Forgot one. The evil TV show H.R. Puffinstuff.
Puffinstuff!? Weak ass cheese.
Lidsville, now theres a nightmare. Talking hats, Charles Nelson Reilley, Witchiepoo. Geahha!
I forgot one, too. Remember Lost in Space? There was one episode where the Robinsons landed on the Planet of the Animate Vegetables (not its real name). There was one especially fearsome character – a humungous walking carrot. Ridiculous, I know, but it was pretty bone-chilling to myself as a child.
Aaaackkk . . . I grew up in New Hampshire and there were woods right behind my house (pretty creepy all on it’s own), and one summer we had a PLAGUE of gypsy moth caterpillars. It makes my flesh crawl just thinking about it. When you opened the door to go in or out of the house, you had to shake off all the caterpillars that fell on you from the top of the doorway. There were sqished caterpillars COVERING the front steps and walkway (they’re such a putrid shade of green inside.)
All night and day you could hear them chewing leaves. When no one was making any noise, it actually sounded like it was raining outside.
We had a cookout one day (my dad REFUSED to let some stupid little bugs keep him away from his grill). We started in the back yard and slowly throughout the day we had to move the picnic table further and further down the driveway until finally the entire side of the house was carpeted with those squirmy, fuzzy bastards.
We used to have contests to see if we could get the wheels of our bikes to roll vertically right up them, sort of tube o’ toothpaste-style. Of course, when you’re riding slow enough to enjoy the massacre, chances are you’re going to fall off and end up in a pile of gooey green guts.
Call ‘em what you will, they are evil, horrid little things and now I can’t stop thinking about them. Thanks a steamin’ heap, Chance!!
Well, if you’re gonna talk about caterpillars, I gotta talk about googley-bugs.
That’s what I’ve called them my whole life, until this year when my wife finally looked them up: Crane Flies.
They look like giant, two-inch mosquitoes, but they spazz around with their floppy legs like they’re completely out of control. I just know they’re going to flop all over my face (and, in fact, not long ago that’s exactly what happened to my three year old son, who – though he isn’t bothered by other bugs – is now terrified of these goofy things).
When I was young, hanging out with a woman I was interested in, sitting on her bed in her residence room at university, one of these things flew in through her window. We both squealed like girls as we ran from her room. Her neighbour rolled her eyes at me, walked into the room, and promptly dispatched the beast.
Not one of my proudest moments, and surprisingly, not much came of that relationship.
I’ll third the creepiness of Dr. Seuss’s empty pants. What were those plants called- brickleberries or something? In the fall here, when the wild black-eyed-susan-like plants lose their petals and leaves, they look exactly like the plants in the book.
My favorite place in the world is a particular lake in northern Wisconsin. Oddly, I’ve been tormented with nightmares about that place since I was a little kid. I can’t stand being able to see the rocks and logs on the bottom of the lake. When you ride in the boat, the water gets shallower and shallower until you’re sure the propeller is going to hit the rocks, then all of a sudden the water goes black as the bottom drops off to sixty feet. I get faint just thinking about it.
In my nightmares, I’m always in the middle of the lake and I have to swim to shore. My feet keep touching rocks and logs on the bottom, and I just freeze with panic. (Anyone care to interpret that for me?)
Originally posted by Holly
Going the Freudian route, it’s obvious you’re a lesbian.
I remember the Dr. Seuss story about the floating, empty green pants. It was weird and a little creepy, but I always dug that one. I thought it was exciting. Come to think of it, I can’t recall any books that creeped me out as a kid. The movie that creeped me out literally for years was Halloween. I saw the edited-for-TV version, but it still creeped me out. That was still a good scary movie with minimal gore.
But H.R. Pufnstuf and Lidsville and, well, all the Krofft Supershows depressed me. At a later age I developed an appreciation for the original Land of the Lost, but there was something about those productions that made me depressed back then and even today—especially Sigmund the Sea Monster—yecch!
As a very small child, I used to lie awake a night contemplating the infinite nature of the universe. I would imagine a box, sitting on a table, in a room, in a house, in a town, in a country, on the earth, in the solar system, in the milky way galaxy, in the universe, in a box, on a table…
and on and on until I would vomit. It basically still works.
Also, as an adult I saw the movie Aliens at a theater and I swear I could not get into my car until I checked underneath.
The Sleestaks on “Land of the Lost” creeped me out to no end! More acurately, my sister’s incesant imitation of the Sleestaks on “Land of the Lost” creeped me out.
The live-action SpiderMan on “The Electric Company” scared me too. I think because SpiderMan didn’t talk and because he fought villains like Mr. Measels, who blew the Measels on you.
There was also some TV movie about three friends who raped and killed a girl when they were young. Then later in life they’re all rich and famous and meet up at the cabin where it all happened. One was some sort of neo-messiah that had been blinded with lye while in jail. That thing disturbed me for months.
Oh my God, me too!!
There was one villian, The Can Smasher (they must have been playing up the long “A” sound), who ran around smashing cans of tomato soup with a mallet because during a school trip to a canning company he had dropped his frog Freddy into an open can.
Strangely, at three I was saddened knowing Freddy would have died suffocated in a can of tomato soup, even though at that age I still thought that the people on TV just stopped moving when I turned the TV off. So the poor Can Smasher was doomed to failure and some innocent person would end up with Dead Frog Du Jour soup.
Secondly, the Can Smasher broke into innocent people’s houses and wrecked their soup. This seemed very wrong to me at the time.
Finally, Can Smasher was the only bad guy who ever got away from Spider-Man unpunished. This was an a real blow to my nieve sense of justice.
What uncleBIll said about flushing and not waiting to open the tap until the toilet COMPLETELY finished flushed…That is FREAKING out as AN ADULT!!! OH MY GAWD!
I was petrified of the vacuum cleaner when I was a kid. I was so afraid that it was going to suck off my toes. It also didn’t help that my dog was scared of it too and would attempt to attack it while it was operating. I would flee the room when mom vacuumed. One time I did serious injury to myself trying to get away from the darn vacuum. I was barefoot this particular time and therefore doubly certain I was about to lose several toes. I ended up tripping and catching the last two toes of my right foot on something and nearly ripped them off. My parents had to rush me to the emergency room and have them sewn back on. Stupid vacuum.
Funny, though, the things kids aren’t scared of. My grandmother had polio as a kid and lost an eye. So my whole life she had this fake eye that she had to periodically remove and then clean the fake eye and the empty socket. I used to watch the whole thing. She would stick this little suction thingy right on the eye and ::: pop! ::: pluck it right out. The eyelid would close but she’d have to pull it open to clean around the edge. She even let me look in the empty socket one time.
I had no trouble whatsoever with the whole eye-removal process but I was scared of the vacuum? Weird kid.
The Incredible Hulk. Actually, just when David Banner morphed into the Hulk. I would hide under a quilt every time I saw his eyes turn that gold-green. Of course, if my son gets the willies from a show, I turn it off. My family? All of a sudden it became their absolute favorite show in the world. Can’t miss it. Come on, Erica, The Hulk is on! Don’t be late! Don’t wanna miss it!
Cemeteries. We had to drive my Rosehill Cemetery to visit my grandparents when I was around 6 or 7, and I would close my eyes the whole time.
There was also some graffiti back then ('80, '81, somewhere around then) on the Diversey Avenue bridge over the Chicago River, in red spraypaint: “(someone’s name) I WILL GET MY BLOODY HANDS ON YOU”. I went into hysterics upon reading that, and started screaming, “I don’t want to die! I don’t want to die!” Oddly, the concept of dying terrified me when I was a child. Go fig.
Under my front porch. I really don’t know why. Bugs, or mice, maybe.
Oh, and my basement. Not as creepy as one with claw marks in it (OH MY GOD!) but loaded with old junk, so there were plenty of places to hide. I’d go down there for whatever reason, and then bolt up the stairs and slam the door behind me. I was convinced someone was lying in wait for me. Come to think of it, basements still creep me out.
Originally posted by Gundy
Claw marks. Hah! When my brother was eight and playing in our creepy basement, his friend insisted he saw a black hand come out of the wall and reach for my brother’s neck.
(This kid was the shy, quiet type, neither a practical joker nor a liar. I, however, can not vouch for his sanity.)
Hmm… then perhaps you might be interested in… this?
I can deal with the caterpillars but Gypsy moths?!?! Now THOSE things are CREAPY!
Remembered another one -
It used to freak me out to have a phone left off the hook and have it start beeping. It’s not really the sound, but the fact that the phone isn’t able to work. I think that maybe I saw too many scary movies where the telephone is knocked off the hook. It still sort of freaks me out a little.
My mom’s antique porcelain doll with the teeth.
I was the youngest kid in our cabin at summer camp. It was my first (and only) time I went. My brother, and all the other kids in the cabin started telling scary stories one evening. All the classics, the hook, the railroad tracks, you know the type.
I’d never heard anything like that. I was scared out of my wits, crying, and carrying on. They finally got me calmed down and asleep. My brother filled me in on the rest of the story later.
After I was asleep, my brother let the other guys know I sometimes walked in my sleep. They started in on the “sleepwalker kills everyone in the house” types of stories, and they kept an eye on me.
About that time, I rolled over in my sleep, and my foot hit the floor. The other guys yelled, and stumbled over each other as they rushed for the door.
When I was 3 or 4 years old, up until I was about 10, the sound of a flushing toilet terrorized me. I guess that roaring, slurping sound triggered my fight-or-flight instincts. As long as it was daylight, or if an adult was in the room, it didn’t bother me, but if it was dark and I was alone, I simply would not flush the toilet.
~~Baloo
So that’s what those bastards are…
Am I the only one who finds them basically indestructible? I remember a particularly tough one was buzzing around my house a while ago. I, the resident bug-slayer, simply wrapped some paper towel around my fist, waited till it was buzzing the roof, and uppercutted it flat into the ceiling.
To no effect at all.
I repeated this three or four times, at which point I think I managed to damage a wing. So it resorted to crawling around my floor. After stepping on it a few more times, it seemed quite crippled, but just kept going…
At that point I dragged it outside and decided that more pressure over a smaller area than my foot should do it. So I put it under the leg of a lawn chair and stood on the chair. It was being crushed almost in half, and still kept trying to crawl away. So I started shifting the chair back and forth until it was, indeed, cut in two.
It stopped trying to escape, but it did continue squirming. I dont know for how long, I figured that would do it and left to watch TV.
Tough little guy, though…