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)?

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......

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. 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....

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...

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!

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.

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

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.

I was one of them...

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

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.

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.

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.

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 pissed 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.

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...)

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

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.)

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.

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!

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

Tree Shadows appearing at night against my window!

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.

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!

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.

It sound rediculous but when i was around 3-5 years old i was terrified by flowers and things related to flowers like butterflys. i was especialy scared of sun flowers cause they were so big. it was because i watched the movie Little shop of horrors where a giant flower eats people. im still scared of butterflys but not flowers

I had a fear of buttons. Wouldn't wear anything with a button on it. I can't ever recall being scared of them. My mum just says I was terrified of them when I was very young. Pushed anything with a button on it away.

My nan had this gold button on her window ledge for what felt like years, at the base of her stairs. I hated that. I can remember hating that. It wasn't that it was a button, it was that it was made of gold-coloured metal. I was scared of touching it, or putting it in my mouth and whilst I never did every time I sore it I thought about it. It made me feel sick.

My "fear" of gold metal is still with me. Coins, keys, jewelry, door handles, etc. I hate touching them. I feel the need to immediately wash my hands. When I do have to touch them, it's never as bad as before I do... But, for example, when my mother asks me to do up her necklace I feel physically sick touching it.

I associate gold coloured metal with being dirty, that smell of blood on my hands makes me feel unclean until I have washed them.
Jewelry is just disgusting full stop, it picks up all the filth from your skin all day, eugh!!! Strangly though, if it's not metal it doesn't bother me. I wear leather bracelet's, and they are no problem. In reality, they probably pick up more dirt, but they smell clean. It's all about the smell, I think.


Owls. I never liked owls. We used to have a ornament of one on our fireplace. I think that's what started it. I had a fear of a teddy bear of "mine" which had similar eyes to the ornament, too, so I can only guess it came from the horrible eyes. Orange, shiney eyes which didn't match the rest of either object...? They do not bother me any more, but I still do not like that teddy.

Ikea. When I was very young, I lost my "scruffy toy that every child carries around" in Ikea. I left it somewhere and when I went back, he had gone. He was a purple dog. For years, I couldn't go to Ikea because it made me sad. It turned into a phobia. It faded out when I got older, I now love the place.

I had a traumatic blood test when I was about 6 and I've been scared of injections of any kind ever since. It's gets better the more I have, because every one since has been fine. But there was a time when I couldn't even look at anything "needle-like" because I'd need vomit out of fear.


I think I'm probably very "susceptible" to phobias. Seems I have a slight OCD personality.

I like Family Guy. The older boy Chris has a demonic monkey living in his bedroom closet. Well, there was something in my closet (or under the bed) until I was about eight. But I cannot remember what it was. Maybe it was just "the darkness."

Yep, Black Peter! Behave or he will come and fetch you to work in the fields on his farm in the very hot sun untill you are burned just as black as he is! They used to torment us kids with stories of Black Peter. When I started to torture my cousins with Black Peter it was so much fun I am the oldest of all the children cousins, brothers, ect. and this one time, I scared them so much, we had very well behaved kids that day! You had to be there to seeit, I never laughed so hard in my life

There are only two things on earth that I truly fear.

1. Arachnids. I become immobile at the very thought, word, sound. LoL I just wigged out thinking about them.
2. Dangling my feet over my bed at night. I don't know why, but I just won't do it. I won't even stand in front of my bed if I can't see the darkness of the underneath. *shrugs*

I used to be afraid of that too. I always thaught that the evil monster which resides under the bed would grab me...

My biggest fears were porcline dolls, monsters in the closet and someone looking in through my window, I always have to have my bed pushed up against the window and sleep close to wall so no one could see me...sadly I still fear my closet at night...

I had a fear that stood out in my memory after seeing this thread. Totally irrational but it scared me as a child when it really shouldn't have.

I had this fear probably between about five and nine years of age.

Here goes.......

- That when out in the car with my parents we would run out of petrol. I had visions of this being a terrible thing to happen. That we would be stuck in the car overnight, or for a week even. That we wouldn't be able to get home before we starved to death.

On first sight that might not seem like an irrational fear, if it happend in the middle of the Australian outback, for example, it could be disasterous. But I don't live in the outback, I live on an island nine miles long by four miles wide, with 60,000 people. That's a population density of 2,166/sq mile. We have about twenty garages selling fuel with none more than fifteen minutes walk away. Totally irrational given the circumstances but I literally had nightmares about it and bugged my parents like mad about the fuel guage all the time we were driving about.

I hate touching metal jewelry too especially the gold kind and metal thats really dirty looking. I also don't like touching keys or coins but not as much as jewelry because people wear it and get their sweat and dead skin all over it. Some metals just smell really nasty like pennies. I've had moments where at school I would be eating lunch and I would see someone with some kind of metal jewelry on and it would make me feel sick. What is really gross though is when someone is putting their necklace in their mouth.

As I've likely mentioned before my childhood was plagued by a wholly overwhelming and totally irrational fear of coffins and cemeteries and especially of funeral homes and the accoutrements of embalming. At its worst I avoided a forested area near my home after I learned that those trees would eventually be harvested and the wood used in the construction of coffins.

Recently I was talking to a friend just a few years younger than I, raised two states away, and it turns out that her childhood funeral and death terrors were almost identical to my own.

In neither case does there seem to have been any environmental factors and neither of us ever had a "bad experience" with funeral homes or cemeteries.

I'm 46....I don't think my fear of childhood is at all irrational......

I've noticed quite a few people fear sticking their arms or legs over the edge of the bed at night--which is still one of mine. The funny thing is, if something wants to grap your leg/arm when it's sticking over the edge of the bed, what's going to stop it (the anonymous monstrous thing) from grabbing your arm/leg when you're lying curled up in the middle of the bed? What seems to surround these irrational childhood fears are equally irrational 'rules' that will keep you safe from said fear. It's like only the child can defuse their own fear, they'll never listen to what parents/adults tell them i.e. 'there's no such thing as monsters'.

Another fear I had comes from staying with my parents' friends when my perents were out for the night. I was around eight. For some reason my parents' friends though it was okay to watch The Exorcist while I was in the living room with them. I spent the movie cowering behind a Mad magazine, too frightened to go into another room to get away from the movie (because then I would be ALONE). And I couldn't help but peek around the magazine for some of the worst bits of the movie--like where Regan is lying on her back in bed and her upper torso starts to violently flip up and down on the matress. For years after that I couldn't sleep on my back. I still can't, not because of the movie, but because I'm not used to that position and it's uncomfortable.

On a slightly different note, there are some scary movies I won't watch a night, especially if I'm alone, yet I really enjoy having nightmares. If I wake up in the morning after having a nightmare, I feel really refreshed and energised. Nightmares are like being in a scary movie, but being perfectly safe at the same time because you're in bed and nothing can really hurt you.

Mine was, and still is even in my teenaged years, clowns. I have Stephen King, my hero, to thank for that. I have this clown doll that I gave to my dad. I had gotten it for my birthday one year, and it disappeared. Shortly after I watched the movie, I found it again... and I couldn't stand to be in the same room with it. Even now it gives me the chills -- especially with its mine-shaped black eyes. It was made for me, but... I just can't stand it. My dad likes it though.

I have the fear for what is behind me when it is dark.

I still have that too. I really am a very rational person, I pride myself on it, but that is one I still have and it's ridiculous.

I just cannot go to bed with arms or legs hanging out. Maybe there is an evolutionary reason for this fear? Something from our ancestral past that makes sprawling out of your sleeping place unwise?

I think it might have something to do with when we lived in trees, and if we draped anything over the edge, ground predators might have been able to get at it.

I wish my girlfriend would learn not to sprawl out when she sleeps... i end up giving her a nice firm shove but its not long before i get an arm flopped onto my face

Maybe it's the evolutionary fear of being eaten?

my childhood fears were mainly these 2 :
mirrors, OH HOW THEY TERRIFIED ME this was only after wen i was 6 wen my sister told me about bloody mary she didnt mention the part about having to chant her name though so i thought she was always there just waitin for me to look in a mirror so she could pop out and freak me out

also my fear of shadow ppl i saw something vaguely resembling a figure that was a shadow in my room wen i was 9 but the strange thing was it was rlly dark so how could there be a shadow and there was no person to make it so then i was afraid they would follow me everywhere waiting for me to turn around

It's funny, even if I'm in a bed that's low to the floor (i.e. nothing can hide under it), I still don't like to stick my arms and legs out.

Now I'm an adult, there no real fear that something will grab my arms/legs, more like a well worn habit, I guess.

My dad went a bit funny when I moved into an apartment a few years ago. I lived alone, and placed the couch so its back was to the kitchen area. He was insistant I put the couch so its back was against the wall--something about people sneaking up on me. But I didn't move the couch the way he wanted, as it would have made watching TV harder, the angle the couch faced and so on.

On a different note, that was the first time I lived alone, and I was plenty nervous the first couple of months. Then I got over it, and have been fine ever since.

So glad I'm not alone!

Yes, eugh, and people who put coins in their mouth!!!!! OMG. *cries*

I used to have the fear of going through drive thru windows and having to see the cashier at any fast food place. It did not last long I can go through now but it was weird for a time. Dogs scare me since I was bitten three different times as a child.

I always hated, and still do hate, travelling via London Underground. I don't know why, it's just the thought of being underground, in a cramped environment. Not being able to get a signal on a mobile phone doesn't help either, neither does being surrounded by a lot of other people in such a small space.

My youngest sister (4 going on 5) loves shouting out that there is no such thing as monsters, until its bedtime and she whispers in my ear about the Tickling Top Hat Man with 20 arms and 20 legs, who might just run into her room and eat her if shes not careful to shut the door every night

The funny thing is, she only came up with this idea after seeing a picture of Abraham Lincoln. Now whenever I show her the picture she screams "2O Arm legs top hat man!"