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

359 replies

GinJeanie · 20/06/2020 17:26

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?

OP posts:
Thread gallery
15
pinkrain · 22/06/2020 22:42

The elephant man
Eraser head
The Exorcist

No other films scare me !

Sewrainbow · 22/06/2020 22:58

My dh and I were only talking about those public safety films aimed at kids in the 70s/80s the other day, they all scared the living daylights out of me. Kite on a pylon, playing on the railway and the farm one....

They don't make that sort of thing now but maybe they should, they stick in your head!

Lemonmaid · 22/06/2020 23:39

Traction engines. There used to be some at my hometown summer carnival and they were terrifying, and smelt evil.

Tall cranes. Used to be very frightened of them as a child and of walking past them. They still scare me now.

YY to pylons.

OhYouBadBadKitten · 22/06/2020 23:44

70s and 80s public safety films. I'm still utterly terrified of electricity pylons and substations. Everytime I walk under pylon lines I have to rush through at high speed. I hate the crackling and pinprick feeling. I keep trying to get the courage to touch a pylon but I'm convinced I'll die.

OhYouBadBadKitten · 22/06/2020 23:46

oh and 'words and pictures' the one with the jack o lantern man. I still hate pumpkins.

FlappyFish · 22/06/2020 23:58

The Skeksis from The Dark Crystal.

LizzyAnna99 · 23/06/2020 00:01

Peacocks

LizzyAnna99 · 23/06/2020 00:09

OMG also, dalek, nazis and aliens (covered these topics in P6/7 and have the fear they were coming for me) and the piracy video at the start of movies, does anyone else remember it!? So scary

HoppyHop · 23/06/2020 00:12

Chortlon and the Wheelies, completely freaked me out as a child. When it's on those programmes about 1970's TV i still can't look.

TomBradysLeftKneecap · 23/06/2020 00:14

Tsunamis and houses that have hidden rooms.

TomBradysLeftKneecap · 23/06/2020 00:14

And plants that look like triffids.

callmeearly · 23/06/2020 00:17

This....

Northern Ireland TV advert in the 80's
I still think it's bizarre this was on but then nothing was normal in NI in the 80's

InterestingIris · 23/06/2020 00:18

Man hole covers and covered drains.

I can still remember my mum telling me not to stand on them (when I was about 4) in case it wasn’t secured properly and it collapsed and I fell in. I used to have nightmares as a child about falling down drains when the cover gave way and still can’t stand on anything drain/cover like now - i’d walk into the road to avoid one if need be even though I know I’m being ridiculous.

IamPickleRick · 23/06/2020 00:22

Enfield Poltergeist. I lived 3 roads down and it was spoken of locally as 100% real. As an adult now I see that they lied about a lot of things, even the adults, but at the time we all just knew it as the ghost house and everyone knew someone’s uncle who had been in it.

I read the book recently and it was actually quite nice because the author spoke about all the local pubs that aren’t there anymore!

Drivingbuttercup · 23/06/2020 00:30

The portrait on the wall in Ghostbusters 2. The wheelers in the wizard of oz. Terminator 2 where sarah conner sees herself playing with john and the whole world is destroyed. Always thought that was how the world will one day end.

SlightyJaded · 23/06/2020 00:41

Definitely public information films from the 70s and 80s. Especially anything with a slurry pit or quicksand. The idea of suffocating in the dark was the worst thing I could imagine. There was also one about Stranger Danger and his girl has been abducted and is sat on a chair and this enormous shadow of her abductor moves towards her. I have never stopped being scared of him.

Agree with When the Wind Blows and nuclear war in general.

An episode of Hammer House of Horror where some children are having a tea party and a pipe above their heads bursts and blood pours out all over them and the party food. I had nightmares for weeks.

But the worst for me was seeing a huge ship in dry dock. We turned down a road near my grandmas house, and it was there, blocking all the daylight and looming stories high. I just couldn't comprehend the size of it and kept thinking it was going to crush me if I even looked at it. Still hate huge ships.

TheSandman · 23/06/2020 10:24

Probably didn't help that my school and home were in a town with a nuclear power station so I was constantly worried about that blowing up! I could see it from my bedroom window and used to wake up in a cold sweat and stare out of the window to make sure it was still standing!

The Aberfan Disaster.

I was the same age as those kids. A couple of years after the disaster my family moved to the valleys and I could, from my school, see coal waste tips up on the hillsides.

RaraRachael · 23/06/2020 11:08

A story called The Hobyas that was in a school reading book in the 70s. These creatures would creep in to a little girl's house in the middle of the house and do horrible things like cutting her dog into pieces if my memory serves me right. Whoever though that was suitable reading material for 7 year olds wants their head testing.

Terrified me as I thought the Hobyas were going to creep into my house and do horrible things.

bluetongue · 23/06/2020 12:19

Reading When the Wind Blows at the school library. Chills.

There was a display about fire safety at a local agricultural show about the dangers of fire with graphic photos of burned people. I can’t remember they were adults or children but to this day I refuse to even have a candle in my house.

My school had a pair of blackened smoker’s lungs preserved in glass or Perspex in a pen inside classroom window. You would see every time you used the nearby stairs.

jojogoesbust · 23/06/2020 13:03

The Incredible Hulk. The series. The music at the end. Used to make me cry
And watching him change. Still can’t watch now. Terrifying

coronaornona · 23/06/2020 13:06

@ShinyRuby

One of my earliest memories is hiding in the kitchen because I was scared of Ermintrude on Magic Roundabout. We still had a black & white tv so I must've only been 2 or 3.

I was a nervous child & I absolutely dreaded the days we would all have to go & sit in the school hall & watch a Public Safety cine film. The kite in the pylon wires was horrific with the flash of electricity & I clearly remember the railway ones. A pp mentioned the boy not needing his football boots anymore, it still makes me shudder.

When I was about 9, a local youth club had a film night. It was an actual police training film which showed car accidents, stabbings, robberies & more. Being trapped in a dark room with all the other kids was hideous. I shut my eyes & put my fingers in my ears. I got through half of it & looked so ill in the interval that I was sent home. It was the 1970s & a very different world but it's stayed with me all my life & I still hate feeling trapped, I would never go to see a horror film at the cinema.

Other random fears were pylons in general, we had some big ones near us, one really looked like it had a face(!) & I had to take a trip back a few years ago to make myself walk past it, I was still scared but I did it!
Also there was a book in the newsagents with a horrible alien head with brains spilling out, I imagined that looking through the hall windows everytime I went upstairs for years!

My parents were generally unsympathetic to my anxieties & blamed it on an overactive imagination but I think we really underestimate how scary things can be for children.

Yes the pylon one and the railway one. Fucking terrified me for years
Imgladimnotyourchild · 23/06/2020 13:07

Freddy Kruger

IamPickleRick · 23/06/2020 14:30

Yes to When the Wind Blows! It’s the little drawing of the old man with blood running down his chin that stays with me. Chilling.

Also just to say, the fear of AIDS. I will never ever forget that panic, the adverts on tv with a grim reaper. Even when they said to me as an adult when I was pregnant, “we will just do a HIV test” I was 100% panic stricken.

SlightyJaded · 23/06/2020 14:55

@IamPickleRick

Yes to When the Wind Blows! It’s the little drawing of the old man with blood running down his chin that stays with me. Chilling.

Also just to say, the fear of AIDS. I will never ever forget that panic, the adverts on tv with a grim reaper. Even when they said to me as an adult when I was pregnant, “we will just do a HIV test” I was 100% panic stricken.

Yes to the AIDS fear. The tombstones under the sea, the letter dropping through the box, the pictures of skeletal people. Syringes, blood, drugs, sex, death - it was all bundled up together and there was an underlying belief that you or someone you knew was going to die.

I worried myself sick about HIV for years, I had gone out with one 'risky' person for about a year and was on the pill at the time - so no condom.
In the end my mum persuaded me to go for a test as I was semi-hysterical, so I went for two tests but was too scared to go back for results. It wasn't until many years later when pregnant with first DC that I had the test and I had exactly the same reaction as you Pickle - sheer panic that it was going to be discovered.

In fact the NHS test was going to take about a week so in view of the fact that I was about to 'find out', my mum and DH took me to Harley Street to have it done privately and I got the results (neg) the same day. The relief was extraordinary.