Irrational Childhood Fears, who's had 'em?

[NosmoKing]

Hello, long time lurker, first time poster.

There might be a thread on this, so if there is direct me there please.

Anyway, what were people's irrational childhood fears? For example, toilet monster, monster under the bed, bogeyman in the closet, etc.

One night, when I was about 8 years old and watching tv with my mum, after watching a tv ad for sunscreen where people who didn't wear sunscreen turned into lobsters, I had this fear my mum would turn into a lobster--then I would have to act like she was still my mum, because if she knew I knew she was a lobster, then she would eat me. I couldn't look at my mum for the rest of the night, for fear she would be a lobster. Luckily, the next day in the sunlight, this fear went away.

As a child I was never scared of monsters in the closet, witches, etc, but was permentently terrified robbers would break in, and I would flip out if anyone left windows open at night--even though we lived in a third floor apartment!!! It's not like anyone could really get in.

Also, I never ever hung my hands or feet over the edges of the bed...and on particulary frightening nights, the only thing that would keep me safe would be to hide completely under the blankets, even if it was a hot night.

I wonder why children believe these things, the psychology of it. I mean, parents can sit a child down, and logically explain it (whatever the fear is) away, but the child will still persist in believing in their particular fear.

I was never scared of the dark, though. I liked it, figured I was safer in the dark, thinking the robbers/monster wouldn't be able to see me. I still like the dark.

So, to everyone here, what were your fears? How did you get over them? Do any still persist into adulthood? And were there any shared fears (i.e. shared with siblings, or school mates)?

[goalienan]

I haven't thought of childhood fears for a very long time lol....I was never afraid of monsters, ghosts, or anything in my closet...I did have a fear of someone breaking into our house, so I would sleep on my back, with my legs bend and thinking my knees were hiding my body This way if our house was broken into, the burglar wouldn't see me.... Crazy, funny memories..... Forgot to add, welcome to UM......

Edited April 15, 2008 by goalienan

[Blue Raven]

I could never fall asleep if the room was not completely dark, I imagined that there was somebody in the corners of the room and if it was completly dark I could not see them and they could not see me.

Also, I was terribly afraid of our hallway, (our old houses here has a hollow foundation, almost like your basement, but here you can not access this part but through a trap door) Anyway, I was convinced that the devil is under there and there was a small hole in the floor, he could/would try to catch me! I used to run as fast as I could down the hallway and never looked back!

Also, I was very afraid of Black Peter, one Christams (our family always makes a huge thing of X-Mas) they dressed one of my uncles and painted him black (I had no idea) and of course he tried to catch me, I almost had a heart attack. The adults thought is was very funny. :angry2: But I grew out of it and I had to naturally follow tradition and torment my cousins and brothers with Black Peter

Oh the childhood memories....

[Ignus Fatuus]

I thought they were irrational. My parents thought they were irrational. I used to run barefoot down the gravel road at night, for sure that something was watching me. I slept under the covers with only my mouth sticking out for air. I now will do "a small amount for safety and logical purposes" of night hiking by myself in the forests here where I live while having no fear. I now know for a fact that my thoughts were all but irrational, but that is a different story...

[crtDzyn]

Black Peter! what the hell?

When I was very young, I had this nightmare about evil zoo animals. (don't ask) Ever since then I would be afraid to look at the little window in my bedroom at night for fear of seeing a bunch of various zoo animals, angrily peering in upon me. Forget the fact that I was on the 2nd story... this had me shook!

[theGhost_and_theDarkness]

lol. ..angry zoo animals. . .maybe that's not too irrational. . .maybe they've all been plotting their escape from the zoos to get revenge on the humans for putting them there.

Most of my childhood fears came with me into adulthood (lol). .. Mirrors (and bathrooms in general) for one. My brother was just AWFUL to me when I was little. He would lock me in bathrooms and chant "bloody mary" outside the door. . .and he was inventive too. . .one time he had a bag of fake blood over the mirror with a string or something attached to it. . .I don't know. . all I know is that he turned out the light and locked me in the bathroom and started chanting outside and the next thing I knew my mirror was covered in fake blood (and some even got on me). . .still not sure how he managed that. . .but I remember him pulling the bag off the top of the mirror.

Then, he had this complete freddy krugar costume, fake claws and all. . .and he'd hide under my bed and wait til I was almost asleep and he would come out and attack me.

So, yeah. . .I'm still terrified of mirrors, bathrooms, and things under my bed. I was never really afraid of anything else. . except dolls, which I'm still afraid of now as well. lol. But, my most irrational fear has to be zombies. . and that's a totally adult one. My fear of bathrooms is so bad that I had to get a clear shower curtain so I could watch the mirror while I take a shower. . . my brother totally messed me up in the head.

[crtDzyn]

Hah! He owned you with the blood on the mirror. Although I admit, I probably would have soiled myself on that one...

I just thought of another amusing fear I had as a child. I did (and still do) have a bad habit of biting my finger nails. As a child though I wouldn't spit them out, I'd actually eat them. Gross, I know, but I guess someone told me at one point or another that finger nails didn't digest properly. Well I had been swallowing my fingernails for a while and after I heard this I couldn't sleep for fear of all the nails piling up inside me and blocking out my throat. I had to go downstairs and sit with my parents for so long because I was scared to death that I was going to end up suffocating from them.

Also, any creak the house made would spur insane fears as my imagination ran away with the possibilities of what it could be. The water pump or something like that would make this noise that sounded JUST like the garage door openning. I would bug out because I was always worried someone was going to hack a garage door openner to open ours and ransack the house. I even went so far as counting out how long it took for the garage door to open, this way when I heard the noise I could always know what it was

I was a little wuss

[Purplos]

Long-necked birds under the bed. First they would steal your covers, and they they would peck at your flesh.

My two older sisters would TORTURE me with these stories.

[Promethius]

long time lurker

I was one of them...

By the way, I used to be absoloutely petrified if people walked behind me on the stairs...

[BiffSplitkins]

When I was a toddler I had this insane fear that I would be sucked down the bathtub drain... or any drain for that matter, even a kiddie pool drain. I could see where the water drained to on the outside of the kiddie pool too and I was still petrified to be near that drain while IN the pool, I was fine outside the pool. My older sister would torture me with that and push me close to the pool drain every chance she got.

I was also pretty scared of werewolves when I was about 5 years old. One time after coming home from the drive-in theatre (aging myself there) My father got out of the car and headed toward the house ahead of us. We had an open staircase to the back porch and I didn't see him underneath them (it was a full moon that night too). He reached through the stairs and grabbed my ankle and started growling and screaming. - That was the one and only time I pee'd myself literally. I will never forget that moment.

[Pelican_Eel]

Usual stuff: statues, sculptures, dolls, mannequins (fake people)... dark rooms, of course.

Aliens - BADLY - to the point I couldn't look at the sky or hear a word "flying saucer". If I heard this word OR remembered it, the day was ruined. It was a day of fear.

Robots. Because you can't talk them out of what they're about to do. Argh, these cold metallic scoundrels.

Also, when I got a bit older (in primary school), I was very very much afraid of insomnia. Maybe not of it...but something like that...if I couldn't get to sleep, I would start to panic. It would get worse and worse, until I start to feel sick. Oh, did I mention I was also deadly afraid to vomit??? So I would just lie there for hours, fighting nausea and nerves, until I start shivering. So yeah. Then it's even worse, because I used to literally tremble. Oh God, what nights were these. Torment.

[Pelican_Eel]

I was also pretty scared of werewolves when I was about 5 years old. One time after coming home from the drive-in theatre (aging myself there) My father got out of the car and headed toward the house ahead of us. We had an open staircase to the back porch and I didn't see him underneath them (it was a full moon that night too). He reached through the stairs and grabbed my ankle and started growling and screaming. - That was the one and only time I pee'd myself literally. I will never forget that moment.

Oh and this reminds me of...

In summer I used to spend holidays at my grandparents', and my mother would come to visit only sometimes, once a week or so. I didn't expect her that day. I came back from the outdoors and stopped by the armchair to ask something my grandmother. Suddenly I felt something grab my ankle and holding it... silently... I was petrified, couldn't even make a sound, too afraid to look down. Verrry slow I turned to look... It was my mother, she was squatting behind a chair to stroke a dog, so I couldn't see her. I could have had a heart attack.

[BiffSplitkins]

Oh and this reminds me of...

In summer I used to spend holidays at my grandparents', and my mother would come to visit only sometimes, once a week or so. I didn't expect her that day. I came back from the outdoors and stopped by the armchair to ask something my grandmother. Suddenly I felt something grab my ankle and holding it... silently... I was petrified, couldn't even make a sound, too afraid to look down. Verrry slow I turned to look... It was my mother, she was squatting behind a chair to stroke a dog, so I couldn't see her. I could have had a heart attack.

Something about getting grabbed by the ankle unexpectedly really scares the buhjesus outta me. That's probably why that scene in Pet Semetary where Gage scalpels Fred Gwynn's Achilles really freaked me out too.

[crtDzyn]

Usual stuff: statues, sculptures, dolls, mannequins (fake people)... dark rooms, of course.

Oh man, when I was young, my family and I went to this big wax museum. Tons of fake people, but I was alright because they all just stayed in place, so I knew they were very much fake. Well I was starting to have some fun looking at all of them so I ran ahead down the hall and around the corner. Just as I made it around I looked to my left and saw Abraham Lincoln on a rocking chair that was rocking back and forth. I freaked out, yelled, nearly p***ed myself and ran right on back to my mom. I was holding on to her so tight until she guided me around to show me that he wasn't real, but I didn't trust any of those f'in things after that.

[MadMachine]

Dolls and stuffed toys used to really scare me, and then there was the irrational fear of DEMONZ back when I was all sorts of brain-dead. (Like four years ago...)

[Melusine Kelandra]

Porcelain dolls did and still do creep me out. They are so unnatural. ;<

[OldTimeRadio]

My childhood was a long series of carefree and sun-dappled days descending down into fear-choked and skeleton- plague pits of night.

There was no physical reason for this. I wasn't in the least abused. I was raised by caring, loving, nurturing, indeed doting, parents in a storybook small river town where loving grandparents and aunts and uncles and cousins also lived.

However I was informed in after years by psychologists and psychiatrists that such truly-overwhelming childhood terrors, with no physical or environmental cause, are very often an early indication of incipient and developing Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder and Generalized Anxiety Disorder. (I have both.)

[Rosewin]

A few of the paranormal sort but my biggest were termites eating our house and the Russians nuking our city which still has a few military bases.

[Atana]

I had loads of fears! I hated the toilet flushing! I always had to run away very quickly afterwards. I hated my red bed spread - this was after watching Dark Towers at school, with the ghost of the res bed chamber! Does anyuone else remember this program? The whole thing terrified me! I once had a dream of a ghost in a wood near my house. After that I hated to even walk past the wood and probably to this day would not go in it, although I no longer live in the area, so I can't test that. I was scared of clowns. And petrified of Father Christmas!

[NosmoKing]

Hi. I'm so glad people replied to this topic. Some thread have, like, only three replies.

I found this great website. http://www.iusedtobelieve.com/ It has posts from adults, and the strange things they used to believe as a child.

I had this strange experience as a child, I was around three years old, I think. I woke up in the middle of the night (only my baby brother was in the room with me), and I saw Santa Claus standing in the corner of the room. However, Santa looked REALLY angry, like an evil Santa or something. Scared me senseless. To this day I have no idea what it was. I know it wasn't Santa, and I KNOW I wasn't dreaming (my dreams have a particular feel to them). It never much scared me beyond that night though.

I also remember a Readers' Digest 'Mysteries of the Unexplained' type book. When I was younger, I loved reading it. But I had to put it away by 5pm each time I read it, reading it at night would really scare me. Something about the day time took the fears away, though

[~Cheese~]

Tree Shadows appearing at night against my window!

Edited April 19, 2008 by ~Cheese~

[irken_dreamer]

I used to be scared of those manikins (I don't know how it's spelled) without the heads. I remember walking really fast through stores trying not to look at them.

The reason I was scared of them was because they didn't have heads. The other kind didn't scare me at all.

[grither]

I used to be scared of the Grinch(yeah laugh it up) and a toy monkey my brother had looked just like the one from a movie where a toy monkey controls minds. I had a server phobia of spiders now I'm much less afraid of them. Still don't like them though. A few other things scared me but not anymore now I'm into serious horror!

[Rosewin]

Was that movie Monkey Shines?

I remember also being scared of a cult breaking into my house and killing me and my family. This after seeing the movie Fatal Vision.

[grither]

Was that movie Monkey Shines?

I remember also being scared of a cult breaking into my house and killing me and my family. This after seeing the movie Fatal Vision.

No it wasn't Monkey Shines. It was a very low budget movie if I saw it now day I'd laugh. Also I think it was a Japanese movie. I don't know the title.