Things that CREEPED you out as a kid

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
81

Does anyone remember the horrible Bigfoot horror movie from the early-mid 70’s? Commercial showed some teenage babysitter watching TV, sitting in front of a picture window at night with no drapes. Bigfoot’s arms come crashing in, drag her off into the night… to this day, I can’t sit with my back to an uncurtained window at night.

Also the Sleestaks (sp?) from “Land of the Lost”

ANYTHING from “In Search Of,” but especially the “Amityville Horror” Episode.

And just so they aren’t all from TV and film-- I was scared to death of the chainsaw. It seems like my dad was always chopping down these big pine trees from our yard. The chainsaw would scare me so I’d run inside. But then I’d think the trees were going to fall on the house and crush me. So I’d run back outside. Then I’d hear the chainsaw… repeat ad nauseum.

82

Another movie that creeped me out as a kid was “Little Monsters” (I think thats what it was called- that Fred Savage movie where the access to the monster world was under his bed?). It wasn’t so much the thought of monsters under the bed that got to me, but rather the look of some of those monsters and the idea of turning into one and not being able to go outside in daylight after a while… I only watched that movie once, and that was enough for me.

83

The David Lynch movie “The Elephant Man”. My dad was going off to see it one night when I was 10, and I INSISTED on going along.

Beyond the really good makeup job of the man himself, the whole film was just really creepy. Filmed in black & white, very atmospheric, creepy music. The whole thing was like a nightmare, and that’s exactly what I had for months, even though I ran out of the theater halfway through it.

My dad stayed to watch the rest, which I never forgave him for.

That night I stayed up all night with the lights on and read pleasant cheerful books. For a while I was convinced the John Merrick himself was going to walk out of the closet. I even had this fear that my dad, knowing the movie freaked me out, would buy a life-sized cardboard cutout of Merrick and put it in my room. It got so bad that I eventually had to confide in my teacher about why I was so distracted in class all the time.

Today, at age 30, I can watch the film and appreciate it. But I still get a tightening of the stomach. And with some distance I now know that I was equally horrified at Merrick’s horrible treatment by others as by his appearance.

84

a) Hunter the TV cop show
they had this one about cults, where they found this dead animal (cat or dog) surrounded by candles in a star. creeped me!

b)Hitler :wally
this one time I was older about 13 and my fam and I were watching a documentary on hitler (dad being jewish ;j) kinda freaked me out, specially they never actually found his body’s remains. I had nightmares that night.

c) The Ribbon
one of those cheesy kids scary stories books, where this guys wife wears a ribbon around her neck and never takes it off, one night he has to know and takes it off and her head falls off! whoa!

d) Similar to Mr Goodbody, Inside Out boy
on Nickelodeon i think, strange little kid.

e) Seven
I watched this movie one night with my friend (14 y/o) we walked up to the movie theater while it was light, after watching this freaky movie, we walked home, dark by then, except halfway home we had to part ways to go home, I stopped about every 5 seconds to see if anyone was behind me. Really freaky.

f) Snake in Toilet movie
there was this movie my dad was watching one time where this guy put a snake in the plumbing of a bathroom in a school or something and the snake came out in the toilet while the lady when to sit on it.
OH MY, i still look into the toilet bowl carefully before sitting down!

My little sisters are afraid when BIG BEAR IN THE BLUE HOUSE, sniffs the TV, I wonder if that will affect them in years to come??? :eek:

85

I literally had the reply window open and I was going to mention this exact story, when I decided I had better look at the thread again to make sure nobody had used it. Here it is. Now that’s creepy.

Anyway, if you want to read the story (and I can’t imagine a circumstance in which you would), it’s at http://www.angelfire.com/ma3/BirchLane/oct00.htm. I can’t tell you how much that terrified me when I was little.

86

Ah, yes, the Robert Sheckley story about fishing. I loved that story as a kid. All those stories that seem just “a little too old for you.” Yup.

87

From the 1950s and 1960s:

In an episode of “Science Fiction Theater”, a man borrowed a neighbor’s flashlight. It turned out to be an X-ray flashlight (the neighbor was from the future), and people’s skeletons became visible. Scared the heck out of me. After seeing it repeated on the Sci-fi Channel a few years ago, I recognized the film they used (most of you would, too): an X-ray moving picture of someone eating and swallowing some radio-opaque food.

There was a horror/suspense series titled “Thriller”. It was introduced by Boris Karloff, and sometimes he played a character in the show. One episode was “Yours Truly, Jack the Ripper”, based on the Robert Bloch story of the same name. At one point the detective investigating a modern-day Jack the Ripper attends the funeral of the latest victim. In an earlier scene, someone had casually mentioned a superstition that the dead body of a murder victim will open its eyes to look at the murderer if he’s nearby. We see one of the pallbearers struggling with the coffin. We then see the onlookers as they react to off-scene events. Someone says, “They’ve dropped the coffin! It’s opened!” Then a woman screams, “SHE’S LOOKING AT US!!! SHE’S LOOKING AT US!!!” I saw this when I was about 10, and in my young memory the scene is incredibly dramatic and horrifying. Also, the series theme music was reminiscent of the “Psycho” shower scene. When I saw the episode repeated on the Sci-fi Channel, the whole thing seemed rather lame.

The Twilight Zone episode, “The Eye of the Beholder” really scared me out when the “normal” faces were revealed at the end.

88

Are you talking about that David Essex song “Rock On”? Because I totally see where you’re coming from after seeing “Dream a Little Dream.”

Other things that were (and are currently) creepy:
Return to Oz (no WAY is that for little kids. NO WAY!!!)
Snow White and the Seven Dwarves
Unsolved Mysteries, with that demonic Robert Stack who would narrate every single horrible story. In particular, the episodes about aliens scared me and I was convinced for years that my parents were aliens sent to observe me and used our cat as some sort of recording device because she was ALWAYS in my room, just lurking.
The stairs at school. We lived in a ranch home, and I always had visions of falling to my death while we were all in our little Madeline formations. I would cling to the banister tenaciously.
Chinese food
“Something in the Air Tonight” by Genesis

89

When i was about 2-3, i was terrified of the air conditioner, or the “ee da da” as i called it. I remember one time i was out on the 2nd floor deck, and the compressor below suddenly turned on, and i ran inside screaming “eedada eedada eedada!!!”

90

Well I can’t vouch for that one, since I’m not American, but I have a vague recollection of someone mentioning turtles in connection with nuclear protection films shown to schoolkids. We just got “protect and survive” leaflets, where we were instucted to make a bomb shelter out of old doors and paint it white. As for the others, I remember quite a few of them. Apparently, some have been released on video and have been selling well!

91

I just have to say, I’m so glad I’m not as weird as I thought I was.

I must have had some sort of bad experience during infancy, because as a child I was terrified of loud noises. Whenever mom vacuumed, I would scream and cry in terror. When my sister took a shower in the bathroom across the hall from my bedroom at night, the sound of the water running drove me into paroxysms of terror (and I was like 8 or 9 years old). One time when I was about 5, my mom pulled out the iron to press dad’s shirt and I ran away screaming, thinking it was going to make a loud noise. Don’t even mention the blender.

I’m still scared of noises: motorcycles, bad mufflers, etc. When my husband uses power tools, I pace around the house wringing my hands, on the verge of panic. If he’s at it for very long, I have to get in my car and leave.

Jaws scared the living s*** out of me. For years afterwards, I was terrified of taking a bath. I couldn’t use bubble bath; I needed the water to be perfectly clear so I could see the bottom. Even then, I was afraid the shark would materialize right there in the tub with me.

Of course, I couldn’t enter the bathroom until the tub was filled because I couldn’t stand the sound of the running water. I was ten before I was brave enough to take my first shower. Plus, I had a pathological fear that the tub would overflow.

The fire safety films freaked me out, too. I’d lay in bed long into the night, imagining that every little creak was the sound of a fire starting, and imagining I smelled the smoke. I still do this. Most nights, I get up at least once or twice and check the whole house to be sure nothing’s on fire. Damn fire safety films.

92

Oh yeah ladybig, I can totally relate. Their commercials were so freaky, like when they were acting like flies. I’m going to have nightmares tonite just remembering them.

93

I mean ladybug. It was a typo that I missed while previewing, and nothing else was implied, really. Sorry.

94

Inky-, you are going to Hell. I hope you know that.

95

My oldest brother is 17 years older than me, and when I was a kid my parents were very preoccupied with his many drug and alcohol problems. As a result, and since I was a good kid, I ended up not being noticed when I stayed up late and watched shows I had no business watching.

I’m 30. I started watching Saturday Night Live when it first came on in 74 or 75. Mister Bill is highly traumatizing to a preschooler. I still find him a little creepy (on an un-creepy note, I also thought Father Guido Sarducci was a real priest until about 8 years ago).

The tv stations in Milwaukee would often show pretty adult stuff after 10 when I was a kid (censored, but still, I don’t think either of the two films would be shown on network tv now) :

When I was 6, I saw cut versions of both The Exorcist and Looking for Mr. Goodbar, by myself. I was terrified by both of them, and when I would wake up from my nightmares I couldn’t go to my parents for fear of them finding out I’d been watching that sort of thing on tv. I love both those movies now, so no lasting damage, but I was creeped out for YEARS.

I also can still remember a bit of a horror movie I saw on a weekend creature feature when I was between 6 and 8 (1977-1979). Looking back, I guess it might have been one of the 10,000 versions of The Island of Dr. Moreau. Anyway, all I can remember is this really short clip–the hero walks into a hut in the jungle, and on tables there’s these small humanoid white creatures that don’t look like they’re quite, well, done yet, but they’re alive. One of them mewls at the hero making a noise kind of like Bad Andy (bwenh). I’m smiling as I write this, because I can’t seem to make out how creppy it is, but I still sometimes wake up with that image in my head.

96

I have never really felt normal, but reading this thread had brought me closer to feeling normal than anything could. Thanks to all of you.

[sub](thinks; god, what a bunch of sissy weirdos. At least I’m not THAT bad!)[/sub]

97

Kitchen witch. My Oma had one when I was a four year old in Holland. I didn’t like going into that room, with that thing in there, with it’s little shrunken head.

I saw a scary Bigfoot movie when I was a kid, but I don’t know if it was Boggy Creek or not. One scene involves a bunch of Sasquatches throwing rocks down at a cabin in the middle of the night. Sound familiar to anyone?

Also, not sure if this is the same movie, but there’s a scene where a guy’s on the crapper when Sasquatch sticks his arm through the window and tries to grab him.

When I was even younger, there was a movie called “The Five Thousand Fingers of (something or other)” involving a boy and piano lessons. It was like he was sent to piano lesson hell, or something. It was weird, and scared the crap out of me.

[slight hijack]

There was this TV show on in Holland, late '60s, early '70s, about a clown and his family who lived in a caravan and had something valuable… an big egg, I think? These two guys – who looked like pirates but riding a motorcycle with a sidecar – were always chasing them, trying to get the egg. Something like that. I only lived there till I was four, so it’s all very hazy, but I remember that it made great nightmare material. (Maybe I can call on Coldfire again as my link to the old country? Do you know what I’m talking about? Pipo the Clown or something?)

Anyways, though they were too young to remember this show, my younger brothers had this poster in their bedroom of the clown standing in front of his caravan with a big happy smile on his face (it was actually a painting, on cloth, rather than a photo). When I was seven, my brothers started saying that the clown’s eyes would move at night and look around the room. I didn’t believe them (a skeptic even then), but I knew they were genuinely frightened.

I had been on a field trip to the local RCMP detachment not long before, and one of the things I got while there was a Sam the Police Dog sticker (kid-oriented mascot of the day). Though I cherished this sticker, I told my brothers that if we stuck it to the window of their bedroom, Sam the Police Dog would protect them from the evil clown. So I put my sticker on their window, and my brothers never again were bothered by the clown.

Aren’t I a wonderful guy?

[/slight hijack]

98

LOL…I thought it was a rose! And then I didn’t want it in my room anymore, because I HATE HATE HATE SNAKES! (Even though as a child, I loved Mary. She’s pretty cool, you know?)

I used to be afraid the devil would come in my room at night and take me away. So my dad said he’d throw him out by his tail. I was a strange child.

99

The guy sitting on the toilet and the monster sticks his arm in? That’s Boggy Creek 2…and the Legend Continues.
It’s funny, it was on MST3K and it’s one of my favorites…I LOVE that! For what it’s worth, Boggy Creek 2 was actually Boggy Creek 3. Weird.

100

That movie would be “The 5,000 fingers of Dr. T”. This was the only live-action movie based on the works of Dr. Seuss until “The Grinch” came out last year. Dr. Terwilliker (played by Hans Conried) is the master of a musical academy that’s kidnapped 500 little boys so they can demonstrate Dr. T’s skill as a musical director (or some such). Many of the sets as well as some of the lyrics and dialogue were concieved by Dr. Seuss himself.

It’s a visually interesting movie, but I always did find Dr. Seuss’ works slightly disturbing, even as a child. Of course, I kind of liked being disturbed. Compared to Dr. Seuss, Beatrix Potter was a wimp.

~~Baloo