That would be The Incredible Mr. Limpet, starring the one and only Don Knotts. FWIW, there’s a remake stuck in development hell; it was originally going to star Jim Carrey, but then he ankled and the project has languished since then.
I was a very fucked-up kid, and here’s some evidence of that.
I was not afraid of clowns, or boogeymen, or monsters under the bed, or burglars, or anything like that.
I was afraid of Rip Taylor.
I can’t remember the name of the TV show he used to do–this is probably because every time someone turned it on, I would run screaming from the room. I don’t remember why. I was very, very young.
He was just so… loud.
It wasn’t often, but now and then as a child I would see a movie which was too mature and scary for me. I remember them vividly; there were exactly three:
-
The Birds. I couldn’t have been more than eight when I saw it. Scared the living crap out of me.
-
The Naked Prey. The torture scenes sickened me. My parents took me to see this at a drive-in. I remember going into the back of the station wagon and puking. The movie still gives me the willies.
-
The Pit and the Pendulum. Another movie with graphic torture scenes. I was haunted for weeks. Thanks a lot, Vincent Price!
I still get freaked out when I see porcelain dolls in the dark. When I was younger, my mom got some really lifelike ones, and they stayed on top of a bookshelf in my room. I’d wake up, and they’d be staring at me. I swear, if I ever have to sleep in another room with dolls in it, I’ll have nightmares for weeks.
[quote}3. The Pit and the Pendulum. Another movie with graphic torture scenes. I was haunted for weeks. Thanks a lot, Vincent Price![/quote]
This is one of my favorite movies for some reason. Probably because it’s the only movie that’s actually frightened me.
I am afraid of many things:
Tub-monster: My old tub used to make a funny gurgle noise when the water flowed down. I asked Mom what it was and she said that the sound was made by a walrus down in the drain. It scared me!!!
I started being afraid of clowns because of the evil ones in Pee Wee’s Big Adventure.
I used to have a painting of this girl in my room that had butterfly wings. She had this dark mournful look in her eyes, like she was staring right into your soul. My cousin told me that the girl had been an evil queen called Slaveria because she was a cruel person who owned and was mean to many slaves. That painting freaked me out in the worst way. I wonder what happened to it…
Not sure where to start:
“Ooga-boogas”
“Eebie-jeebies”
“Hatchet Man”
spiders
“Ooga-booga”
Lived in the hallway just outside my bedroom. As long as the door was closed, I was safe.
“Eebie-jeebies”
Were inside my room, but so long as I had the blankets over me, with an opening just big enough for my nose so I could breathe, I was safe. (No, SHEETS were not good enough! We’re talking blankets in 90 degree weather!)
“Hatchet Man”
Lurked around the room as I slept just waiting for me hang my feet over the edge. He’d then chop them off at the ankles. (I may have been 19 before I stopped sleeping in the fetal position.)
Spiders
Everyone know that spiders wait until you sit on the toilet, so they can crawl in your butt. (Imagine a 15 y.o. hovering over the toilet while taking a crap.) :eek:
IT, the swamp guy, I had nightmares and had to go for counselling over it. And just my normal fear was walking into a completely dark room alone, especially if I knew there was a mirror in the room, mostly because of fear of ghosts.
Funny! I used to live in an old house out in the country where the bathroom was INFESTED with frogs. I refused to go take a shower until someone made sure there were no frogs in there. Then sometimes I’d find one anyway! Eeeek!
Do any other long-hairs suffer from this little irrational fear?
That as you rinse out your hair in the tub the drain monster will grab it and drown you?
(mumbles)I swear twenty-four years and still afraid of the drain, geez!
Wow, I haven’t thought about this in years, but the thread has surfaced an old memory. Specifically:
I used to live in a house that had a strange gurgling tub, too. One morning, I went in for my early shower (this was my freshman year in high school), and there were at least two dozen squirming larvae in the tub. Greyish-brown, maybe an inch to an inch and a half long, thin and wormy with a hard shiny exoskeleton, like small millipedes.
It was weird, but I’m not creeped out by bugs, so I washed 'em down the drain and showered. Next morning, they were back again. Clearly, they’re living in the plumbing or under the house or something, and coming up the drain during the night. I washed 'em down again and poured bleach into the drain. That should fix 'em, I thought.
For a while, it seemed to have done the trick. But then maybe a week later, I found even more of the little squirmers waiting for me first thing in the morning. At that point, what was making my skin crawl was not so much the general thought of the bugs, but what would happen if someone didn’t look into the bathtub before stepping in, and crunched the little guys with bare feet.
That’s not the worst part, though. The worst part is that a couple of weeks later, after washing the bugs down the drain had become a routine, the tub developed a strange gurgle. First time, it happened to someone else, but it kept doing it afterward, so we all got to experience this lovely moment. You’d be in the shower, the drain would start to slow down, and you’d hear heavy burbling and clanking from the pipes.
And then the squirming millipedes would come back up the drain and swirl around your feet.
All together now: Ewwww.
We had a guy go into the crawlspace and take stuff apart, and after that, no more wormies. I have no idea what he found down there, but, at least at that time, I didn’t want to know.
Sorry if I gave any of you entomophobes additional nightmare material, but I just had to share. 
I am taking a kitchen chair into the shower tonight to stand on. Cripes!
Drains, especially those in pools, have always given me the heebie-jeebies, but I never knew of anything to crawl out from them. Until now. <brachy does the full body, totally oogified, shake.>
Good Lord that is gross!!
<shudder>
The movie “The Return of Count Yorga(?)”. When I was a kid I saw that movie in the theatre. Dark and breezy nights scared the hell out of me well (well) into adulthood. I would go outside, but if I was by myself I always got this creepy feeling and had to get inside before “they” got me. Even though in the movie “they” actually got the people INSIDE the house. Oh well, I was a kid. I finally saw the movie in adulthood and it was really stupid, but those were more innocent times. And dark and breezy nights still creep me out.
this grownup boogieman experience with frogs until y’all started talking about bathrooms.
I was doing a consulting job in Guinea, West Africa and I found out that I was pregnant with my first kid. I was invited to stay in a private home rather than a hotel. Ok, no problem. BUT remember my hangup about frogs from waay back when I was a mere child?
To make a long story short: I was really looking forward to a nice cool shower after a very long day working w/out a/c or electricity for that matter. I tossed my sweaty clothes on the bed and started to sit down on the toilet when I saw the biggest frog/toad peeping out from under the toilet rim. It was ugly and humongous; I can only imagine how he got that way. I promptly puked over the $?*ing thing, slammed down the toilet seat and sweated the night away because I was sure that he was going to jump out. I checked into a hotel the next morning.
When I was a kid, I developed this fear of…jeez, what’re they called?..weeds that grow from the bottom of the lake and reach all the way to the surface. There was definately something in there; I knew it, and it knew that I knew. I made the mistake of letting my brothers know this, and so every summer we’d go camping, take the canoe out over the weeds, and then they’d stop. At this point, they’d start rocking the boat. I’d be holding onto the gunwales begging them to stop. And of course, they’d flip the canoe and I’d have to swim back to shore, with the weeds wrapping themselves around my legs, and my loving brothers grabbing me and pulling me under. I still won’t go anywhere near those plants when I’m swimming.
I think this fear goes back to an album we had as kids: “Bozo Under the Sea.” Bozo goes deep-sea diving and gets his foot trapped in a giant clam. I can still hear his voice bubbling up through the water, “Help!..Help!..” It scared the sh!t out of me.
My stepfather.
Needs2know
I don’t know if this really counts as a “Bogeyman.” I wasn’t living in deathly fear of it, but –
“Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory” really disturbed me as a kid. Those Oompa Loompas were just plain creepy, and some of the punishments inflicted on the kids(bratty little monsters though they may have been) were just horrifying. I had nightmares about the little girl who eats the gum and then blows up like a giant blueberry. And the scene where Gene Wilder & co. were on the gondola, and images of chickens getting their heads cut off and worms crawling over a guy’s face, while Wilder is singing dazedly made me sick.
It seemed like every holiday, it was on t.v. and one of my brothers would turn it on, mainly to torment me because they knew I would race out of the room and cringe when I saw it.
Our house had a water tank and pump in the basement, when I was a young kid. We also had an old wringer washer down there by it, that got hold of my mother’s arm one day. I couldn’t bare to be down there alone, unless the lights were on.
I got moved into the room in the basement, when my parents had another kid. The stairway had walls, so no problem there. The run from the stairs to the door, and then the door being slamed shut was the problem.
The pump coming on in the night would scare the shit out of me. Then I’d dream about being sent through the wringer in the washer that would chase me down. I was only about five at the time.
EEEEEEEEEK!!! AAAAAAAAAAAAHH! OH MY GOD OHMY GOD OHMYGOD OHMYGOD OHMYGOD OHMYGOD!!!
Major, major heebie jeebies here.
When I was a small child, about 6, I saw the carcass of a dog (a german shepherd) that someone had just left in the alley on the next block, with alk the garbage. It was crawling with those white wiggly things (don’t make me say, or even think, the “m” word). I can still see it clearly in my mind and it FREAKED ME OUT.
To this day I am unable to look at little crawly things. The thought of having them come up the shower drain … I can’t think about it again.
And yes, that was my own husband who posted that story. Thanks, honey, for freaking the crap out of me!
Bogey, man. I was always creeped out that a babe like Lauren Bacall would marry a crusty old coot like him. Sheesh, I can’t believe anyone else said that.
Joking aside I didn’t have a specific boogeyman though my grandmother ofthen threatened me with one. I love my departed nana but that’s not cool to do to a kid. If anything specific it might be the creature Ymir from 20 Million Miles to Earth, a wonderful grade B flick with terrific Ray Harryhausen special effects. I got extremely worked up over that one, running around the living room to the chagrin of my uncle who let me stay up late to watch.