Childhood bogies seem almost equally divided between the feet-grabbers and the head-grabbers. I was one of the latter; I always figured it would be safer to lose a foot than my head! <g>



I still don't care for my head touching the bare wooden headboard or my feet the bottom of the bed.

When I was a kid I saw a TV show that talked about Spontaneous Human Combustion (SHC).
This scared me - the fact that your body could burst into flames, and there was nothing you could do
beforehand to stop it. I didn't understand that it was a rare phenomenon.

Also as a kid, I saw photographs of the Tulip Staircase ghost and the Brown Lady ghost.
Spooked me pretty good.

Also saw the movie "Aliens" (first one) at an impressionable age.

The first one is just called 'Alien'

When I was about 5 or so I loved horror movies. My parents would grudgingly allow myself and my older brother to watch horror flicks with them.

We lived in a house in a town called Kilwinning and my bedroom had a closet which had a door in the hallway which led through the closet and into my room.

The closet was always full of crap like christmas decorations and other stuff, despite the fact that nothing else could fit in there I always thought Jason from Friday the 13th was going to burst through that door.

I imagine most kids think there is something lurking in their closet but for me it was Jason.

Years later my fear turned to Poltergeist and I often had nightmares of them throwing me around my room, or my stereo coming on and despite unplugging it from the wall the music would keep playing.

From 5th grade on I've had an intense fear of the world ending. Not anything to do with Dooms Day, nope, but the good ole fashion way.. meteor hitting the Earth, etc.

They took us on a field trip to a local YMCA camp and taught us our classes there while having nature-oriented retreats. Would have been a neat deal if they hadn't told us in our Science class that the world was going to end.. and it would have been nice if they had specified that it was to happen in God knows how many billion years. I lay there in my bunk that night thinking that KABOOMBLAMPOP the world was going to end at any second.

This fear has followed me into my 20th year of life.. falling asleep to The Universe on The History Channel certainly doesn't help, especially when it fuels the nightmares

I have a fear that started in my childhood thankfully due to my mom. I think there should be a poll to figure out how many fears were started by moms. My mom was terrified of escelators. We went up one one time together and she was afraid it was going to suck us up at the end. Silly right? I still watch very closely when going up or down an escelator for fear it will grab ahold of me at the end if I don't get off in time. Dark was a fear also. The old fashioned camp bathroom was a fear also, that gaping hole and the smell, and my parents liked to camp.

Hurrah for this thread When I was a child, about 5 or 6, I read the grisly and disgusting tale of the Tailypo. I was very young when I read it, and it seems to me I could be wrong about the age, but I was very small. My teacher was telling the class the story of some Disney princess, which I didn't feel like listening to. So I found the Tailypo book which was absolutely scarring for me as a child.

It scared me for years until eventually I forgot about it. Then a few years ago I had a very unexpected dream about it, and remembered all my childhood fears. I told my best friend at the time, who ordered the book and read it to me over the phone one night. I was surprised to remember the book nearly word for word.

Ugh. Worst story ever. And I'm very surprised that the book had the murderous ending in it, as it was in the class room of very young children. Everyone should read it. Scary stuff. ...If you're 6.

I like to sleep in the dark, but my mind like to "play tricks" by making me see things that aren't there. Like clothes that are hanging around, with the right type of lighting, may look like some weird animal. One time, there was a white shirt hanging in my closet and with the way it was hanging, I thought it was some crazy guy with a knife! I don't really fear that anymore, but I'm still a bit of a kid and with all the horrid crimes going on, I have officially become half-paranoid. I use to believe a freaking sasquatch liked to walk down my hallway. I must have such an overactive imagination.

I was afraid of leaves when I was about 3½. I thought they would come and take me away and eat me. I don't know why I thought that.

I was afraid of the ambulance too (or the sirens). I thought they would come and take my grandmother away and I would never see her again.
And they did.....

OMG THAT IS EXACTLY WHAT MY MOM DID FOR ME!!!!!

oh and this will make your blood boil Valkrie!

SOME GIRL PATEND "MONSTER SPRAY" wich is scented water and in a can that says monster spray on it and now she is a MILLIONAIRE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


lol i was sooooooooooooooooooooooooo pissed when i heard this.

Okay, I'm going to do this, I'm going to talk about it...
When I was a wee girl I had the most awful fear of The Scarecrow from Batman...Like, serious fear!
I don't know how or why it happened, but whenever I even thought of it, the dread overwhelmed me, I was so scared and it was ridiculous!
There was one particular nightmare that has remained in my memory vividly to this day of my sneaking to my father's room in the dead of the night, peaking in only to find the horrid Scarecrow lurking menacingly over his sleeping body!!!
It bloody terrified me I was so scared of that thing, like nothing else in all my childhood, and it was a cartoon character!
Now, I don't think it was a fear of scarecrows in general, they are creepy all right, but I wouldn't freak over them necessarily, like I did with The Scarecrow, I mean, I would be on edge every time I watched an episode because I was so terrified that The Scarecrow would be in that episode...I distinctly remember having to stop watching immediately at the first mere glimpse of him once, so whatever happened in that episode I will never know!
I think even today I wouldn't be able to watch an episode with him in it, I am irrationally afraid...
All scarecrows do make me uneasy though simply because of the association and they always remind me of him...I couldn't watch a lot of that one horror movie about killer scarecrows Just every time those tense "something bad is about to happen!" moments came in the film I had to turn away 'cause the thought of an 'evil' scarecrow was just too much for me to handle!

Saying 'beetlejuice' three times.

And small soldiers.

*Shudders*

Haha love this thread!

For me a big one was being scared that if I flushed the toilet with me being too close to it, it'll take my soul or something... hahaha

So I had to leave the bathroom before it finished making the noises, and I would be ok. Got to be a habit though, so I would, until recently, always leave the bathroom quickly.

woah, me too! glad to meet someone else with that fear. And the strangest thing, me also wasn't too little when I feared this. Around 5th grade, and some years after that... For some reason, the end of the whole world seemed to me more scary than the death of myself alone. I would imagine everything that is going on at the moment, playing children, graduating students, families, someone's birthdays, travels, elephants in africa, dolphins in the sea, dogs in the streets, parks, someone's home, mountains - everything just BOOOOOM and gone. I used to think and think about it, until I start to cry... the more beautiful everything looked, the more sunny day there was, the more sad I was. Even now, when the sky is very clear and blue, I have this little feeling of danger deep inside. The sky seems open and waiting

When i was a child i was afraid of the dark very much!
I couldn't sleep in my room without any lights, i was thinking that i will see in the dark red eyes or a ghost will appear!!
I also was afraid if i turn to look in the door of my room ,which was usually open, and see someone staring at me!
hmmmm......I also was afraid If any monster or something get into my room from the big window ,especially in the summer when i let it open!
Generally i am afraid of the dark! Till today i can't sleep in a total dark room, except if i have a company

I remember being afraid of going down the bathtub drain. Stupid Rugrats episode.

My best friend is nearly 20 and she still can't sleep near the edge of her bed.

I forgot skeletons. Skulls and their eternal smile

And just think, we are surrounded by three hundred million walking and talking skeletons in the United States alone!

There's one sitting at my computer right now!

Yes!!! yes!!! maybe it has to do with social phobia?
There is a wonderful short story by Ray Bradbury, I think it's called "the skeleton". About this very subject

I use to think my toys would talk to each other when I left the room, and I would try to sneak up on them and catch them

ET.

He used to scare the Heck out of me. XD I had a hallucination once when I was really ill and he was walking across the room towards me in the dark and from there on the fear wouldn't go away. I'd seen the film earlier that day for the first time. The part where the little boy throws the ball and the ball gets thrown back? The stuff nightmares are made of.

I used to be afraid of porcelian dolls. I think it was because of some silly movie I watched as a child. Really freaked me out. And also I would lay in bed at nite and think of a plane crashing into my house. Which is kinda strange for a child to think about. So that was a big fear too. lol funny to think about these things

Rotten teeth, i used to be scared of anyone who had less than perfect dentures

and chickens..

I believed for years that when people lived into their eighties and nineties their gums turned BLACK. What it was , of course, is that they had false teeth with black India-rubber "gums."



I still remember the chicken which bit my finger when I was four.

I was one of those rare kids that my parents would brag wasnt scared of a damned thing. But I had one fear from the time I was two till now at 28-- I am scared of and I loathe cows.... they make me have panic attacks and its really scary. Odd too cause I used to frequent rodeos where they were--

Anyways I think its a past life thing for me.

Pigs, rollercoasters, the dark, spiders, button hooks, scissors, and horses.

I still fear all of those except for scissors. Button hooks is a relatively recent fear I got after watching Sybil.

When I was young, my friends aquarium malfunctioned, and all the fish died or jumped out of the tank... I stepped on one, screamed, and hid in my room for the day lol...

I felt bad for the dogs that were killed in that story when i read it

I never was afraid of anything (and I've been thinking about this for a while too). The only thing I can remember that frightened me was that damn CHUCKY movie. Stupid DOLL. Grr.

When I saw that movie I remember not dangling my feet over the side of the bed for months. I'm over that...LOL.

Oh yeah the Exorcist movie scared me... but I'm over that too.

As an Adult though I hate it when people come up to me from behind while I'm eating. Or, if someone touches me while I'm eating it makes my blood run cold. Don't know why but I get a weird choking sensation. I wouldn't say that's a fear but more of an annoying thing I guess. Silly eh?

CHUCKY sure put the kibosh on the child-sized doll business, didn't it?

Actually I had a very funny childhood fear. One day my dad (I am pretty sure) told me that squirrels can carry rabies...which is very true. But some reason when I was a child it never entered my mind, and when he said that and described the foaming and stuff I thought you died after it bit or sratched you. So, when I road my bike I was careful to watch out for squirrels jumping out of the trees above so they wouldn't attack me, I was scared for a few months, so much so that I would distance myself from them. ha-ha But other than that short lived period I really had no fear, though I've not been one to have many fears. Now ironically I work with wild animals helping rehablitate them, which a lot of them carry rabies have to love life!

Ah, when I was younger, my parents were both heavily into the X-Files, and I would usually catch some episodes with them. Remember Tooms (from "Squeeze") and the Flukeman (from "The Host")? Yeah, I was terrified to sit on toilets for a long time.

And you know how, if you look hard enough, you can make out faces in just about anything? I was convinced that I had to sleep under the covers and never look directly at the 'faces', or they would try to kill me.

I also had a strange fear of aliens (which could have been attributed to the X-Files, lol).

The Dark. Difinitely. And yet today when the lights go out my senses go mad.

I was never much one for being afraid of too much, and if I was, I got over it in pretty quick order.

The strangest one that someone else also mentioned, was teh bathtub drain. It scared the heck out of me for a while.

I've never been one to like scary movies, even today... that probably stems from seeing Bella Lugosi's Dracula on TV at a friends house and it scared the living crap out of me. For YEARS I was sure Bella Lugosi was in my closet or under my bed getting ready to "Suck my blood!" LOL

I also went through a period in about 1st grade where I was terrified to walk home from school. It was somewhat of a trek, probably close to a mile. I lived in Bellevue WA in the early 70's when serial killer Ted Bundy was on his rampage abducting and killing women about my mother's age in our area, and in fact our neighborhood. I was TERRIFIED to walk home school thinking every car was Ted Bundy, and frankly I worried when I was at school that he was going to get my mom. That one took me about a year to get over.

Since then, I don't think I had any strange or irrational fears. And that last one, I'm not sure it was all that irrational anyway! LOL.

I had three childhood fears.
1. Aliens
abducting me and scaring me.. still the only things I'm scared of.
2. Spiders
crawling on my face while I'm asleep.
3. Glow in the dark stickers
when I was little me and my big sister got some goosebumps glow in the dark stickers and when the light went out they would glow and they fly around the room.. its obviously a trick of the eye but me and my sis didnt know that at the time and were scared of the stickers for our whole childhood.

MissMelsWell, I am not sure your last fear is that irrational either..

I have always been scared of clowns - more the dolls than when someone is dressed as one. There was this big clown doll that we had in our house and my sister and I ended up locking it in the garage under the house because we were so scared of it.

Oh, and I had the most irrational fear ever. When I was little, about 7 or something, my dad's house was right near the train tracks and the train went by at 8:30 every night. I watched this movie (that I can't remember the name of for the life of me) where a man paid some people to kill his wife when the train went by their house so that no-one would hear her scream.
anyways...
I was always scared that this puppet that I used to watch on TV - Agro - would come and try to kill me when the train went by so no-one would hear my screaming.

Oh, and the bathtub drain thing too.
I always used to pull the plug out of the bath and run away so I wouldn't get sucked down.

I remeber that episode of rugrats! I love that show!

When I was younger, my cousin let me watch Steven King's IT. I was terrified of clowns and plumbing for weeks.

I also saw a movie on Sci-Fi about these two creepy guys that stole people's souls. All the times they did, the people were always lying on their back (usually asleep). It took me a long time to sleep on my back again.

Also, there was that fear of ovens. Seriously! I freaked out whenever the oven was on, and would never let anyone go near it because I was afraid they'd fall into it. I still get a little jumpy when putting something in it.

When i was a baby (6 months or so) my mother was carrying me in a carry cot, she stopped and balanced my cot on a wall whilst she unlocked the front door to our home, when she turned to pick me up, my cot had over balanced and I was lying face down in the snow, (I was fine) (( I know all this cos my mother has told me)).
She picked me up and took me into the house to warm up........................ there was no injury or damage.

But I am now 30+ and the biggest fear in my life is to FALL to my death, its not the death bit that freaks me out, just the falling which really scares me!!

Might this have something to do with HANSEL AND GRETEL?

Human infants are supposed to be born with only two instinctual fears - the fear of falling and the fear of loud noises.

Haha. Actually that story had me more afraid of getting lost, and cannibals.

A poltergeist/ghost appearing in my room and the door on my room getting locked while it's happening.

I loved Agro the puppet. He was the best. Although I do see how you could find him scary.

^^^
yeah, I like agro now too, there was just something about him when I was a kid that scared the crap out of me.
probably cuz he was so angry all the time.

ha ha, well, I suppose that is why it is irrational!

It's good to know that so many others shared my odd childhood fears. Mine were:

1. Dolls, especially porcelain dolls, but certain other ones as well. I saw a weird movie on TV as a kid about a porcelain doll that came to life and was killing people. Even though I loved scary movies as a kid (still do), that one really got to me.
2. Having any part of my body hanging over the edge of the bed. I still can't sleep that way.
3. Spiders-still dont like them much.
4. Being buried alive. I still have this one, and would consider it an actual phobia. I can't see a coffin being lowered into the ground without having a panic attack. I also cannot enter caves without having one as well, as I embarrasingly discovered during a family vacation one year. I tried to "cure" myself of this by watching the movie The Descent. I will spare you all the details, but it didn't work out so well.
And finally...for family induced childhood fear...
5. When I was around 5 or 6, my sadistic uncle told me a story about a dismembered hand that crawled around, and liked to hide behind people's toilets. He told it with such enthusiasm, that I actually believed him. Needless to say, I was pretty paranoid about using the bathroom for a while after that.

I lived in the countryside when I was younger in a heavily wooded area near a river. I was terrified of a few things as a kid...mostly thanks to Unsolved Mysteries tv show that i used to sneak up and watch when I was supposed to be in bed.

1. Bigfoot - I was afraid to sleep near my window because I thought bigfoot would come open my window and get me.

2. Aliens - I was scared at night aliens would come.

3. The dark. When it was dark and the woulds would creak and moan it used to scare me.

4. Ghosts - I always was afraid to go deep into the woods at night

Luckily I grew out of all these fears. Now if I ever ran into any of these things minus number 3 I think I would still be afraid lol.

Holy crap!
I was reading this thread and decided I would include mine when I got done with all the posts... but then I read yours, Vixxy. When I was probably around 5-6, I had a very vivid hallucination that ET came in the door of my bedroom, walked across the room and onto the bottom bunk (I was on the top bunk at the time). I could hear his breathing and footsteps perfectly, and very much remember every detail to this day. Soon after (within a month, iirc), I saw him staring at me from behind the partially closed door of my bedroom closet. Just staring, but I became so frightened that I ran from my room nearly in tears.

My parents had taken me to the movie when it was in theatres (I was 2) and I was a big fan of ET. Didn't scare me in the least until after those incidents. Now I can't watch the movie or look at pictures of him. I get chills and goosebumps. Interestingly enough, I'm convinced that it was a medication I was taking at the time that made me see those things. I would also see parades and marching bands walking through my bedroom while I was in bed and dinosaurs "flying" through my door and past my head. I think they found I had an allergy to the medication...

DK

Oh, and I think this is my first post... I've been lurking these boards for a long, long time

Maybe that explains my irrational fear as a child. For some reason, until about the age of 6, I was afraid of those bumps you drive over on the freeway that warn you that a turn is coming up or that your car is going off the road. Usually they aren't that loud, but this one highway nearby was really loud. I don't know if it was the loud noise or the thought that something was wrong with the car, but they always scared me for some reason.

I remember being frightened the first time I rode in an automobile as it passed over a bridge which had an open gridwork decking. (Then a brand-new design.) It wasn't right to look down through the bridge floor and see the river far below.