What is it? What is it? What is it? My name…
(oh wait, they cut that song from the movie)
Mr. Magoo terrified me when I was a kid–I think it was because it looked like he didn’t have eyes. Why that’s scary, I don’t know.
When I was very young, maybe 4 or 5, I went to Wonderland, a big amusement park near Toronto, with my grandparents and cousins. We went to see the Smurfs stage show and when Gargamel came out on stage, I was terrified. I started bawling and we had to leave the show because I was so scared he was gonna throw me in a cage (and then cook me? I don’t recall exactly what it was he did to captured smurfs). My cousins tease me about that to this day.
Oh, and since Askia mentioned The Count from Sesame Street, I’ll throw in Guy Smiley. That huge grin creeped me right out.
I’ll have to second Robin Williams. He’s always creeped me out a little, and I suspect his level of mania borders on some kind of mental illness. I guess that’s why I started liking him after his recent foray into mentally unstable characters. He makes a very convincing psycho.
When I was three years old I was absolutely terrified of The Mummenschanz. I’ve read that the performers are mute on stage, but I have a distinct memory of a TV commercial in which they made horrible, inhuman sounds. We were visiting my aunt once when the commercial came on. I only remember hiding from the TV, but my mom swears that I vaulted over the back of the sofa in my panic to get away.
I was also scared of Soundwave on the original Transformers series. None of the other Decepticons bothered me, but Soundwave’s voice always creeped me out.
For cartoon characters, this guy (not Bugs, his friend) used to scare me. I felt sorry for him but scared at the same time.
Those freakin’ Sleestacks on Land Of The Lost. And Captain Noah (a local Philly kids show host). I met him when I was four and I cried my eyes out.
Ah yes, Rudolph, or as we referred to him the ‘Tooth Monster’.
I also remember Bugs’ performance in that scene as (possibly) one of the first gay characters I ever saw.
I thought the big red fuzzy cartoon character’s name was Gossamer.
Anyway, I second Margaret Hamilton, especially in Kansas as Ms Gulch and during that scene when the house is flying and she appears in the window and turns into a witch. Time to hide your face in a pillow, kids!
Hal Linden from Barney Miller also creeped me out when I was little. He just looked like a creepy man. The thing that really got me was some animated thing that I saw (it was either during the opening credits, the closing credits, or some advertisement for the show in syndication). But it was this animated thing where the glass portion of the door with his name on it broke, and he looked through the broken glass with this weird look on his face.
But he was looking at me…
Ralph Cramden, roaring at his wife Alice, was way scary. Too much like my own dad.
I was maybe ten or eleven before I didn’t have to leave the room during certain parts of The Wizard of Oz.
The cursed Hawaiian doll in the Karen Black movie Trilogy of Terror scared the crap out of me - I had to be 2 or 3 at the time, since we were watching it on our 12" black and white TV in my parents’ first apartment. I watched it again as an adult and it was still creepy, but kind of silly at the same time. I was also scared of the lumberjack statue in front of the hardware store near my grandparents’ house.
I don’t recall offhand ever being scared of real people, in either real life or playing characters, but I’m sure I was. Well, my uncle when he cut his hair off, but he’s not famous.
Richard Nixon on television! His mouth bends one way, his eyebrows bend the other, he’s always looking up for some reason … unless he looks right at YOU! What an ugly, scary man. And when he smiles, he’s even scarier, because it looks so wrong!
I was also scared of the opening credits of The Honeymooners … the moon rises, and then Jackie Gleason’s cartoony face APPEARS in the moon. Ahhh!
Another vote for the flying monkeys in The Wizard of Oz.
Alfred Hitchcock… maybe because of the opening music of the show (which I now really like).
And Perry Mason (Raymond Burr, but that wasn’t the point) solely because of the opening music of the show - we kids would flee the room in terror.
Well, I feel like one of these was somewhat justified…
My great aunts collected copious amounts of trash tabloids, like The National Enquirer. And in their desire to save such vaunted documents for all eternity, my mother would end up with some to wrap breakables in and such.
Lucky for me, several apparently came from around the same time that The Exorcist was released and prominently featured full-turned demonically cute little Reagan on the covers. :eek: :eek:
I would lie awake every night after I first saw those (forever too), staring through the blinds waiting for her puking and putrid face to came looming up over the end of my bed and get me. I have no idea what she’d want with me, but dammit, that didn’t matter.
So, yes, as a wee child I should get a pass on that one. 
Still should.
The others?
The apple head (?) creatures in an old made-for-TV movie with Kim Darby had me terrified of being electrocuted or eating turkey at Thanksgiving.
Then I was also freaked out by the gremlin on the plane wing in the original Twilight Zone series that someone has already mentioned.
::: waggles finger and head back and forth :::
But the one that has stayed with me forever and I still don’t know what in the hell it was is from record shop in a mall during the early to mid 70s. They had one of those life-size cardboard cutouts of some male singer (think Robert Plant) in the throes of passion, with his arms spread wide up towards what would be the balcony, I guess. What made me run in fear though was that he had an equally proportioned pen stabbed in his torso like a spear. Giant man + giant murder weapon = scared shitless faithfool. I so wish I knew who that was now so I could at least have one thing to put a name to in therapy.
Yeah, you just think I’m kidding. 
For me it was Captain Hook in the Mary Martin featured version of “Peter Pan”.
Actually that play always troubled me from start to finish. I never really understood why, because I could not tear myself away from it every year when it came on! I was always mesmerised!
I need to see if it is in reprint for rental and show it to my grandkids.
Seconded. And that guy from Unsolved Mysteries. What’s his name… Robert Stack? I remember watching him emerge from the fog in a long trenchcoat. And that voice. Jesus! Scared the piss out of me when I was four or five(?).
The man from America’s Most Wanted. I was young then too, and spent most of my time alone. Sitting in front of the television watching dramatizations of horrible criminal acts does something to a little girl. I remember running from the room and hiding under my bed.
But hey, I turned out ok, right?
Don’t ask me why, but for some reason,Jerry Colonna gave me the heebie-jeebies when I was a little kid. He still does.
Is it just me, or were a great number of little kids scared of Richard Nixon?
See what I mean??? Scared witless…STILL!!! 
Even after all these years!!
No kidding. I’ve talked with several people in my age group who’d hear a loud jet go over the house at night and were sure it was an ICBM.
Combine that with the “duck and cover” they were still doing in my grade school…