Yep. Killer Bees. When I was in 2nd grade, we learned all about them. My friend Steven constant got the book out of the library about them, had our teacher read it to the class and teach us about them. I had nightmares for WEEKS. Woke up screaming many-a-night. And I was convinced that they were going to kill my grandparents who lived in Florida, and I was going to move to Alaska so I’d never have to worry about them killing me. (So why on Earth am I now living in Florida??? ) They were like a plague, like an epidemic, and I was sure the whole world was going to be killed by them. Not easy for an 8 year old.
The other thing was the Twighlight Zone. Even though I KNEW it was fiction, I’d still hear noises after I go to bed and wonder if it was the vampire that lived down the street, or wonder if the workers that build the minutes were going to screw up the order of a couple of mine and how would I convince people when they did? It didn’t cause easy sleep in the little Fishy…
I guess I’ve always had a bit of an over-active imagination, huh???
:pComes from what Zeus did to you, right? Memory remembers…
Oh, yes, I was also (a little later, I think) freaked out by the witches in the Narnia books. Especially the Emerald Witch from The Silver Chair. I remember re-reading the book & avoiding a particular scene she was in–skipping past it. I don’t remember the man-eating giants bothering me quite so much–unless that was the next bit, & I was avoiding the whole thing–I remember being bugged by her.
There was some weird sexual stuff wrapped up in this whole Slim Goodbody/Wonder Woman/Emerald Witch fear of mine, & I don’t know how to explain it.
When I was little, I was always afraid to go to church because of the big scary statues of Mary and Jesus…I used to believe that they were watching me and other sorts of evil stuff.
The scary truck driver from the Pee Wee movie…you know, when she turns around to look at him and she’s all monstery? That used to scare the crap outta me.
Anything with lots of holes really close together. This is hard to explain, but just thinking about it even now makes me gag. Try to imagine lots of tubes tied together, and you can look into them, or just see the tops of them…that freaks me out big-time.
Infinity/anything infinate. Just the thought of it used to scare me, it still does, really.
I was afraid of Bigfoot. Yes, Bigfoot. I saw that film of him walking away on some show (probably ‘In Search Of…’), and that was it. The idea that Bigfoot was supposed to live in the woods and couldn’t possibly be hanging around Brooklyn, NY never occured to me.
I also saw a movie called ‘Don’t Be Afraid Of The Dark’ on TV that scared the living shit out of me when I was a kid. It was about these little guys that lived in some lady’s basement, and for some reason, were out to get her. Good Lord, that movie scarred me for years. I’d love to see that movie now, just to see how bad it really is.
I also saw something on a nature show that freaked me out for years. Something about a deer or an antelope that was sick because a bug had crawled in it’s ear and eaten it’s way into it’s brain. The though of a bug crawling into my ear and eating my brain kept me up many nights. :shudders:
I was always afraid of the crickets in my basement as a kid (we had a walk out basement). I never wanted to go down there if it was dark because I could hear them chirping and I was totally convinced they were going to attack me. My parents tried to tell me that they were more afraid of me than I was of them but I never really believed them.
I was also afraid of fire safety week at school. All the talk about what to do if my house caught on fire made me think it really would. I was afraid that my house would burn down at night and I wouldn’t wake up in time. It freaked me out so much my dad would put a smoke detector on a shelf in my room to make me feel better. The thing was, then I would lay in bed, staring at the little red light on the damn thing, just waiting for it to go off. I dreaded that week every year.
Oh, and at the bottom of the basement stairs was a huge fire extinguisher, which combined both my fear of fire with the terror of going into the basement in the dark. Shiver!
Escalators. I was convinced I was going to get pulled down by the stairs’ teeth. I had to stop and take deep breaths and then jump onto the middle of a stair. Annoyed the heck out of my parents.
Oh, yeah! Get your foot caught in the escalator as it goes into the top or the bottom, and you’ll go all the way around and come out flat (with grooves) at the other end. I’ll take the stairs, thanks.
Having to scratch my grandfather’s head. Eeeewwwwwwwww !
Watching same grandfather eat scrambled eggs and brains. Talk about something that looks and smells ** nasty ** .
Having to go to the outhouse in the middle of the night in the dark. Or during the day for that matter. I was always so afraid something down there was just waiting to bite a little girl’s ass. My dad’s Mom didn’t get an inside toilet until I was about 8.
I walked in on my mom watching some movie once… I only saw a tiny fraction of the scene and I can’t have been older than about 4… but that scene has stuck with me. There are three men… an indian and two white men… they are standing in a river and the indian scalps one of them, and then the other white guy goes running off into the woods.
Another movie I walked in on that scared me for years: again no idea what it was but there was this white foamy stuff on the ground… sort of bubbly… and this guy was going around with a pitchfork stabbing into these mounds of foam. I think there were monsters or people or aliens or something in them… anyway that scene gave me nightmares for YEARS.
If anyone can identify either of these movies, I’d be curious to know what they are.
Other things that creeped me out… I was SURE that there was a monster in the toilet who would reach his hand up and grab me while I was sitting there. Especially when I flushed. I used to wash my hands first, then take a running leap out the door as I flushed… not sure why, but this was the way I did things until I was probably 12. The Toilet just scared the shit out of me (har har I made a pun)
There was a poster of a girl with a badly burned face, warning about the dangers of fireworks, which used to be displayed in schools and libraries in the run up to bonfire/Guy Fawkes night. In my school it used to be put up opposite the doors from the school hall, so we’d see it every morning after assembly. I’d walk with my eyes shut until I was safely past it.
Some public information films, which were shown in 1970’s UK. In retrospect they are rather funny as well as patronising, but at the time some of them really scared me, especially the one about not playing with matches, which can be found here: http://www.carless.btinternet.co.uk/pages/realaudio.htm
When I was really young, in the early '70’s I was terrified of the introduction to a kids show, where a guy sand in a deep operatic voice. It started “come with me, come and see…”. I guess thinks were more innocent then, but I found that deeply disturbing (though I wasn’t sure why)and woud bury my face in the cushions and put my hands over my ears until he’d stopped singing.
Yeah, and escalators, going down. Which still bothers me, a bit.
And loose hairs that belonged to someone else. I don’t mean the clippings after you’ve had your hair cut, I mean whole single hairs that have fallen or been pulled out, still with a piece of scalp attached. That definately still gives me the creeps.
Our old family doctor told my mother I was “a nervous child” and “very sensitive”. Yep, I got taken to thedoctor because I would get so creeped out.
A Catholic childhood is not particularly easy on a kid like this. Take the paintings of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. You have Jesus standing there (this is the wimpier/gentler, Let The Children Come To Me variety of Jesus icon), looking sorrowful, and no wonder, because his heart is sitting on the outside of his chest like something out of an Indiana Jones movie. And it’s wrapped in something. As a kid I didn’t get that it was supposed to be the Crown of Thorns, I just thought somebody had wrapped Jesus’ heart in BARBED WIRE! AAAAAAAAAAAAAACK! Or all those statues of Mary stepping on the snake. The snake wasn’t so bad, to be honest, but she always had this very wide robe, and she was holding it out so that it looked like she was just about to take off… like the Flying Monkeys! NOOOO! Not the Flying Monkeys!
And the paintings of the Ascension, with Jesus flying up to heaven (no wings, thank gawd) with holes still in his feet and hands! I tell you, you don’t need scary movies when you’ve got an overactive imagination, and images like this being presented as devotionals. :eek:
(Oh yeah, bees and wasps were awfully creepy as well.)
Aaaaaaaaaaauuuuuuuuugggggggggghhhhhhhhhh! flodnak you just HAD to post about the barbed wire Jesus bleeding heart to this once-devoted Catholic, didn’t you! One of the things I found scary about the Catholic church, that I had banished to the deep recesses of my memory lo these many years, and you HAD to bring that image back to the light of day!
Just as bad was the stained glass window in my church with the line “…And Thy own soul, a sword shall pierce.” Guess what was on the stained glaas window in all its gory glory? Yup, a heart pierced by a sword, shedding drops of blood.
Brrrrrrr. ::shivver::
If anyone needs me, I’ll be under my desk, making a set of rosary beads and trembling in abject terror.
[It took me several years to realize Mary was standing on a snake. My statue (kept on the dresser on a proper little white lace doiley) was so badly painted, I thought it was a small green river.]
Remember in Invasion of the Body Snatchers (the 70’s remake) there was a alien pod screw-up that produced a dog with a human face?
When I saw that (I was about five) my head just about fell off. I was convinced the thing was going to pop out from under my bed in the middle of the night.
Inky, it was cruel of you to remind me of that human-faced dog thing. Brrrrr…
It reminds me of that Lovecraft story where the witch had a familiar named Mr. Brown (or something like that), which was a rat with a human face.
And of course, you had to mention popping out from under the bed, because Mr. Brown ended up burrowing through a mattress and chewing someone’s heart out. :eek:
Flodnak, dang, I had very near forgotten that Jesus with his barbed wire heart outside his chest image. Then I went back to my old church to see St. Something Or Other (Stephen, I think) who is a marble statue with arrows peircing his torso. This left lasting images of just why I don’t want to be a saint in my life.
What about the pictures of St. John the Baptist and his head on a platter…yikes! and away.
FYI, Bigfoot hovered around Royal Oak, Michigan, waiting to pounce on small children that were about my size and height.
The Loch Ness monster, I was sure, lived in our pool along with sharks( accompanied by the Jaws theme too.)and pirana’s.
Might I add that due to a serial murderer in our area when I was young ( The Oakland County Child Killer) he was suspected to drive a gremlin. Those cars gave me the creeps for years. Never caught the guy either.
And for gross out factor, remember SLIME. Basically it was a gel that kids played with. Looked like snot. Nearly threw up when the local boys would play with it.
When I was about 10 years old, I went to see a matinee of “The Legend Of Boggy Creek”. I was scared shitless and witless as I rode my bike home at dusk after the movie.
No, no, Bigfoot lived in the patch of woods between my house and the mailbox a few blocks away in Newburgh, New York. I know this because he was chasing me every time I had to take letters to that box.
Also, I, too, had some weird-ass books in my classroom as a kid. One was a collection of surreal little horror stories; the cover had a picture of winged eyeballs on it. Among the stories: boy chews gum, gum takes on life of it’s own, boy can’t stop chewing… father and boy throw gum away, gum makes its way back into house, tries to get back into boy’s mouth… gum is eventually trapped in a bell jar and buried. Or, people begin disappearing from a town where fishing is popular… one who is almost “taken” but escapes reports that he/she felt like he’d/she’d been “hooked.” And (I think it was the same book), many people begin having a dream in which everything is green and moist and plant-like… they begin to sense that the dream is real, and reality is not. A man tries this theory out on a woman at a bus stop and she freaks. Turns out he’s right.
Creeped the hell out of me as a kid, but didn’t stop me from reading the book. My gradeschool library had a ton of questionable material itself now that I think of it (really weird collections and novels probably better suited for older kids, though I read as many of them as I could get my hands on) But man am I glad nobody ever questioned it!
) They were like a plague, like an epidemic, and I was sure the whole world was going to be killed by them. Not easy for an 8 year old.
