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What bits of media or anything else out there scared the holy fucking shit out of you when you were younger. Come on, we all had things. Some of mine make sense, some of mine are ridiculous nonsense.

NUMBER ONE!



The episode of Ghostbusters, Ain't NASA-Sarily So. This specific episode. It probably has to do with a combination of many things, but when I was young, we didn't get cable. My aunt would stick a tape on early in the morning and let it tape till noon or so for me every week. I was watching this particular episode one afternoon after school, home alone. I was only about 7 years old (heh, I was allowed home on my own all the time at this age, I was a trustworthy kid). This episode came on and I suddenly became aware of how alone I was in the house. The skies outside were cloudy and it was dark for an afternoon. I freaked the fuck out, ejected the tape and went outside to find some neighborhood kids to play with. ANYONE would do. I just couldn't be alone. This fucking episode creeeeeeped me out. The music in it. The atmosphere. It just did it.

NUMBA TWO!




Skeletons, rotting corpses, etc of ANY kind. I was a fucking teenager before through sheer force of will these stopped causing me to have almost outright anxiety attacks. It was a painful and personal and unshared ordeal for me to get over this fear since I didn't tell anyone about this until I was an adult for fear people would think I was a freak or crazy. It made it VERY difficult for me to watch so many of my friends' favorite movies. Movies like pictured above, Batman, Ghostbusters, Raiders of the Lost Ark and the Goonies.

I'm gonna try and think of some more. SHARE YOUR childhood FEEEARS!

Stripe jumping in the pool always sent me running upstairs for some reason.



And speaking of downstairs, I was scared of my basement in general. The way our house was built, we had a long staircase going downstairs. At the bottom, to your right, was the living room. To the left was the laundry room. But way in the back was also the boiler room. And I was scared of that in general (probably because I was watching a lot of horror movies around the same time, including Nightmare on Elm Street movies). But the bottom of the stairs was pitch dark unless the light was on. Even if the light at the top of the stairs was turned on, I don't think you see all the way to the bottom.

As a result, I had recurring nightmares where an unknown, evil force somewhere in that darkness would yank me out of my bed and pull me towards the basement. I always woke up just before I was pulled into the basement, usually clutching to something for dear life at the top of the stairs.

That clown in Poltergeist, hell, that whole movie. But, clowns in general don't scare me or didn't when I was a kid.
Jaws messed me up (the scene where Jaws eats the boat captain). I was scared of bathtubs and swimming pools. I am still leery of the ocean.
Since, I grew up in the tale-end of the cold war, nuclear holocaust scared the bejeebus out of me: DefCon4, etc. Any movie showing melting faces or houses being swept away.

Freddie and Jason never really got me, but Leatherface scared me good. That whole "true story" bit is what terrorized me.

Oh, I forgot The Shining old lady and the axe in the head bit.

And, the original Amityville Horror freaked me out too. I think the blood coming out of the walls and portal to hell thing got me good.

Good grief - why did my folks let me watch all that shit.

My parents had no filter, which was difficult for those of us raised by televisions. As such, I grew up watching things like this:



In and of itself, it's not that bad. Grouped together with all the other episodes, In Search Of, random movies, etc., you get a kid who has intense nightmares involving ghosts in the house. To this day, I can watch horror movies all day long, but if it's a decent ghost story, that shit ruins me for dark rooms for days.

My grandmother had the creepiest Kleenex boxes.

sixpackshaker said:

My grandmother had the creepiest Kleenex boxes.

Spoiler

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Proven masturbation deterrent.

I wasn't allowed to watch much TV, but movies were a different matter. My parents--well, my dad anyway--let me watch anything he brought home. I know I've posted this before, so apologies for reposting, but those damn silver balls from Phantasm scared me for literally years. I found out later that part of the reason they're so creepy is that they hired a pro baseball pitcher to throw them for all the long shots.

Fun Size said:

My parents had no filter, which was difficult for those of us raised by televisions. As such, I grew up watching things like this:



In and of itself, it's not that bad. Grouped together with all the other episodes, In Search Of, random movies, etc., you get a kid who has intense nightmares involving ghosts in the house. To this day, I can watch horror movies all day long, but if it's a decent ghost story, that shit ruins me for dark rooms for days.

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That fuckin' Sunnyvale Toys'R'Us, I swear to God, not a year of my young life went by where I didn't see some horrifying ghost special that involved it.

E.T.

I'm not sure what it was but the whole first half of that movie, I would just hide behind the couch. And it's odd for me because normally I'm all about the 'monster' character in movies (i.e. my obsession with the Rancor monster, rooting for Monstro in Pinocchio, etc.) but I could not handle that tiny alien!

That movie still unnerves me and I don't really enjoy watching the beginning.

A recent post reminded me of this. It terrified me as a kid. So many nightmares.

I've never really been afraid of "stuff". Clowns, the razor ball, all that stuff. To me, it's just stuff.
I don't get scared at haunted houses. My wife sees Jason running at her with a chainsaw. I see a pimply faced teen sweating it out for minimum wage.

On the other hand, I was very afraid of the unknown. The boogeyman. Things that would come in the night and get me. So, while I had an intense fear of the dark, it wasn't the dark, per se, that bothered me. But what might be in the dark with me.

Oh, and this painting:

http://www.wikiart.org/en/joshua-reynolds/miss-bowles


My grandmother had a print of this painting in her living room. When I was young, that girl's expression seemed so sinister, for some reason..like she was thinking "I just strangled this dog, and you're next." It doesn't help that the splash of light just to the right of her head looks like a demonic face manifesting from the darkness. You know, egging her on.

Whenever my grandmother's house was full during the holidays, and we drew straws for the couch, I always hated losing, because that of that painting. I knew it was irrational, so I never told anyone. But man, it gave me the the heebie jeebies.

I remember the giant fan scene from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory scaring the crap out of me as a kid, to the point where I was sobbing uncontrollably.

Heights, and I've never grown out if it.

I wasn't entirely certain there weren't things in the dark, like Gremlins, so if I was alone upstairs and had to shut off the lights before coming down, I tended to book it downstairs.

Although I was never afraid of clowns, I do distinctly remember having nightmares from Jack Nicholson's Joker in the theater, and accidentally catching Killer Clowns from Outer Space on tv. Come to think if it, both of those episodes happened on visits to my aunt and uncle's house, so sleeping in a strange bed probably added to it.

This scene from an episode of TOS





I dunno what it was. The thought of some poison gas creature coming out of the vent in killing me in my sleep was pretty terrifying. Vents creeped me the hell out as a kid because of it.

One word:

Jaws.

The Bumble before he was humble.

and especially

Terrik said:

This scene from an episode of TOS





I dunno what it was. The thought of some poison gas creature coming out of the vent in killing me in my sleep was pretty terrifying. Vents creeped me the hell out as a kid because of it.

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Oh shit, the fucking alien in the credits from the episode with Clint Howard scared the shit out of me too. I always had to cover my eyes at the end of Star Trek credits.

A horror movie about a girl stuck in a mirror. I saw it at a sleepover and was freaked out for ages. Bad dreams and everything.

That shoe scene from Roger Rabbit for obvious reasons.

And King Ramses from Courage,

I could not sleep after seeing that the first time.

And that's just off the top of my head, I got freaked out by all SORTS of stuff at that age.

Ghost episodes from That's incredible!

Animatronic anything terrified me. Also, The Secret of Nimh.

The Batman live action TV series gave my oldest brother nightmares. And it gave me my nickname for the next 25+ years.

When I was a kid, I couldn't deal with suspense/jump scares of any sort. It didn't matter what it was, supernatural, a murderer, being stalked by a predatory animal, whatever.. if there was tension building to a jump scare, I freaked right the hell out.

I'm better now, naturally.

Celt Z said:

Heights, and I've never grown out if it.

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Brofist for heights.

I was terrified of elevators for a brief time when I was seven or so, because I saw The Shining at way too goddamn early an age, and all that blood pouring out... I was convinced it would happen eventually. To date, it hasn't.

Suspense got me as well. My favorite show for a few years growing up was Rescue 911 with Bill Shatner, but every time just before the climax of the buildup to whatever caused the victim to need 911, I had to turn away or cover my eyes and ears. Also, I'm still not overly fond of the dark - or rather, the possibility of unseen things in the dark. Ditto with dark water.

I'm going to buck the trend and say...nothing, really? Nothing outside of a couple of nightmares, at least*. And speaking unprepared in front of groups.

Except for that one episode of Ironside.

I don't know what it is, really. I've been "afraid" of all kinds of stuff...needles, fire, falling from great heights, whatever. But these always felt like I was being "appropriately" scared, like sure I would try to avoid them but they wouldn't cause me to sob hysterically or try to run through a wall to escape.
That one episode of Ironside, though. I can't explain it. Maybe it was because I was alone at night in someone else's house the first time I saw it, which heightened the mood of the episode.

I was able to happily watch Die Hard and "Starship Mine" without problem, so I don't know what makes Ironside so different.

I don't know what it is. I don't count myself as particularly "fearless," really. I suppose my abnormally high curiosity plus my penchant for rationality have teamed up to replace "fear" for the majority of the lookup table of my reactions to things, maybe? Or maybe I'm just unusually well-adjusted? I'm interested in finding out, if anyone is legitimately, clinically interested in pursuing that.

--Patrick
*I've had two. Yes, for as far back as I can remember, I can only recall having two nightmares, total. I'm sure this supposedly indicate something important.

Well, I mean I assume everyone is using "scared the shit out of you" as hyperbole. I don't think there's a whole lot of people out there who have had the misfortune to experience real terror.

Or soiled pantaloons for that matter. (One hopes, anyway.)

You know what movie frightened me as an adult due to events in my childhood? Insidious.

On the one hand, I'm not a believer in the paranormal, but that movie hit really close to home. When I was a kid, I was convinced I was astral walking. I had a detailed understanding of the roof of my house at night. I would start at the top of our long country driveway, run down it toward the house, and leap, clearing the house. Every time, when I cleared the midline of the roof, the world took on the same green murky flavor as it did in the movie--partly due to the green security light we had on our property. But at that crossing point, something would always change about the woods behind my house. There would be creatures dancing in it. The woods would be burning, though the trees weren't being consumed by the flames. There were things walking around in chains. Sometimes subtle changes, like the leaves becoming iridescent or phosphorescent.

Now, of course the rational part of my mind gets that there are probably chemical or behavioral reasons why astral walking experiences are similar, but it's still eerie.

I remember (and am slightly embarrassed about) being terrified of one Scooby Doo episode where they meet the Headless Horseman. Just something about the way he screamed "Give me my head!" (may not be an exact quote, it was in French) freaked me out for weeks.

To this day, though, the best way to make sure I don't sleep well is to have a creepy silhouette in the dark, especially if it's a child's. Bring all the zombies, monsters, and demons you want. I might get grossed out, but that's gonna be it. Throw in one of those silhouettes, though, and I'm gonna be sleeping very poorly for a while. I watched a short movie on YouTube, Lights Out, a few months ago, and I was freaked out by it for weeks. WEEKS!

Nightmares for weeks.

Bowielee said:

Nightmares for weeks.

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TECHNOZOMBIE HATE BIMBO

I was scared of pretty much anything and everything as a kid. But, the worst by far was a painting of The Last Supper my grandmother had in her living room. It was the weirdest thing since it had a light underneath the picture and one on the top. You could flip the switch 4 times, so it would be lit only from the bottom, only from the top, both lights on, or shut it off. When it was lit from the bottom that painting looked evil. I hated it.

My grandparents had this 100 year old photo of three really stern looking Civil War Veterans. Then combine low light, shadows dancing in the room through swaying, dead trees, then the damned disembodied doll's head on the night stand.... no wonder I was never able to sleep there.

Poltergeist. Scared the piss out of me.

This particular episode of Are You Afraid of the Dark:

I don't remember being scared of any other episode, although the intro was pretty terrifying. But this one episode scared the shit out of me.

The trailer to "The Grinch". Dr. Seus needs to stay in the second dimension where it belongs!

Wait, that was like 5 years ago.

fade said:

Wait, that was like 5 years ago.

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First, that was more like 10 years ago.
Second, Yoshimickster is like 12, man.

Edit: Holy crap it was 15 years ago.

Please I'd KNOW if it was five years ago, I got this crazy psychic time travel plan going on! But first I'll need a wind-mill, a bald guy, one clown-faced lady, a generally normal lady, a homophobic British teen, and a Brazillian transexual wizard!

You'd know if it was five years ago because that was the year you lost your first tooth.

That fucking deer head from Evil Dead 2. Especially since my family's favorite restaurant had a deer head hanging above the entrance to the dining area, and I always spent my entire meal keeping one eye on it just in case it decided to look at me and start laughing maniacally.

I could watch almost anything as a kid and be fine. I remember a weekend where we rented Night of the Living Dead (original), Invasion of the Body Snatches (Donald Sutherland version), and Carnosaur when I was 8--no problems.

The only thing I had a problem with was Chucky, and I know exactly why--I had a similar doll, similar size. Commercials for Child's Play would send me running out of the room, and I couldn't have that fucking doll near me. Later on I watched the movies and saw how goofy they were, but when I was little, Chucky was the worst thing ever.

Zero Esc said:

I could watch almost anything as a kid and be fine. I remember a weekend where we rented Night of the Living Dead (original), Invasion of the Body Snatches (Donald Sutherland version), and Carnosaur when I was 8--no problems.

The only thing I had a problem with was Chucky, and I know exactly why--I had a similar doll, similar size. Commercials for Child's Play would send me running out of the room, and I couldn't have that fucking doll near me. Later on I watched the movies and saw how goofy they were, but when I was little, Chucky was the worst thing ever.

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That's why that Are You Afraid of the Dark episode scared me so much. The room I shared with my brother was painted the exact same colour as that kid's room.

Read this thread to the wife, she mentioned how she worried about things grabbing her ankles and pulling her under the bed when she got up in the morning, but she also mentioned that this just freaked her out for being sick, twisted, disturbing, and just plain wrongity wrong wrong.


--Patrick

Ooh, are we dragging our spouses into this? Awesome .

My wife was terrified of the hell scene from All Dogs Go to Heaven. She still refuses to watch that movie because of it.

My sister was terrified by the toad thing from Weird Science:


To this day she can't watch movies with Bill Paxton in them, and it was only a few summers ago we learned it was because this movie gave her nightmares as a child.

I showed this thread to Mr. Z, and apparently he was scared of a lot of things as a kid. (...wuss.) We did share a fear of things possibly being in the dark, and he had a huge fear of ghosts and/or the supernatural, due mainly to Chinese folklore. I still make fun of him for the Chinese vampires thing. ("They have to keep they're legs together and they hop! Lame!")

Celt Z said:

I still make fun of him for the Chinese vampires thing. ("They have to keep they're legs together and they hop! Lame!")

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They're also undead, so they never need to stop or rest. They cannot be reasoned with. They will never cease their pursuit of you. There is no way to kill them, unless you're a taoist priest in a movie. The only way to temporarily throw them off your trail is to hold your breath, which obviously is an unsustainable strategy.

They're analogous to zombies in western popular culture. The slow but relentless kind. Except they're usually dressed up like government officials from the Qing dynasty.

bhamv3 said:

They're also undead, so they never need to stop or rest. They cannot be reasoned with. They will never cease their pursuit of you. There is no way to kill them, unless you're a taoist priest in a movie. The only way to temporarily throw them off your trail is to hold your breath, which obviously is an unsustainable strategy.

They're analogous to zombies in western popular culture. The slow but relentless kind. Except they're usually dressed up like government officials from the Qing dynasty.

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THEY. HOP.
Argument invalid.

Celt Z said:

THEY. HOP.
Argument invalid.

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... I have no rebuttal to this.

So they're defeated by mud?

This scene in Amityville Horror, was terrified of open windows for weeks:

CynicismKills said:

This scene in Amityville Horror, was terrified of open windows for weeks:

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LOL that violin spike would have given 10 year old me a heart attack, but other than that, isn't it funny how cheesy it looks in retrospect.

President Quayle

Should I spoiler that for being too scary?

Too many things scared me as a kid. I'd think of something a little scary, and then my mind would run away with it. I had dreams of drowning, being trampled or crushed, and being possessed or haunted. As a result I was an overly cautious child. I think that ghost/paranormal stuff was the worst. It was ridiculous... scary things fascinated me, so I sought them out...but then I wouldn't be able to sleep for weeks. Sleepovers were a big pain for me, because I was the one everyone made fun of because I wanted a night light. Sometimes I still keep the reading lamp on if I recently watched a scary movie or read a scary book. It Follows is the latest thing that's kept me up. It's fed my paranoia about being watched.

HCGLNS said:

President Quayle

Should I spoiler that for being too scary?

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I would propose that people were more scared of "President Palin."

--Patrick

Cajungal said:

Too many things scared me as a kid. I'd think of something a little scary, and then my mind would run away with it. I had dreams of drowning, being trampled or crushed, and being possessed or haunted. As a result I was an overly cautious child. I think that ghost/paranormal stuff was the worst. It was ridiculous... scary things fascinated me, so I sought them out...but then I wouldn't be able to sleep for weeks. Sleepovers were a big pain for me, because I was the one everyone made fun of because I wanted a night light. Sometimes I still keep the reading lamp on if I recently watched a scary movie or read a scary book. It Follows is the latest thing that's kept me up. It's fed my paranoia about being watched.

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I've noticed you leaving the lights on a lot later these days, which is fine. These night-vision goggles really burn through the batteries.

GasBandit said:

LOL that violin spike would have given 10 year old me a heart attack, but other than that, isn't it funny how cheesy it looks in retrospect.

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Yeah, I mean now it's pretty cheesy, but when I was like 11 or whatever when I saw it that was scary as hell. Coupled with the faces floating in the dark in Exorcist, I wasn't a fan of the dark in general for a long time.

CynicismKills said:

Yeah, I mean now it's pretty cheesy, but when I was like 11 or whatever when I saw it that was scary as hell. Coupled with the faces floating in the dark in Exorcist, I wasn't a fan of the dark in general for a long time.

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Exorcist still holds up pretty well. Except maybe the head turning.

Did a lot of camping and hiking as a kid (Eagle Scout), and while the normal ghost stories never got to me, there was one 50 mile hike, in the middle of the wilderness of Montana, where we passed a dead and decaying moose. For some odd reason, that night's scary stories focused around that moose, and by the end of the night we had ourselves absolutely convinced that the phantom moose was going to get us. I don't think any of use slept that night (which made for a bit of a miserable day the next day).

I'm still freaked out by basements.

I still get that feeling in the pit of my stomach when I turn off lights at the bottom of a staircase before I have to go up said staircase to get out of the dark.

CynicismKills said:

I still get that feeling in the pit of my stomach when I turn off lights at the bottom of a staircase before I have to go up said staircase to get out of the dark.

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A friend of mine,when he was a child, had to walk down into the basement to turn on the lights. He would always see a shadow of a pointed ear dog, limping down the stairs with him. He would get so scared that he would jump down to the first landing. Years later his fear of the stairs and basement came up during a conversation with his grandmother. She said that it must have been the German Shepherd that his parents owned back in France. It was hit by a truck the week before he was born, and it crawled down the stairs to the basement and died....

The bridges at the Embassy Suite hotel! They. Don't. Have. GUARD RAILS! What ass-hat designed that?!

Yoshimickster said:

The bridges at the Embassy Suite hotel! They. Don't. Have. GUARD RAILS! What ass-hate designed that?!

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"I'm not saying we should make stupidity illegal, but why don't we just remove the warning labels [guard rails] off everything and let the problem sort itself out?"

Yoshimickster said:

The bridges at the Embassy Suite hotel! They. Don't. Have. GUARD RAILS! What ass-hat designed that?!

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Imperial architects.

GasBandit said:

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This is scaring the shit out of me as an adult.

bhamv3 said:

This is scaring the shit out of me as an adult.

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I'm pretty sure it's from Mama. I highly suggest watching it, even if it does kind of fall down towards the end.

First two thirds of Mama is one of the best horror movies I've ever seen. The last 1/3rd not so much.

I remember, in high school, the local blockbuster's horror section started out with the Amityville Horror, which my friends and I would walk past every time we went to go rent a movie. Thing was, the box was a butchered small/thin factor VHS box cover cut up and wrapped around the thick plastic blockbuster casing, and the last inch or so didn't make the cut for some reason, so the box read "The Amityville Ho." Many a ribald joke was made about that every weekend when we went to go rent movies.

I just put the movie on my netflix rotation.

My wife has always lamented that she loves horror and and I don't. Typical horror (jump scares, violin shrieks, copious amounts of blood) just doesn't scare me. But it looks like something she'd get a kick out of.

I'm more down for psychological thrillers than the cheap and easy gorefest of a lot of horror movies.

Tinwhistler said:

I just put the movie on my netflix rotation.

My wife has always lamented that she loves horror and and I don't. Typical horror (jump scares, violin shrieks, copious amounts of blood) just doesn't scare me. But it looks like something she'd get a kick out of.

I'm more down for psychological thrillers than the cheap and easy gorefest of a lot of horror movies.

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Then you'll probably like the first 2/3rds of Mama. I don't know if anyone can like the last bit. I'd be super interested if when you guys watch it you'd let us know what you thought.

Every single thing I see about Mama, including the short it was based on, tells me that I can't watch it because it would absolutely ruin me. That gif...I just peed a little.

Gore horror _is_ silly to me, too. I won't lie--it makes me cringe. But it doesn't scare me. You do have to let yourself live in the movie. I mean, you kind of have to with any fictional genre, or most fictional works are a bit silly objectively.

I think horror hit its apex in the 70s. Although, the first Paranormal Activity and Insidious were pretty scary. Mostly because they never shoved anything in your face. Most of the monsters were in your head, and the movies only hinted at them.

Frank said:

Then you'll probably like the first 2/3rds of Mama. I don't know if anyone can like the last bit. I'd be super interested if when you guys watch it you'd let us know what you thought.

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Will do