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 had this action man Halloween toy that I used to Olay with, one day I had a nightmare that it was trying to kill me and after that I kept trying to lose it. I would put it in the bin, leave it at people houses, I even buried it in the back yard. Still it kept turning up in my toybox. I was convinced it was just waiting for me to go to sleep and would try to kill me as soon as I shut my eyes. In the end I told my grandma who promised to get rid of it, it stuck that time.

Toilet flushing.

And my DB and I were terrified of Noseybonk.

Murderers.

I grew up in Leeds when the Yorkshire Ripper was about.

I insisted on sleeping in the bottom bunk because I thought a murderer couldn't be bothered to bend down to get me and would prefer to stab at chest height i.e. the top bunk.