I think I was the only one in my group who was afraid of heights. I was afraid my buddies would find out so I would follow them into some very precarious places. I was very often on the verge of just freezing and not being able to move.
I chose “something else”.
Due to a misbegotten attempt by my Dad to teach me to swim by simply tossing me into a pool, I was deathly afraid of bodies of water until I was at least 12.
Distant second and third were stray dogs and nuclear war. Now, a stray dog with a nuke, that might have made the head of the list if I’d thought about it a bit.
When I was very young (4 or 5), nuclear war. There was one time in particular when the evening news was talking about… whatever the latest tension-escalation was, and I went to bed that night honestly unsure as to whether I’d wake up the next morning.
By the time I was about ten, my biggest fear had shifted to the heat death of the Universe. Which, yes, is a very long way off, but it WILL come.
The dark.
Reagan from The Exorcist. When that came out in '74, pictures of her possessed were on magazine covers everywhere. And as such, I got really acquainted with one from the National Enquirer. That thing kept me up at night, terrified she’d come through my window and get me while I slept. The funny thing now is that’s my all time favorite horror movie.
I was also constantly afraid of dying and going to hell. I had nightmares about it weekly. Fortunately, I’m glad I’m over both.
Oh. Yeah. Dogs. I was bitten on the face by a dog when I was a toddler and was scared to death of them until I reached my teens; I started shaving and found a scar on my face I’d never noticed before. Asked my mom about it and she told me the story. Might have helped me get over the fear a bit sooner if she’d told me earlier…
House fires. One of the apartments in the complex that I grew up in burned down, killing at least one of the kids inside in a particularly disturbing way. It terrified me. Still does.
I was scared of dinosaurs for a few days after I saw a monster movie, but other than that, I really b wasn’t scared of anything.
I must have suppressed my biggest fear back then: Cancer! I still dread it, but it has quit being a constant source of dread. A couple of kids my age had bad cases and died and it really bothered me a great deal until I was in my 20s. By then other people my age were dying from all sorts of things like wrecks and diseases and murder and what not. You just get somewhat jaded as time passes and you don’t die.
There was one particular house I lived in that had a couple of trees just outside my bedroom window. I was 10 years old. The shadows that they casted on my walls at night were enough to get my imagination going and send me completely under the covers. On many nights I saw things that were not really there. One day after a bad night of sleep, I got tired of it. I went looking for nails and a hammer. Then I nailed a thick blanket over the window and the very see-through curtains that were hanging there. No more shadows.
The inevitability of time.
I looked at other people and understood that they dealt with all kinds of complicated-seeming things, whether related to school or jobs or relationships. I knew that would be me someday and that I’d have to deal with it whether or not I was capable of it. And since I wasn’t capable of those things yet, I had a hard time imagining being capable of those things, and so I feared being forced forward in life without having any say in the matter.
Eventually I realized that real life was pretty easy, and most people muddle along having no real idea what they’re doing, but it didn’t seem like this as a kid.
Really? I’m the only one who was terrified of snakes and spiders?
I remember being terrified of the electrical sockets.
I think I saw my mother yank a plug out and saw a spark, and from then on I was scared I was going to get electrocuted every time I plugged or unplugged something. I remember insisting on holding my mother’s hand and crying while she made me plug in the vacuum (I think she was trying to make me overcome my fear) because I figured if I died, I was taking her with me.
The scientific. I always loved sci-fi and I knew it was all make-believe but ----- the thought of a giant radioactive mutant looking in my window or giant killer grasshoppers was what my nightmares were made of.
This. My father was the only thing I remember being afraid of.
My fears fluctuated over the course of my childhood. I grew up in a devout Catholic home. So, hell was a terrible fear at times. Ghosts and monsters were my main fear at other times. I was really scared of house fires and tornadoes at times as well. I was born in 73, so the tail end of the Cold War gave me a lot of terror as well. For most of my childhood, though, my main fear was probably some kind of supernatural menace like ghosts or demons.
The summer I was six, however, I was terrified of Skylab hitting our house. I knew that Skylab was falling to Earth, and I was aware from the media coverage that the exact place it would hit was unknown. Somehow I became convinced there was a good chance it would land on our house. I was really scared of that.
Oh, and other times I was terrified that I would get out of bed late at night and go into the living room and discover that my parents were really some kind of aliens or monsters in face masks. That one kept me awake many nights.
Oh, I almost forgot – I went to a tiny parochial school, and I was probably the best student in the school most years. But I had this gnawing suspicion that I was really mentally handicapped and that the school and my report cards and everything were some sort of elaborate Potemkin village designed to spare me the truth. I kept waiting for the big reveal.
I’m gonna go with drowning. Always had an uneasy feeling around water. However, I was none-the-less Captain of the Ship at sixteen on a notorious rough lake where I grew up. I always had a healthy respect for that lake and never had any problems. Was out there many times during small craft warnings.
Good times!
Where would the fear of monsters under my bed fall?
OK - I was going to not say anything but --------- I guess I really am odd. My mother was the physically and mentally cruel one (to the level that I had to live with relatives now and then for my own safety when I was very little) but I was never afraid of her. Somehow, even at 4 or so years old, I knew the other adults around me (father and grandmother, aunts and uncles) would keep me safe. Your reaction is the one more normal; how my brain got to the place it was is still a mystery to me.
Shut up!!! I was twelve. To be honest it kind of unsettles me now.