# What fictional things scared you as a child? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [July 29, 2010, 5:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-fictional-things-scared-you-as-a-child/548480 "2010-07-29T17:27:21Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 7
**Author:** ![AClockworkMelon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aclockworkmelon/32/10803_2.png) [@AClockworkMelon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AClockworkMelon)\ **Post date:** [July 31, 2010, 4:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-fictional-things-scared-you-as-a-child/548480/121 "2010-07-31T16:54:22Z")
> [@Maggie\_the\_Ocelot](#): > > Bloody Mary. > > You know. You go into a bathroom at night with the lights off at midnight, and all your friends chant “BLOODY MARY BLOODY MARY” and you look in the mirror and YOU SEE HER FACE INSTEAD OF YOURS!!! > > I still don’t like going past a mirror in a darkened room. I always chickened out when my friends dared me to try to summon her. So yeah. She scared me as a child. ---
**Author:** ![MeanOldLady](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/meanoldlady/32/10737_2.png) [@MeanOldLady](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MeanOldLady)\ **Post date:** [July 31, 2010, 5:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-fictional-things-scared-you-as-a-child/548480/122 "2010-07-31T17:07:13Z")
That reminds me, I forgot to do the Bloody Mary thing. I’m finally going to do it tonight. Well into adulthood, I’ve allowed this to creep me out, even though it is completely silly for even a part of me to entertain the notion that Bloody Mary’s image is going to appear in the mirror. Midnight tonight, it is on. I am so scared. ---
**Author:** ![History\_Geek](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/b19c9b/32.png) [@History\_Geek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/History_Geek)\ **Post date:** [July 31, 2010, 5:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-fictional-things-scared-you-as-a-child/548480/123 "2010-07-31T17:12:57Z")
> [@Maggie\_the\_Ocelot](#): > > Bloody Mary. > > You know. You go into a bathroom at night with the lights off at midnight, and all your friends chant “BLOODY MARY BLOODY MARY” and you look in the mirror and YOU SEE HER FACE INSTEAD OF YOURS!!! > > I still don’t like going past a mirror in a darkened room. This. Though my cousins and I used to tell each other she would appear behind you. I won’t look at a mirror unless the lights are on, even today - overactive imagination. I was also really creeped out by _The Exorcist_. ---
**Author:** ![Freudian\_Slit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/5daacb/32.png) [@Freudian\_Slit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Freudian_Slit)\ **Post date:** [July 31, 2010, 5:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-fictional-things-scared-you-as-a-child/548480/124 "2010-07-31T17:13:35Z")
If you don’t report back first thing Sunday morning, I’m going to assume she got you, you know. The scariest thing about Bloody Mary is that it wasn’t like a movie. It was just a tale. So the way she looks is in your imagination. And you can’t just get over it by watching the movie and telling yourself it’s not real. This is pretty much just the most awful thing you can think of. Godspeed. ---
**Author:** ![Sampiro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/2acd7d/32.png) [@Sampiro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sampiro)\ **Post date:** [July 31, 2010, 5:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-fictional-things-scared-you-as-a-child/548480/125 "2010-07-31T17:23:02Z")
The variant of Bloody Mary I grew up with was she was “Mary Goodson”- a black lady whose husband cut her head off and she’ll appear over the trees if you stand outside and say “I believe in Mary Goodson” twenty (?) times. Agreed it was terrifying. ---
**Author:** ![Leaffan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/leaffan/32/299_2.png) [@Leaffan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leaffan)\ **Post date:** [July 31, 2010, 5:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-fictional-things-scared-you-as-a-child/548480/126 "2010-07-31T17:39:34Z")
The only Bloody Mary I’m familiar with comes in a glass. Caesars are better though. ---
**Author:** ![BigBertha](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/d78d45/32.png) [@BigBertha](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigBertha)\ **Post date:** [July 31, 2010, 5:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-fictional-things-scared-you-as-a-child/548480/127 "2010-07-31T17:43:18Z")
> [@BrotherCadfael](#): > > > [@Hypno-Toad](#): > > > > The little devil doll that had the soul of an african warrior trapped in it. Specifically, the shot of it rising out of the bath tub at the end of the hall. > > I saw this as an adult – and left the lights on in my bedroom that night. > > But it wasn’t the bathtub, or any other scene with the doll. It was at the end, after Karen Black finally killed the thing, and then > > smiles. Same here. ---
**Author:** ![BigBertha](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/d78d45/32.png) [@BigBertha](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigBertha)\ **Post date:** [July 31, 2010, 5:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-fictional-things-scared-you-as-a-child/548480/128 "2010-07-31T17:46:57Z")
> [@Sampiro](#): > > It wasn’t until I was a teenager and watched some interviews with Manson (reruns of Tom Snyder among them) that I began to realize "he’s not a demon- he’s a crazy ass hillbilly- > Then finally actually reading the book and realizing that the case was fascinating but it was a story of a bunch of drugged up hippies with knives and guns weak enough to be manipulated by a criminally insane hillbilly runt and then being hunted by one of the most incompetent police departments in history rather than the story of a satanic mastermind who dispatched minions to do his evil bidding through his demonic powers- it was actually a major part of skeptical rebirth. I disagree. ---
**Author:** ![jrbor76](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/9e8a1a/32.png) [@jrbor76](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jrbor76)\ **Post date:** [July 31, 2010, 5:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-fictional-things-scared-you-as-a-child/548480/129 "2010-07-31T17:55:23Z")
Don’t know if these really count as fictional, but… - The mountain climber from Cliffhanger on The Price is Right. _Especially_ when he went over the edge. The car crash sound effect was just one of those WTF things to a youngster like myself. - Ditto (to a lesser extent) that hurdler from TPIR, and I say lesser mostly because they retired that game when I was really young. - Also the devil from the bonus round of The Joker’s Wild. _Especially_ when they did a closeup on that slide after it came up. The kicker? I really loved game shows back then. Except for those parts, of course. ---
**Author:** ![SoulFrost](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/f07891/32.png) [@SoulFrost](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SoulFrost)\ **Post date:** [August 1, 2010, 12:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-fictional-things-scared-you-as-a-child/548480/130 "2010-08-01T00:00:16Z")
Vampires. I loved me some vampires–_had_ to have my vampires–but oh lordy!, once the lights went out and I was all alone… I had a big stuffed animal toy, a snake, and I’d wrap him around my neck before going to sleep. _Jaws_ freaked me out good and proper. I’d get nervous sitting in a tub of bathwater if it was murky enough that I couldn’t see the bottom… and if you’re a boy, it will frequently be murky enough that you can’t see the bottom. The worst, though, was the animated donkey from _Hee Haw_. When that damn thing opened his mouth, baring his squared-off fangs, and brayed out that godawful laughter, four-year-old me would scream and scream and scream. Mom says that I once picked up something–a candlestick, I think–to brain his heehawing ass with. ---
**Author:** ![Kamino\_Neko](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kamino_neko/32/34_2.png) [@Kamino\_Neko](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kamino_Neko)\ **Post date:** [August 1, 2010, 12:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-fictional-things-scared-you-as-a-child/548480/131 "2010-08-01T00:39:50Z")
> [@SoulFrost](#): > > Vampires. I loved me some vampires–_had_ to have my vampires–but oh lordy!, once the lights went out and I was all alone… I had a big stuffed animal toy, a snake, and I’d wrap him around my neck before going to sleep. You wrapped a creature that crushes its prey to death around your neck to protect from vampires? Talk about cutting off your nose to spite your face. ---
**Author:** ![dangermom](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e274bd/32.png) [@dangermom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dangermom)\ **Post date:** [August 1, 2010, 12:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-fictional-things-scared-you-as-a-child/548480/132 "2010-08-01T00:51:26Z")
I remember being at a sleepover when I was about 8, and there was a movie on that scared the living daylights out of me. It must have been about a serial killer or something; all I can remember is the evil guy carving lines into one of his victims (a pretty girl of course) before killing her, and the worst bit, which was two kids, a boy and a girl, in a car with the windows rolled a few inches down. He had some sort of claw or hook in the space and they wound up dead, maybe from fright? For _years_ the sight of a partially open car window would bring that back and freak me out just a little bit. I wonder what movie that was. Also, the one about the killer rats in the subway, esp. where they eat the baby right out of the high chair. **shudder** ---
**Author:** ![dangermom](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e274bd/32.png) [@dangermom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dangermom)\ **Post date:** [August 1, 2010, 12:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-fictional-things-scared-you-as-a-child/548480/133 "2010-08-01T00:53:55Z")
> [@filling\_pages](#): > > > [@dangermom](#): > > > > Books hardly ever scared me, but movies did. I am embarrassed to say that the librarian ghost in _Ghostbusters_ scared the bejeebers out of me. So did _The Towering Inferno_ and a burning car scene in some random KISS movie. I liked Japanese monster movies, but there was one where the monsters terrified me–they looked like standing-up squids and for some reason they got to me (I was only about 6). I wish I knew what movie that was! > > Could it have been [Yog - Monster from Space](http://dreamslikethat.blogspot.com/2009/10/space-amoeba.html?zx=7f6d4d9b758da2f9)? Dang, no. It was a color film, and the squids were in a spaceship and had much more tentacle to stand on. ---
**Author:** ![Rushgeekgirl](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rushgeekgirl/32/3715_2.png) [@Rushgeekgirl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rushgeekgirl)\ **Post date:** [August 1, 2010, 12:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-fictional-things-scared-you-as-a-child/548480/134 "2010-08-01T00:58:44Z")
That little devil doll in Trilogy of Terror. I had nightmares about that thing for years. I saw it recently and it’s so stupid looking, so cheaply done I can’t believe it freaked me out so much. You can see how lame it is here: [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1pnFLT\_k5A&feature=related](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1pnFLT_k5A&feature=related) but judging by the comments I’m not alone in my fear. ---
**Author:** ![SoulFrost](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/f07891/32.png) [@SoulFrost](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SoulFrost)\ **Post date:** [August 1, 2010, 1:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-fictional-things-scared-you-as-a-child/548480/135 "2010-08-01T01:20:09Z")
> [@Tengu](#): > > > [@SoulFrost](#): > > > > Vampires. I loved me some vampires–_had_ to have my vampires–but oh lordy!, once the lights went out and I was all alone… I had a big stuffed animal toy, a snake, and I’d wrap him around my neck before going to sleep. > > You wrapped a creature that crushes its prey to death around your neck to protect from vampires? Talk about cutting off your nose to spite your face. Yeah, but his fangs were _plush_. And he was my friend. ---
**Author:** ![Freudian\_Slit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/5daacb/32.png) [@Freudian\_Slit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Freudian_Slit)\ **Post date:** [August 1, 2010, 1:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-fictional-things-scared-you-as-a-child/548480/136 "2010-08-01T01:35:05Z")
I had the same reaction to the toy snake thing. Aw. Plush fangs. ---
**Author:** ![Sampiro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/2acd7d/32.png) [@Sampiro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sampiro)\ **Post date:** [August 1, 2010, 3:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-fictional-things-scared-you-as-a-child/548480/137 "2010-08-01T03:12:49Z")
> [@BigBertha](#): > > > [@Sampiro](#): > > > > It wasn’t until I was a teenager and watched some interviews with Manson (reruns of Tom Snyder among them) that I began to realize "he’s not a demon- he’s a crazy ass hillbilly- > > Then finally actually reading the book and realizing that the case was fascinating but it was a story of a bunch of drugged up hippies with knives and guns weak enough to be manipulated by a criminally insane hillbilly runt and then being hunted by one of the most incompetent police departments in history rather than the story of a satanic mastermind who dispatched minions to do his evil bidding through his demonic powers- it was actually a major part of skeptical rebirth. > > I disagree. # It _wasn’t_ Tom Snyder? I’ve known several girls/women over the years who said that really lifelike dolls freaked them out and in some cases still do, especially when they were life sized. ---
**Author:** ![SoulFrost](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/f07891/32.png) [@SoulFrost](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SoulFrost)\ **Post date:** [August 1, 2010, 3:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-fictional-things-scared-you-as-a-child/548480/138 "2010-08-01T03:44:04Z")
> [@Sampiro](#): > > I’ve known several girls/women over the years who said that really lifelike dolls freaked them out and in some cases still do, especially when they were life sized. That’s a [very common reaction](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncanny_Valley). ---
**Author:** ![Maiira](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f04885/32.png) [@Maiira](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Maiira)\ **Post date:** [August 1, 2010, 5:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-fictional-things-scared-you-as-a-child/548480/139 "2010-08-01T05:43:56Z")
> [@Justin\_Credible](#): > > remember that giant mouse siege engine thing at the end of An American Tale? What the hell was that horrific thing doing in a kid’s movie? Oh my god, I came in to mention this. That thing was pretty fucking terrifying. I still loved that movie, though. Actually, no, I lied, I came in to mention the aliens from Sesame Street. You know, the ones that went “yuuuup yupyupyupyupyup”? I always had to at least look away from the television screen whenever they came on. Judge Doom’s true form in **Who Framed Roger Rabbit?** made me leave the room every time I saw it. Again, great movie, but goddamn that was horrible. The first scene with The Dip is pretty unsettling, too. The first time I saw **Willow** , the evil queen’s big floofy hunting dogs scared me, especially since I wasn’t particularly fond of big dogs when I was a kid. (Now I prefer them to small dogs…go figure.) When I was a bit older (like, ten), there were these aliens or something on **The X-Files** that had no faces and burned people alive with some sort of…device. Didn’t sleep for WEEKS after seeing the first episode featuring them, and was almost turned off to the entire series. ---
**Author:** ![Musicat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/musicat/32/20189_2.png) [@Musicat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Musicat)\ **Post date:** [August 1, 2010, 5:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-fictional-things-scared-you-as-a-child/548480/140 "2010-08-01T05:53:05Z")
God. It wasn’t until much later in life that I realized he was a fictional character. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-fictional-things-scared-you-as-a-child/548480.md?page=6) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-fictional-things-scared-you-as-a-child/548480.md?page=8)