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?

The sound of WW2 air raid sirens . No, I'm not that old!

But my Mum was a nurse in an inner London hospital during the Blitz in WW2. She described the fear during air-raids, but where the hospital staff had to keep going. She described the fear when they heard the sirens.

When I was in my early teens, we lived in an outer London suburb not far from one of the main train lines from London to the north. Apparently maintenance works on the tracks used to take place during the night. The rail companies used the the old air raid sirens (which were still in place from WW2) to warn the workers that an overnight train was coming through.

I was always woken up by those sirens - and was utterly spooked.

selkies - live as seals but shed their skin and come on land as people - I came from an island in Scotland and the themes and myths surrounding selkies made me really scared of the sea. (which is not great on a small island!)

Driving over cattle grid. Used to shake and cry when getting close. Then my parents convinced me to lie on the floor of the car in the back under a blanket and I was OK with that. Luckily we only took the cattle grid road about three times a year

I was petrified of those hand dryer thingies in women's toilets... I wouldn't go in them. It took until I was about 13 for me to completely grow out of that one.

The table at the bottom of stairs.

I thought a wolf on a spring would come up and bite me when I went to the bathroom during the night

Skeletons. Saw one in a museum when I was about 7. I hid behind my mum. I've at last grown out of thinking one is hiding under my bed (I'm 42), but it's still an effort not to imagine one behind the bathroom door when I go to the loo in the middle of the night.

When I was about 7/8 I had a poster on my bedroom door of Micheal Jackson. On the very bottom of the poster was a tiny picture of a tigers face (or it may have been a lion or a wolf) just in white against the black background. Possibly the hallmark of the record company or poster company. Anyway it gave me terrible nightmares, in the end my mum had to colour over it with a black marker pen. Not sure why it scared me so much, it might have been that I associated it with the Thriller video, which I saw and was terrified by at around the same age.

Seal lions, escalators, lifts and stilt walkers. The latter still scare the shit into me.

*out of me. Not into

Oh and JCBs. Scary fuckers.

The sea devils in Dr Who kept me out of the water for years.

I was also terrified of a neighbour's toilet which sucked all the water down then filled up nearly to the top before subsiding to normal levels. Very unnerving.

Having my photograph taken. I had to have a lot of surgery as a child. One of my earliest memories is being held down for an X-ray. No photos of me between age 2-4.

There was a TV series back in the 70/80's called 'Kizzy' she was a gypsy living in a wagon and was sent to a local school, where she was bullied and in one scene she was swung back and forth bashing her head against a wall. I was so shocked by this as a pre teen, I worried about it for years, and even now can still feel how horrified I found it

ILostIt I was going to say the witch in Chorton and the Wheelies too.
Escalators, the Child catcher (but that's not weird, just properly scary).
That picture of the sailor is properly scary! There was a thread about scary pictures a while ago. We had a Reader's Digest book of Strange Stories Amazing Facts and my db and I used to scare each other senseless with some of the stories in it. In the end my parents hid it.

Children of the stones. Hysterical terror when I watched it as a child.

Also escalators, even now they make me nervous and I can't take the children on them. (Am ok by myself at a push)

The cellar and attic steps in my childhood home.

The Thin Man from The Boy from Space. Whoever decided that was suitable for infant school pupils needs to shot.

Brown/orange flowery 70s curtains in the bedroom I shared with my sister - I could see a pirate face in it and it terrified me.

People in saggy, towelling character/mascot suits.

Ornaments and pictures of clowns, especially sad ones.

Those awful 70s pictures of sad urchins with massive eyes.

I went through a phase of hating the Smurfs and Hanna Barbera cartoons because of the way their groins were drawn

I was a very odd child.

The combine harvester that used to go up and down the cornfield next to our house!

Archaeological programs, especially with bones involved. Always gave me nightmares.
Dr Who. Paradise Towers was mentioned above, that one gave me the creeps! There was also one involving a circus that scared the crap out of me, mostly because aliens posessed a family and turned them into evil judges.
A certain type of old fashioned lamp post that had a round lamp on the top. Couldn't even tell you why, a friend of mine at school was also scared of them. We used to imagine them creeping up to out bedroom windows and peering in.
All those public information films about safety. I used to have regular nightmares about dying in a fire.
Squashed food on the floor. Still gives me the creeps and makes me gag!

Bill Sykes from the classic movie Oliver! and the creepy music that accompanied his intro onto the screen, his shadow appearing on the wall.

The fucking goblins in Noddy absolutely scared the ever loving shit outta me. They're really creepy!

The 80s Old Spice advert freaks me out still, gave me nightmares as a child. It's by carl orff carmina burana.

My sister was the same. Don't know why!

The Thin Man from The boy from Space
God yes! I'd forgotten about him and his sinister face. I found that whole programme really creepy.

Maybugs.
Deep water (as in, being out at sea in a boat where the water might be MILES deep). I have regular nightmares about deep water.

There was a street light outside my bedroom which backed onto an entry.
I used to call it Billy Wind. I don't know where the fuck I got that from.
I was terrified of it.