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 once watched an episode of Skippy the bush kangaroo when I was about 6 which involved Aboriginal people playing a didgeridoo to help get a missing girl back home. Don't know why it affected me so much but I have been terrified of this sound ever since.

Around the same time I remember watching an episode of Adventure Weekly where an old lady lived in a windmill. I had nightmares about it for ages. I believe the old lady was Joan Hickson who I loved as Miss Marple.

The headless horseman.

The Zuni warrior in Trilogy of Terror

War of the Worlds musical version with Richard Burton

Jaws

The horror of being a child in the 70s

This picture of Lon Chayney as the Phantom of the Opera which I encountered in newspaper and scared the CRAP out of me aged 8ish

And a scene in an episode of Doctor Who circa 1965 (now lost) with giant spiderwebs in the London Underground.

When I was very you ET terrified me but my gran was always trying to force me to watch it. I would have only been about 3 or 4 🤨.
Jeepers creepers terrified me for years I watched that at about 13 and it scared the shit out of me until I was about 27.
What still scares me now is reading ghost stories, mostly on MN of real people's experiences. That can still keep me up at night.

Level crossings! When I was growing up, there were a number of level crossings without barriers near us, unfortunately, we would have to cross at least two when going in a certain direction, or take a much longer detour. My dad started taking the detour because I became hysterical at the thought of crossing them. I was terrified that we would be hit by a train (a number of cars had been). Even now, I will avoid them if I can.

Rod Hull, Emu and the whole pink windmill gang, terrifying!

Worzel Gummidge and Aunt Sally.....no, no, no and the recent remake is even more terrifying!

Jeepers creepers terrified me for years I watched that at about 13 and it scared the shit out of me until I was about 27

Wewearpink I stopped finding that scarey upon realising that the creature looks exactly the same as the old woman in 'Drag Me To Hell'. Same face makeup - so ridiculous I just couldn't find it scary after that (thankfully!)

Maybe someone can tell me what this is...

There was an episode of a programme (I was 6-8ish and it was daytime after school so I assume it was a children's programme). The programme featured those caricature type puppets like the ones on Spitting Image (which I also cannot watch)
Anyway I think they ran a hotel and the episode was about the woman being in a diet and not eating and she woke up in the night eyes bulging and bloodshot yelling out "fooooooood" in a low voice and then tried to eat some rope, scrabbling about going "nomnomnomnomnom". I was absolutely terrified and bolted out of the room sobbing. I remember my dad cuddling me and trying to reassure me that it was meant to be funny.

It was NOT funny.

No idea what the programme was but I still think about it occasionally. I'm 33 now so this would have been early-mid 90s.

Ant ideas?

@BlueSuedeStiletto Dizzy Heights? www.curiousbritishtelly.co.uk/2015/06/dizzy-heights.html

@DesmondTheMoonbear Ugh yes that's it!!! I don't like puppets anyway and that episode tipped me over the edge!!

I also was and am still very very creeped out by people wearing animal heads. Couldn't go to Disney!

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.

An episode of Strange But True about a ghost named Bill who could move furniture. He was caught on tape speaking and moving a rocking chair! 😨

Yes to the Wheelers and the screaming heads!! 😱😱 I was shown that film by an irresponsible neighbour when I was far too young.

There was a horrible episode of 999 once about a house fire, which trauamtized me.

I had an irrational fear of Frank Spencer from Some Mothers Do Ave Em

And there was a board game called Atmosphere which had a terrifying video that went with it. I wouldn't play it in case I got cursed so would watch the adults play instead, with one eye closed.

Oh and there was an episode of Round the Twist with a terrifying scarecrow that gave chase 😱🙈

Myra Hindley's mugshot. I was terrified of it when I was a child and now as an adult I still can't look at it. I remember as a teenager falling asleep with the TV on and waking up during the night and the mugshot was on the screen with creepy Jack in the box type music and the camera was zooming in. I lay there feeling sick and my heart still drops everytime I see it unexpectedly.

Me too! I remember turning the pages of the paper and the mugshot was right there. Still freaks me out now.

The opening credits from " Tales of the Unexpected"

Yes!

Policemen and cows (got chased as a kid)

The voice of The Mysterons in Captain Scarlet. I was very young & it terrified me

In later years, Ghost Ship film - scene where the man is shaving and looking in the mirror at himself, when all of a sudden his reflection moves. It's his abject terror and hysteria that also scared me silly.

Tales of the unexpected the music especially !

Policemen with guns.

@HelpMeh 999!!! I saw an episode when I was about 10 where I guy got stuck in a lift and decided to try to climb out and fell all the way down the shaft. Obviously he was on because no one died in 999 world, but I was absolutely terrified of lifts for the next 10 years (when I moved into halls of residence, lived on the 8th floor and laziness forced me to get over it!)

I would climb 12 flights of stairs to get to my primary school best friend's flat. Just could not get in a lift. I still freak out a bit if a lift moves when you get in it and my absolute nightmare is getting stuck in a lift.

My dad was a paramedic and pointed out that it was actually the man's own silly fault for trying to climb out of the lift in the first place, but I wouldn't have it. To me the lift was the epitome of evil.

(I'm actually a paramedic now too, so it's all come full circle 🤣)

All i can say i Jim Henson must have really hated kids.The Storyteller is freaky

Chuckie.

I still don't love beds with space underneath them, in light of a scene from the dungeons and dragons cartoon where a vortex to hell opened underneath one at midnight and sucked the occupant in.

I think I saw some crime drama or movie where someone grabbed a woman by the ankle from underneath a car. Still gives me the ick.

Fuck and daleks! And Jaws.

999 for me too! I once saw an episode where a young girl was outside the front of her house. Everyone else was in the back garden and they couldn't hear her knocking, so she tried to squeeze her way between the two houses but got stuck. The more she struggled and screamed the more stuck she became. Thankfully they got her out by smashing the house wall down but it's stayed with me all these years.

I also remember seeing strange but true and a young girl was levitating on the tv. Scared the crap out of me!

I live near a road that's supposedly haunted and apparently she's there on a Thursday. So I avoid that road on a Thursday.

Oh and of course the thriller video. Still gives me the creeps now!