on TV that scared the living daylights out of me. An alien zapped a guy at a gas station with a ray gun, and the guy turned into a skeleton. Nightmares for weeks. A few years ago, I turned on MST3K, and it had that movie. I laughed my head off at it. Think the title was something like “Teenager from Outer Space”.

24

I had a deep rooted aversion to dark basements, sewer grates, and storm drains. It started out when I tried to read “IT”, I only finished the first chapter. In that chapter a little boy is killed by a clown that appears out of a storm drain. That one chapter haunted me for a long time.:eek: Another time at a New Years Eve party all the kids were plopped down in front of the TV while the adults partied. One of the older kids had control of the remote and he wanted to watch C.H.U.D., the title stands for Cannibalistic Human Underground Dwellers. As the title suggests, they like to hang out in sewers, storm drains and basements, and they are not very nice. It made quite a strong impression on my psyche. I’ve gotten used to the dark, but storm drains and sewer grates still give me the willies.:eek:

25

i’ve mentioned this before, but…

anybody see that anti-smoking commercial they ran on CBS maybe 7 times total in maybe '82 or '83, and it showed this fetus floating in a womb, and it slowly turned around and was puffing on a cigar with its shaky little fetal arm? as if the non-smoking, open-eyed 2001 and 2010 fetus wasn’t creepy enough!

26

Ummm… This is kinda really stupid and embarrassing, but, oh, what the hell, I’ll share it anyway.
I don’t actually remember this myself, but my parents have told me the story many, many times.

Remember the show Newhart? Remember how, at the end, after the credits, there was this picture of a cat, and some voice saying “meow”? Must have the the logo for the prduction company or something. Well, when I was about 2 or 3, the cat and the meow apparently freaked the fucking shit out of me. My parents say that I’d be a fine and well-behaved child throughout the show and the closing theme song, but the second that cat came on I would start screaming and crying and would be completely inconsolable. I couldn’t explain why then and I can’t now.

On a slightly more normal note…

I used to be afraid of bubblegum. See, when I was little, someone once told me that you shouldn’t swallow gum because it would never digest, it would just sit there in your stomach forever. I could not chew gum after that, because I was terrified of accidentally swallowing it, and then what if I accidentally swallowed a lot, and my stomach would be completely full of gum, and then I couldn’t eat or go to the bathroom, and then I would die.

The Large Marge character in the PeeWee Herman movie scared the shit out of me.

Moral dilemmas freaked me out, too, starting from when I was about 7. Like, what if some evil warlock captured me and all my friends, and he made me choose between being tortured and killed myself or watching my friends be tortured and killed. What would I choose? What if he gave me the option of only killing some of my friends, and then only torturing me? Which friends would I be willing to let die in order to save my own life? Etc. Etc. I used to lay awake nights thinking up impossible, horrible situations like this, then pyschologically torturing myself over what decisions I would make.

Another big imaginary fear was that aliens would come and shoot a freeze ray over the whole world and everybody would be frozen in whatever position they were in. What if I got caught doing something embarrassing? As a consequence I always went to the bathroom really fast.

Yeah, I was a pretty messed up kid.

27

I saw a tv show once where some kids climbed down a storm drain to get a ball or something. They slid in so easily, I’d gotten it into my head that if I stepped too close to a storm drain, it’d slip and slide right in.

I used to be able to freak myself out totally just by looking at some lights in the distance. We lived out in the country, and I could look out the back window over a acres and acres of fields. At night, it was like looking over an immense sea of darkness with a few tiny, colored pinpricks of light where there were some yardlights miles away. I thought of them as “devil-eyes.” I could half-convince myself that they were moving around or getting bigger.

28

Wizard of Oz: Th scene where the Lion gets so scared as he is walking down the long hallway on his way to meet the Great and Powerful Oz that he jumps out the window. This scared the crap out of me everytime I watched it as a child. [sub]And you thought it was going to be about winged monkeys, didn’tcha? [/sub]
Someone here mentioned air raid sirens. Here in Metro Detroit, they are tested weekly. Every Saturday at 1pm. Ever been caught riding your bike under one of the towers ( this one was atop the local fire station and I was passing through it’s parking lot) when the siren went off? I fell off the bike because of the shock of the noise. I can, however, still sleep through a siren like a snooze alarm.

29

mirrors at night. at a sleep over someone got the bright idea to do this “fun” bloody mary ritual. i still can’t look at a mirror in a dark room.

30

When I was little, I was only creeped out by two things:

  1. Very tall people;
  2. Drunks.
31

My dad suddenly changing his mind, deciding whatever thing I was doing that had been perfectly innocuous up to that point was no longer such, and screaming and rampaging and threatening me until I was frightened into stopping it.

That sure creeped me out.

32
  1. Those fake hands at manicure places
  2. Corn on the cob holders
  3. I don’t remember this, but my mother says I once saw Gregory Hines tap dancing on Sesame Street, and couldn’t sleep for weeks afterwards as a direct result
33

The moment when the Wicked Witch of the West first arrives in Munchkin Land. I could watch the whole rest of the movie, no problems, but that part when she first shows up scared the crap out of me. I would wait until Dorothy arrived in Munchkin Land, then leave and hide in another room. Once the Witch’s initial appearance was over, my dad would come get me and I would watch the rest of the movie. Also, at the end, every time I watched it, I was convinced that the Wizard would turn out to be some huge scary monster. I was always so relieved. Why, oh, why did I keep watching that movie each year?
Humpty Dumpty. That story freaked me out so badly when I was a kid. The fact that they couldn’t put him back together again…it still gets to me a little bit. I would always cry whenever I heard the story. When Sesame Street did their “News” segment about Humpty, I would hide behind a chair. I just couldn’t get over it: What in God’s name was an egg doing sitting on top of a wall?!!
rocking chair: I also cannot look at a mirror in the dark, all because of Bloody Mary. I cannot have a mirror in my bedroom because of this.
Lunatic13: I used to get myself worked up over stuff that wasn’t possibly going to happen as well. The “Which friends/family members would you choose to die” was the worst!

This one was (still is) the worst: My mom has a bust of John F. Kennedy. It’s gold. It’s smaller than a person’s actual head, but not by much. It’s on a window sill right at the foot of the stairs leading into the hallway in my parents’ basement. The basement itself never scared me (it’s furnished and my bedroom was down there), but I would run like a bat out of hell past that creepy-ass bust. It scared my sister, too. When our friends would first come over to our house, they’d see it, jump, and be like, “What the fck*!” I’m telling you…this thing would creep you right the hell out. ::shudder::

34

The Clockman in the 1950’s TV program Shirley Temple’s Storybook. One bad dude with a grandfather clockface for a head.

35

This thread needs to be read by some horror writers – might give 'em some original ideas.

Thistles scared me. I was sure they were gonna pull themselves out of the dirt and jump on me. Whenever I saw one (they get big around here), I’d just stop right in front of it and cry, afraid to move.

36

When I was really little, I was scared of not-quite-human characters on TV. The Incredible Hulk, Wonder Woman, Slim Goodbody (What was with that costume??!). Same kind of thing as with clowns–that not-quite-rightness of it. And of course, the Hulk–changed spontaneously, and broke things, so he was my big fear for a while. Wonder Woman got to me so bad, I was actually scared of white women with long dark hair generally–because they looked like her.

Oddly, later I got used to the idea of masks, and quick-changes, & secret identities, and thought it was cool. I have various Hulk comic books–in fact, I like the comic-book Hulk, and have since I was–an older–kid. I got over that fear long ago.

Slim Goodbody still looks like freaky naked guy to me. Ugh!
Clowns? I go back & forth. I currently think they’re annoying.
And (gasp) Wonder Woman? Scarred me for life. Well, I’m trying to heal, but it’s disturbing how much influence a superhuman brunette in a bathing suit had on my psychology.

37

Darth Vader. I didn’t see Star Wars until I was seventeen, he creeped me out so much as a child.

The toilet in my gramma’s basement. When you flush it, it makes this high pitch whine that I HATE.

38

Yep.

Skinny guy + Orange 'fro + flesh colored Danskin + airbrushed ribs, lungs, liver and intestines + songs about the blood stream = sheer terror

39

And has anyone ever seen that really freakyass picture of Jesus? You know the one-it’s just his face, and his eyes can be opened or closed? My neighbors had that in their attic and it scared the begeezus out of me! I HATE that picture. Jesus didn’t look like Jesus, he looked more like Charles Manson, I swear!

40

Roch Demers’ “The Peanut Butter Solution” scared the hell out of me. I have never been able to watch the whole thing, ever since I was a child. I don’t know if it was the guy losing all his hair, or it growing back so damn much, but I was TERRIFIED! I remember my family renting it once when I was young, and I was too scared to leave the room and be alone, but I couldn’t watch it, so I sat in a chair, covering my face with a blanket and plugging my ears with my hands.

Also, back in grade one we had those reader books - one of them had a story called “The Magic Cookie”. Anyone know of this one? Seems to me only people from my school have experienced the horror of it. I am STILL creeped out by that story. This black-and-white cookie comes to life, goes walking through the town and steals all the colours from things she sees. Like she takes the orange cat’s colour cuz she wants orange hair, so the cat ends up white. She does this to a bird, snake, frog…all kinds of things. Can you imagine forcing this kind of an image on a child, just so they can learn to read the words red, green, purple…? And it was one of those illustrations made to look like the cookie was play-doh, which just made it worse. shudder My mom’s a grade one teacher, and I get to see that image every year when she starts that book in her class.

And ever since I can remember, I can’t stand the thought of something happening to my knees, elbows, or belly-button. I freak out whenever someone touches them,which drives my boyfriend crazy when he’s stroking my arm or leg and I jump away from him! And the belly-button… I have this weird idea that anything that goes there will go right into me and do something nasty to my innards…