That’s mundane, but it’s several levels more mundane than axe murderers or clowns with hard-ons, so I didn’t check that box.
When you skip first grade, and spend the entirety of elementary school as that weird misfit among a bunch of older kids, 30-40 years before schools started thinking that preventing bullying was part of their job, you’re gonna have good reason to fear bullies. They’re there on a daily basis, they’re not some abstraction like nuclear war. (Besides, though I grew up in the era of air-raid drills, also grew up just barely outside the DC beltway. If there were a nuclear war, we’d all be vaporized instantly, and we knew it.)
I voted other, because tornadoes. I had a recurring nightmare where I would see the tornado from The Wizard of Oz heading straight for my bedroom window.
My number one fear was people in weird or big costumes, like Santa Claus or the characters at an amusement park like Mickey Mouse or Goofy. They creeped me the hell out.
My mother also passed on her fear of elevators, tall buildings and flying to me. I was a teenager before I could step on board an elevator, and middle-aged before I could get on board an airplane.
…the supernatural, like divine wrath, demons, ghosts etc.
That I would die with unconfessed sin in my heart and go to hell.
Nope, not Catholic. I had a non-denominational, fundamentalist upbringing. I would seriously lie in bed nearly every night trying to think of all my sins so I could confess them before falling asleep, in case I died in my sleep. I would confess even the most mundane things, just in case they were sins. Ex. my parents told me not to bite my nails. I bit my nails constantly. Therefore I was constantly disobeying my parents. Disobeying is a sin. Therefore constantly sinning. Therefore constantly in danger of hell. It’s no wonder I have anxiety issues as an adult.
I was afraid of the dark. Ghosts and demons and bad men who stole children. Later on, I discovered that a lot of my terror was due to hypnogognic hallucinations so it makes sense now. Then? Pure fear. And I was a credulous child who believed every urban legend I heard including the guy under the bed with the long fingernails and the one who left the note “Humans can lick, too.”
I answered something else - basically what scared me most were imaginary things. There was a tentacled monster under my bed, and an alien-type guy in my closet with only one really big eye. Those kinds of things. My imagination was very vivid - I finally realized these guys weren’t real, only when I felt too sleepy one night to move my foot away from the tentacled monster only to discover that he couldn’t actually pull me under the bed. That really was a revelation for me.
Shortly after that, I discovered the ability to interrupt a bad dream by saying “I’m having a nightmare. I should wake up and stop dreaming.” That was another revelation.
I hear a lot about kids who are scared of things like earthquakes and disease and parents dying and being robbed… honestly, I can’t remember a single prolonged concern about those kinds of things as a kid, but I vividly remember being very afraid of things that were purely imaginary.
The closest thing to a “real” fear back then is that I didn’t like heights. Not quite a phobia, but I am to this day quite uncomfortable anytime I’m more than about 2 feet up a ladder. I certainly didn’t climb trees as a kid. I’m a klutz, though, so this is at least partly rational. I don’t need a ladder’s help to lose my balance and fall over, for no reason at all. Sometimes I walk into walls if I don’t watch them carefully.
Clowns and balloons. I thought clown faces were grotesque and frightening and I hated the loud noise balloons would make when they popped, always unexpected and startling.
When Stephen King’s “It” came out, I thought King had read my mind!
Rather the same for me – in my childhood pretty much stock-entertainment-stuff in comics and prose fiction, were ghosts and witches. Didn’t believe in them as such, no experience with, but; just gave me the shivers, didn’t want to hear stuff about them, didn’t find it entertaining.
My childhood was 1950s / early 60s, in the UK: nuclear war was mostly off my radar. Have the feeling that it was overall downplayed then in the UK, as compared to US (though we would have been equally at threat); and also, I suspect that my parents kept me oblivious, as much as possible. Later, I think I kind-of intuited “Mutual Assured Destruction” – both sides frightening each other into reasonably-good behaviour, so it probably wouldn’t happen.
Not meaning to mock you here: but, am reminded of James Thurber’s old lady from his recollections of about a century ago now, who was very chary of electric plugs being taken out – whereby she feared that electricity would proceed to leak all over the house, and do who-knew-what harm. Harnessing of electricity was in its relative infancy then – but that’s irrelevant: we instinctively find it spooky, and as kids or other folk new to it; interpret it as best we can.
There was a kid in grade school who missed a lot of school because of headaches. Eventually a teacher decided that the kid’s headaches mostly happened when we had tests, and the kid had to talk to some sort of psychologist.
Some how, we all knew the kid was “loony” (this was way before Hipaa). Then he stopped coming to school for a few months. Then he returned, wearing a cap to cover his bald head. Then he died.
Add another to the “imaginary” pile. Not ghosts, or demons or bogey men, per se. It was more of a “some undefined person/thing that I can’t see, but I know means me harm”. It wasn’t a fear of the dark, either, but was magnified when in a dark place because my vision was limited. Walking at night in the woods with friends? No problem. Walking at night in the woods alone? The imagination kicked in. What was that sound/motion/light?
I think that not giving my fear a shape - like a ghost or clown or bogeyman - actually made it even more scary. I could never plan a defense or escape because I didn’t know what thing was waiting…watching…perhaps drooling.
We had a big oak tree in our front yard. Every time there was a thunder storm, my mind would flash on that scene from “Poltergeist” when the tree reached in through the window and grabbed that kid. I knew it wouldn’t happen exactly like that, but I was still afraid of it falling on the house.
I’d wake up in mortal terror every Easter morning. Was I afraid of the zombie Jesus? Yes, a little bit. But what was scarier was the Easter Bunny. I’d lay there in bed, afraid to open my eyes lest I catch him hippty-hopping around the house. I was also afraid of Santa Clause too. I liked the bounty the two would leave behind, but I didn’t want direct confirmation of their existence.
You are me. And it’s so incredibly sad that any children are ever raised to believe that way. I still had those night terrors until about two years ago and I’m almost 48. Such fear mongering bullshit.
I also forgot about tornadoes. Sadly though, I’m still scared silly of them. Ugh.
I checked other. When I was a kid growing up in LA, there were a series of serial killers, including the Hillslide Strangler, Nightstalker, Freeway Killers, among others. They dominated the news. On at least one occasion, we had the police stop by our house doing a door to door search.
Between news coverage, all the police helicopters, and my parents paranoia, I was absolutely convinced that a serial killer was coming. I didn’t select “mundane”, which did include axe murderer, because these were not amorphous, “Friday 13” dudes. These were actual mother-fucking serial killers. I would sit up with my light on all night, generally just freaking out.
I had a nightmare when I was about seven. A gypsy fortune teller woman got drunk and cut off her own arms. The arms could fly at night, and they would attack people and strangle them, then fly away. I once thought I saw them fly over my house.
Death is my answer. For a year or two I was so unbelievably scared that sooner or later I would just cease to exist. I’m OK with it now, but it tormented me as a kid for a while.
And then there’s this Danny Glick character. I was flipping around channels and came across this scene on TV and it scared the ever-loving crap out of me. It tortured me for weeks on end. Perhaps because they were about the age as me and my brother. And I pictured him flying up to the window. Horrible.