To ask what you were terrified of as a child

[pinksuede]

NC for this one as I've told some colleagues about these before.
What were you terrified of as a kid that would make you laugh today ?

I was scared of the 'radiator man'. I would lay in bed at night and hear the tinkles and pops of the radiator as it was warming up next to me. I would imagine that it was the radiator man crawling through the pipes to come and get me in my sleep. He was entirely made up of cylindrical tubes of metal, his fingers were long pipes and his body was really slim but long and shiny.
I would literally scream for my DM to come to my room and make sure my radiator was turned off before I went to bed because I was absolutely terrified that he could get to me.
It wasn't until I was in year 7 at school that I told my brother about it and he laughed and laughed at me and said he had never heard of the radiator man. Up until that point I completely believed he was real. I had clearly made it all up in my own head and couldn't believe that no one else had heard of him.

Another one was giants, I was so petrified of them I would look around my room on a night before bed for hiding places where I could go if a giant managed to get his hand through my window. My favourite place to hide was at the bottom of a fancy dress box right at the bottom underneath all of the clothes. Again, I was convinced giants existed until I was about 10! 😂

Would love to hear other people's fears as a child that were completely unfounded.

I was absolutely terrified of spontaneous human combustion and the house catching fire. Also witches. The flashing red stranger car in the stranger danger video. The IRA.

You never hear of people combusting anymore it was big in the 80s though 😀

Crash test dummies....wahhhh they still freak me out!!!!

rubyslippers and ladymonica have you ever read the short story The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman? I think you'd like it, plus it's a great read

Yes to windscreen wipers and flushing the toilet at night!

was and still dont like the creepy glowing aliens int he film cocoon

im a horror fan and can watch anything at any time of night turn it off and go straight to sleep but i hate those glowing aliens

I saw an episode of 999 as a kid (the one with Michael buerk where they recreated stories of real 999 calls) where a kid was swimming in a pool and swam too close to the drain at the bottom, essentially he was bumping along the bottom of the pool. The drain caught his skin(!) and he somehow got trapped on it stuck at the bottom of the pool. Terrifying!! From then on in swimming pools I would give the drains an enormous distance!! Even swimming over them from several feet was scary and I world swim around them.

There was also an episode where a kid dug a trench in the sand on the beach and a sort of tunnel, it caved in and because the sand was wet it was too heavy so his parents couldn’t dig him out. Looking back, that tv show was incredibly traumatic!!

In Superman III when the nasty sister gets pulled back into the computer-machine and becomes an evil cyborg, scared the crap out of me!

Quicksand

So many warnings in the 80s about it and never once have I come across it

Oh god yes blurredspeech that scene!
Bothered me for YEARS.

Those porcelin dolls that people used to collect. I was seven when I went in to someones room and swore that one of them winked at me. I have never recovered.

The toilet. I was about 9 and my bedroom was opposite the bathroom and I remember looking across at it with the toilet seat up. I used to think that it would come away from the wall and eat me up.
Plus recurrent dreams about Daleks being downstairs coming to get me.

Oh and Gonzo from The Muppets. It was his crooked nose that scared me.

Going up the stairs (something behind me)
The grand high witch
The bit in the swimming pool where it drops to the deep end
Grates in swimming pools
The swimming pool expanding so I could never reach the edge and would just be swimming forever
Quicksand
Tidal waves
Hurricanes
An octopus getting into my bed and attaching itself to my feet and never letting go.

I still get a bit scared of all these things if I think about them. I scare easy.

Scenes in films with fire or branding

Thanks to Indiana jones and James Bond for that !

The Indiana jones films were freaky

Life long phobia now

I was absolutely terrified of mud after watching never ending story, to the point I’d become hysterical if I had to walk across a field! Think I started to get over it when I was 8/9.

We were once in Spain and my dad told me not to drink the water there unless bottled. I got some in my mouth when showering, and became convinced I was dying and screamed the place down crying!

Walking in the alleys when the dustbin lorry was collecting the bins - I used to think the bin men would throw me in.

The tractor cutting the grass in the park (!)

The air raid siren at the end of the theme music to Dads Army - I used to cry EVERY week

I would never sleep with my
arm out of my covers in case that man under my bed grabbed my arm

Tripods (tv series), V (tv series)

More problematicalas it was impossible to avoid, I was terrified of the door handle on my bedroom door.

My grandparents toilet.

Escalators.

Rabies ( I saw a poster warning of the dangers).

Mr blobby - frightens me to this day, creepy fucker with a voice that sounds like shrieking -.-

Balloons being popped, same with those party poppers (I was such a fun kid)

The nun with no face from Armchair Thriller utterly terrified me, still makes me shudder now.

Bin lorry and a rather short shouty bin man

Oh, also, when the song ‘When a Man Loves a Woman’ used to come on the radio. I used to cry and get really sad and upset (I was only six)!

Nice song, nice vocal but I still don’t like the song as it always makes me feel sad.

@Mission When I was five I remember sitting and crying to Can’t Live (if living is without you.) I imagined a gnome’s funeral in the woods. Bit weird.

Handle that song made me cry too at that age.

@MissionItsPossible

Oh my days. My family have ripped me about it for years!! Saying I was a right weirdo for even being afraid of it!
I'm so glad I was not the only one! Oh god yeah, terrifying with the white hair and when he starts moving in the painting... Eesh... heebie jeebies.

Morbid curiosity... Don't look at it!!! Don't look at it!!! It's been on ITV a few times and I can't watch it for more than a few minutes...