|
Ktb posted:I also had a large teddy bear that was hard and not at all fluffy and worst of all made a horrible groaning noise when you tipped it over. I think it was meant to be a growl but it sounded in pain or possessed or something. I refused to play with it and it sat untouched in my room for ages until it fell over in the night and scared the poo poo out of me and was banished to the attic which I was then scared of for some time because it was up there.. waiting for me. For a few days when I was 10 or so I would hear whispering the backyard when it was quiet. Just indistinct whispering that I could not pin down or understand, like ambient noises in a survivial horror game or if you wandered into a decepit vault in Fallout. I tried to ignore it, but it wouldn't go away. I accidently found the source of it while playing-it was an old radio that my Dad had thrown in a trailer full of garbage to haul to the dump; it's batteries where almost depleted but it was still picking up the radio. Toys with batteries in it can be scary when left to their own devices.
|
#
?
Jun 10, 2014 20:22
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 27, 2024 22:42 |
|
|
Laocius posted:Brak, for some reason. Brak creeped me out a bit too. Something about his lack of lips I think. Space Ghost Coast to Coast was a bizarre thing for a child to watch anyway, but it was always on and the concept of cartoons not intended for children was foreign to me at the time.
|
|
#
?
Jun 11, 2014 00:15
|
|
|
Back when I was 6 or so I lived on a street with a couple kids my age and an assortment of older kids. Said older kids naturally took on the age-old tradition of traumatizing the younger ones, and in my case this is how it went. One day a couple of the older kids told me they had seen a "Yellow Jack" bee flying around. They helpfully informed me how these rare bees were huge, and their sting was toxic enough to kill you before you could scream. Then they pointed one out to me buzzing around the street:  That's a Cicada Wasp, and that's what was flying around. Now of course the cicada wasp is more interested in hunting cicadas than 6 year old boys, but I certainly didn't know that. I bought every word, and lived in absolute run-around-screaming terror of the Yellow Jack for the summer. Is it really an unreasonable fear when bored older kids troll you into a phobia?
|
|
#
?
Jun 12, 2014 00:07
|
|
|
Ahem. Really, they blew it out of the water but they still hurt like a motherfucker to get stung with
|
|
#
?
Jun 13, 2014 13:56
|
|
|
My earliest childhood memory is also the scariest thing I have ever experienced. I'm someplace I don't recognize. It's loud and I am alone. I can't move. I kick my feet, but I don't hit anything. There is a monster here. It's right in front of me. It's so big, I can only see its head. It has bulging eyes and a long head and it's coming towards me. It comes closer and closer and I try to turn around but I'm strapped into place and then it stops. Its mouth is open and its teeth are inches away from my face. It pauses for a second, and then it backs away. I think I'm safe, and then it comes right back at me again. It is made entirely out of jagged edges and sharp points and it wants to kill me. My parents parked my stroller right in front of a loving motorized rocking horse statue at legoland.
|
|
#
?
Jun 13, 2014 17:41
|
|
|
When I was little, I had a pop-up book about animals. One of them was a Baboon, and that thing scared the poo poo out of me. My parents had to throw the book in the bin and show me it was in there before sneaking it back out later. Still got that book somewhere ( ), but it's buried in a bookshelf. Found a video though. He's the first animal.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kf-iR3fxpsg
|
|
#
?
Jun 13, 2014 20:58
|
|
|
Pob, the Emergency Broadcast Signal, and the Williams Street Logo are still scary to me.  Sesame Street was horrifying. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U1Rhm7kp-tk "Sesame Street: Creepy toys, robots, and satellites" Is this supposed to be whimsical, or funny? Jesus Christ, it's like David Lynch made it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z8TqOTe3ODc "Sesame Street: Operatic Orange" I'm 27 years old and still have nightmares about this. It's goddamn face flies off! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ueyxMQ_KT9k Shining Time Station "The Bad Guy" Kind of cute now, but back in the day I'd run out of the room. And, the ultimate:  Skeletons. Doesn't matter of what. Bones are just creepy and shouldn't be seen! I used to have dreams of a large witch doctor-like mask hanging on the living room wall, with a skeleton hiding behind it, waiting for me to let my guard down. We never had such as mask in the living room, so I don't know what the gently caress.
|
|
#
?
Jun 16, 2014 07:00
|
|
|
As a 70's kid between 3-5 or so, I was terrified of those old opaque glass and brass desk lamps with the single burst of earthtone florals on them. To me they looked like big eyeballs. I had more than one nightmare where they flew off a desk and attacked me. (E: these things! Screw these things   )I was also afraid of stray socks around the same age because I also had a nightmare that one flew up off the floor and smothered me. Not sure what was up with those. Part of Everything has a new favorite as of 23:17 on Jun 16, 2014 |
|
#
?
Jun 16, 2014 08:26
|
|
|
I was also horrified by that singing orange from Sesame Street. There was another bit with a creepy puppet face that scared me: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vVktxm3p7gI
|
|
#
?
Jun 16, 2014 12:50
|
|
|
When I was a kid I was terrified of this soup advert that used to play in the late '80s. And having watched it again just now, I don't actually think it can be described as unreasonable. A turnip head with human teeth, the way every time the farmer looks it's a little closer to the house... those are horror movie elements. I couldn't even listen to the song without being freaked out. That advert ruined 'Singin in the Rain' for me way more than A Clockwork Orange did for most people! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-O9ntO9Fd_s I was also worried that the liquorice Allsorts man was hiding under my bed and would turn me into a liquorice person too, as per this advert  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iZtvhnPzUpM And Punch from the Punch & Judy show. No idea why, but he became a kind of 'arch-nemesis' for me and would occasionally pop up in bad dreams. Stouffer has a new favorite as of 17:49 on Jun 16, 2014 |
|
#
?
Jun 16, 2014 17:26
|
|
|
I drew this dumb comic of my childhood fears
|
|
#
?
Jun 20, 2014 14:20
|
|
|
sweeperbravo posted:Melting Dave from Alvin and the Chipmunks I've actually always been pretty freaked out by distorting faces in general. The music video for "Black Hole Sun" by Soundgarden scared the poo poo out of me when I first saw it, and I was like almost fifteen when that song came out. It probably didn't help that I saw it in the late evening during a weird summer storm, when the sky in real life looked very much like the sky in that video. But mostly it was the stretching, distorting smiles that stuck in my head for days.
|
|
#
?
Jun 20, 2014 18:35
|
|
|
Masonic Youth posted:There's a G.I. Joe cartoon (I think it may have even been a miniseries or at least a multi-part episode) that -- if I'm remembering this right -- involved evil clones of the Joes which would melt when they were "killed". There's one very specific shot where it zooms in on a guy's face as it slowly starts to distort and then drip down into an unrecognizable mass. It freaked me out very deeply as a kid.  I think freaking out is a reasonable reaction to this spectacle.
|
|
#
?
Jun 20, 2014 19:10
|
|
|
Stouffer posted:When I was a kid I was terrified of this soup advert that used to play in the late '80s. And having watched it again just now, I don't actually think it can be described as unreasonable. A turnip head with human teeth, the way every time the farmer looks it's a little closer to the house... those are horror movie elements. I couldn't even listen to the song without being freaked out. That advert ruined 'Singin in the Rain' for me way more than A Clockwork Orange did for most people!
|
|
#
?
Jun 20, 2014 19:21
|
|
|
Pastry of the Year posted:
|
|
#
?
Jun 20, 2014 20:18
|
|
|
When I was little there was a program called Number Time on the BBC aimed at teaching (very, very) basic maths. Episode 10 had a little segment featuring a farmer and his dog...played by a dude in a daft costume and dog makeup. Something about the makeup triggered something in my brain that made Scruff (who until just now I remembered as being called Shep  ) scare the everloving poo poo out of me and I would never watch the show again. This stupid dog and his farmer became my personal bogeymen, who I'd imagine were out to get me and behind every near-miss or accident I had. See this unholy terror at 2:03 in this video.Come to think of it, that dog might be why I had such a strong reaction to Papa Lazarou a few years later. Nothing unreasonable about being scared of that fucker though. The sinister penguin from The Wrong Trousers also terrified me to the point where I had to be seriously cajoled into watching any other Wallace and Gromit.
|
|
#
?
Jun 20, 2014 21:30
|
|
|
Masonic Youth posted:Whoa. I did not even remember the eye popping out. Man, our kids' shows were hosed-up sometimes. Occasional people melting in cartoons scared the crap out of me. In the DTV movie Johnny's Golden Quest, Dr. Zin had cloned cannon fodder monster henchmen that would spontaneously start degenerating. The process was slow and the creature was always still alive and begging for help on its gutter all mutant speak as it happened.  One episode of Pirates of the Dark Water had a sorceress, not the usual expandable non-sentient henchman, make a youth potion out of the titular substance. It worked, but as the episode went on, she aged fast and turned into a purple mush.
|
|
#
?
Jun 21, 2014 05:47
|
|
|
Stouffer posted:When I was a kid I was terrified of this soup advert that used to play in the late '80s. And having watched it again just now, I don't actually think it can be described as unreasonable. A turnip head with human teeth, the way every time the farmer looks it's a little closer to the house... those are horror movie elements. I couldn't even listen to the song without being freaked out. That advert ruined 'Singin in the Rain' for me way more than A Clockwork Orange did for most people! That turnip's a loving cannibal. To contribute, this psychedelic wigout made me hide behind the sofa: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wpxg6U2Yv_4 slinkimalinki has a new favorite as of 11:44 on Jun 21, 2014 |
|
#
?
Jun 21, 2014 11:41
|
|
|
Miss Kalle posted:My parents used to keep a lot more books around the house when I was 4 or 5 or so, and one of those books was Vital Signs by Robin Cook.  HOLY poo poo WHAT IS THIS THING?!?!? My aunt had this book in her home and it terrified me. I didn't know Cujo was a dog. All I saw was this horrific empty eye socket slimy monstrosity.  Loved Raiders of the Lost Ark as a kid, and had this toy. Thought it was awesome, except . . . look in the lower right hand corner. See that mummy? Scared me for years. I wouldn't go rummaging in a small toy box I had because I knew it was in there, and was terrified about coming upon it. And the last one isn't mine, but a couple of months back I was over a friend's house, and his ten year old son and I were talking, and his son mention's the "Bloody Mary" thing he had heard kids at school talking about (You know, "look into a mirror, say Bloody Mary five times . . . "). Well, his mother heard him say this, and see flew into a rage, yelling at him that he was to NEVER do anything like that. It was weird, and frankly, I wasn't going to ask.
|
|
#
?
Jun 21, 2014 12:43
|
|
|
Madra De Dhia posted:I drew this dumb comic of my childhood fears This is adorable 
|
|
#
?
Jun 21, 2014 13:34
|
|
|
kith_groupie posted:Toys with batteries in it can be scary when left to their own devices. Hah, I bought a Clanger hot water bottle cover ages back for cold winter nights as I liked them when I was a kid - squeeze his nose and he'd make Clanger whistles... My then-gf kept stealing him so I bought a 'new old stock' one off ebay as they weren't in stores anymore, but his nose battery was nearly run-down; squeeze and you got a Satanic EEEUUEERRRGGGHHHHH that went on about a minute, not what you want to roll on in the night and activate as she did occasionally. He was 'Demon-Boy Clanger' from then on  Also related: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rNc7JxmrGos HAIL BASSTAN
|
|
#
?
Jun 21, 2014 14:36
|
|
|
Davros1 posted:And the last one isn't mine, but a couple of months back I was over a friend's house, and his ten year old son and I were talking, and his son mention's the "Bloody Mary" thing he had heard kids at school talking about (You know, "look into a mirror, say Bloody Mary five times . . . "). Well, his mother heard him say this, and see flew into a rage, yelling at him that he was to NEVER do anything like that. Is she religious, by any chance? Some Christians (perhaps other religions as well, I'm only familiar with it in Christianity, though) believe that anything involving summoning spirits, like Ouija boards or the Bloody Mary 'ritual,' can actually get the attention of demons and other such nasty things.
|
|
#
?
Jun 21, 2014 14:53
|
|
|
Another thing I was scared of for some stupid reason, was a big plastic moon at the Planetarium. I grew up in Rochester, NY, and my family had memberships to the zoo, MAG, and RMSC/Planetarium. My mom would take us to the zoo or art gallery, but dad used to take me and my siblings to either the museum or the planetarium on his days off. While we waited for the star show, we'd go look at the exhibit hall I remember being like 3 or 4 and my dad holding me up because he thought I'd want to touch the moon, and I just freaked the gently caress out. a rendering:  It was much more realistic looking than I am able to draw, so I was convinced it had its own gravitational pull and would suck me out into space. So strong was my fear, when I went back to Rochester for my fathers funeral, I went to the Planetarium as sort of a nostalgia trip, and that stupid moon still made me uneasy (for the record, that was in 2011, and it was pretty much exactly the same as it was in 1992.)   
|
|
#
?
Jun 21, 2014 19:37
|
|
|
NoneMoreNegative posted:Also related: I much prefer this video. It never fails to make me laugh: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KHx4H6YrLgY
|
|
#
?
Jun 22, 2014 05:18
|
|
|
Madra De Dhia posted:Another thing I was scared of for some stupid reason, was a big plastic moon at the Planetarium. I grew up in Rochester, NY, and my family had memberships to the zoo, MAG, and RMSC/Planetarium. My mom would take us to the zoo or art gallery, but dad used to take me and my siblings to either the museum or the planetarium on his days off. While we waited for the star show, we'd go look at the exhibit hall I love these drawings 
|
|
#
?
Jun 22, 2014 06:18
|
|
|
Last one because I feel bad hijacking a good thread with my lovely drawings. I don't know if anyone else remembers the ~*~dramatic reenactments~*~ The 700 Club did of demonic possessions in the late 80s/early 90s, but my mom ALWAYS HAD THAT poo poo ON TV. I remember one day after watching one of those, I was just sitting in my room having a little freakout about demons (I was about 4 or 5 years old), and our cat had picked an absolutely brilliant time to get the crazy-vrooms. I had passed him snoozing on the banister, and between me passing him and me getting to my room, he had woken up, poofed up his tail, and got the giant kitty eyes. I was CONVINCED he was possessed and spent the rest of the day hiding from him.       In conclusion: 
|
|
#
?
Jun 22, 2014 09:38
|
|
|
The weather alert sound on tv. It would suddenly cut out all sound on whatever you're watching and you hear this horrifying siren. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VPGczKUlgd8 Also when old Macintosh computers had something go wrong, this screen would show up. I think there was also a sound that played with it but I don't recall. 6 year old me would run in terror from this screen. 
|
|
#
?
Jun 22, 2014 10:19
|
|
|
Madra De Dhia posted:Last one because I feel bad hijacking a good thread with my lovely drawings. Honestly, I think anyone with the capacity (and the proper fear) should demonstrate in mspaint. PYWorst Childhood Fear: I drew it, now I can't sleep
|
|
#
?
Jun 22, 2014 13:25
|
|
|
Not "afraid" of this one per se, but I watched the movie "Pee-Wee's Big Adventure" a lot as a kid and there's a part in there where some criminal is on the run from police because he cut the "do not remove under penalty of law" tag off of a mattress. Anyways for quite a long time I was genuinely convinced that this was a SERIOUS crime and that if you, say, were to sneak into a store and remove the tags from mattresses it would make you a criminal and there would be wanted signs with your face all over it and everything.
|
|
#
?
Jun 22, 2014 14:08
|
|
|
This loving scarecrow bastard. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qYhj5yDBfwE&t=140s And this whole loving episode of the Outer Limits. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dwY_eaDxBUE Growing up in the early 90's was hard on a kid.
|
|
#
?
Jun 22, 2014 16:04
|
|
|
When I was a kid the Tate-LaBianca murders happened. Between that and the subsequent trials of the Family, I spent a lot of my childhood being afraid that Charlie Manson was hiding under my bed. 
|
|
#
?
Jun 22, 2014 18:46
|
|
|
Pikestaff posted:Not "afraid" of this one per se, but I watched the movie "Pee-Wee's Big Adventure" a lot as a kid and there's a part in there where some criminal is on the run from police because he cut the "do not remove under penalty of law" tag off of a mattress. Anyways for quite a long time I was genuinely convinced that this was a SERIOUS crime and that if you, say, were to sneak into a store and remove the tags from mattresses it would make you a criminal and there would be wanted signs with your face all over it and everything. You watched "Pee-Wee's Big Adventure" and you were afraid of that? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uzolCu-QLw0&t=70s
|
|
#
?
Jun 26, 2014 18:37
|
|
|
When I was six, my family spent the summer in Australia, and one of the bits of culture we picked up was Dot and the Kangaroo. If you've seen it, you know where I'm going with this. If you haven't, the motherfucking Bunyip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WtrYO-Mog60 fake edit: I just rewatched the video and man, that wasn't an unreasonable fear at all. Whoever made that hated children. (actually, thinking about it, Australian kids' media was all kind of terrifying, with an overarching message of "if you get more than six inches from your parents, you are going to die." Which, to be fair, is a reasonable summary of Australia for a kid.)
|
|
#
?
Jul 19, 2014 20:25
|
|
|
I remember that I was super scared of a Gremlins book. It had an evil gremlin on the cover and it sat in the garage next to the door into the house. I could not look at it or else the book would do... something. I never decided what would actually happen if I glanced at it for too long. It just creeped me out something fierce. I briefly entertained the fear of a sky laser shooting me in the head and turning it to warped charcoal. It could only shoot me when I was outside so I spent a month full sprinting through and away from open outdoor spaces. I picked this up from Captain Amazing's death-by-laser in Mystery Men. I think that part is reasonably creepy for a little kid but I have no idea why it became a sky laser.
|
|
#
?
Jul 20, 2014 08:03
|
|
|
Laocius posted:Brak, for some reason. My boyfriend was always scared of Brak "because he doesn't have lips or gums". His teeth are just one big solid block, which I guess is kinda gross. For me, it was Thomas the Tank Engine. gently caress that googly-eyed bastard. Nowadays I rationalized my fear as reverse-pareidolia. His expression never changed, but the eyes always moved, and always seemed to follow me, especially on those model playsets. When I was little I would make a game out of looking at the front of a car/bus/train and trying to imagine a face: the eyes would be lights, the grill a mouth, side mirrors as ears or whatever. But Thomas the Tank Engine already had a face and I guess it hosed with me. The Chevron claymation car commercials evoked those uncomfortable uncanny valley feelings as well. I remember watching an episode at my Grandma's house, where Thomas crashes into some family's house, and I hid behind her couch for hours. For a few years afterward, I would be in my bed and just about to fall asleep and all of a sudden in my mind BAM THOMAS THE TANK ENGINE OUT OF loving NOWHERE crashing through my room. I was also terrified of my uncle's boxer puppy after she got fixed and had to wear the cone of shame. She would always jump on me and knock me down and after a while I demanded to be picked up by anyone who was taller than me. The cone combined with her obnoxious excitement earned her the nickname "clown dog". Later she turned into a deaf-as-a-post little nugget who enjoyed playing fetch with rocks and was about as smart as a loaf of bread.
|
|
#
?
Jul 20, 2014 21:01
|
|
|
I remember I had a weird thing as a little kid where sometimes I woke up and the entire world had an innately malevolent edge to it for the rest of the day. Like, people's voices, my parents, reporters on the news, every voice I heard had a really detectable sinister undertone. I remember these incidents happening once or twice and it's really weird contemplating it now or describing it, basically the tone of every voice I heard would suddenly universally have a distinct sneering malicious quality to it potent enough to be seriously disturbing. I remember telling my parents, can't remember if I went to a doctor/psychiatrist for it or what the deal was. Unfortunately I can't really remember stuff from TV and so on that unreasonably terrified me as a little kid but I remember at my Montessori preschool we were all terrified of the "roly poly" species that looked normal but didn't roll up. They were like demonic poisonous pretenders and we'd always freak out if we accidentally picked one up assuming it was the legit rolling kind.
|
|
#
?
Jul 21, 2014 00:07
|
|
|
Zopotantor posted:You watched "Pee-Wee's Big Adventure" and you were afraid of that? The clown statue that's put there in place of his bike scared the gently caress out of me, enough that I even didn't try watching it again until I was in middle school. Snuffleupagus' eyes scared the poo poo out of me when I was little. Those long lashes invaded my dreams. I remember one dream where a train crashed into my basement, and it had those big dead muppet eyes, and there were singing muppets (not actual muppets, ones conjured up by my brain) with the same big eyes and big lashes, just singing and looking at me with those loving eyes. I remember another dream where I was walking to school and there were snakes everywhere, and I found the "queen snake", which was a snake with a "crown"-like growth coming out of its head, a trumpet bell mouth that had thin white flower petals coming out of it, and snuffleupagus eyes. It bit me in the stomach with a pair of giant cartoon lips and it scared me so much that I broke down crying about it the next day.
|
|
#
?
Jul 21, 2014 04:09
|
|
|
BumbleChump posted:The weather alert sound on tv. It would suddenly cut out all sound on whatever you're watching and you hear this horrifying siren. The sound was the part that freaked me out as a kid. I think it falls under the same category as emergency broadcast beeps. It was engineered to make you feel uneasy and alert when you heard it. Between the jump-scare of the icon/sound and thinking "oh no, I BROKE the computer mom and dad are going to be so angry" it put me into a panic.
|
|
#
?
Jul 21, 2014 04:41
|
|
|
A lot of my childhood fears stem from the Commodore 64, since I was on it probably way too much. The early "digitized voice" on the C64 was legit paralyzing, especially the voice in Impossible Mission http://youtu.be/ivHFP3dJAkM and this loving laugh, I still can't hear it without feeling nervous: http://youtu.be/ElJNQxgKZPw
|
|
#
?
Aug 15, 2014 16:21
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 27, 2024 22:42 |
|
|
Quad posted:A lot of my childhood fears stem from the Commodore 64, since I was on it probably way too much. The early "digitized voice" on the C64 was legit paralyzing, especially the voice in Impossible Mission http://youtu.be/ivHFP3dJAkM and this loving laugh, I still can't hear it without feeling nervous: http://youtu.be/ElJNQxgKZPw Hi Commodore 64 fears buddy! Playing Friday the 13th. 2 things. 1) The scream whenever someone dies: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dkqDMLXO-mU&t=153s 2) When this appears randomly on the screen with a blood curdling scream, I'd have to basically shut off the system: http://imgur.com/7sTFa1Y
|
|
#
?
Aug 15, 2014 17:10
|
|
