Orderfire, I had that spider book. I used to use it to scare my sister away from borrowing my stuff.
As God is my witness, I’ll never be hungry again.
Crow T. Robot from MST3K. It was my favorite show when I was around 7 or 8, but goddamn, Crow scared the crap out of me. I was wary enough of him when he was just a tiny silhouette on the bottom of the screen, but I sometimes had to actually leave the room during the host segments.
I must have been six or seven when my family went to the local carnival. The midway included a House of Horrors with a bubbling cauldron, screeching witches and numerous large loudspeakers on top. I was cringing as we walked in front of it but just had to sneak a look at it. I totally freaked out, looked down, grabbed my mother’s hand and started dragging her away from that nightmare. We had gone a few feet and I was beginning to think I would survive it, looked up at my mother and … it was a total stranger. I double freaked out and started screaming. My parents rescued me and laughed it off but that feeling of horror-filled abandonment had staying power.
I was afraid of tons of things when I was a child. Too many to list! But I will nominate The Twilight Zone TV show for actually warping me. Everything about it scared me - the weird opening with the spiral and the floating eye, the awful scary music, Rod Serling pontificating with his hands clasped in front of him, all leading up the ultra-scary shows themselves. Frightened the bejesus out of me. One with a busted robot, wires exposed. The one with the old woman living out on a farm, getting mysterious phone calls, and the phone line was traced to…a line going into a grave! The one with Agnes Moorehead fighting off tiny spacemen. OMG the one with the monster on the airplane wing!! TO THIS VERY DAY I can’t watch The Twilight Zone if I am alone in the house. Or at night when everyone is sleeping.
Two stories:
1)As a kid, I was deathly afraid of Darth Vader. Now, I intellectually know it’s a guy in costume, but I still won’t watch the original trilogy.
2)I’m (still) soewhat afraid of the Statue of Liberty (I was 8 when she had her Centenial)
I also get queasy when around tall buildings (around, not inside) And when seeing large stuff up close on TV. (Mom thinks me seeing/experiencing the world seated distorts my perceptions)
This clip will drive away all fear.
LOVE that movie!
I consider this stupid only because I only saw only about two minutes, but when I was seven or eight they showed Helter Skelter on TV. I only saw the very opening scenes and there wasn’t much to see, but I knew something was very, very wrong. If I remember correctly, it was shown in two parts and when the teaser came on the next night, I started crying and and I was sure my family was going to be murdered while I slept.
I think it was around that time that I woke to hear my parents having sex. I thought my mom was being murdered, so I went into the kitchen and got a pair of scissors and went and knocked on their door. I guess I thought I was going to save her.
Incidentally, I later read Helter Skelter and really enjoyed the book. I’ve also got a pair of sharp kitchen scissors I keep handy, just in case.
Oh God yeah, the famous Canadian safety PSAs - best is the guy getting blown up by the acetylene torch -
Who knew Canadians could be so graphic & morbid?
20,000 Leagues Under The Sea - where the giant squid attax the sub. Naturally, this led to me reading in the Encyclopedia Britannica about squid attax - including one in WW2 where 1 pulled down survivors of a UBoat torpedoing.
So when I would go swimming at the beach, I’d feel something slimy on my arm or leg (probably seaweed), and I’d instantly freeze up thinking it was a squid gonna pull me down.
Street Cleaners. I can remember when I was five or six so terrified of those yellow trucks with their huge swirling brushes, they could sweep you right up! I always ran into the house and hid behind the sofa until the monster passed our block.
Those are pretty graphic, but subverted a bit by humour - the one I was thinking of I think aired in the late 1970s or early 80s and was played totally straight. I did a bit of looking around, but I couldn’t find it online. Anyone remember the one with the metal splinter in the eye?
. . . Just in case your parents ever have sex again?
Ooooh, you just reminded me–this enormous (more than eight feet tall!) head of Constantine still gives me the heebie-jeebies (I didn’t even want to Google-Image it!) http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/ancient/romans/images/pivotalemperors_6.jpg
I had almost forgotten about those PSAs. Remember Astar, the robot who jumped through all that machinery and then put his arm back on at the end? That thing gave me the creeps!
I was also a victim of Carrie. My mom decided I was a wuss who needed to see a scary movie, and since Carrie was one of her favorites, we sat and watched it together. It wasn’t that bad, really, except that bit at the end that made me jump. The bad part was that night as I was trying to sleep, I left my bedroom track lights on, but low, with the dimmer switch. I didn’t have a nightlight, you see. Well, just as I was falling asleep, there was a loud POP and one of the light bulbs flew out of the socket onto the floor. I was up and screaming within a split second!
Pretty much the entire oeuvre of Sid and Marty Krofft.
It wasn’t easy, growing up in the '70s.
Amen!
And speaking of movies, I still get the shivers when I think of “Jeepers Creepers.” It was absolutely cheesy and stupid and fake, and it scared the willickers out of me.
Oh wait, I was 39 when I saw that. Does that count?
I had swimming lessons when I was a kid (maybe 9-11 years old, as I went through the intro class 3 times). At the end of each lesson, we had to jump from the low diving board into the deep end of the pool. The instructor would supposedly catch us with a pole and haul us to the edge, but always pulled out the pole to force us to swim. So I had ample moments of panic in the water, and afterwards I felt betrayed, humiliated, etc. I never learned to swim back then, I just learned to flail and scream that I was drowning.
No obvious trauma, just bad memories. And a rational knowledge that I had to avoid the deep end, of course.
This year (age 44) I decided to fix this. I found a great swimming school for adults that was more “touchy-feely” and “find your own pace” than “jump-in-or-else”. The first lesson was fun and painless, but that night I didn’t sleep, I had constant vivid recalls of those terrifying and humiliating sessions from 1980.
I was worried that the sleepless nights would reoccur every week, but they didn’t. The other lessons went fine, and now I can swim in a limited way, including the deep end. No diving boards, though.
Oh geez, I used to do the same thing!
For me it was the animated version of “Watership Down.” There was a prologue before the film, The Tale of El-Ahrairah, and the scene of all the rabbits being killedand then the Black Rabbit of Death jumping at the camera freaked me the fuck out. I don’t know how old I must have been. 7, 8 maybe? And then the scene showing all the rabbits being buried alive and cramming the warren tunnels, suffocating and dying, holy crap! Terrifying!
Also the animated film of “The Hobbit.” The scene where the dwarves are with the goblins and Bilbo falls down into Gollum’s cave was so scary! Especially because of the songs! In fact all of the music in that movie was pretty terrifying! Actually that’s *still *kinda creepy!