Things which scared you as a kid and have stayed with you...

[GinJeanie]

I’m talking about things which scared the bejeezus out of you at the time and you would still hate to encounter as an adult- no doubt irrationally. I have two examples and suspect if I revisited them, they wouldn’t be as bad as I remember. I won’t though - still too scared!
The first is a book called A Candle in Her Room. It’s about some sisters who have an vile, evil wooden doll in their house and horrible things keep happening to them. It was a children’s book but I found it terrifying. I’m a middle-aged woman but NOTHING would make me read it again. The thought makes me want to vomit.
The second is a public safety film called Apaches which was shown in the 1970s. It involved a group of children dying one by one on a farm (all had horrible accidents)... I know I will never watch that film again even though it’s readily available on YouTube. My terror is too great.
Anyone else?

I remember as a kid on a caravan holiday watching a film which involved people getting trapped in a telephone box. They couldn't get out and no one would help. Eventually, a truck came and carried it off to a warehouse which was full of telephone boxes with corpses in. I've no idea what it was called but it has haunted me ever since!

I couldn't bear to see children being smacked in public, often seen in the 1980s; I used to run and hide if I could see it was imminent (and then be in danger of being smacked myself). Thankfully it's now very rare to see it.

Lots of replies on here about ghosts, and Strange but True. As a child I was proud of knowing which things were real and which things were made up, and I definitely put ghosts in the latter category; but it was a bit of a shock (aged 10) to find out that many adults do believe in them quite seriously. We then got a "factual" Usborne book All About Ghosts, which had some scary pictures, including the one-eyed dog Black Shuck. My brother and I used to debate hotly whether ghosts were real; he was once delighted to visit Pluckley in Kent, the village with a dozen ghosts, although he was disappointed not to see any.

Cellars and scorpions.

@LittleMissEngineer I too used to be terrified about lighting matches, because I was afraid of burning myself; also holding candles and wax dripping on my fingers, something I had to do occasionally at church. My mum was so worried that I wouldn't be able to light Bunsen burners when I started secondary school, that she made me light candles regularly when I was 11.

I overcame that one eventually, but I'm still very uneasy about lighting our fondue set which has a methylated spirit burner; I can hardly bring myself to put a match to it.

Another one for Ghost Watch! Even though I know it was fake, it still scares me.
The scotch tape advert with the skeletons
The safety advert about sparklers with girl with her fingers all bandaged up.
The eggcups at the end of tvam

Oh and the song Act of Contrition by Madonna. I bought the Like a Prayer tape as a child and I was not expecting her to start shouting at the end of the song! I ran out the room and never listened to that song again!

The films IT and Jeepers Creepers 😱 still scare me now.

@loopylindazdaughter Chased by police, cows or both?

Remembering more...

Old fashioned illustrations in children's book - Alice in Wonderland terrified me, and Edward Scissorhands.

The Moomins.

*books

So many on here already mentioned, funny how the same things crop up so often. The black riders in the lord of the rings cartoon stabbing the empty beds used to terrify me, despite loving the film. Also loved ghostwatch, I remember watching it in my parents room as I didn't have a tv in my bedroom, it was so scary. I couldn't watch the never ending story when I saw the horse in the quicksand I left the room and have never watched it since as I found it so traumatising! I used to love the storyteller and had completely forgotten it until this thread, just looked and can get it on amazon prime so I'll definitely rewatch that. Strange but true was great too.

Robert Stack,Unsolved Mysteries.It was his voice and coming out of the fog.

We didn't have a tv, so I missed a lot of this.

What I saw of the daleks never bothered me. However there was one image from Dr Who which is burned into my brain - Tom Baker turning into a plant. I left the room, walked out of the house through the kitchen announcing "I'm going home!" and ran back to my Mummy...

I was five years old. I don't know whether it was the end of an episode or the beginning of one

In the decades following, I would occasionally meet someone who declared his [always] fondness for Dr Who. I would then tell this story as it was really my only experience of the programme.

He would invariably confidently pronounce "oh yes, The Green Death."

The Green Death is a Jon Pertwee story, and nobody turns into a plant. I mean, for fuck's sake people have you listened to a word I said?

I have a strong suspicion that my husband thought I'd imagined it. He had no recollection of the scene and we couldn't work out what it was. It was something of a surprise to him when we were watching - erm something, possibly one of those 100-best style programmes, only entirely devoted to Dr Who - and an image appeared on screen of Tom Baker, right in the middle of turning into a plant...

(and I've realised that I've forgotten what the story was called. never mind)

When I was about 5 I watched the old black and white film, Rebecca which starred Joan Fontaine. Dear God! The bit where Mrs Danvers burns in the house fire - her silhouette in the flames still makes me shiver- and I am terrified of dying in a fire because of this.

Does anyone remember Brer Rabbit (Enid Blyton)? Scared the shite out of me.

Jaws

Was Brer Rabbit Enid Blyton? It's an American folk story originally.

I was scared of Jeremy Bentham.

My parents took me to UCL as a child and showed me his freaky preserved head. God, just why? Our hallway at home had an extralong airing cupboard with sliding doors that ran almost the whole length of the corridor and I always used to imagine Jeremy Bentham's awful dead waxy head sloooowly and silently sliding back the doors to look at me if I went to the loo in the night.

Jeremy Bentham should be illegal.

Merryhouse I think the Doctor Who story you are talking about is called Meglos.

Ha, I see there was an EB Brer Rabbit book! We had the old Joel Chandler Harris one.

The adult spaceman from The Boy From space that was shown in schools in the 1980's. I was terrified. Yy to all the public safety films of the 70's and 80's. I also remember a couple of terrifying parts of Murder Mystery and Suspense that was shown in the 80's.

@BrandyandBabycham have you seen one of the baby dolls that can 'breathe'? That rendered me speechless - was being carried/hauled around by a very small girl when I first saw one, and it was a really surreal moment.

Remembered one of my earliest memories when we had stopped somewhere idyllic on holiday and I got out of the car with my Mum to look at an open panel that showed you the machinery of an old mill at work. It was all very dusty (flour?) and among the pistons and stuff was some kind of bellows made out of a large red rubber bladder. It had a black and jagged hand-sized hole in it as it was pumping, and Mum whispered in my ear "A mouse has nibbled a hole in that." For some reason I was terrified enough to leap up on her like a koala. I think I had interpreted it as …'and that will probably break the whole lot,' and thought it was all about to malfunction!

@Augustgirl

When I was five to about seven , I was traumatised by being allowed to watch the cartoon version of x files which always started with a woman watching tv and then the next thing you see is colours flashing in her living room and she starts screaming ( something came out of the screen).

I also watched a film aged 7 (can't remember what it was called) where a deranged man takes out a scientists eye using some kind of pick , because he needed it for the eye scanner on the door.

As a teen, watching scary films on sleepovers (the others- the scene when the kids were hiding in the wardrobe) Jeepers creepers , sleepy hallow etc.

Your film with the eye on a stick is probably Demolition Man

There’s lots of things I remember being scared of as a kid but they don’t scare me now. ET is a hideous film, I have no idea why people like it - it’s not a cute alien and the end when ET and Eliot are connected and he almost dies....Terrified me.

I do wonder if I saw something on (maybe) 999 or something that scared me, because I am really claustrophobic. I’m ok in big lifts but little ones no way. I watched a short clip of a bloke exploring a cave the other day and I’m not joking when I say I burst into tears .

The video of Pink Floyd's 'Another Brick in the Wall' came out when I was about 4yo and I saw it on TOTP and ran out of the room screaming. Wouldnt go upstairs on my own for weeks afterwards.

I've only ever seen tiny clips of it since and wondered what the fuss was about so last week I actually pulled it up and watched the whole thing on YouTube.

It was bloody terrifying, possible even moreso 40 year later as not only does it look grim, but you understand the meaning behind it.

@merryhouse is this what you remember?

Twilight zone movie, I was aprox 8 and too young to watch but the girl with no mouth and the big horror bunny thing in the last story!!! Nope!! Gave me nightmares as a child and still hate now even though I'm a massive horror movie fan.