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?

Those safety ads were made to traumatise clearly!

I vividly remember lots of the Think! adverts. One with a woman thinking she's being followed but it's her not wearing a seatbelt that kills her. One in a pub where he hits a woman. And the worst was the one where a man kept seeing the child he'd killed under his desk etc. Gives me shivers just thinking about it!

Also the NSPCC advert with the puppet children and Thriller as others have mentioned above!

This.

Oh, AND, the don't drink and drive advert that had 'in the summertime' playing while a gormless man was driving drunk, crashed and his head was bleeding on the steering wheel as he lay there dead.

I was 8 when that advert regularly showed on daytime television.

A programme that was on in the 80's where some big things were taking over the world and possibly shooting people. It's a vague memory but I know I was petrified of it.

The cyber men.

All the public service adverts, especially the welly one posted above. I used to be too terrified to move on escalators and also paranoid in case there was a gas leak.

My Great Gran's toilet. It was an ancient high level cistern, the porcelain was all crazed and limescaley which seemed filthy and the flush was so loud. I hold the chain as close to the door as I could to pull it then run away singing loudly to mask the noise.

I used to hate going to get a drink of water at night and looking out of the kitchen window in the dark in case someone was looking back at me.

I watched the silence of the lambs at a sleepover aged about 13/14 and had nightmares for years afterwards. I was the same when I watched the Texas chainsaw massacre in the cinema aged 18. Then decided I can't 'do' scary films.

Michael Jackson's thriller video. Still freaks me out now 20+ years later

We watched Threads in Humanities, and I would have described it as sobering rather than scary.

I mean, surely you knew there'd be a nuclear bomb one day (unless we got very lucky)? It was always being talked about.

(Mind you, I've never understood why people are scared of clowns...)

Armchair thriller ending quiet as a nun. I watched it recently on YouTube and it was still quite scary imo

Jaws.
i watched it as a 5 year old and it set my shark phobia off ! I can watch it now but won't dip more then a toe in the sea. Ironically my daughter is fascinated by them and finds my phobia hilarious.

@mogloveseggs urgh, that's just brought it all back- a made-for-tv film called the Great Los Angeles earthquake in the early 90s, watched it at a sleepover and my mum had to come and get me, it shit me up so badly! I seem to remember people trapped in rising water...

Quicksand, no idea why but it seemed like a real danger when I was a kid, no one seems to talk about it anymore. Also spontaneous human combustion

@Tashalburrows

Jaws. i watched it as a 5 year old and it set my shark phobia off ! I can watch it now but won't dip more then a toe in the sea. Ironically my daughter is fascinated by them and finds my phobia hilarious.

Yep! I was far too young to watch it and clearly recall hiding behind the sofa during it. I've had a lifelong interest/irrational concern about great white sharks!

Also, Worzel Gummidge I still cannot look at him.

Ooh I'd forgotten about quicksand. And plugholes! And the toilet flushing. And the Invisible Man. And spontaneous combustion...

I used to hide behind the sofa when the Incredible Hulk was in transition. I was fine with him being green but it was the bit where the camera would zoom in on his eyes and the high pitched music. I haven't watched in years and not sure I would.

Also child catcher
Also Salem's lot (have to have curtains pulled to this day)
And still can't put foot outside bedsheets in case something under the bed gets me like the bogeyman
I'm 47 years young

Oh yes, 'A Candle In Her Room'.
I also add to this 'Midnight Is a Place', brain bleach needed for the image of a small factory boy almost crushed by a metal carpet press that smashes down to glue fibres to carpet.
And the horribly fascinating detail of a sentence about some relations of phosphorus handlers (in jobs as safety match makers) who recalled 'luminous vomit' piling in the gutters on routes home from the factory because of the chemicals and their (major, carcinogenic) danger.

This book. Still makes me shiver now.

I have a very strong memory of some collectible cards that came free with tea bags. Just had a quick google and they may have been the "Unexplained Mysteries" series from PG Tips.

I think there was a spontaneous combustion one, and also one where there was an extra limb in a picture of a group of people that didn't belong to anyone. I can't remember why but something set me off in this habit that every time I passed a mirror I'd have to touch my face, just to make sure the mirror reflected me properly. Just the thought of it now makes me shiver, even though I can't remember exactly why it started.

Starsky and Hutch- there was a serial killer who dressed like a vampire, there was one scene where he ran across a car park towards a woman, I still can’t go in a car park alone after dark and I’m 55!

Ghostwatch with Sarah Green. Mr Pipes had me shaking in my bedroom with fear!

Threads.
I still remember one scene with some guy in a street looking up and seeing the mushroom cloud saying 'they've only gone and bloody done it' or something like that.Then he wets himself.
It was the ordinariness of the people that did it.
With Thatcher and Reagan I was perpetually scared every night. For about 5yrs!. Esp when we had a power cut!
I remember once they tested the air raid sirens., wow, that is a horrible sound.
Also,not test card, but the beeeeeeeep sound at the end of the day. Flatline!
I think I had an end of the world complex.

Ok, just rtft.

At least I'm not the only one traumatised by Ghostwatch.

Also very much agree with spontaneous human combustion. Read that in many (children's!) library books. Why were we allowed to read that stuff?

And the public health information video about train tracks. The boys football boots. Shocking really, but it worked.

Quicksand fear; was that anything to do with the horse who died in the never ending story film?

I really did t like Willy Wonka, Gene wilder creeped me out as a child

Never knew the Waltons covered Poltergeist activity, wow, just googled the heck out of that and learned it seems to have been made as a Halloween special but still - The WALTONS- is nothing sacred anymore???

Next you’ll be telling me that Ma & Pa Ingles called in an exorcist in one of the episodes of Little House on the Prairie!

Totally concur with spontaneous human combustion theory too, every time i feel a bit hot & bothered for no discernible reason this springs to mind!

Also, Nightmare on Elmstreet, the thought that not even sleep was safe was and is a disturbing one.

Pet Cemetary (first incarnation) too which was a right of passage to watch in my teenage years.

Can’t abide horror films as an adult, all subjects must be contained in the ‘Puppies & Cushions’ Category after 9pm if i am to get to sleep :)

All the public safety films of the 70s including Charlie Says but Apache really worried me. I was prone to anxiety anyway but this catapulted me into OCD which is still a problem and I'm bloody 50!

@Happymama24

I really did t like Willy Wonka, Gene wilder creeped me out as a child

Completely agree re Gene Wilder, very creepy.

Him and another creepy actor on On The Buses. Shudder.