Things that absolutely terrified you as a child.....

[lisaJN1986]

And still scare you all these years later?

I'll start... 😂

Cybermen

The child catcher from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, obviously!
Tales of the Unexpected tv show.
Pylons
Threat of nuclear war
The image of IRA terrorists in their balaclavas
My brother was petrified of Rod Hull’s Emu 🤣🤣

Do you mean Timothy Claypole??
As I recall, he was a sort of jolly, bearded ghost. I don’t remember any of Rentaghost being scary.. The most notable thing was Audrey from Corrie as Mrs Meeker!!

@lisaJN1986 was the book Strange Stories Amazing Facts? It was a purply Readers' Digest book with lots of stories about spontaneous combustion, lightning fireballs, ghosts and most terrifying of all ghost faces that came through the floor! My brother and I scared ourselves shirtless reading it and in the end my parents confiscated it.

I see I'm not the only one to remember the Sapphire and Steel with people trapped in a photo.

I was a child in the 70s and some of the so-called children's TV shows and the public information films were properly scary. Chocky, I remember and being so frightened of pylons.

Public safety videos - particularly the firework ones

The terrible noise made by steam railway engines as they drew to a halt. Still frightened by very loud noises

God, my dad did the same as I was thought the whole thing was electrified. He didn't pretend to be electrocuted - I think he thought he was reassuring me. But I remember I was screaming.

Was coming on to post that it was Strange Stories, Amazing Facts. I rescued it when clearing my mother's house and my youngest then became obsessed with it 😁

Jason and the Argonauts.

Sharks
Cybermen
The dark

Oh and clowns!

A Great White shark has been observed off the coast of Scotland before!

Pretty much all of Return to Oz... the wheelers, the heads in cabinets, the pumpkinhead, the electroshock therapy and the Nome king in particular.

Trees.
No idea why

@ThisIsNotAFlyingToy my brother and I were completely obsessed with it too.

Jeff Wayne's War of the Worlds...
At nursey age I would hide behind the sofa looking at the artwork/booklet in the cd case while it was playing.

Nightmares for years and still cannot listen to a whole song.

The turning of the cylinder... the ooolllaaa... 😖

Me too! I remember when I was about 7 they showed us this short film at school of a boy who climbed up a pylon to get his kite and it electrocuted him, was petrified especially when you can hear them crackling sometimes I always thought I would get zapped.

Jaws. For some reason they had it on for us at primary school on one of the last days of term when I was around 9 scared me to death, I had nightmares about that body that popped out from under the rocks. Over 40 years later I can still see it clear as day in my head. I also thought that a shark would come up the toilet or plug hole in the bath, this must have been for a good six months.

This, especially the hedgehog boy episode

Clowns & ventriloquist dummies.

We used to go to Water Palace all the time as kids. It was flipping awesome. As an adult, I'm not surprised to hear it was lethal. I was always wary of the wave machine grate. You could swim right up to it and I'm sure you could be sucked in. Every pool I've been to that has a wave machine in more recent times has an area of the water roped off to stop you getting too close.

It's a shame they couldn't have refurbished it to make it safer as it was brilliant there and I've never been able to find anywhere that comes close that serves a community rather than a holiday park.

My own personal fear was the Wheelers in Return to Oz. The noise they made was particularly terrifying.

Pylons and their wires make me uneasy and I once refused to even view a house based on there being a pylon basically in the garden next door and the wires went straight over 'our' garden. Told DH it was a complete dealbreaker for me so pointless even viewing it.

Cybermen. Terrifying.

Kenny Everett
Metal Mickey
Those 1980s clown pictures

Our under stairs cupboard. It was dark and spiders lived in there.
The film Quatermas. and The Day of The Triffids.
Our outside toilet (our only toilet) there’s 12 year age gap between my big brother and me. I wouldn’t go in unless he waited outside the door for me.
Swimming lesson at school. Hate swimming. Not helped by aforementioned big bro trying to teach me to swim and half drowning me.
I miss him.

DH wouldn’t look at houses if they were near a pylon.