You know, now that you mention it, I was extremely creeped out by the “Mothman” accounts when I first read about them, many years ago.
Which makes no sense at all.
When you take Mothman, & break it down to its original story elements, you realize very quickly that it isn’t all that scary. Any Vincent Price film, or any news broadcast about RL serial killers, is much scarier–in principle.
And, allegedly, Mothman saved people from dying–wasn’t it a bridge collapse?
But, perversely, the story is scarier than the sum of its parts, scarier than logic dictates it should be.
Well… lets see… There was the scene from the little mermaid where Ariels dad kills her statue of the prince, The part in beauty and the beast where the wolves are chasing the person, Snow White whne the witch changed into a hag, and then the wizarc of oz scared me, too… I didn’t like the wind. I dunno. I’m weird.
I remember my first ever nightmare(taht I can remember). Anyone ever see that show “Dinosaurs” with Earl and Mrge and the little baby with the frying pan screaming “not the mommy! not the mommy!”? Well, I dreamt one night that they were in my living room, and they were force feeding my mom tomatoes(she don’t like tomatoes) and then they saw me and Earl was like " I like her hair. Lets cut it off!" and then they cut off a hunk of my hair and I woke up crying.
I also didn’t like posters with eyes in them, or mirrors in my room, and I couldn’t sleep with my closet open, and I would jump into bed so that the monster under it wouldn’t get my feet.
I second the tornado thing. I did a science project on tornados when I was just a tyke, and from that point on, just thunderstorms had me in the basement praying rosarys. All spring and summer I was a 8 year old doomsayer on all but the sunniest days. I was sure we were going to lose our house and become homeless.
Also, for no real reason, I still am terrified of horses. First time I saw a horse I was sure I was a goner and that my parents were nuts for thinking these huge creatures with big teeth and weird eyes were “perfectly safe” for me to be around.
We moved to a new house, in a small isolated town when I was eight. It was kind of decorated for DISCO! and although my parents werent impressed they were only staying there for a few years and decided not to change the decor much. (They did change the pornographic wallpaper in the master bedroom… although they left the mirrored ceiling alone.)
But it was the bathroom that terrified me. It had mirrored shower doors, mirrored ceiling, and this textured glass bathroom window. There weren’t streetlights in my neighbourhood, but somehow there was always a glow on this window. It made me think of the way light shone on Darth Vader’s helmet. Something about that gave me the willies. I used to go up to the bathroom and hug the wall outside and sneak one hand (my right one, the most expendable) into the bathroom and turn on the light (dimmer switch dial) before I went into the bathroom.
I was eight and not easily scared but that bathroom was…too shiny… and … it scared me.
Also I was scared of UFOs but that may have also been because I actually saw an unexplained light in the sky once. No little green men, or anything, but something that scientists couldnt or wouldnt explain kind of frightened me.
My dad wouldnt let us watch Wizard of Oz because he had been scared badly by flying monkeys. I was the only kid in school who hadn’t seen it a billion times by age 10.
I think I’ve told this story before, but for me it was The Exorcist. I saw the TV version when I was 10 and couldn’t sleep for a week afterwards. I was convinced that if I fell asleep, I would be possessed by the Devil. My parents made an appointment for me with our pastor. She showed me the passage in Corinthians (IIRC) about the armor of God and told me that God would protect me no matter what. It helped.
The basement scared the crap out of me, too. In Germany, we lived in an apartment building with one of those long basements with storage rooms and a shared laundry room. The lights for the whole basement were on a timer that was supposed to be 20 minutes but would get screwed up every once in a while. I lived in fear of having to go down there by myself, then when I was down there, I was terrified that the light would go off. I would prop the stairwell door open to at least have a target to run to… If it DID go off, I’d BOLT toward the stairwell singing as loudly as I could, on the edge of panic… Ach, what a nightmare.
I read this earlier, but it was a conversation with a cow-orker that made me remember this.
Crawlspaces gave me the heebie-jeebies, and still do, to some extent. Now understand that I grew up in the Midwest, and due to the threat from tornados, basements are pretty much a given. The first time I heard of a crawlspace was when I was maybe 7 or so, and was in reference to a serial killer (John Wayne Gacey?) who hid bodies in it. A basement is a big room, and you don’t (usually) see dirt. No buryint bodies there. But a crawlspace? [shiver] Plus the name crawlspace–doesn’t it just sound oogy?
There was a popular series of book when I was about eight called something like “Scary Stories To Tell In The Dark”. Near the middle of the first book was a story called “The Thing” which I don’t remember the details of. I do, however, have a vivid mental picture of the pen and ink drawing which accompanied it. I couldn’t look at it. It was a drawing of a man who was all black around his eyes and oddly hairy and he had this huge, evil, grin. I could read the story okay, but I could not look at this drawing.
I just checked over my shoulder to see if he was there.
Most people have mentioned movies and TV shows. I wasn’t exposed to much in the way of cinematic scares as a child. I was afraid to see anything I knew was supposed to be scary.
I hated going through the automatic car wash as a little boy. Those huge, lloud spinning things coming towards the car would make me cry and crings as they roared past each side of the car. I waited until it was quiet and I could see the sun shining through the window before I got up.
The Volkswagen Bug that my parents owned had a vinyl ceiling with a series of small holes in a diagonal pattern. These were “dots” to me. Whenever I looked up at the dots my eyes would go out of focus and the dots would appear to come to life. They’d start swimming around in my field of vision. As a three-year-old this completely freaked me out and I refused to look up at the ceiling. My parents didn’t realize it then, but they thought it might have been an indication that my eyesight was out of focus (I got my first pair of glasses when I was 6).
I refused to go down into the basement at my aunt’s house. It was always dark since the small windows were usually covered up.
Disneyland used to have a ride called “Monsanto’s Journey Through Inner Space” or something like that. You went into this giant microscope and got shrunk so that snowflakes towered over you. Pretty groovy until you pivoted around to see the GIGANTIC HUMAN EYE staring at you. They warned you that the Snow White ride was “scary” but they neglected to mention the GIGANTIC HUMAN EYE?!
