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.

Motorbikes used to terrify me.

The moomins <shudder> I don't understand them or why it's a children's book... It was like a horror story to me. I read a lot as a child but I always had nightmares if I tried to read those.

Moomins kitsch memorabilia was all the rage at one point so I'm clearly an outlier in this.

A certain poster by Munch on my parents' wall. Not "The Scream", but "two girls in pinafores", who stood side by side, looking right at me, with dour expressions.

I was reminded of this recently when I looked in a children's book "I know" by Bel Mooney, which contains an illustration of two people standing side by side, looking full face at the reader, with very disapproving expressions.

When I was at junior school (7-9) we would watch TV programmes on occasional afternoons. Two really stick out as scary:

1. The Boy from Space - the thin man literally scared the SHIT out of me (turns out it was Adrian Boswell in Bread 😂)
2. Dark Towers. The ghost in the bed really freaked me out! How they got away with showing kids this stuff, I'll never know! 😬

Wind socks.

The moon
Fire extinguishers (ex-ting-moosher I called it apparently)
Toilet brushes
Kebab shops/vans
Horses (only bc I was so allergic)
Margarine. Still cannot bear to even think about it!

Lightning - my brother told me if you see it you go blind!

Can't edit my post, but it wasn't Adrian Boswell in The Boy From Space. Not sure where I got that from! 😂

Carwashes

My egg donor (an excuse for a mother), in hindsight and how is unknown to me, would leave me alone in the car to go through alone

Blew my mind when kids loved them

Oh, and my uncle told me that earwigs crawl into your ear and eat your brains

I still fucking hate the pincer-y little bastards

Clowns. Falling into the loo when I was sitting on it. The wooden carved gargoyle type thing on my bed head. Wardrobes because of what might be lurking in them.

Big street cleaning machines and the toilets at my junior school.

That's what I meant!

It's interesting because I was also scared of a lot of things mentioned on this thread (spontaneous human combustion, electricity pylons etc)
But I wouldn't have said they were random. I mean, being scared of a pylon is perfectly reasonable. They can actually kill you.

After watching that I was terrified we were going to die in a house fire in our sleep. Used to drive my mum mad checking all the plug sockets / iron / oven etc every night!

The green slime in Dr Who, and the night sky 🤣

Dental or clothing?

The wheelies! Was it from Wizard of Oz? I can't remember as I've blocked it out in horror

Return to Oz.

They were terrifying. My cousin loved that film.

They were called Wheelers, not wheelies.

I liked that film, but it was scary. They showed it to us at primary school: perhaps we were made of harder stuff, or the teachers didn’t know how scary it was.

70s primary school.. picture box.
The balloon 🎈 creepy AF.

swingboats but have no idea why

Nuns!

I saw an Armchair Thriller episode which finished with a Nun in a rocking chair and when she turned around, she didn't have a face. Even now, the thought of it makes me shiver.

ET, film terrified me as a child. Still can’t watch it.
When we took the kids to America, I couldn’t go on the ET kiddies ride in universal studios. I had to sit outside.

The witch out of Chorlton and the Wheelies 🧹