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Original poster

To want to know a light-hearted childhood fear?

239 replies

GeorgeAndTimmyTheDog · 06/03/2023 19:33

What I mean is you can possibly laugh about it now.
For instance because of reading the Unexplained magazine growing up I was convinced I was going to "Self human combust" as that was an article in there.
Also an adult told me that bleach "Makes things smaller" so I was petrified to sit on the loo if I could smell bleach as I thought my bottom would disappear.

OP posts:
PuttingDownRoots · 07/03/2023 00:06

My mother was reminiscing last year about how I refused to walk over the wooden bridge over the duck pond un the park as a kid.

She was surprised and amused to discover from me it was the troll that lived underneath it that terrified me... in my head it was just like the bridge in the Billy Goats Gruff.

(Also... I was left behind on a train platform when a train left with my mother on. Must haven 8 or 9. The staff took good care of me but I still get a bit paranoid about a train leaving half of us behind)

MojoMoon · 07/03/2023 00:06

meow1989 · 06/03/2023 21:59

Our local pool had a wave machine and at the end of the deep end there were bars under water in front of what I assume was the area where the machine was but what just looked like an empty (waterfilled) recessed bit of the pool (in the wall not the floor).
I know now there wasn't a shark in it. I knew then there wasn't a shark in it. But I was still absolutely petrified and would dare myself to see how long I could poke my foot in before fear too over or the shark bit me.

Exactly the same for me. I thought they let it out at the end of the day when the pool closed and freaked out once when my dad was the last person in at the end of the session in case they were about to release it

PolkadotsAndMoonbeams · 07/03/2023 00:06

Being shot in the side of the neck with a dart from a blowpipe while sitting in the car and being paralysed by it. If we stopped moving I had to wind the window up as fast as possible.

I'd seen it happen in a film when I was 5 or 6 and it terrified me. I assumed for years it must have been a Bond or similar spy film. I found out completely by accident about twenty years later what film it actually was — Thoroughly Modern Millie!

MahMahMahMahCorona · 07/03/2023 01:54

"A friend of mine still has nightmares of a childhood stone statue of a boy that her mum coated with yogurt, which then makes green moss grow on it.
Sometimes in her nightmare it's covered in yogurt, sometimes it's green and hairy."

@GeorgeAndTimmyTheDog - I honestly can't believe there is someone else out there who has such a similar fear. Having said that I don't doubt that next time I have the recurring nightmare, SD may well be covered in yoghurt, so thanks for that! Usually he's part green / part slime / part white scaly lichen...

TheObstinateHeadstrongGirl · 07/03/2023 02:28

The curtains in my childhood bedroom never quite met so there was always a six inch gap. I was utterly obsessed wee Willy winky was gonna peep through it after reading the book of the fable 🤣 didn’t sleep for years and mum refused to buy new curtains!

steff13 · 07/03/2023 03:26

I was afraid an escalator would grab my shoes and suck me under if I didn't get off in time. I still jump off, just to make sure.

Idratherbepaddleboarding · 07/03/2023 06:10

So many weird things! 😂

When I was really little, I was afraid of Zippy from Rainbow because I went to a soft play place on holiday and saw a man dressed as Zippy remove the head of his costume, I thought Zippy had eaten the man and that’s why he was inside of him 😂.

I was scared there’d be giant spiders in my bed and had to lift the duvet right up every night to check.

A friend told me if you touched sand, you’d get warts which wouldn’t be so bad but I grew up in Saudi Arabia!

I was scared sharks would eat my toes in the swimming pool and had to keep lifting my feet out of the water to check, this also wouldn’t be so bad but we had a swimming pool on our compound in Saudi and swam every day.

Mummadeze · 07/03/2023 06:16

Sharks coming out of a secret door in our swimming pool (Bond did this), getting possessed (the Exorcist did this). My DD used to be really scared of bananas in pyjamas.

Namechange567775 · 07/03/2023 06:33

@GeorgeAndTimmyTheDog

it was mainly used as an excuse to slap each other and claim it was alien hand syndrome 😁

Original poster
GeorgeAndTimmyTheDog · 07/03/2023 07:36

@Namechange567775
I've had a thing since childhood that one of my arms/hands seems possessed (and hates me) it will suddenly move but only in really important situations, never in my sleep or walking etc.
It made me lose a pool competition when I was a teenager when I for no reason brought the pool cue down rapidly on all the balls.
It has waited until really posh situations and then whilst I've been nodding at someone talking has thrown said drink over myself, not dropped or fumbled purposely thrown it at myself.
I must look like I have gone completely insane.
I cycle and climb so it's not like my hand goes weak/have a serious motor skills disease it just likes to embarrass me and doesn't like me having friends.
Alien hand syndrome hmmmm.

OP posts:
Original poster
GeorgeAndTimmyTheDog · 07/03/2023 07:43

steff13 · 07/03/2023 03:26

I was afraid an escalator would grab my shoes and suck me under if I didn't get off in time. I still jump off, just to make sure.

I was having this conversation the other day with someone about them, my sister did get her foot trapped in the 70's and it ripped her trainers, I was terrified of them then and also thought they would drag me in.
They were bloody dangerous though back then but even though I know you can't get trapped with modern escalators I still step carefully on them.

OP posts:
OldTinHat · 07/03/2023 08:10

The Humphreys. Had many a nightmare about those creepy buggers marching about.

You have to be of a certain age to know what I'm talking about...!

sealon82 · 07/03/2023 09:13

JMSA · 06/03/2023 23:05

The gap between train and platform.

I am still irrationally scared of the gap. I have do a long jump every time I get off. 😂

wibblewobbleball · 07/03/2023 09:14

midsomermurderess · 06/03/2023 19:38

I was scared of heffalumps.

SAME.

ThisIsTrifficult · 07/03/2023 09:30

waterlego · 06/03/2023 22:56

Sorry but this sounded sort of sweetly comical and almost made me giggle and then I remembered that I had a real aversion to that Billy Joel song ‘Just the Way You Are’. It made me feel a real sense of dread for some unknown reason. I must have made an early association between it and some negative event or feelings, I guess.

In later childhood, my best friend had an electric keyboard (a very desirable item for a kid in the 80s!) with a few preset tunes on it (so you could tap on the keys and pretend you were playing very competently), one of which was the aforementioned Billy Joel song. I was too embarrassed to tell her I hated it for no reason so sometimes had to suffer hearing it 😂

Show quote history

Music is a funny one! But it was this awful sound that I hated with my tiny little being! My kids won't be encouraged to learn the oboe!

tregunamekoidestrecorumsatisdee · 07/03/2023 12:25

@GeorgeAndTimmyTheDog I just watched that on YouTube 🙈 it's unsettling even in my 40s

SinnerBoy · 07/03/2023 12:52

onionringcheeseypuff · Yesterday 20:04

I was scared that a shark would swim up the toilet and bite me until I was maybe 8/9

We had a rat come up the U-Bend in 1976, the hot summer. I was six. My dad killed it and disposed of it, but you can imagine the effect on me and my two older sisters....

amusedbush · 07/03/2023 13:10

I was also terrified of sharks in the swimming pool. I'll be honest: I'm 32 and I still feel a bit panicked when I'm swimming in the deep end and my brain idly wonders if there's a shark under me Blush

When I was about 7, we were by the local river and I asked my dad why the swans kept sticking their heads under the water. He said they were looking for pipes so they could pop their heads out the other side and bite people's bums when they were on the toilet. I thoroughly checked every toilet before I sat down for years!

SinnerBoy · 07/03/2023 14:52

Ah ha ha hah!

lurchermummy · 07/03/2023 18:29

I was scared of Skellingtons especially the ones in Jason and the Argonauts that got yp to fight.

Any kind of mannequin or costume model.

Statues.

My man's black overhead toilet cistern.

Our pantry because I thought it was haunted by the old lady who lived in our house before us.

Putting my feet down the bottom of the bed.

Lots of things! What a scaredy-cat I was.

sueelleker · 07/03/2023 18:42

OldTinHat · 07/03/2023 08:10

The Humphreys. Had many a nightmare about those creepy buggers marching about.

You have to be of a certain age to know what I'm talking about...!

"One hundred Humphreys,
Soft as silk
Out on the search
For your Unigate milk"!😁

Lotsofthingstoconsider · 07/03/2023 19:54

Foxes.. they killed our chickens . It was only a matter of time until they got me ...

red78hot · 07/03/2023 19:55

The feather duster and a peacock feather my parents had 😅

justmyluck1234 · 07/03/2023 19:59

As a toddler I didn't like the baby in the sun on the Teletubbies I used to run and hide behind the Sofa 🤷‍♀️😂

Lilyandroses · 07/03/2023 20:02

I had an irrational fear that my teddy bears were real. Maybe not so much a fear, but I’d move them out of the way to avoid squashing them in case they felt pain and would make sure they wasn’t under my duvets in case they suffocated. Now I write that I feel like a right weirdo haha