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As a kid, I was terrified of the sound the trains would make late at night. I heard the wheels on the tracks and the horn, but I couldn't see anything, so I thought it was a ghost marching band.
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Feb 20, 2014 19:06
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Tater Tot 13 posted:The Emergency Broadcast System! Alter Ego posted:Oh my god, I thought I was the only one. You're watching TV and all of a sudden BZZZZZZZZZZZZT *BEEP* *BEEP* *BEEP* Me too. I think there's a lot of us. Also I was afraid of tornado sirens. I was also irrationally terrified of mold.
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Feb 20, 2014 19:38
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Whenever we went to my grandma's house, I couldn't sleep because of a wall decoration in the form of a giant owl. Scared me to death. In elementary school, I was extremely scared of going to hell and devils (which, in my imagination, looked like overgrown salamanders for some reason) stabbing me with red hot iron forks. I'd lie awake at night and couldn't fall asleep because I was so scared. I have no idea where I picked that up, my parents have always been atheists. Maybe I read something I was too young for.
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Feb 20, 2014 19:40
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According to my parents, when I was a toddler I was terrified of butterflies because I thought they'd eat my nose. I was also scared of football helmets, the Boston Celtics mascot, and any sort of deep or loud noise. I have no idea.
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Feb 20, 2014 20:26
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I used to be terrified of the X-Files theme song. Not the X-Files itself, not the opening sequence visuals, not any of the villains or Scully and Mulder (My parents both liked the show, so I was familiar with it from magazines and such)-- just the song. I'd be somewhere playing while my parents watched TV, and as soon as it came on they'd just hear "Noooo please turn it doooown" from the next room until they muted it. I'd cover my ears, but I knew enough of how the song went that it never seemed to help. I don't even know why I was afraid of a song, I just convinced myself that if I heard it all the way through it'd be bad. "TO BE CONTINUED..." cards were almost as bad. It feels like I grew up in some kind of heyday of 'very special two-part episodes' that were always on. I could not see the ending shot of a show with those three words overlaying some character looking shocked, or have the last shot fade to black and then fade in "TO BE CONTINUED". I'd freeze and feel like I couldn't move or breathe until it was gone. I think this one has something to do with how dire it always seemed-- the idea that things could just cut off and leave the characters in this bad situation forever until someone decided to 'continue'. Maybe I thought real life could do that too or something, I dunno. This was also at about 5. TotalBlammBlamm posted:I was also irrationally terrified of mold.  Mold is terrifying.
Parasol Prophet has a new favorite as of 21:13 on Feb 20, 2014 |
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Feb 20, 2014 21:10
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The old Touchstone Pictures logo looked like a deformed face to me: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zTkiW8XB7dM There was a brief period where I was terrified of Gangster's Paradise, which then became my favorite song for a while. And of course, looking out the window when it's dark out...though to be fair, that's still creepy.
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Feb 20, 2014 21:21
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Toad on a Hat posted:Freaking Ghostbusters. Goddamn, loving Ghostbusters. I remember being super into the cartoon growing up, so my dad took me to Ghostbuster 2 when it came out. I was probably 5 or 6 years old. Something scared me in the theater and he carried me out screaming. Probably not the best move on his part, but meh- live and learn. I had a cat growing up- only pet I ever had until I hit my 20's- and it used to freak the gently caress out and start staring at absolutely nothing, then dart off after the nothing and stalk things I couldn't see. I was CONVINCED that she was seeing ghosts or demons or something but she was chasing them off to protect me. Now that I have 4 of the little furballs, I know they're all just idiots.
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Feb 20, 2014 22:29
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Stringbean posted:I also share the same fear of the Emergency Broadcast Signal and the William Street logo that was shared in the "favorite scary or unnerving article or Wikipedia page" thread. Ah the perfect sound to make people alerted to danger but stay calm and- oh wait, nevermind, let's just make it terrifying and panic-inducing. It still creeps me out today, I feel uneasy for a while after I hear it. OneThousandMonkeys posted:After a nightmare I was deathly afraid of Grover for a while. http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=EzQiQ1pVlN8#t=66 Farecoal has a new favorite as of 22:38 on Feb 20, 2014 |
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Feb 20, 2014 22:32
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Kaboom Dragoon posted:Also, when I was 11, I had terrible flu, hallucinating like crazy whenever I tried to sleep. My mother bought me some comics and game magazines, including a Simpsons Treehouse of Terror comic (the one with the Curse of the Cat People parody, if anyone's familiar). That night, I started hallucinating about missiles tipped with Homer Simpson's face trying to attack me. It freaked me out so much, it was a while before I could actually see anything Simpsons-related without instinctively being nervous. The Treehouse of Horror stuff could be legitimately pretty frightening to kids, I think. I remember being scared to death of one episode back in the day -- the one where the last story is about Springfield Elementary killing kids for meat for school lunches, and there's a final showdown involving a giant food processor followed by an end-of-show gag about people's skin flipping inside out. I didn't have nightmares about it, but I did end up proclaiming at dinner that night that waffle fries "look[ed] like skin grafts." I still don't know where the hell that came from, aside from a flailing kid mind trying to deal with (very silly) body horror for the first time. (I still think this whenever I see waffle fries. It's a problem.)
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Feb 20, 2014 23:10
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HellCopter posted:As a kid, I was terrified of the sound the trains would make late at night. I heard the wheels on the tracks and the horn, but I couldn't see anything, so I thought it was a ghost marching band. I used to be, then I moved somewhere that was right near a major rail line and the sound became so commonplace I learned to ignore it.
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Feb 20, 2014 23:14
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X Files theme song- I was in sixth or seventh grade and watched the show with my Aunt, then started watching it on my own...at the same time my mom started leaving me in the house alone for days or weeks at a time. Cue every noise scaring the poo poo out of me because I was always alone. The show Millenium didn't help. Emergency Broadcast Signal- never scared me as a kid, but unnerved me as an adult because I assume some bad poo poo is going down- and the radio station we use at work plays the signal and never explains it. Local fire station used an air raid signal to dispatch trucks. As a kid I always assumed it was the Russians starting the bombing campaign. This was reinforced by teachers telling me the Fall of Communism was a false ploy to get America to lower her defenses. Giant Ants- I saw part of the movie Them (I think that was the title). It was black and white and had giant stop motion ants eating people and attacking cities. As a kid, I had only seen documentaries in black and white, so black and white=real footage. Fake edit - My extended family lived in a coal town in West Virginia. The coal trucks would drive way too fast on the road in front of the house and to keep us kids from going near the road, my Great Grandmother told us there was a guy who drove around in a coal truck who abducted kids, threw them in the back, raped them and ate them. She was explicit and was always sure to say rape/molest us before eating us. Being raised on a steady diet of Unsolved Mysteries, America's Most Wanted, and Rescue 911, I believed her until I was in my teens and told the story to the next generation of kids. Then I saw the look of abject terror on their faces, and I realised how terrible it was. :-/ I am sure there were tons more, but most were mentioned already. bulletsponge13 has a new favorite as of 23:24 on Feb 20, 2014 |
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Feb 20, 2014 23:17
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Scandalous Wench posted:Also, I can't be the only one who was afraid a shark would materialize in the bathtub if you didn't climb out fast enough. This but with Lobsters. One time when I was about four to six my mum left me alone in our living room as she went off to do something turning on the television for me as she left. It turned onto the movie ET coming off an advert break, that wholesome family classic. I was greeted by the scene where the kid is sleeping in a deck chair in his back garden after leaving sweets for ET. Then he wakes up to see the black silhouette of ET with blinding light coming from behind him. My expression matched the kid's  And then ET started waddling towards him  ET can gently caress right off. Also I had recurring nightmares about elephants chasing me around abandoned back alley ways.
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Feb 21, 2014 00:53
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Pob: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3dqxZo_myyA Also Alf: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BYEotteB1A0 Roland Rat's cool though i got no beef with him.
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Feb 21, 2014 01:00
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poo poo man that one ain't unreasonable.
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Feb 21, 2014 01:02
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That anti-littering PSA from the 70's with the American Indian crying about litter. It always only seemed to come on late during Nick at Night and would scare the crap out of me. That crying Indian was going to loving kill me. Also the sound quality was really bad and blown out, making it even creepier. And it make it worse, my elementary school art classroom had a poster of this crying Indian that I had to see every time we had art class. When I was in 3rd grade, I had gotten a Guinness Book of World Records from the book fair and thought it was awesome. This is before it went all coffee table book with big glossy, colored pictures and graphics on every page. It was just a 500-ish page paperback with some black and white photos occasionally. Well there just happened to be an image of the man with the longest fingernails. Giant four foot long gnarled, nasty fingernails. I thought he was going to come out from my closet and touch me with his gross loving fingernails. My mom had to rip the page out of the book to get me to forget about it. Still freaked me out for a while.
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Feb 21, 2014 01:22
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 The Hell is wrong with you Brits.
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Feb 21, 2014 01:23
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What in the gently caress is this? That's terrifying.
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Feb 21, 2014 01:25
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Toad in the Hat... you're not wrong. Those dogs ruled my childhood fears with an iron fist, I'm an adult now and still legitimately scared of them due to seeing that movie so early. I mean this* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sh5mhrPH3FM is a bit intense when you're 4. *Ignore the video title, only good clip of the scene I could find. Also, the United Artists Logo, something about the small sound at the beginning and the way the logo reveals itself. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kuaJm8_0cZ0
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Feb 21, 2014 01:32
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I was terrified of the episode of darkwing duck where Launchpad gained psychic powers and at the end the bad guy does too, and he become a giant floating brain-head. But since he's thinking as the ray gives him powers he explodes.
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Feb 21, 2014 02:46
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The last part of the original Fantasia scared the poo poo out of me as a kid. As soon as that part would come on I would flee the room immediately.
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Feb 21, 2014 03:15
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Nadir posted:I was really scared of ET as a kid. gently caress that movie and more specifically, gently caress that ride in Universal. My parents knew ET scared me shitless and they still took me on it. They thought it was funny. And by the way, the whole "ride" is just a slow moving car that wheels you around the ET home planet. There are animatronic ETs everywhere and at the end, one of the ETs says goodbye to you in his creepy loving voice and uses your name ("BBBByyyyeeeee Naadiiirr"). I almost started crying right around there. When I was little, I loved the movie E.T. Couldn't get enough of it. My parents assumed this love of the squat extraterrestrial meant I would love to have some sort of physical, real memento of the movie. How very wrong they were. That was when I first knew what it means to be truly afraid. One day my mother gave me a small box. "Open it!" she said with a broad grin. I must have been...four or five at the time. I was in the dining room of our house, so it must have been some kind of a birthday celebration. Was it my own? No idea. For a few years when my siblings and I were all much younger, my parents were in the habit of giving one "consolation" present to the non-birthday child so we wouldn't feel too left out. Yes, we were pretty damned spoiled. But the point is, this could very well have been my sister's birthday and I was receiving my "please don't whine about not getting any presents" present. I opened the box up eagerly. That was when I first knew what it means to be truly afraid. Inside was this:  E.T's benignly smiling, decapitated head. Oh God. Oh. My. God. There were no words to describe that moment. I was too terrified to form any kind of coherent, logical response. What horrible, nameless feeling was this that chilled my bones down to the marrow? Up until then, the only thing that had ever horrified me so much was a short clip that ran on the Disney Channel involving a goofy sort of green monster in the closet of some child's bedroom. This was something new, and unspeakable. Something evil. I became away that my mother was speaking to me. Her lips were moving, but the only sound I could hear was a distant, high-pitched whine that was gradually growing louder. If fear had a sound, that would be it. "Do you want me to put it on you?" Dumbly I shook my head, forced a wavering smile of pathetically inept gratitude. "No, I wanna put it in my jewelry box," I could hear myself saying. My jewelry box? What the hell was I thinking? That was where my beloved treasures were kept safe, I couldn't put this sick abomination from the depths of hell in there. That night, E.T's smug-rear end, bodiless head was hidden carefully under a pile of towels in the dark recesses of the bathroom cabinet. I lay awake that entire night in a cold sweat, waiting for E.T's head to come and get me. Somehow, I made it through to the next morning. At breakfast, Mother wanted to know where my new necklace was. "In my jewelry box," I flat-out lied. "He's making friends with everyone in the room." Oh god, I was giving personality to the nightmare? That was just what it wanted. I could barely stomach my Fruity Pebbles, so overwrought with anxiety of the thought of returning to my room only to find my words had come to chilling existence. E.T's head would be resting on my sunshine quilt, a holier-than-thou glint in its smug plastic gaze. Not even a day had passed since this curse had been bestowed upon me, and I knew I had to take action else live the rest of my life lying, and in constant fear of that drat head. So I did what seemed perfectly reasonable to my young self. Looking back on it, I think it was the best decision I may have ever made. I dug out the accursed necklace from its hiding place, and locked the bathroom room with a grim look of determination on my face. This ended now. I steeled myself to rip the necklace off of the plastic hanger that had been the only thing keeping it restrained from getting me. Now I had freed it. Now I had to act. One, two, three steps, and I was standing over the toilet. "Rot in hell, you sonofabitch," I muttered as I dropped the plastic monstrosity into the water. It plinked on impact, and slowly sank to the bottom of the bowl. (It must have been my imagination, or the reflection of light upon the water, but in that moment of unending time when the necklace was released from from my hand and drifted through the air towards its watery demise, there was a gleam of something akin to unbridled fury in those vacantly staring blue eyes.) With that, I flushed the toilet, forever ending the horror that was E.T's plastic charm head. Later on, I was again asked by Mother about the necklace. I feigned utter ignorance. Pathetic, pathetic ignorance. "I can't find him, Mommy! I think I might have lost him!" That resulted in a quick search around the house, with maybe my sister being half-heartedly blamed for stealing and hiding it. I felt no remorse though, some sacrifices were necessary in the name of preserving order and sanity in the household. When asked if I wanted another one, I quickly shook my head. "No, I just like to watch him on the tv." Yes, E.T on the television screen was just fine and dandy with me. He was behind glass, and a strange fuzzy void my child's mind imagined existed between the VHS film and the actual television. E.T was no threat there, just a frightened little creature that wanted to go home and eat candy. He was no threat at all...until he was brought from behind the glass, and into our world. God I hated that thing.
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Feb 21, 2014 03:20
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When I was about 3 I had a nightmare about my brother getting sucked down the toilet, which triggered this debilitating fear of the toilet for most of my early childhood. It got to the point where if I had to go in an unfamiliar toilet, I would refuse and go outside instead. My brother took advantage of this by locking me in the bathroom at new places and holding the door shut. I was CONVINCED I was going to get sucked down. I was also really scared of our Teddy Ruxpin. Missus Dill has a new favorite as of 03:24 on Feb 21, 2014 |
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Feb 21, 2014 03:22
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Hirudo posted:I was also really scared of our Teddy Ruxpin. I don't trust people who weren't scared of Teddy Ruxpin as a kid. That doll was an exercise in terror.
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Feb 21, 2014 03:33
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http://youtu.be/rbBX6aEzEz8?t=11s X-files Opening, specifically the part with the distorted face. Had to close my eyes for that portion. It's unreasonable in the sense that the episodes themselves did not cause nearly as much distress.
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Feb 21, 2014 03:49
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Zombies in children's cartoons scared the poo poo out of me and I would refuse to watch them in reruns (and man, did I watch a lot of reruns of stuff). Courage the Cowardly Dog is notorious for scar(r)ing its target audience, but the only villain that truly shook me was this motherfucker right here:  I don't think I even made it through the first Benton Tarantella episode when it came on. It was the second short in a 22-minute block and I always turned the TV off if I saw the opening credits for it in reruns. I think I finally watched it a year or two ago and it was pretty amusing. Then Powerpuff Girls had their Halloween episode with this creepy bastard:  I was able to watch that one but I took a while to come around to it. Dude gave me goosebumps. There was also an episode of Hey Arnold! where Arnold had a dream sequence in which he and Gerald are still refusing to speak to each other as elderly men. His Grandpa is still alive, but clearly like 180 years old and a walking corpse with creepy eyes. He says something and his jaw falls off, and it still freaks me the gently caress out. I will not watch the video but here it is for anyone curious: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DRGogGbYaLU
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Feb 21, 2014 04:12
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When I was really little like 4 I was afraid of a cow. Not all cows mind you. My room was across the hallway from the bathroom on the top floor. For some reason I was scared of a cow silhouette camped out looking up at me from the stairs. I also managed to see Child's Play at a really young age and was scared of that loving doll. To make it worse there was an oldschool toy, the little wooden "doll" type things where you pull a string to move their arms and legs, hung right across from my bed. Whenever I'd wake up I'd look up and see this insanely happy looking thing grinning back at me. I used to convince myself to have staring contests with it to prove it wasn't real. One night when my window was cracked open I was staring at it and IT MOVED. Ever so slighty (thanks wind) but you're god drat right I noticed. Lastly the dude on the Quaker Oatmeal box creeped me out. Not really a fear, I wasn't afraid of him coming into my room and saying "hey kid I'm here to sell you decent tasting cereal" but I wouldn't look at the box in the store.
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Feb 21, 2014 04:31
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Electric razors. But for a really stupid reason. I can't find evidence of this anywhere but I remember seeing--and I'm positive it was on "A Current Affair"--some little joke video about a chinchilla who went around shaving people's heads in their sleep. Except to my paranoid childhood mind, this meant that the chinchilla was going to slit their throats. I refused to let an electric razor anywhere near me until college when I finally got a pixie haircut, and even then I almost had an anxiety attack because of a stupid goddamn chinchilla puppet. And not mine, but my sister used to be terrified of the song "Feelings" by Morris Albert. She'd cry hysterically every time she heard it. It probably doesn't help that once we figured it out (we being me and my parents) we'd sing it when we were bored to get a rise out of her. ETA: Maybe it was "Hard Copy." It was one of those two. Tlacuache has a new favorite as of 05:18 on Feb 21, 2014 |
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Feb 21, 2014 05:15
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I'm really glad im not the only one who got freaked by Ghostbusters! I just remembered another one too. If you've seen the movie "Labyrinth", there's the initial scene with the Fireys right before they start their Chilly Down song where one of them jumps out from behind the tree screaming its head off. No matter how many times I watched that movie, I would freaking jump out of my seat when the one came screaming from behind the tree. It was unreasonable because for as many times as I watched the movie as a kid I should have known it was coming, but it still got me. For reference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kiUt5HuW3xc starts a few seconds in The movie itself is enjoyable, but god drat to a little kid the Fireys were way more scary than they had any right to be Seth Pecksniff has a new favorite as of 05:53 on Feb 21, 2014 |
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Feb 21, 2014 05:47
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I watched a ton of Sightings as a kid on TV, but was always creeped out by the alien in the intro. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=79HmgT9pbvI
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Feb 21, 2014 06:04
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When we lived in our first house, up until I was about 5, my mum had hung a picture of a cartoonish-looking lion running out of some woods towards the viewer (Think Monty Python's Holy Grail, shot of John Cleese as Sir Lancelot running to attack the wedding) right opposite my bed. Always used to swear that the lion was closer every time. Around the same time, I had a nightmare about a crow or a raven coming in through the back door of the house and attacking me. Cue irrational fear of those birds for a good year or so. Oh yeah, and worms and snakes. Not so much the worms any more, but i'll be damned if i'm going near any snake.
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Feb 21, 2014 06:11
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Feb 21, 2014 06:15
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The goddamn DIC logo. A friggin' meteor is crashing through your window, kid. Wake the gently caress up!
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Feb 21, 2014 06:20
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I had a few things that I remember while growing up. In the Haunted Mansion at the Magic Kingdom, the attic and graveyard(still has them today) scenes had these heads that would pop up every few cars. I remember always hoping it wouldn't happen on my car. Even after riding the ride 20 or 30 times over several years, they would still startle the younger me. I know that was their intended purpose, but it seems strange to think that it was something that took a long time to grow accustomed too. The Elephant Show https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y5n7f_dshSc&t=8s I couldn't have been older than 4 or 5, but after seeing this I would be afraid of gorillas coming and taking me away. I remember being afraid to go downstairs to our living room alone for a year or so after seeing the video. Actually, I had an unrelated nightmare in a completely different house about where the unfinished side of our basement became a factory run by gorillas. I was also afraid of the singing animatronics at Chuck E. Cheese's(rightfully so), one of which was a gorilla. Dad also had a gorilla mask that was scary too. I know I didn't find that until after I had seen the Elephant Show though. Its strange thinking about it now, because I never would have said I was afraid of gorillas, just a few chance associations. We had this large cardboard or heavy paper skull that mom and dad would hang up for Halloween. It was bright green with orange glaring eyes. It was usually on a closet door or something, but I would have trouble going near the door it was taped to. I saw too many scary movies at a young age, but I think I enjoyed it to an extent, despite the terror it caused with my imagination. Most of my favorite movies now are movies that scared me when I was little. I agree on Ghostbusters, but I still loved it. The library ghost, and the terror dogs. I saw Poltergeist when I was 8 or 9, at the same time as my younger sister. It didn't mess me up as bad as it did her. She had a larger closet in her room, which also had a light. It was probably 3 or 4 years after the fact, when she would finally consistently sleep in her own room. Mom and Dad wound up having to buy a bunkbed for my room, because of this issue. One of the things in Poltergeist that stands out nowadays is the first scene with the clown doll. For those who haven't seen it; Robbie, the young boy, throws a jacket to cover up the clown doll, thus hiding it from view and keeping him safe for the night. When I saw Poltergeist, I hadn't seen Star Wars yet, so seeing this hairy sharp-toothed monster was much more frightening than the clown doll. 
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Feb 21, 2014 06:26
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 This takes a bit of explanation. My father worked in a post office, where there were FBI Wanted posters all over one of the walls. So when I was maybe 4-6 or so, I thought seeing this sign in a window anywhere else meant "Help! We've spotted a Wanted man on the loose nearby!" and I was terrified to go anywhere near a place that had one. Obviously since the sign wasn't always in the window of diners and stores, it was only put up for emergencies, and the black and red color scheme obviously meant immediate danger. One time I made my own help wanted sign out of paper and crayons, and my dad thought it was clever, but when he asked why I made that I said something like "Just to be safe." 
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Feb 21, 2014 06:35
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I just remembered some others. The telephone operator voice. As we all know, when you leave your phone off the hook for a bit you'll hear "if you'd like to make a call please hang up and dial again...". Anyways the phone to my house rang and rang and rang, I got to it right before the answering machine picked up. It's my mom, great. Conversation goes on for a few seconds when that voice starts playing over my moms voice. Then the tone plays over that. I freak out because this poo poo ain't normal and I slam the phone back onto the hook. Cue the phone ringing because my mom is wondering why I hung up. Cue me bawling in a corner far away from said phone. Come to think of it, it still sends shivers down my spine when I hear it.
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Feb 21, 2014 06:37
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My grandmother had (still has) one of these hanging on her living room. It's about 2 feet tall or so and creeped my siblings and I out. Still does, actually.
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Feb 21, 2014 07:07
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Stairs posted:I was terrified of uncovered windows at night, even going as far as using a sheet to cover mini blinds because there were teeny holes where the strings go that someone might peep through. To this day I hate blinds and use thick curtains. I was also terrified of the America's Most Wanted and Unsolved Mysteries themes and background music. I also hid under the covers in case I woke up in the middle of the night and have one staring at me.
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Feb 21, 2014 07:15
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I remember when I was a kid and was watching PBS as I would normally do, the signal cut out one day and there was a picture of a blank face figure holding a sign that said something to the effect of "WE ARE EXPERIENCING TECHNICAL DIFFICULTIES - PLEASE STAND BY". This scared the ever-living poo poo out of me, I had no idea what was going on but I guess I assumed it was something really, really sinister. And I also knew that blank-faced motherfucker had something to do with it too. Looking back on it, it seems ridiculous, but it seemed legitimately terrifying at the time. Also put me down as another one who got/sometimes gets freaked out by emergency broadcast tests. This will sound really weird, but I used to get freaked out by those little emotion-indicating faces in the original Roller Coaster Tycoon. I think that started one day when I was playing and clicking on guests and I suddenly saw this dude whose face was loving RED and it looked like he was about to MURDER someone. I had never seen that face before and it freaked me right the gently caress out. I guess I thought the game was out to get me personally after that, subconsciously, cause I had recurring nightmares about all of these hosed up roller coaster tycoon guests and their dark facial expressions. I remember one dream in particular there was this slightly-off face that a guest would make that indicated that they were about to literally kill people. Yikes I didn't mean to wander down that road again. 
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Feb 21, 2014 08:38
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Ah, childhood fears, thy name was Legion in the Boods household. We moved to a more rural area when I was just going on 6 (around 1970/71), and I overheard a conversation between my parents and the house's previous owner about tornadoes and hurricanes. I became convinced everytime dark storm clouds piled up over the northwest a hurricane was coming to take the roof off; every passing airplane at night was a tornado on its way to gently caress up my poo poo. We had oak panelling in the living room, beautiful stuff. One board had a magnificent knot in it; the board was actually two halves, side-by-side, of an original single board, which meant that the knot was doubled/mirrored. The resultant shape had huge bug eyes, a pointed head, and appeared to be wearing a flowing dress as it hovered on the wall (it covered about two feet of the wall), just watching and waiting to leap out and get me. Nearly 40 years later my brother dug up some photos of us at Christmas, playing at the foot of the tree in front of that wall, and instead of looking at myself in my footy pajamas playing with my new Velvet and Chrissie dolls, I zeroed in on that goddamned spectre still taunting me four decades later. ABC-TV (US) used to show batshit insane scary made-for-TV movies in midweek and Saturday nights. A lot of them are on youtube now, and they're still pretty crazy stuff; I've re-watched a few, and it's astonishing that poo poo was on tellie at 8pm, &c. I used to be scared simply by the trailers of these films; the grand champion, worth several-years-nightmare fodder was the third part of a triology written by Richard Matheson (who became one of my favourite authors from high school onwards). I give you, The Trilogy of Terror starring Karen Black. If you're of a certain age, you know the one -- with that goddamned troll doll. We're powering through Star Trek (TOS) as my husband got the box set for Christmas. I haven't seen them since I was a kid, but remember them affectionately because it was one of the few times my oldest brother and I had time together. There wasn't a single episode that didn't have something in it that frightened the piss out of me -- the rock monster protecting its babies (bullpoo poo that it went on to help those miners; it went back to eating them the minute Capt. Kirk and co left, and you know it. As a grown up, though, I sided with the monster this time around)). The lady who was actually a salt monster attacking Dr McCoy. Those flappy jellyfish things that squeaked and attacked Mr Spock. That box that blind Diana Muldaur looked into. Nomad. The flying horn o'plenty that zipped through space eating whole planets -- thanks, Mr Spock, for suggesting there might be hundreds of the fuckers floating around. I think with Star Trek it was especially the one musical cue that set me off (it accompanies the planet eater, for example}. My oldest brother used to reassure me, that if Capt Kirk didn't slay the monsters, then he would gently caress their poo poo up for me. I know he was telling the truth, because my other brother tried to take advantage of my fear of the dark + the troll from Trilogy, waited until I was getting ready for bed one night, and went outside to press his face up against my window. My oldest brother then swiftly went outside, caught the culprit, and beat the piss out of him. I was also convinced that fiddle-head ferns were some sort of outer-space creature (once they pop out of the ground, they grow really fast, like, noticeably fast over the course of a day.) Finally -- airplanes. When I was tiny, I thought they were actual, living beings, and that any smaller plane passing over the house might see me, and swoop down and get me. I suspect that fear comes from the old DDT-spraying planes that would swoop across the beach every evening (Fenwick Island, DE, late 1960s) that convinced me planes were somehow alive and out to get me. Sorry about the wall of text! I was such a weird kid. Ms Boods has a new favorite as of 10:00 on Feb 21, 2014 |
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Feb 21, 2014 09:51
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| # ? May 2, 2024 13:36 |
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This episode of Courage the Cowardly Dog:
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Feb 21, 2014 10:08
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