# What stupid things scarred you emotionally as a child? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [June 25, 2012, 7:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-stupid-things-scarred-you-emotionally-as-a-child/626276 "2012-06-25T19:03:23Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![Rich\_G7subs](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/85e7bf/32.png) [@Rich\_G7subs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rich_G7subs)\ **Post date:** [June 26, 2012, 3:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-stupid-things-scarred-you-emotionally-as-a-child/626276/61 "2012-06-26T15:56:48Z")
> [@DeepLiquid](#): > > The Exorcist. My older cousins thought it would be a fun movie to take a 12 year old to, I’ve never been so scared, I still freak out if I see a clip of it on TV. I didn’t see that until 10 years after it came out. (I was 8 when it originally played) It STILL disturbed me for months! I went to the movies with a friend and his family when I was 10 or 11. His mom lied to my mom and said we were seeing The bad news bears. What a cool Mom he had, right? :rolleyes: The ACTUAL movie we saw… The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. I had to walk (run!) home about 2 blocks… in the dark. If I’d heard a chainsaw I’d have stroked out right then and there. I think I was scared of the dark woods well into my late teens and I was an Avid camper! ---
**Author:** ![Eve](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/9e8a1a/32.png) [@Eve](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Eve)\ **Post date:** [June 26, 2012, 3:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-stupid-things-scarred-you-emotionally-as-a-child/626276/62 "2012-06-26T15:58:38Z")
> [@Rich\_G7subs](#): > > His mom lied to my mom and said we were seeing The bad news bears. What a cool Mom he had, right? :rolleyes: > > The ACTUAL movie we saw… The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.! It was “The \*Really \*Bad News Bears.” ---
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [June 26, 2012, 5:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-stupid-things-scarred-you-emotionally-as-a-child/626276/63 "2012-06-26T17:15:01Z")
> [@Dung\_Beetle](#): > > Sitting on a pinecone? I’d have rather done that. It was possibly a part of the preferred alternative. ---
**Author:** ![DeepLiquid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/deepliquid/32/14893_2.png) [@DeepLiquid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DeepLiquid)\ **Post date:** [June 26, 2012, 5:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-stupid-things-scarred-you-emotionally-as-a-child/626276/64 "2012-06-26T17:28:21Z")
> [@Rich\_G7subs](#): > > I didn’t see that until 10 years after it came out. (I was 8 when it originally played) It STILL disturbed me for months! > > I went to the movies with a friend and his family when I was 10 or 11. His mom lied to my mom and said we were seeing The bad news bears. What a cool Mom he had, right? :rolleyes: > > The ACTUAL movie we saw… The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. > > I had to walk (run!) home about 2 blocks… in the dark. If I’d heard a chainsaw I’d have stroked out right then and there. I think I was scared of the dark woods well into my late teens and I was an Avid camper! It probably didn’t help that my brother thought this was all great fun. After _The Exorcist_ he would wait until my light was out and make a guttural whispering sound and say “Reaaaaa-gan” though the air vent leading into my room. After _Carrie_ he hid under my bed and reached and grabbed my arm as I was falling asleep. After\* Don’t Look In The Basement\* he locked me in the basement and turned the lights off. I’ve pretty much been terrified of the dark ever since. ---
**Author:** ![lorene](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/65b543/32.png) [@lorene](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lorene)\ **Post date:** [June 26, 2012, 5:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-stupid-things-scarred-you-emotionally-as-a-child/626276/65 "2012-06-26T17:36:16Z")
> [@Hampshire](#): > > Around the age of 10 I saw some of the Amityville Horror on TV and in particular the part where the guy breaks the hole in the basement wall and the lady looks in and says in the modulated voice “It’s the gateway… to Hell!!!” > I was convinced for a couple of decades that that was the absolute scarriest thing ever shown on film…ever. Until I saw it on TV again 20 years later. OMG, was that horribly cheesy. Right? God, when I first saw it, it was pee-my-pants scary. Then I caught part of it on TV last year and it was pee-my-pants laughably cheesy. Just mortifying. My mom is a big Stephen King fan and took us to see The Shining when it first came out. Scared the bejeesus out of me. > [@Philster](#): > > My grandmother looking out the window secretly at a neighbor that I would go on to see everyday for ten years and telling me he was a murderer did not help me at all. Did you ever find out what she was thinking? I mean, other than “That dude’s a murderer”? > [@TriPolar](#): > > _The Sound of Music_. Don’t ask, but I assure you it involved a horror too great to imagine. Luckily the movie does not invoke the flashbacks because it now contains **one of my favorite movie scenes**. What’s the favorite movie scene? Was the \*horror too great to imagine \*a fear of Ledehosen? Marionettes? _ **Marionettes in Lederhosen?** _ ---
**Author:** ![Shosy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/919ad9/32.png) [@Shosy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shosy)\ **Post date:** [June 26, 2012, 5:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-stupid-things-scarred-you-emotionally-as-a-child/626276/66 "2012-06-26T17:37:53Z")
I think it HAD to be seeing the Omega Man (the Charleton Heston version) when I was 4 when my older sisters were baby sitting me. For months everytime I went to bed I thought the mutants were after me. ---
**Author:** ![Dung\_Beetle](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dung_beetle/32/7945_2.png) [@Dung\_Beetle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dung_Beetle)\ **Post date:** [June 26, 2012, 5:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-stupid-things-scarred-you-emotionally-as-a-child/626276/67 "2012-06-26T17:44:11Z")
**Tripolar** , is it like a nightmare where you’re in school and the whole class is pointing and laughing at you, and then you look down and find out you’re wearing curtains? ---
**Author:** ![Jman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jman/32/4416_2.png) [@Jman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jman)\ **Post date:** [June 26, 2012, 5:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-stupid-things-scarred-you-emotionally-as-a-child/626276/68 "2012-06-26T17:49:05Z")
My parents took my sister and I to the drive-in when I was about 5 to see Poltergeist. Now, this was not their smartest idea, and it wasn’t for us to watch the movie, and they learned not to do this again, but whatever. We were to stay squarely in the back of the station wagon either sleeping or playing games. We were told that we should absolutely NOT peek over the back because we’d be really scared. I did a very good job and then decided to peek over the back EXACTLY at the moment the guy tears his face off in the bathroom. I screamed my head off and a highly realistic vision of that has stayed with me forever (with occasional little nightmares about it). I just watched the scene for the first time since that night, on YouTube, and while my memory of it was certainly quite good, it’s far less scary now as an adult, mainly because you can see the swap to the fake face, and it’s really far less realistic than my mind had made it out to be, but it’s still a nasty scene. To be honest I’m a little unsettled right now, simple because it’s bringing back that night. ---
**Author:** ![Stauderhorse](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ce7236/32.png) [@Stauderhorse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stauderhorse)\ **Post date:** [June 26, 2012, 5:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-stupid-things-scarred-you-emotionally-as-a-child/626276/69 "2012-06-26T17:57:12Z")
My parents took me for a vacation to the Cayman Islands when I was 5, then left me in the hotel lobby all night while they went out partying. I sat through the first three Child’s Play movies. I was terrified, but too morbidly engrossed to change the channel. I had this fear that Chucky would show up under my bed and stab my legs for a really long time. Also, I was afraid that E.T. would show up in my room and do…something. I was just really weirded out by his appearance. ---
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [June 26, 2012, 6:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-stupid-things-scarred-you-emotionally-as-a-child/626276/70 "2012-06-26T18:04:29Z")
> [@lorene](#): > > What’s the favorite movie scene? It’s when the Mother Superior asks Maria “What is it, you cunt face”. ---
**Author:** ![Kenm](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/bc79bd/32.png) [@Kenm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kenm)\ **Post date:** [June 26, 2012, 6:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-stupid-things-scarred-you-emotionally-as-a-child/626276/71 "2012-06-26T18:08:14Z")
> [@Jack\_Batty](#): > > When I was 4 or 5, my aunt would always try to get me to say “shit,” but I wouldn’t. So she got me to say, “honey,” after which she told me, “Honey is bee-shit; you just said bee-shit!” and I would cry. Tell her “You were WRONG! Honey is bee PUKE! So there! _raspberry_” > [@tapu](#): > > Yeah, The Exorcist, definitely. Thank god no one took me to the movie! I read it (secretly) at 12, and I had to go wake my parents in the middle of the night. They said, We told you so. :smack: When I was five or six, one of my parents showed a story in the newspaper that included a head shot of a Neanderthal, not the prime minister but a cave-man Neanderthal (no worse than that U.S. insurance company’s TV-ad caveman) drawn to look like a photograph. “I wanna see it! I wanna see it!” “No. It’ll scare you.” “Whine, whine, whine.” “Oh, all right.” That night I woke up screaming from a nightmare about it. “We TOLD you so!” ---
**Author:** ![SmellMyWort](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ea5d25/32.png) [@SmellMyWort](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SmellMyWort)\ **Post date:** [June 26, 2012, 6:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-stupid-things-scarred-you-emotionally-as-a-child/626276/72 "2012-06-26T18:17:52Z")
Those PSAs with the ominous music warning about the dangers of high voltage wires (shudder). And add me to the list of those traumatized by _Rescue 911_. I remember being terrified watching kids catch on fire or almost drown and my mom would always cry during that show. I also remember being freaked by an episode of \*3-2-1 Contact \*that involved a ghost, someone drowning in quicksand in _The Electric Company_, and some cartoon episode on PBS where a troll or something make a guy carry him on his back and won’t get off. Weird. ---
**Author:** ![Malthus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/85f322/32.png) [@Malthus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malthus)\ **Post date:** [June 26, 2012, 6:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-stupid-things-scarred-you-emotionally-as-a-child/626276/73 "2012-06-26T18:26:44Z")
> [@SmellMyWort](#): > > Those PSAs with the ominous music warning about the dangers of high voltage wires (shudder). And add me to the list of those traumatized by _Rescue 911_. I remember being terrified watching kids catch on fire or almost drown and my mom would always cry during that show. I also remember being freaked by an episode of \*3-2-1 Contact \*that involved a ghost, someone drowning in quicksand in _The Electric Company_, and some cartoon episode on PBS where a troll or something make a guy carry him on his back and won’t get off. Weird. There was a deeply traumatizing safety commercial that aired in Ontario, about the necessity of wearing eye protection while working. It featured a guy pounding with a hammer on some sort of metal spike (not wearing safety glasses), and finally the pounding detatches a mental splinter that flies through the air in slow-motion straight at the screen (with ominous soundtrack) … and then you see the worker writhing in agony and clutching his eye - the agony of having a metal splinter shot into the guy’s eye was very graphically displayed. The commercial was certainly effective. It gave me nightmares for years - but I always wore safety glasses when working! ---
**Author:** ![Rich\_G7subs](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/85e7bf/32.png) [@Rich\_G7subs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rich_G7subs)\ **Post date:** [June 26, 2012, 6:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-stupid-things-scarred-you-emotionally-as-a-child/626276/74 "2012-06-26T18:29:03Z")
> [@DeepLiquid](#): > > It probably didn’t help that my brother thought this was all great fun. After _The Exorcist_ he would wait until my light was out and make a guttural whispering sound and say “Reaaaaa-gan” though the air vent leading into my room. After _Carrie_ he hid under my bed and reached and grabbed my arm as I was falling asleep. After\* Don’t Look In The Basement\* he locked me in the basement and turned the lights off. I’ve pretty much been terrified of the dark ever since. But that’s what brothers are for! 😃 ---
**Author:** ![TruCelt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/trucelt/32/523_2.png) [@TruCelt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TruCelt)\ **Post date:** [June 26, 2012, 6:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-stupid-things-scarred-you-emotionally-as-a-child/626276/75 "2012-06-26T18:34:30Z")
[Ultraman](http://www.google.com/search?tbm=isch&hl=en&source=hp&biw=1290&bih=775&q=ultraman&gbv=2&oq=ultraman&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&gs_l=img.3...1297.3016.0.3391.8.8.0.0.0.0.78.78.1.1.0...0.0.IrOAXyO-u6Q) scared the bejeezus out of me. Soemthign to do with the psychedelic swirling colors int he opening sequence. And his resemblance to a [Sleestak](http://www.google.com/search?tbm=isch&hl=en&source=hp&biw=1290&bih=775&q=ultraman&gbv=2&oq=ultraman&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&gs_l=img.3...1297.3016.0.3391.8.8.0.0.0.0.78.78.1.1.0...0.0.IrOAXyO-u6Q#hl=en&gbv=2&tbm=isch&sa=1&q=sleestak&oq=sleestak&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&gs_l=img.3...91722.93003.0.93268.8.7.0.0.0.0.0.0..0.0...0.0.Hdz-iO6PT-o&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_qf.,cf.osb&fp=1&biw=1290&bih=775). ---
**Author:** ![DeepLiquid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/deepliquid/32/14893_2.png) [@DeepLiquid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DeepLiquid)\ **Post date:** [June 26, 2012, 6:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-stupid-things-scarred-you-emotionally-as-a-child/626276/76 "2012-06-26T18:54:07Z")
> [@Rich\_G7subs](#): > > But that’s what brothers are for! 😃 Same thing he says. 😛 ---
**Author:** ![SmellMyWort](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ea5d25/32.png) [@SmellMyWort](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SmellMyWort)\ **Post date:** [June 26, 2012, 7:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-stupid-things-scarred-you-emotionally-as-a-child/626276/77 "2012-06-26T19:39:24Z")
> [@Malthus](#): > > There was a deeply traumatizing safety commercial that aired in Ontario, about the necessity of wearing eye protection while working. It featured a guy pounding with a hammer on some sort of metal spike (not wearing safety glasses), and finally the pounding detatches a mental splinter that flies through the air in slow-motion straight at the screen (with ominous soundtrack) … and then you see the worker writhing in agony and clutching his eye - the agony of having a metal splinter shot into the guy’s eye was very graphically displayed. > > The commercial was certainly effective. It gave me nightmares for years - but I always wore safety glasses when working! I have to say I survived childhood without lighting myself on fire and never chased a soccer ball into a fenced-off electrical area, so yeah, I guess they worked. ---
**Author:** ![lorene](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/65b543/32.png) [@lorene](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lorene)\ **Post date:** [June 26, 2012, 8:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-stupid-things-scarred-you-emotionally-as-a-child/626276/78 "2012-06-26T20:22:18Z")
> [@TriPolar](#): > > It’s when the Mother Superior asks Maria “What is it, you cunt face”. 😛 ---
**Author:** ![orderfire](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/orderfire/32/10908_2.png) [@orderfire](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/orderfire)\ **Post date:** [June 26, 2012, 9:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-stupid-things-scarred-you-emotionally-as-a-child/626276/79 "2012-06-26T21:55:12Z")
The thought of being shrunken down to a teeny, helpless size was very disturbing to me. Such as when Paul accidentally gets injected with the shrinking potion in _Help_ and wriggles out of his own gigantic pantleg and is scrambling around in a gum wrapper, or, even better, the entire concept and premise of _Fantastic Voyage_. Shudder. Great nightmare fodder, that. I also harbored some dread that some unknown person would come into my room and put drugs in my mouth when I was asleep, and would very carefully pull and fold the sheet up over my mouth at night. I don’t know where I got that idea, but it must have come from some late 60’s PSA warning about LSD and everything else. My younger brother and I voluntarily traumatized each other with the reference book “Spiders and their Kin”. We’d sit side by side on the couch and would take turns flipping the pages and having to put your hand on the next picture of the grossest, most hideous, hairy, disgusting, horrible spider. I’m sure I’ll come up with some others. ---
**Author:** ![needscoffee](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/needscoffee/32/1076_2.png) [@needscoffee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/needscoffee)\ **Post date:** [June 26, 2012, 10:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-stupid-things-scarred-you-emotionally-as-a-child/626276/80 "2012-06-26T22:32:32Z")
> [@Dung\_Beetle](#): > > **Tripolar** , is it like a nightmare where you’re in school and the whole class is pointing and laughing at you, and then you look down and find out you’re wearing curtains? 😃 [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-stupid-things-scarred-you-emotionally-as-a-child/626276.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-stupid-things-scarred-you-emotionally-as-a-child/626276.md?page=5)