Weird things that scared you as a child...

[user1491572121]

My DD is 12 and I was just absentmindedly singing "Frere Jacques" and she said "Oh that song! It used to give me nightmares!"

And I said why? I used to sing it to you all the time!

And she said YES! And it made me think of people drowning...

Apparently she used to hear it and envision a man in bed and then water would rush in and drown him!

What weird fears/thoughts did you or yours have?

I was scared actually petrified of waves at the beach. Apparently i liked the sea but couldn't get past the waves until my dad forced me to stand there and let the waves run over my feet one day and i was like "oh this is fine not scary at all" haha silly child!!

the 'bongs' on the news at ten, overhearing them used to make me feel really anxious. still does

Electricity Pylons terrified me, I had to close my eyes when I went past any.
Also was scared of the dark.

That my hot water bottle would catch fire.
The music to Doctor Who.

Spotty from Superted! When he popped up at the window in the opening credits, I just found him really sinister.

Tractors - still scared of them, the wheels are bigger than me!
Dinosaurs - still scared. Nightmares after watching jurassic park as a kid. My poor son can't have any Dino clothes or toys.

My tormentor of a brother thinks it would be great if a dinosaur driving a tractor came down our road.

My Nan's wardrobe. If I stayed overnight, she had to throw a sheet over it so I couldn't see it.

Anubis. I thought I saw him stick his head around the door to the loft and it scared me so much.

I still sometimes run past that door when I visit my parents .

My wallpaper

I was terrified of the moon until my DF explained what it was and how far away it is!

Dr Who made me scared of drains in swimming pools. There was one episode with Bonny Langford as the assistant and iirc a large swimming pool with robot spiders at the bottom of it. I still can't swim over them now!

Any shallow water, like a swimming pool. Convinced there were crocodiles in them.

Those big power stations. I dreamt at a very young age that my mum was being chased by them, hence my irrational fear

The airing cupboard

I had a dream that Henry the eighth and all his wives were in there but they were dead and if was a strange giant coffin.

My house doesn't have an airing cupboard now and I think I'm a bit relieved

What scared me was an old David Niven film called The Brain. There's a scene close to the start where his head suddenly falls to one side when he learns something new (the idea being that his brain is too heavy for his head/neck), and it scared me witless as a child.

Plug holes. You know when there's a droplet of water in the middle and it reflects a ring of light? I used to think it was an eye.

I was reminded of it watching Doctor Who last night

There was an occasional character in the old Parsley the Lion / The Herbs TV show, think it was some sort of dragon - snapdragon? - and I was terrified of it. Hence, whenever I heard the music to the show, I was terrified in case the scary dragon might be in it. The music still makes me scared.

Beards. I think I got traumatised by a visit to Father Christmas as a very young girl and for some years was terrified of men with beards. Bit awkward tbh - happily over that now.

A character in Rupert the Bear called Raggety - still freaks me out now!

Puppy Tarragon the Dragon. A friend told me he used to scare him shitless when he was a kid too.

A castle, my gran lives in a town with a ruined castle, it used to scare the shit out of me.

The gaps between the planks on the pier - I always felt like I would fall through.

And the gaps in my Dad's staircase - I alwas half-expected a hand to come through and grab my feet.

Oily bubbles - when you get the multicoloured patterns run across the surface it kind of weirded me out.

When in bed at night I used to see pixels which my mind would make "scary" shapes out of. I also used to hear the blood pounding in my ears which I attributed to the "shapes" - between both of those I used to get pretty scared!

Tarragon the dragon,that's him.

" The Rag and bone man " scrap metsl collectirs shouting

" ayyyyy rag bone" echoing round the streets. I used to run back in the house.
So scary.

The door handles in our house. Looked like sinister faces. Terrified me and my sister. They all got changed except for the one on the airing cupboard door and when I had that bedroom in my teens I still needed to hang something on it so it couldn't watch me.

StorminaBcup I think that was Paradise Towers. She got threatened with a toasting fork as well and the BBC received complaints. The Doctor Who story that scared me was Snakedance - it was the talking snake skull and Tegan being possessed that did it, rather than the sight of a young Martin Clunes in ridiculous gold hotpants. I did watch it again a few years ago and it was hilarious rather than terrifying.

Railway lines. Information films shown about them in school and their dangers did it for me. I cannot look at the electrified lines running down the middle of a track without awful images from those 1970's information films.

Also coal mines. Lived opposite one, could see the winding great from my bedroom window. I thought there were dead people down there burrowing towards me.

Of course later I found out that there were dead people down there. Probably not trying to dig there way to me though.