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?

Sunday late afternoon "family" shows like the Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe type things where humans were dressed as animals creeped me out. (Reepecheep or whatever it was called)

There was one which was short stories acted out which was normally involving people dressed as animals which particularly turned my stomach.

There was one episode one Sunday where a Hedgehog man thing had fallen in love with a princess (human) and that was double creep because of an animal being in love with a human.

I seem to remember him saying to her to hug him to take the spell away and turn back into a human but her hugging his spikes killed him!!

Please tell me someone remembers the name of that show!

The Harpies in the film Jason and the Argonauts, I think it was made in the 60s. Also the fighting skeletons that came up out of the ground.
Terrified me.

The boy from Space - Look and Read.We watched it at school.
I was so scared and so were a few other kids.
Even to this day I can remember the fear I felt.

I feel sick!!! I've actually found that hedgehog man thing and it's awful!!!!

Hans my Hedgehog - looks like it was a Jim Henson Storyteller show. It has a hedgehog baby human thing in too [faints]

@Bluebell1995

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

Not sure, I feel like it was in everything at one point. Blazing Saddles, The Moonstone. I read books on how to survive in dangerous situations and the whole Willard Price series, and so things like quicksand and man eating lions felt like as much a threat to me as stranger danger or being run over. I was an odd child

Yes, another for the Disney film Watcher in the Woods! I was terrified but at the same time couldn’t stop watching it

The Cookie Monster on an Atari video game made me cry when I was very little.

The electricity suddenly coming back on after power cuts also made me cry.

@ninecoronas yes! And someone stuck in a lift then the cable broke and down it went! Terrifying

Those public information films where kids would get electrocuted, abducted or drown in garden ponds. There was one I remember vividly where a cookie making grandma would be happily looking after her granddaughter. The child went in the garden for one second, grandma got distracted by her home baking and the kid fell in the pond. Grandma came into the garden and saw her dead body floating downward in the pond and screamed. It was fcking horrific and you'd never see this on tv now but it gave me nightmares for weeks and weeks and used to make me freeze with terror every time it came on tv. That fear has stayed with me and if I saw it now I'd probably have a panic attack.

Its weird isnt it because I can watch all kinds of horror films now and they dont bother me one bit but that?- terrifies me.

@JacksCreation YES I remember that thing! I think there was another episode about capturing death that traumatised my sister, will see if I can find it.

there was no doubt the safety films in those days pulled no punches.
i can remember one a man was carrying his baby im sure thats right and in the hallway someone his mother? had polished the floor and put a rug down. he went flying.
i suppose these days with laminate flooring it would still apply but it was horrible

Here. WTAF.

@JesusInTheCabbageVan

I found the episodes too and it's genuinely turned my stomach!

I'm making Father's Day big breakfast here but I can't eat any now because of disgusting Hedgehog man ☹️

I have a morbid fascination now with the Storyteller series so I am probably going to torture myself by watching it.

That hedgehog thing is awful 😭😂

@Justmuddlingalong

Getting up for a wee during the night, I always imagined the witch that lived under my bed would grab my ankles as I put my feet on the floor. After doing my wee, I was terrified the witch that lived in the toilet, would reach out and grab me as I flushed the loo. I never washed my hands after the loo at night. I would flush, flick the light off, tear along the hall and leap onto my bed from the bedroom door, because the witch under the bed was still waiting... I use the past tense here, but I'm now 50 yo and those witches are still waiting.

That sounds like a first paragraph of a novel Justmuddling. You should write it.

there was no doubt the safety films in those days pulled no punches

Of course the ultimate irony is: most of the presenters on kids 70s/80s TV shows turned out to be paedophiles as shown by operation yew tree

@JacksCreation I've just ordered it for DS8 - I'm a horrible mum

Wasps!

@JesusInTheCabbageVan

Haha!

Your previous link didn't work for me. What was it?

I just looked up the list of characters in the "Hans My Hedgehog" story and have come over with a wave of horror at the memory of this:

First Princess – Refuses to marry Hans and is punished by being pricked by Hans' quills until she bleeds.

😱

I agree with the kite tangled up in the pylons from the 80s. I'm still scared witless about pylons and can't even look at them.
Zammo from Grange Hill. Best drug prevention ever.
Also, the child catcher from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. He is still the most terrifying film character I've ever encountered. Just the thought of him sends chills up my spine.

There was a public information film in the early 80s (when I was around 4 or 5). About wearing a seatbelt. There was a poster version of a woman with cuts all over her face. I had to walk past it to and from school. It still makes me shudder.

The Triffids. I must have seen a little of one of the episodes, and I was very frightened of my mum leaving the house afterwards in case a Triffid got her.

Now whenever I see one of those “Heavy Plant Crossing” road signs I always imagine a load of Triffids crossing the road.

This is reminding me of so many things I was terrified of as a child!
Watched Salem's Lot at age 7 and was terrified of vampires for ages.

The red eyes in Amityville

The threat of nuclear war

The Incredible Hulk TV show for me too naughtymutha. Small kids should not have been allowed to watch that in the seventies. I used to run upstairs to hide.

DM telling me to get back to bed because Jack Frost would be see me. This lead to years of nightmares of a scary man with long spindly legs going from house to house peering in upstairs windows. Thanks mother.

The Weirdstone of Brisingamen, as per the username. The bit where they're crawling through tunnels with the goblins after them and the water level is rising. I don't know whether I would have been claustrophobic anyway but that definitely didn't help!
Marianne Dreams. Ugh. Tried it again as an adult, started nicely and ended in a gibbering ball going hot and cold from fear.
As a teenager, the film Caché. A French suspense thriller watched for study purposes. Blank corridors still scare the shit out of me.
In freshers' week at university, they showed us actual real life footage of a fire resulting from unlicensed pyrotechnics in a club in Australia in which people were screaming and dying on screen. I have no idea why this was considered appropriate to warn us against using candles in our rooms. They did give us a warning, but seemed more interested in the fact that it was one of very few bits of footage of PEOPLE ACTUALLY DYING IN A FIRE. After about 5 people walked out they switched it off, which was good because I was staring at the floor with my fingers in my ears and any longer and I would've thrown up.