Ok, so we have clowns, the ankle grabber, and now the tub beast. When I was a kid I had a nightmare once about a clown that would hide in the tub. When you were brushing your teeth, he would spring up and flick ink on you with his fingers, and the ink would paralyze you so that you couldn’t move a muscle. For years afterward I, too, would nervously watch the tub in the mirror as I brushed my teeth!
Anyone else out there with tub-related bogeymen?
-Ben
I’m not sure how this started but I evidently had some fear based on department store mannequins-- headless ones. At least I think that must have been it, because my greatest fear as a very small child was that people I referred to as “The Necks” would parade up our stairs and into my bedroom (first room at the top when I was in my crib, and easiy accessible to unholy beings eager to feed on the tender flesh of a child). I had dreams about this, and my parents remember me wailing about it.
I was also terrified of “The Rock Monster.” There was some old movie in which a train travelling through some creepy Eastern European landscape end ups taking on some… thing… that was either made out of rock or just looked that way (I don’t know what they called him in the movie, “Rock Monster” was my name for him). R.M. was a restless sort and apparently roamed the train, attacking hapless passengers who would be found with their eyes rolled up so you could only see the whites. This scared the crap out of me, and my parents (who surely had no idea just how bad they were freaking me out) liked to make jokes about how “the Rock Monster will boil your eyes!”
I think I need to call my parents now and thank them for warping me.
Strangely, it wasn’t a person, but rather an evil being: the red-eyed pig from “The Amityville Horror.” I would imagine it looking through my window. For a long time I had to keep the shade down, no matter how hot it was outside.
That’s what I got for secretly reading my mom’s novels. Don’t like horror novels to this day, and I sleep soundly every night as a result. Of course, now I’m old enough to realize a publicity stunt when I see one (the publishers of “Amityville” probably work for “Jerry Springer” now), but back then…
Of course, having a catholic education didn’t hurt, with all that talk of Satan. Brrrr!
I don’t remember this, but my brother tells me I was terrified of his “Robot” from Lost in Space - he would send it towards me with its arms waving and shouting “Warning! Warning!” I supposedly would run screaming every time.
Other monsters that I’m still afraid of:
The one that lives underneath the bed and can pull me under in one swift motion if any part of me is hanging over the side. This monster can also get me if I don’t have a sheet covering my torso - my arms and legs can be outside the sheet (but not over the edge of the mattress).
The monster that lives underneath the bed and has a sword or bayonet or something that it can stick up through the mattress and impale me. I guess this one shares space with Monster #1.
The monster that lives in the tub, which I can protect myself from by having a see-through shower curtain, or by always leaving the curtain open when not using the shower. This is a female monster with long reddish hair, lying in a tub full of water. (I think I saw this in a scary movie once.)
Bad Ronald.
apparently i was afraid of feathers. when one would come out of a pillow or something, i would freak out.
and the positive aliens from sesame street gave me the creeps, too.
the cookie monster
when i was about 5 i had a nightmare that i was a chocolate chip cookie for halloween, and that the cookie monster had moved into my neighbor’s house. i think the ending is fairly predictable…
as an (un)interesting side note, my husband’s (nen’s) mother has a large cookie monster cookie jar atop a cabinet in her kitchen. the thing freaks me out. i think it watches me…
My Monster?
Marlo Thomas.
Ms “That Girl” herself.
Swear to God.
She put out this kiddy album way the hell back when. There was this song “Girl Land and Boy Land” I believe. It had all this creepy merry-go-round organ music in it (you know, the music clowns play before they kill people…) And somebody droning on maniacly about- you guessed it- Girl Land and Boy Land. Had nightmares about this song for years.
Why the hell would anybody put such a creepy-ass song on a kids record?
Heard it a few years ago when I was in college when somebody brought it to the computer cluster as a joke. Creeped me out 20 years after the fact.
Damn you, Marlo Thomas.
I was never really scared of monsters when I was a kid. Oh, sure, Poltergeist was pretty freaky, but it never translated into a fear of clown dolls or killer trees or whatever. Space aliens, sharks, spiders… nothing ever really got to me like that.
No, my big fear as a child was nuclear war.
I know, I know, that sounds totally cliched. But let me tell you, I was obsessed. I read everything I could get my hands on; I knew all about EMP (not the new Seattle Hendrix museum) before I was eight. I watched every movie I could find; I loved (in that hate sort of way) the run of movies from Threads to Testament to The Day After to whatever the other one right around there was.
What’s worse, I lived within artillery earshot of Fort Lewis. So on random days (or early evenings), I’d just be hanging out, and I’d hear a deep, echoing BOOM come rolling in from the distance, and I’d freeze in terror, waiting for the flesh to be burned off my bones.
I was a weird little kid. I’m all better.
Now it’s earthquakes…
Cervaise, Just gotta say- ME FRICKIN TOO.
So obsessed as a kid. Mr Shehan, my history teacher in elementary school sat us all down one day and explaned to us what would happen if the bombs fell.
Thanks. I didn’t need that happy childhood anyways. I’ll be hinding under my bed till I’m a teenager.
Was so very sure that I was going to die. Consequently, I too was one seriously morose kid.
I’m all OK now though.
Hey… did you just hear something?
::submits reply from beneath bed::
when i was younger, and even now, i cant sleep with my bedromm door open. i figure if the evil things can’t see me sleeping, they cant get to me. also i check my cabinet and closet, with the lights on before i go to bed to make sure theyre isnt anything hiding in there.
i also saw the movie “pyscho” and it scarred me. i couldn take a shower without having the curtain slightly open so i could see the rest of the bathroom for the longest time.
Bugs, insects, spiders – the relatives of the ones that I killed, either accidentally or on purpose. If Daddy Longlegs didn’t make it home because of me, I was certain his whole family would be coming after me.
Hubby destroyed (we hope) a hornets’ nest this afternoon. His valiant act is a mixed blessing, cuz now I’ll be scared for days.
And I know this doesn’t qualify as a boogeyman, but is anyone else afraid to yawn in bed, after seeing that silly movie where a big spider dropped from the ceiling into a girl’s mouth?
Mmmmmmmmmmmbaaaauuuuuuuuuuyipyipyip.
One of my favorite scenes from “Elmopalooza” (hey, it was playing in Learningsmith) was when Grover picks up hitchhiking Sesame Street aliens at Roswell.
-Ben
Cats. Or more specifically, my neighbors’ cat. I personally witnessed that feline demon get creamed by a bus, and the next day it was walking around like nothing happened!
I’m glad I had a large dog that hated cats. It kept the evil undead kitty away.
Well, now we know what’s under the bed!! :eek:
It’s amazing that innocuous items can take on such horrific qualities (lamps, clothes, Marlo Thomas, evil pigs and undead kitties - okay, the last three are not so innocent) but these can all be combatted with simple 200-count cotton sheets. And we knew we gained some immunity if we did things in a certain way (face the tub, run tippie-toe). For me, tippie-toe wasn’t quite enough - I had to jump from the end of the bed into the hallway. When I was really young, this was a distance with which to contend. Fortunately, Dad (slayer of evil creatures) was in the next bedroom, listening to either baseball or opera on his transistor radio.
Unfortunately, I had to share the room with Kiffa, my older sister. <ribbit ribbit> Huh, Kiffa, what’s that noise? <ribbit>
Keep 'em coming! And I’d like to know if clowns were boogeymen before the existence of King’s It. I know it would have finished me off if I had seen that toothy grin as a tyke.
After battling Clock Man, frogs/turtles and IT, I thought the boogieman blues were over until my young daughter decided that she wasn’t going to sleep any more. Two weeks of hell went on [“Go to Bed” “I’m not sleepy”] until she finally confessed that she was afraid of the bad bear living up above her bedroom. Yup, you could hear this thumping up there. I thought it was lizards [we were living in Africa at the time], but it turned out to be a bunch of baby rats tumbling and jumping around. I felt so bad that she went on for two weeks before telling us about that bad bear… gulp, I hope that she isn’t ruined for life. Maybe I should have given her those magic sheets that I use.
I was raised on a farm in the middle of nowhere, so “things that go bump in the night” really didn’t have much effect on me - various flavors of wildlife outside and old house noises inside.
However
The kids’ bedrooms were upstairs in our old farmhouse, and while I knew that there was nothing following me as I went back upstairs after going tinkle at 3 a.m. I was damned if I was going to turn around to prove myself right. To make it worse, the bed that my sister and I shared was one of those old-fashoined Victornian things that’s about 2 feet off of the floor. While it was great when mom and dad told us to “clean” our room, it also had lots of storage space for the afore-mentioned monsters that would snag you if you hung so much as your little toe over the edge of the bed.
ANYHOW…when I was maybe 8 or 9 years old my parents installed a new mattress on the bed my sister and I shared. Rather than take it downstairs immediately they left it leaning up against the wall in the hallway. While there were light switches, the light fixture itself was a bare bulb with that little dangly chain next to it. During the night our cat crawled up the mattress and spent the evening batting that damned chain against the lightbulb. Of course, MY over-active imagination had Frankenstein’s metal shoes clomping their way up the bare-wood staircase to get me. Somehow, this dream morphed into Dracula coming to get me: I was on the altar of the church down the road from us, turned to look at the balcony, Dracula morphed into a bat and flew towards the altar, I ran screaming down the aisle and up the stairs to the balcony, I’d look down at Dracula, he morphed into a bat and flew up at me…etc., etc., etc.
I thought of one.
When I was very young, my dad and I were looking over an issue of National Geographic together. This issue included an article on giant sea spiders. These things were like 6 feet tall and lived on the bottom of the ocean. I had nightmares about them, and fantasies about giant spiders walking into my room at night. I have read a couple fantasy books that include giant spiders (Harry Potter #2, in which giant spiders try to eat Harry and Ron, comes to mind immediately - kids should NOT read that scene!) that just freaked me out, even now.
::kack-kack::
Damn dust bunnies.
Yeah, OK. It’s me. I’m the Boogieman.
Don’t know why I started doin it, really. Guess I just liked scarin the bejeezus outta little kids.
You gotta admit though, for all my time cowering beneath your beds, I never actually DID stab any of you.
Foiled as usual by those damn poly/cotton blend sheets.
Hey… wait a minute.
Sheets?
I can cut through SHEETS.
Holy crap…
What have I been doing all these years?
You guys are so screwed.
Lets see…
Clown makeup- check.
Nasty pointy knife- check.
Big sack of icky crawly things- check.
CD of random household noises- check.
One moulting chicken for Kilgore- double check.
Ok, I just thought of another.
I refused to go in a bathroom if it was dark, for any reason. Because when I was in gradeschool, there were stories of “Bloody Mary”. You know, say “Bloody Mary” in the mirror 3 times, and she shows up to kill you. Well, I told my mother, and I’m not entirely sure why she said this “Oh sure, that’s possible. Anything’s possible if you call on Satan.” I don’t know if she was kidding with me or not, but it fucking terrified me.
So about 1 1/2 ago, I dared my BF to go in the bathroom and say Bloody Mary 3 times to see what would happen. He did it, and of course, NOTHING happened, but did that satisfy me? Oh no. There is still, and there always will be, a bright nightlight in the bathroom.
cant sleep, clowns will eat me!
that quote was on a t shirt that i bought a friend of mine for his birthday. except it was in big letters on top and then it got smaller and smaller until it faded into nothing on the bottom. that was a really neat shirt.