What was the most random thing you were scared of as a child?

[ClassicStripe]

Me and DP are watching Mr McMahon on Netflix and it reminded me that when I was a child me and my sister were really scared of Hulk Hogan. We didn't have a clue about wrestling he was just on a poster at our cousin's house.

Bird poo on windows terrifying

Totally agree with the theme tune to 999 on the TV.

Also Alf. He terrified me! 🤣

The Strange But True? theme tune too. Actually both shows were terrifying. You had Michael Buerk on the BBC putting the wind up you with all the real-life horrors you might be subjected to, and Michael Aspel doing the same thing with various supernatural terrors on ITV!

Grotbags
Aunt Sally and The Scarecrow
Annie Lennox

Still afraid of them now.

That was scary. The grandmother knew a little girl who disappeared. She reappeared in a picture and moved around the picture year after year until one day she was gone.

Lighting matches: after all, it was rammed down my throat never to play with them, and I was afraid of burning my fingers. I didn't like candles much either, especially when people did the trick of putting their finger in the flame. I didn't like holding a candle, as I often had to at church, in case I burnt my hands. There was a time when all the children's long and thin candles were put into a tray of sand, still lit, and they gradually bent over, and their flames combined. Somebody kept trying to straighten them, but in vain, and the resulting fire started to melt the tray they were in. Of course, we children were far more interested in this than the talk we were supposed to be paying attention to.

My mum kept making me light matches at the age of ten, at every opportunity, such as somebody else's birthday, saying it was vital that I cracked this in time to light Bunsen burners.

Women in high heels: perhaps because the strict headmistress at my primary school wore them.

A teenager who babysat me sometimes also wore heels, although she did take them off and go barefoot when she arrived, which was a relief.

I used to hear high heels clinking down the street past my house most nights, very late, but whenever I looked out of the window to see who it was (very nosey child) there'd be no one there. So, of course, I concluded it must be the ghost of some poor woman who had been murdered walking home after a night in the pub. I can confirm no such murder had ever taken place 😂

The Yorkshire tv logo

That’s it! I had a vague memory of it but yes, very scary. However, looking through this thread it seems quite a lot of films from that time scared the life out of kids 🫣

A poster of Michael Jackson on my bedroom wall, because it had a tiny little logo of (in my mind a werewolf, possibly in hind sight a tiger) in the bottom corner. Probably the record company or poster company logo.
I think I equated it with the Thriller video which terrified me (rightly!)

I loved MJ so didn't want to take the poster down, so my mum coloured over the logo with a marker pen and all was well again.

Men in glasses. Not women in glasses or men without, just men wearing specs.
And a round brass plate that hung on the wall of the house we lived in until I was 5. I couldn't be in the room on my own with it, or go anywhere near it, but I have no idea why.

Those "Charlie says..." information videos were terrifying.

Those saying spontaneous combustion, we had a Reader's Digest book called, "Strange Stories, Amazing Facts" that had pictures and stories about Spontaneous Combustion and other spooky stuff. My brother and I used to scare ourselves shitless with it. The story that scared me the most was about faces that appeared on a floor. In the end my parents confiscated the book.

Monkey puzzle trees.

A quick Google tells me they're Faces of Belmez.

Moomins

quirkychick
my parents also had that book. I was scared I would just combust one day

Swimming pool drains. I still have to suppress a shudder when swimming over them, 40 years later.

My Wardrobe thought something scary was in there. I have a friend and she was frightened of a page where one of the engines got tar all over him so her parents clipped the page together.

There used to be some continuity music between programmes on the BBC in the early 1960's - I was very small at the time. It scared me witless, I would run out of the room crying. I've never been able to find it anywhere (probably a good thing....😊)

Michael Jackson. Specifically, the photograph of him and Toni Braxton.

Escalators and stairs that had gaps between each step. Big dogs.

People with braces

Oh gosh yes, I had forgotten about this one!

The Humphreys.