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Far and away the scariest for me was LIZZIE BORDEN. That sick look in her eye. The ax. I couldnt walk anywhere without thinking she was gonna ax me.
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Lady Elaine Fairchild from Mr. Roger’s Fricking Hellish Neighborhood. Didnt someone ever tell him that she/he was the scariest puppet to ever curse the dreams of children?
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I have a permanently red eye from the shampoo dripping into the one eye necessary to keep open in the shower to make sure Mrs. Bates wasnt gonna knife me.
“The Man-eater” from the Hall and Oates song of the same name. I heard this song as a child, and it freaked the ever living crap outta me.
For years I was afraid there was a woman out there that ate men, and I didn’t know who she was, and when she was gonna eat me. Not to mention that the song itself is kind of scary…
Whoaaa… here she comes… watch out boy… she’ll chew you up!
Ahhhhhh!
When I finally confessed to my mother why I was avoiding all the older women around us including my teacher she laughed her butt off. She still teases me about the man-eater.
Darth Vader-I would not watch Star Wars as a kid because Darth Vader-who I called Dark Vader, scared the bejesus out of me.
The wicked witch from Wizard of Oz. Couldn’t sleep for a long time after my first viewing of that movie when I was a kid.
Not for me but I know several people who were tramatized by the ‘Child Catcher’ from Chitty-Chitty Bang Bang.
I had no problem seeing the E.T. movie in the theaters at age 6. I wasn’t scared afterward.
But when a relative bought me the E.T. module for Speak ‘n’ Spell, the pictures (stills from the movie!) in the accompanying book scared the crap out of me every night when the lights went out.
And while I do sometimes show signs of childhood oxygen deprival, I’m certain I made a breathing hole so I could stay under the blanket.
Dracula, and vampires in general. The whole becoming-one-of-the-undead thing totally creeped me out, worse than just being generally abused by your average monster.
And the banshee in “Darby O’Gill and the Little People.” I wouldn’t be in the same room when it was shown on The Wonderful(ly Sick & Twisted) World of Disney.
Mr. Slugworth from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. When he just popped up, AAUUGGHH!!!
I was very young and didn’t understand why he was there, or the plot of the show, just that he was the bad man and he SCARED me!
George Wallace… I still get shivers.
Winnie the Pooh sorta gave me the willies.
Sure, he’s a cuddly bear and all, but I could not get over his name. Poo(h)! I think that naming anything so obviously nice and cute and wholesome after excrement is decidedly odd. I mean, who wants to hug poo?
I am probably going to regret that I admitted this.
As a child I was terrified of Count on Sesame Street. You know, the guy that looks like a vampire and counts everything. My mother bought me a count doll and I kept hiding it because I could tell that it was looking at me when I tried to sleep.
He still give me the shivers.
I remember when Michael Jackson’s video, Thriller, came out and Vincent Price had the narrating part. His voice and his evil laugh at the end gave me the heebie jeebies! It still does… 20 years later!
I was also scared of Dracula. I had a dream that my mom and I were sitting on the porch and four coffins popped up in the front yard. The lids of the coffins opened and three people got and stood over the fourth coffin and slit their throats. They let their blood run into the fourth coffin and dracula rose up and started walking towards us. I got up and started walking away and my mom just sat there. I said, “C’mon mom, let’s go.” She said, “Just a second, here comes the good part.” Then I woke up. I don’t know why that dream scared me but it did!
There were a lot of scary killers in the news when I was a kid. Let’s not have any Jack the Ripper cracks, now: I meant The Boston Strangler, Richard Speck, Charles Manson,whatshisname in the University of Austin tower.
As far as pop-culture nightmare fodder, the Wicked Witch of the West; any ventriloquist dummy; and—more than Dracula!—Dwight Frye as the creepy, laughing Renfrew.
Vampires? Nah. Wicked witch? Nope. Child Catcher? Uh-uhn.
Flying Monkeys
Flying freaking monkeys were the bane of my existence as a child.
The Man-eater song scared me, too.
I was totally petrified of Lindsay Buckingham from Fleetwood Mac. I remember seeing him as the musical guest on some show once, and he had that creepy afro, and that weird look in his eyes, and he was so hardcore into playing that guitar that I was convinced he was possessed. To this day, he still makes me uneasy.
Also, the scene in The Parent Trap where the cake fell on the woman seriously bothered me.
CLOWNS! FREAKING DAMN PARTY CLOWNS!
I remember running out of the circus just so I wouldn’t have to meet one of those horrors! SO of course I loved “IT” when I saw it as an adult… was nice to know I wasnt alone in the world.
What a good, juicy thread! I’m amazed that my #1 answer was already taken: Lady Elaine Fairchild. That big red nose was clearly evidence that she was knocking back the gin in the Museum-Go-Round.
Runners up:
The magician guy from Lidsville.
The milkman. Our actual milkman. I was terrified of him, yet secretly hoped he would bring me chocolate milk.
Bigfoot. Why I was afraid of Bigfoot, I don’t know. He just seemed very threatening, and I thought he might be the first step in some sort of Planet of the Apes scenario. I was particularly afraid he would jump through the picture window in our living room, so I was careful to always sit so that my back wasn’t to it. I scouted out areas in the house that were big enough for a child to hide, but too small for Bigfoot.
Thee was this man in Sesame Street who was unshaven, and wore a bowler hat and a white paint-spattered smock.
He was so creepy! He went around painting numbers everywhere and once he painted an “8” on a bald man’s head and I screamed and screamed so much that my mom had to come into the room and turn off the tv since I didn’t want to get close enough to the scary man to turn it off myself.
I was also afraid of the women’s voice who screamed “Hey, you Guuuuuuuuys!” on the Electric Company.
Oh, and this guy, from Coney Island:
Man, some of you people are tripping me out! Scared of ‘The Count’ on Sesame Street? The lady from The Electric Company? Hee hee! How about Elsie the Cow? Did she scare ya too? 
Myself, I was unfortunate enough to see ‘Dark Shadows’ as a young kid, and was traumatized for years because of an evil, laughing clown head in a glass case that could somehow get people. That thing gave me nightmares for months!