Purd Werfect, me too! I saw Boggy Creek on tv. My dad realized it scared me, so being the concerned, caring father that he is, he took to talking about it all the time and warning me that the Boggy Creek Monsters was coming to get me.
FWIW, MST3K got their hands on that movie, or its sequel (yes, it had a sequel!) in one of their last seasons. Sweet, sweet revenge.
I kid you not – I was creeped out by a (drumroll please) Chevrolet commercial!
When I was about 4 years old, my folks & I were sitting in the living room watching “Sing Along With Mitch”. It was a Halloween special. During one commercial they had Billy Barty perched on the hood of a Chevy station wagon, and some guy in a dark sheet loomed up from behind the fender and snatched him off the car, disappearing behind it. Mr. Barty hammed it up, looking terrified, and I just sat there with my hair on end while nobody else in the room seemed to notice! That part was scariest of all. I had nightmares about that ghost for years afterwards. I would awake screaming at the top of my lungs. Mom always thought it was because my sister let me watch a scary movie, but the real source of my terror was General Motors!
When I was 7 years old, we moved to the mountains, where we lived in a 3-bedroom 2-story house. There was a room at the back of the house that had been converted from an open porch, and that was my bedroom. Just the thought of looking out the window from that room at night creeped me out. Later, there was a picture (artist’s conception) in the newspaper showing Bigfoot compared to an “average” human. The picture of Bigfoot had a face like Tarzan, and when I read the article, I was convinced he must live right near us. After all, there’s been recent sightings of Bigfoot in the mountains, and that was right where we lived. I slept with the covers pulled over my head, and made sure I was inside after dark. I was doubly afraid to look out my room’s window at night. I was afraid I’d see Bigfoot looking in at me. Now I’m older, I have no idea why the thought of getting looked at by Bigfoot creeped me out so badly, but at the time, the mere thought was terrifying.
~~Baloo
hanging head in shame
I’m STILL scared of sharks in pools if I swim at night. It’s totally irrational, but I will literally have a panic attack over it.
I’ll be 29 in 25 hours.
I find this hilarious now, at the time it was a nightmare.
I was about 8, my parents were divorced, and my mom would come to pick me up every other weekend. Well, mom came to pick me up one weekend and came into my room; she commented on how much of a mess my room was and then proceeds to tell me a story of when people have messy rooms that rats come in there to live and bury themselves in the mess. Thinking back, my room wasn’t that bad…anyway, when she brought me back after the weekend I was getting ready for bed and looked under the bed for some reason. All I saw was a brown furry thing…I freaked…jumped on the bed, grabbed my pillow and a blanket and then jumped to my lateral bookshelf. I slept on top of that bookshelf all night because of the “rat” under my bed. The next morning I get up, jump to the bed, of course, and look underneath. The “rat” was a ball of brown yarn. I couldn’t believe it!!!
Clowns
Potato bugs (Also called ‘Jerusalem Crickets’) Are the absolute ugliest creatures ever created. I only came into contact with one once, at a cousins house when I was very young, and the visual memory haunts me to this very day.
Like a couple other previous posters, I used to get creeped out every time I saw Large Marge from Pee Wee’s Big Adventure 
I used to be creeped out by the tiny river that ran through the little village where I grew up with my grandparents (I spent most of my time there because my own parents were both working). My grandpa was a real kidder, you see–he would tell stories about vampires and ghosts and goblins that would live in the river and come out at night.
But then he would also take the extra step and sneak outside in the middle of the night to do stuff like rattle chains and splash rocks in the river near my window. Hahahahaha! My grandpa–what a character!
(can’t sleep…vampires will get me!..can’t sleep…vampires will get me!)
Some ghost stories used to creep me out, too. One that comes to mind is one from the ‘Scary Stories to tell in the dark’ trilogy. The basic climax of this story involved a lady who had a dream about a creepy pale woman entering her bedroom and telling her to flee her apartment (The illustration of a creepy, gray-scale, plump woman with a grossly disfigured and disproportionate appearance made it creepier), and in the end, while moving into a -different- room for rent, the homeowner overseeing everything disappears for a moment, and the said pale woman enters afterward with the dire warning from her dreams.
The thought of a creepy, ‘unearthly’ stranger intruding on me in such an intimate place as my own room scared the hell outta me. When laying in bed–I face the doorway. So I used to stare at it all night and imagine the doorknob suddenly turning and…well you get the idea.
-Ashley
Frogs… isn’t it obvious?
Turtles… with those ugly, ugly necks.
Clowns because I saw Circus of Horrors when I was little…it’s amazing how many people were totally creeped out by clowns. I guess that clown [the movie It] standing in the middle of a field who beckons kids to come really found a sore spot in lots of people’s minds.
:shiver, shiver:
Worst series of nightmares I ever had as a child were caused by an episode of the original “Star Trek” tv show. There is one episode where Spock’s brain is stolen (to run a building facility or something), and Dr. McCoy sets up a device to have the “brainless” Spock body walk around. That image of a body sans brain walking around controlled by a hand-held device terrified me as a child, for many months.
I also had nightmares about being chased by that innocuous cartoon witch, Broom Hilda.
As a child and to this day, I dislike and fear clowns. Never thought they were funny, just very very creepy.
Oh, and the “Devil’s Doll” episode of the Twilight Zone. Still don’t like dolls to this day (not as much of a handicap to a 32 year old man as one would think, haha).
return to oz esp. the wheelers
My god, Sir, my heart’s still pounding from that “matches” film. Who the hell directed it, David Lynch?
Seriously, though, I don’t think it’s necessary to make a point that way. Adults know damn well what one lit match can do, and what the aftermath of a house fire looks like. They don’t need an image like that on top of the worries they already have for their children. And kids will just be terrified by that, as you apparently were. It must have scared a lot of children to no purpose: they still might not have made the connection between a book of matches or a lighter, and that scary house. PSAs aimed at kids need to show direct cause-and-effect, and go easy on the effect.
Ok, Doris, I just played the duck-and-cover film. Halfway through, I started laughing and saying, “This is a parody, right? This isn’t authentic; someone made it in the '80s!” It looks very much like the propaganda film Hogarth’s class had to watch in Iron Giant. Of course, it may be real after all; I’ve mentioned the pamphlets my parents saved from the early '60s that instructed how to pile a bunch of furniture and boxes real tight against the inside of the garage door to keep the radiation out.
Well, either way, I’ve added it to my Favorites. I love how the announcer says something about “taking responsibility” for family, or safety or something, while Dad’s barbecue is smoking out of control. Well, most of it’s blowing on him, so I guess he is being responsible, by taking most of the carcinogens.
Yikes… that “Matches” film reminds me of the last few minutes of “The Blair Witch Project.”
Is the “Duck and Cover” film the inspiration for South Park’s little skit of the same name? Only they were learning how to survive an erupting volcano, not the A-bomb.
My mom, btw, remembers air raid drills, wherein she and her classmates had to duck and cover under their desks at school. Clearly, holding your hands over your head will protect you from any atomic bomb blast. Considering that sirens at night still scare the hell out of me as they did when I was a child, I’m amazed she grew up relatively unwarped.
The Mummenschanz mime troupe scared the hell out of me when I was little. My mom likes to tell the story of when I was 2 or 3 years old and we were visiting my aunt’s house when one of the commercials came on. She says that I screamed hysterically and vaulted over my aunt’s couch, refusing to come out of my hiding place until long after the commercial was over. Even now I’d cringe if I saw one of the old commercials.
When I was a little older, maybe 8 or 9, there was a music video that always freaked me out. There weren’t any people in it – just motorized mannequin/robot parts doing various repetitive motions. The thing that really scared me was the bottom half of a mannequin that walked around in a circle. I can’t remember the name of the song, though – I must have blocked it out.
My basement. Now this wasn’t your average, ordinary basement, this was a hole dug in the dirt with a cement floor. The farmhouse was about 100 years old, and the woman that lived in it before us was crazy. Literally. She tried to shot the sheriff when she was being forcibly evicted. Her husband died in that basement under mysterious circumstances, and there were claw marks dug into the walls going up the stairs. I wouldn’t want to go into that basement now, 30 years after we moved from the house. Also, marching bands. Or the sound of marching bands. From that same house you could hear the high school marching band practice. My beloved older brother (who else?) told me they were martians landing. They still give me the wiggins. And search lights. When I was a kid and lived very near Lake Huron, craft would go missing on the lake. They’d have helicopters with searchlights that would fly around looking for crafts in distress. That seemed to me to be a terrible thing, to be lost on the lake, never found.
StG
I think this is Herbie Hancock’s Rockit.
I read The Exorcist when I was around 10 or 11. Late at night my stomach would growl and I knew it was the devil trying to posses me. I’d grip my bedclothes in an attempt to keep myself anchored because I could feel myself levitating from the bed.
The Late, Late Movie used The Syncopated Clock as its theme song. It scared the crap out of me when I was 6 or so.
My creepout has got to be one of the dumbest. Way back in the late 60’s the toy company Kenner sponsored a series of animated specials based on classic literature; Huckleberry Finn, that type of thing. The one that got me was their version of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. Specifically, it was Marley’s Ghost that did it. Basically, they kind of drew old Marley as a skeleton in a nightgown and whos hair appeared to be aflame. The night I saw this I had an unbelieveably realistic nightmare that this ghost was hovering in the middle of my room.
Slept with my lights on til i was 15, folks, no lie.
Chris W
And the “Creeped-Out” Generations will continue …
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=59414
When i was a young child i had this terrible fear that when i was using the toilet something would crawl up and bite my ass… ok maybe i am just weird, and wanted to share that…
thanks.
-Michael
Man is certainly stark mad: he cannot make a worm, yet he will make gods by the dozen. – Michael de Montaigne
The Eagles.
The movie that got to me was The Incredible Shrinking Man, where he shrank down to nothing, had to fight off a huge (comparatively) hairy spider with a pin as a sword...
Gave me nightmares for a long time.The street cleaner that rumbled down our street scared the crap of of me. I always thought it was gonna come suck me up. You never woulda found me outside with one of those on the loose.