Things That Scared You As A Kid

[Tragic_Comedian]

Come one, come all! Step right up, post your childhood fears! Come one, come all!
I, for one, was scared of the lizard in FernGully, and I had this Disney Christmas sing-along tape, and one of the songs was "Hip-Hop Noel" and it was sung by Reindeer. I had a mortal fear of those reindeer. I was scared of the dark the majority of my life, and I was terrified of having my soul taken away (long story). The camel from Aladdin on ice.:smalleek:

Alright. Carry on.

[randman22222]

The Easter Bunny.

Scared me speechless. Not soundless though. I screamed. A lot.

Oh, and Darth Vader. Once I had that thing where you keep dreaming after you wake, and so I got up, and got out of bed, and Darth Vader came out of my bathroom and tried to kill me, before I really woke up.

[happyturtle]

I was pretty fearless as a kid. I'm more scared of stuff now. :smallfrown:

[potatocubed]

I remember this one TV program I saw where people kept getting sucked into a strange mirror world and replaced with their duplicates - the program ended with the main character (some kid) banging silently on the inside of the mirror as his duplicate wandered off, then sort of being sucked away.

I was terrified of mirrors for years. I still sometimes check to make sure the writing on my clothes is properly reflected, or that my reflection isn't doing things I'm not. :smallfrown:

[Tragic_Comedian]

Strangely enough, I was scared of the FernGully lizard, but never of Hexxus. I'll never understand that.

[randman22222]

I remember this one TV program I saw where people kept getting sucked into a strange mirror world and replaced with their duplicates - the program ended with the main character (some kid) banging silently on the inside of the mirror as his duplicate wandered off, then sort of being sucked away.

I was terrified of mirrors for years. I still sometimes check to make sure the writing on my clothes is properly reflected, or that my reflection isn't doing things I'm not. :smallfrown:

Come to think about it, this music video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7i5AOGTbpRw) probably would scare the s**t out of any kid. It's got weird mirror stuff.

Hey... It freaked me out only two years ago.

[SMEE]

The Pink Panther. :smalleek:

[happyturtle]

Oh, I was scared of people I loved going to hell. Like anytime anyone did anything 'bad' I was scared of their damnation.

Yeah, the fundies really did a number on me...

[Jibar]

But...
I'm still scared of everything that scared me as a child...

[EndlessWrath]

Spiders... still arachnophobic.. ironic how all my d&d characters take favored enemy spider....

that and heights... heights were pretty bad for me. or rather...the idea from falling from heights. and hitting something pointy that kinda scared me.

[TwoBitWriter]

As a child I used to watch a lot of Extraterrestrial-themed shows, like Sightings.

Anyhow, that led to a strong fear of aliens. All my childhood, I couldn't stand bathrooms with windows to the outside because I thought aliens would watch me doing my business. I also was afraid of my bedroom window, because that was the most likely entrance for a group of aliens wanting to abduct me.
I still am afraid of aliens, actually.

[SurlySeraph]

Boo. *hugs Jibar in least threatening possible way*

I was scared by the movie Space Jam and couldn't watch the whole thing. In my defence, I was 6 years old and pretty sheltered.

Very few things scare me anymore. I attribute it to starting to read Michael Crichton at 4 years old, Tom Clancy at 7, Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child at 8, and Stephen King at 9. Of course, I'm not terribly good at dealing with the few things I am afraid of (most social interaction, anything that moves too quietly for me to keep track of, and really wide open spaces). Eh well.

[randman22222]

Oh yeah, I used to be afraid of aliens as well.

Oh, and everyone is afraid of heights. That and loud noises are the only two fears babies are instinctually born with.

[happyturtle]

I taught myself to read very early, and there were never enough books in the house for me. So one day when I was maybe 7 or 8 I got hold of a grownup murder mystery and read it through. I can only assume my parents didn't know I had it, or they certainly would have stopped me. Man, that book gave me nightmares. :smalleek:

[Fostire]

The only thing i remember scaring me as a child was the first time i saw Jurassic park. I saw it again a couple years later and it didn't scare me, i even saw the ring and the exorcist and they didn't scare me.
Another thing that scared me as a child were roaches. Other bugs scared me too but not as much as roaches. Now I'm not scared of them but i still don't like them.

[Coplantor]

The thing that scared me the most in my life was mirrors in dark places when I was between 3 and 6 years old, somehow, I thought that keeping a mirror in a dark place turned it into a gate to another world. At night, i could'nt get out of my room because it was next to the bathroom, the door was ussually open and the mirror was facing right to the door. I dont know from where did I got the idea of horrible things happening on the other side of the mirror, i always had an active imagination.

When I was 8 or 9, being abducted by aliens was my greatest fear, all because of a documentary about abduction victims i saw on the TV.

My grandmother owns a house for the holidays near the beach, near that house there is a square that had a picture of a priest, the face of the picture was plain white, and during the night, it looked like a ghost face, i was afraid of that square when I was like, 3-5 years old.

Finally, when i was three years old, I was afraid of the garbage trucks because once, someone in my family told me that if I did'nt finished my food, the garbage men were going to take my grandmother away and burn her with the trash.

[randman22222]

<snip> Finally, when i was three years old, I was afraid of the garbage trucks because once, someone in my family told me that if I did'nt finished my food, the garbage men were going to take my grandmother away and burn her with the trash.

That just redefined Schadenfreude for me. :smallbiggrin:
Funny.

[Totally Guy]

There was one episode of ghostbusters where a character got posessed. It was Peter. That was scary.

Then there were comedians pretending to be the blues brothers. Also scary.

Dairy products were also scary. I never was bothered about meat eating but dairy seemed odd because I could think of animals that ate other animals but I couldn't think of an animal that drank the milk of another animal. So it was scary.

Oh, and beards that asian (pakistani/indian) men grow. That was scaring me before it became cool.

[captain_decadence]

The dark

Heights

The basement

The attic

My uncle

Saying the wrong words and accidentally summoning a creature of darkness that would kill and eat me (yes, I actually feared that as a child)

[Semidi]

Clowns and gutters (I watched that part of IT), Chucky and most dolls (my dad thought it would be a great idea for me to watch the movie at 7 years old), langoliers, mirrors at night, the time of 1:00,the devil, and I'm probably forgetting a few things.

Yeah, I'm better now.

[Coplantor]

Clowns and gutters (I watched that part of IT), Chucky and most dolls (my dad thought it would be a great idea for me to watch the movie at 7 years old), langoliers, mirrors at night, the time of 1:00,the devil, and I'm probably forgetting a few things.

Yeah, I'm better now.

Wow, i thought that i was the only one with fear of mirrors at night. Although when i was a kid, the IT movie had no effect on me, neither did chuky, I was a strange kid.

[The Vorpal Tribble]

Guess this isn't really a fear so much as trauma, but when I was like two years old I was taken into an appliance store by my parents and were looking at TV's. They set me down and I toddled over to a pair of those enormous speakers.

Unbeknownst to any of us, in the next aisle a customer and employee were talking about this music system attached to the speakers. For some reason the speakers had been turned to full volume, possibly some other kid messing with the knobs, but he turned on the stereo to show the customer and deafening static blasted out while I was standing right in front of it.

My parents said I didn't cry or anything but immediately collapsed like I had fainted. I didn't, but just lay there shaking and did that for the next several hours.

Ever since then if I hear a sudden loud noise, especially hissing like, I duck down into a fighting crouch. Sudden movements at me can trigger the same thing. Not sure if it's related but I also was scared of vacuum cleaners because of the noise. Grew out of being scared, but still hate them.

On the flipside rain and thunder put me to sleep. Go figure.

[Dave Rapp]

We had a huge backyard. I was afraid that there could easily be monsters and stuff behind me and they'd have enough room that I'd never know they were there until it was too late.

The dark too, just because you never know what's out there. The darkness almost seems to magnify every little sound.

Hmm. I guess I feared the unknown. I still do.

[Mx.Silver]

I had a big fear of cows for years. This was not helped by the fact that I grew up next to a farm.

[Coplantor]

I had a big fear of cows for years. This was not helped by the fact that I grew up next to a farm.

May I ask what in particular scared you about cows?

[Tragic_Comedian]

This Guy:
http://www.mwctoys.com/images/review_deadly_1a.jpg

[Bor the Barbarian Monk]

As both a kid and adult, I was always spooked on the second floor of the family business.

My grandfather founded our auto parts business. It started out as something he ran from home, with stock stored away in closets, cabinets, and (from what I hear) the oven! Eventually, he moved the business into a genuine store. After a decade or so, the business was moved again into a larger piece of property.

This last building was over 100 years old. It had started as a firehouse, with horses and fire carriages on the ground floor, and the men stationed there doing whatever it was they did on the second floor.

Then it became a sewing factory, and a small one at that.

It's final business was ours. While the ground floor has seen many updates to keep up with the times, the upstairs had only seen enough changes for the storage of exhaust systems. Even the conveyor belt system was decades old when my grandfather bought the building.

The thing is, Poppy Sam, as I always knew him, died when I was nine months old. When I would visit the store, I would sometimes play with my cousin there, and adventures that took us upstairs always had me imagining my grandfather's ghost was wandering around. It didn't help that the wooden slats that made up the floor would creak with the slightest temperature change, setting the illusion that some invisible being was walking around.

As an adult, those childhood imagings continued to haunt me, and I would get chills on the second floor, even on the hottest summer days.

Well, I eventually faced down that fear in a pet project all my own. I took it upon myself to clean up some of the storage, most specifically a lot of old records that had been shipped upstairs and virtually forgotten. I spent most of my work days up there over a week's time, receiving a rather intense workout as I kept myself suspended between shelves, moving heavy boxes boxes around for hours at a time...

But the workout was also spiritual and emotional. All that time up there put the image of my grandfather's ghost to rest for me. After that, instead of rushing out of there every time I went up, I would sometimes actually go up to get a little peace from the noise of the ground floor. :smallsmile:

[randman22222]

If it makes you feel better, judging from my reaction to that picture, I'd freak out and punch that thing in the face...

EDIT: Bor, I always enjoy reading your little stories. :smallsmile:

[Devin]

I've been afraid of bees and wasps for the longest time. I still am, to the point of being afraid of flies when I don't know what they are. The funny thing is, I love wasp-type creatures in video games.

[Haruki-kun]

I was really scared of dinosaurs.....<.<

Some idiotic kid brought Jurassic Park into a classroom of 5 year-olds and convinced the idiotic teachers that it was OK for us to watch it, and there couldn't possibly be any kid who would be scared at all.

You know the type of kid.... the one who sees a movie in which a guy kills a bunch of people with a knife, then yells out "Awesome!!!" when he sees the murderer's blood-stained clothes.

Anyway.... I was terrified of dinosaurs for the next three or four years of my life.

[valadil]

There were some jerks at school who scared me, but that's mundane so let's go for something more embarrassing.

So there was this old movie about a blob that engulfed people, cars, and buildings. I never saw the movie, but I saw clips of it on The Muppets and it scared the bejesus out of me. As such, I couldn't watch the Muppets. Where it gets weird is that at the time (keep in mind this was at an age when watching The Muppets was appropriate) I thought that the blob in the clips was made of yogurt, so I don't think I ever ate yoghurt till my mid teens.

[Tragic_Comedian]

If it makes you feel better, judging from my reaction to that picture, I'd freak out and punch that thing in the face...

EDIT: Bor, I always enjoy reading your little stories. :smallsmile:

Funny thing is, it didn't bother me when I first saw it on the Muppet Show, it was a while after that, because I started having dreams about him. I invented this whole big mythology for him, called him the Nightmare Terrorizer (real name is Uncle Deady), and made up a nemesis for him that was basically his head on legs. I tell ya, it was bad. I think he's awesome now.

[SilentNight]

That thing with the spider legs and the doll head form the first toy story movie. When I was very little I would sleep with a hammer so I could smack it if it came out from under my bead.

[Castaras]

Butterflies and Moths.

They still unnerve me.

Also what scared me as a kid and has got worse over the years is injections. Now, all sorts of medical things make me collapse.

*sigh*

[Shas aia Toriia]

Open doors leading into unoccupied/dark rooms. Those things scared my so much. Still do, just not as much.

[RabbitHoleLost]

For some odd reason, I used to have a nightmare with Jafar from Disney's Aladdin. In this dream, there would be a library in a sand box, and, strangely, some kid would always pick up the sand and let it drop slowly.
That oddly terrified me, and, to this day, watching sand drip from an hour glass gives me the willies.

I was also ZOMG terrified of this life-size doll my cousin had. She used to chase me around the house with it.

[bosssmiley]

The thought of drowning
Medusa from "Clash of the Titans"
The sub-hunting sections of "Das Boot"
Disney's version of the Headless Horseman
Whole chunks of the "Last Unicorn" cartoon
The melting Nazis in "Raiders of the Lost Ark"
The thought of what Daleks looked like inside the armour
The idea behind the D&D cartoon episode "City on the Edge of Midnight"
The death and rapid decomposition of the Skeksis Emperor in "Dark Crystal"
The hostility and emptiness of deep space in "Phoenix 2772" (aka "Space Firebird"). That was my first introduction to the idea of explosive decompression.
The movie "Wargames". People who didn't live during the Cold War cannot imagine how chilling the synthesised *BWOMF* sound of cities being wiped off the NORAD screen was.

Rich and varied was my childhood nightmare fuel, and my parents really did not believe in mollycoddling. :smallamused:

[Shademan]

fear of the dark, to this day.
clowns. thats my first mayor phobia. nowdays i just get aggressive and voilent around clowns.
vampires. i was horrified by some wax figure in a movie (it had like five seconds of screen time and did really nothing) but thats what triggered it. i was VERY afraid for SEVERAL years. and mostly only when i was alone and it was dark. offcourse.

hmm... come to think of it, when me and my friends were roared at by a bear, in the forest, at a dark night only scared me for some minutes...

[Albub]

Beetles, which I now love, used to send me into mindless blubbering tears of horror. Were it a fear of something dangerous, it would have been utterly debilitating, as I would have curled up and cried while it dangered me to death, so I lucked out on that draw.

That MGM lion scared the piss out of me. Seriously. I didn't start watching MGM movies until about age 11. Even just trying to fast forward through the part killed me 'cause I'd still see the lion.

Clowns. They made me stop believing in god. I'm am literally scared of nothing else on this earth or off, but I still hate and fear clowns from the very depths of my jaded, cynical soul.

[Shademan]

Clowns. They made me stop believing in god. I'm am literally scared of nothing else on this earth or off, but I still hate and fear clowns from the very depths of my jaded, cynical soul.

i feel yer pain.
lets make a hellsing like organization that slays clowns!

[Haruki-kun]

Butterflies and Moths.

They still unnerve me.

I agree with this 100%.

I hated how in movies and cartoons they were a symbol of beauty and spring or whatever and all I could think was "Kill the butterfly. Kill the butterfly now."

[Kyrian]

The Jaws Ride at Universal Studios. I went on it for the first time when I was five (and after I did research online of the ride a couple summers ago, found out that back when I was five, the shark still looked REAL on the ride). Guess where my seat on the boat was? RIGHT NEXT TO WHERE JAWS POPS OUT IN THE DARK BOAT HOUSE!!! Needless to say, I was not exactly happy with my mother. Refused to go near the ride again (we went back about every other year) until I was 18...

So I go on the ride for the first time again when I was 18, and ironically enough, was in the same seat I'd been in back when I was five. This time I could clearly see in the pool that the ride is in where the robotic sharks were resting (it was a pretty sunny day and the water was quite clear). I could see that they only had about half of a shark on the devices used to make it come out of the water at you. Of course, in the boat house it was still dark in the enclosed area so I couldn't see where the shark was hidden there, but the shark looked so fake that I ended up laughing and looking at my mother to ask "And what about that thing scared me so much?" Of course, I think this was before I found the websites that told me about the change in sharks, which I believe they switched out the realistic looking sharks for the ones they have now around 1999.

[Collin152]

I used to be terrified of choking.
Now I'm just mortified by the thought.

[Tengu_temp]

Open doors leading into unoccupied/dark rooms. Those things scared my so much. Still do, just not as much.

Scared me too when I was a kid - the room where I slept always had to be completely closed. Including windows. Probably connected to my fear of aliens and alien abduction - playing Ufo: Enemy Unknown (X-Com for you Americans) at the age of around 8 didn't help.

[Thanatos 51-50]

The Dark. I was seriously afraid of the dark as a lil' un. Which is wierd, becuase now I revel in Darkness!
Those little "Do not remove under penalty of law" tags on mattresses. To this day, I now point out "Except by consumer" is written on these tags to everyone who uses the joke. The reason is not included here for invkoing real-world religions.

Now, pretty much the onlything that scares me (Spoiler'd for possible religious connotations) is the possibility of utter oblivion after death.
And cicadas. Not scary, per say, but the noise they make... especilly when its quiet, and you hear their wings suddenly snap out and they flutter away without warning.
Sets of my "KILL IT!" and "DEFEND YOUSELF!" reactions simulotaneously.

[Mx.Silver]

May I ask what in particular scared you about cows?

They were bigger than me and they'd just... look at you. With those blank, expressionless eyes. Then sometimes they'd start following you.

Yeah, I didn't like them.


Now, pretty much the onlything that scares me (Spoiler'd for possible religious connotations) is the possibility of utter oblivion after death.

Actually, that one isn't always quite as bad as it first seems. Oblivion itself isn't anything to be scared of. I mean, you spent about 14 billion years in that exact same state before you were born and it doesn't seem to have harmed you. The bit immediately before that and the knowledge that you will cease to be as you are is kind of scary though, but that does get easier to accept as time passes.

[Moofin Bard]

i feel yer pain.
lets make a hellsing like organization that slays clowns!


I agree. Ever since I watched IT when I was only 5 years old, I've hated clowns. I still hate clowns. We went to Circus Pizza for my birthday once and I had to get my picture taken with a clown. I did not stop crying until ten minutes after he was gone.

[Kjata]

The singing and dancing robot mice and Chuck E Cheese scared me ****less when i was 4 or so.
Uhh...
Brave little toaster when they are in the junk yard freaked me out to. You know, when the cars are singing as they get smashed.

[Lerky]

things that scared me as a kid...
X-Files. As a kid I'd naturally get scared so I'd go out and sit by my mom who was watching X-Files with my dad. And so seeing X-Files scared me so I went out again and lo and behold they were watching X-Files, it was an endless loop kinda thing. Also things that still scare me are spiders and needels.

[Thanatos 51-50]

Actually, that one isn't always quite as bad as it first seems. Oblivion itself isn't anything to be scared of. I mean, you spent about 14 billion years in that exact same state before you were born and it doesn't seem to have harmed you. The bit immediately before that and the knowledge that you will cease to be as you are is kind of scary though, but that does get easier to accept as time passes.

I know all that. I just... try not to think about it, but its like The Game.
You can't help but think about it sometimes.

Oh, you all just lost the Game.

[Evil_Pacifist]

The song "Desperanto" by Marianne Faithfull. I was terrified of it when I was ten or so.

[shadowxknight]

When I was little I used to be really afraid of bugs and spiders.
But after I grew older I just squished them.

What freaks me out now is...well the kid from Grudge. He's just so pale...and dead.

[Keymort]

When I was a little kid I was always afraid of dying. Now it doesn't really bother me that much =P.

vvReligeos Stuffvv

Of couse this is because I have faith in ma religeon. =D

[Space-Is-Curved]

I've never really been afraid of anything particularly unusual. I was never a fan of darkness. It's not that I was afraid of aliens or monsters or anything. I was afraid that some killer or someone could be waiting. I used to try to sleep without thinking about being murdered in my sleep as opposed to eaten by monsters. I was odd like that.

Oh, and I'm afraid of bees and wasps. Much less now than when I was younger. My sister got stung a lot and I didn't get stung until I was eleven. That was when I stopped being so terrified.

Pain is terrifying for me as well. More so than it is for most people, I think.

[Lex-Kat]

Initially, only bees & snakes. I didn't develope arachnophobia until I nine or ten, and that was because my mom was always so deathly frightened by them.

[KingGolem]

My two greatest fears as a child were:

Sleep Paralysis. Its like some kind of sleep disorder in which you go to sleep, and then you wake up fully aware of your surroundings but completely paralyzed and then you hallucinate to see aliens or demons or monsters or whatever. I learned about it when I was watching a documentary on alien abduction on the discovery channel when I was 9 or 10 or something. The concept of alien abduction seemed impossible to my logic, but sleep paralysis seemed VERY real. I lost a few nights of sleep over that.

Pipes. Or more specifically, the insides of industrial steel pipes full of some transparent liquid (water, most often) large enough to contain a human being. :smalleek: I mean, I loved covered water slides, but I find the concept of pipes that were NOT meant to contain humans and may lead into an man-shredding propellor or some kind of machinery. To this day that concept is still horrifying.

Death and Going to Hell: Yeah, I went to Catholic school. Those nuns were mean and quick to bring out the whole, "you're going to hell if you don't do what we say" thing. When I got into Middle School I stopped believing in existence of the consciousness after death, and in High School I kind of stopped fearing the inevitablity of death. Now when I think of dying, its usually in a really epic context, like fighting demons or trying and failing to difuse a bomb.

[Aereshaa_the_2nd]

Unfortunately, for me fear is something that happens to other people. Any situation in which anyone else would have fear either has no effect, or makes me angry. However, due to my mannerisms, and the fact that I am always reading or programming, my classmates in primary school though I was, variously a "robot", "alien", or "demon" (that kid's parents were christian fundamentalists, go figure). Thus, through no intent, I was those idiots' worst nightmare, an eccentric person who dresses in army surplus (mostly), is unusually adept at computers, and to them, a waking nightmare. Morons. :smallamused:

[TRM]

Heights. They don't scare me in theory, but if I am somewhere like a ropes course—or even looking down from a tall building—I start to freak out.

When I was a kid (<12 years) I was mortally afraid of deep water; I nearly drowned when I was really little and that fear stuck with me until I became a fully competent swimmer—now I love water in all forms and depths, yay.

Death. I lost nights of sleep and days of pleasure worrying about what would happen to me after I died. I would picture eternal, unconscious, blackness and would lose it completely. My dad labeled those episodes "existential crises."
If I think too hard about death and its associated tangents, especially late at night, I'll still become unhappy and worried; I need more hugs.

[Doran_Liadon]

The Pillsbury Doughboy used to scare me a little. But then i starting seeing him everywhere and i got used to him...and Chuckie, i saw a Chuckie movie when i was 5 and for years i would check under my bed and my covers to make sure he wasn't there. After seeing the Chuckie movie most porcelain dolls freaked me out. My sister got one for her birthday and i pulled its arm and leg off. Then i had nightmares it would drag itself up the hallway with aknife in its mouth and it was coming to kill me...

[Collin152]

I was afraid of death as a kid. But no longer!
This has nothign to do with me learning hte secrets of immortality!
Which I will not be sharing.

[reorith]

this video was the reason i couldn't sleep without a night light until i was 16. (http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=UjgHbRrnjhU)

[EvilElitest]

Myst 1 and 2. I beat both games when i was 5, and those games scared me to death. It was so much like real life, i'm walking around a scary abandoned place with all of these empty houses nad strange people running away, and these creepy books, and everything is all about me looking around and learning my own thing, when bloody ninjas come out of no where and throw knives at me. I literally ran off the computor and out of the room. Bloody ninjas.
from
EE

[Serpentine]

I remember this one TV program I saw where people kept getting sucked into a strange mirror world and replaced with their duplicates - the program ended with the main character (some kid) banging silently on the inside of the mirror as his duplicate wandered off, then sort of being sucked away.Was that a TV series? With episodes like the haunted house with the box full of gnawed bones at the end, and the one about the courthouse place where all the punishments are really horrible, things like one guy having his nose chopped off? I only saw a couple of those, but they were pretty damn creepy...

Earwigs.

Car alarms (bad experience - I fell asleep on a long trip so my parents locked me in the car when they stopped somewhere. I woke up, went to get out... and promptly freaked out as the alarm went off).

The dark.

Things under my bed.

Mirrors (seems to be a common one...)

Going upside-down on a ride (again, bad experience: The Demon at Wonderland, waaaaay too young to go on that).

[happyturtle]

The little slug thingies in Star Trek II that crawled inside your ears and made you do things. *shudder*

[Dallas-Dakota]

Cookiemonster afraid as kid for the Grukel! He mysticy. He be said to raid cookie stacks at night when you is not looking.

Bit more seriously : Nothing that I can remember at the moment.

[H. Zee]

My uncle gave me this toy monkey once, when I was very young. It was kinda creepy-looking, but didn't bother me that much.

Then one night I woke up and found it at the foot of my bed, staring at me...

Today I know that was just a dream, but when I was little I thought it was real, and from then on that particular toy monkey scared me so much I had to get my dad to throw it on the bonfire.

It hasn't left me with a fear of monkeys or anything, though. I love monkeys.

[The Orange Zergling]

At one point my brother rented LoZ: Majora's Mask for the N64, and I was playing through it and came to this one point where this guy was hiding behind... some bushes, I think. Talked to him a few times, then he ran up to a passerby and stole something from him. I don't know why, but that scene completely freaked me out when I was like 5. Haven't played MM since, although I haven't had access to it since then.

[Lex-Kat]

The little slug thingies in Star Trek II that crawled inside your ears and made you do things. *shudder*

Thank you. I forgot all about my short-term fear after seeing that movie. I still can't watch that scene without getting squeamish.

[SoD]

Nothing. No, seriously. I got over my dark thing at a really young age, never worried about anything under the bed, loved all the rides I could go on, and was laughing at my nightmares a few days later.

Nowadays, I'm more scared of stuff, heights, bridges, etc.

[happyturtle]

I was never scared of the dark as a kid, but I often tried to have a sneaky light source so that I could read books after bedtime.

[Thes Hunter]

As a kid tornados and wild fires scared me. As an adult I am not afraid of those things, but I am afraid of spiders, which I wasn't as a kid. =]

I find it ironic, as I kid I had more rational fears than I do as an adult. =]

[Edge]

I was terrified of canines. They still unnerve me, but I deal with most quite well now.

[Thes Hunter]

I was terrified of canines. They still unnerve me, but I deal with most quite well now.

Yeah the thing about being afraid of dogs is if you are afraid of them, you have more reason to be afraid of them. Because many will sense it and mess with you because of it.

[Shademan]

i second the dog notion. was attacked by a huge drug-crazed nazi schaeffer when i was a wee lil' 'un. got away without a scratch but i've been afraid of dogs ever since.

[Cubey]

Except for the fear of failure (which plagues me often - failure, not fear. Well, that too. :smallfrown: Offtopic! :smallfurious:), I am and was fearless. I definitely was NOT afraid of using playground slides as a little kid. No siree.

[Inigo Montoya]

There were just a few things that scared me as a kid.

1.Storm drains. At my old house, cats would hide in storm drains to get away from the heat and whenever I would ride my bike I would see cat eyes staring up at me. I was sure they were waiting for me to get close and then they would grab me.

2. The movie "The Nightmare before Christmas". That scene where the Oogie Boogie man started to sceam "My bugs! My bugs..." gave me nightmares for years...

3. I forgot cows. I hated them when I was a kid, and I hate them now.

[Lupy]

When I was maybe... 9, my dad told me this story, and for over 2 years I carried a flashlight with me:

A guy buys a house in an old neighborhood and it's a real fixer upper. The first thing he notices is that the fireplace is bricked over, but he doesn't worry about it. The first night in the house he hears some noises from behind the fire place, so the next day he opens it up again. Over the next few days he hears strange scuttly noises coming from anywhere dark, but he thinks it's just Mice. Then he starts seeing things like big eyes looking at him, or tiny feet dissapearing into the darkness. He laughs it off and goes to sleep. That night he wakes up having been tied up, and these little gremlins are dragging him downstairs. he snaps the ropes and runs back upstairs. He hits the lights and they start steaming and they scatter. A few minutes later his lights start going off and he sees them using coat hangers to get to switches. He tries to make a phone call be they've cut the line ((This is set in the 70s)) and he freaks. He grabs a flashlight and runs downstairs to the door but they've jamed the deadbolt somehow. He goes back upstairs and is sitting on the bed when all the lights go out. The little gremlins are waiting outside his door where he can't shine a light on them, and then his light goes out. They rush in and tie him up and start dragging him down the stairs. He pulls a polaroid camera from his pocket by the string hanging out and takes a photo. They scatter then come back and drag him more so he takes another one. Eventually he runs out of film and they pull him into the fireplace down some stairs. Then they flip forward to two mornings later with the police in his house. A detective finds the pictures and says, "Sir, I think you should see this."

I hated being alone.

I also thought that a murderer or something would get me when I went to be though, I had nightmares about sociopaths getting into the house at night.

Mirrors, I always thought that my reflection was evil and would switch spots with me and trap me in the mirror.

[Ragabash]

Zombies. A commercial for a zombie movie gave me nightmares, and to this day any movie or game that they play a prominent role in still does some twenty years later. I think at one point we nearly started a betting pool for how long it would take me to have one after seeing Night of the Living Dead for the first time.

[I'm da Rogue!]

Mirrors still scare me. Sometimes I think I see my idol blinking, and as a kid I had the fear that my idol is moving when I'm not looking.

I'm always afraid that something's behind me. I wish I had eyes on my back.

And I had the fear that one day my dolls would become alive and turn their heads, staring at me. One day I threw all my dolls away and kept just the plush animals.
I still think dolls are creepy.

http://www.imagesbybacon.com/mediac/400_0/media/DIR_123/OldDoll$20BROMOIL--Revised--3X3.jpg

[ChickenDancer]

So yeah I saw an episode of Are You Afraid of the Dark where this evil clown was corrupting people, making them retarded or something and then this nasty blue goo dripped out of their mouths. Since then I've been terrified of Clowns, Blue Goo, and Soup... not sure why Soup but I still don't like it.

I also squeel like a 4 year old girl when I see spiders moving. I'm fascinated with spiders but scared poopless of them... I think my fear of thems plus my over all bad disposition makes me also fascinated with the concept of the Drow from Forgotten Realms games and books.

I also was afraid of...

-Old Books
-My 3rd Grade teacher
-The Dark
-Looking into the toilet in the Dark
-Creaky Wooden Floors
-Most of my Family
-Needles
-Blood (Still Hemophobic, I'll pass out if I see someone else's blood)
-Chucky (And any other doll)
-Banshee's
-and Squirrels.

[banjo1985]

The Incredible Hulk used to scare me crapless as a kid. Dr Who and especially the Daleks did too.

[the HZ]

Let's see...

Dogs
To this day I still find them agressive, noisy and unpredictable. Just a bunch of teeth and fur that suddenly comes running towards you, barking. And I can never tell if they want to play or chew my face off, so I always assume the latter.

Death
Not much to say, really. It's scary and inevitable and noone knows what happens afterwards. This may sound morbid, but I used to lay in bed and think of what would be the worst way to die. Since I didn't have much knowledge of what you could die of, I concluded that it didn't matter much. Death was the scary thing, not the way you'd die.

The Groke
This is probably something I share with everyone in Scandinavia. The Groke is a character from the Moomin books. Cold, dark and scary, slowly creeping about at night, freezing everything in her path. She's really more tragic than evil, and she might just be trying to warm herself. Nevertheless, there's something incredibly frightening about her.

The Devil
This doesn't really make any sense since I grew up in a swedish nonreligious family. I have some memories of going to church with my grandmother and being told the story of Jesus in first grade. I liked going to church and I found the story of Jesus to be very interesting. However, one day a storyteller came visiting the school to tell us some stories. They were old stories about witches and the devil, and were probably supposed to be funny and slightly scary.
They scared the **** out of me and probably traumatized me for life.
I could not ask my parents about this, since most curses in Sweden are religious in nature and my parents had told me strictly not to curse, so I thought it was also forbidden to speak of the devil. I was also terrified of anything related to religion until high school.
I have since then grown up to be a scared and confused agnostic. I don't know if heaven and hell exists, and even if they do, which religion should I follow?
The last year, I have thought far too much about religion, and it's driven me to the brink of psychosis. Sometimes I think I'd been better off if I had kept going to church and found something to believe in.

Wow, this was longer than I intended, especially the Devil part. I actually had to pause while writing that, since it made me remember so many bad memories.
Anyway, sorry for getting all emotional on you. I hope I don't break the rules by posting too much about religion.

[Agamid]

The dark (now only when i'm walking home in the middle of the night after seen a horror film in the city).

Heights - still very much so, but now more falling than the actual height.
Dying - having a chest full of cancerous cells that are inhibiting your breathing will do that.

Sharks - i lived on the coast and had an irrational fear of sharks and all other potentially dangerous marine life.

Pigs - Still hate pigs. i used to live on a cocoa plantation full of wild boars and had a few scary run-ins with massive boars that would have quite happily gored me and my brothers. then my dad took me to a pig farm where we had to walk down narrow passages in between pens where the pigs would rush you and try and (i thought at the time) eat you, though more likely they thought you were bringing food or they were so bored out of their minds that something new was just so exciting.