Ever been scared of the most silly things during childhood?

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For me, it was many things. But it was department store mannequins in particular, the kind that don't have complete bodies. Headless ones, armless ones, ones that were just a torso without head or limbs. I was maybe five or six, and I'd sream my head off as we walked by them. Oh, so many fears of inaminate objects! Like every kid, I was absolutely terrified of the dark. I used to get full blown night-terrors.

I was terrified of this model shark at the zoo, but loved to real shark. My mom used to think she would have to call 911 when ever my brothers played the video game for the movie Toys because she though I was having a heart attack.

Water, Zombies, Michael Jackson and the Pink Panther.


I'm not joking.
I'm STILL afraid of water, but I control it better.

I like traditional, undead zombies now, but I still hate religious people (real zombies). The zombie thing is actually the cause of my other major ones...


Michael Jackson... that was after being made to watch the Music Video for Thriller. I recall this was LONG before MJ actually got accused of doing naughty things with kids..... but I was terrified that Michael Jackson was going to get me for about 5 years. While I admitted my other fears to anyone, I never mentioned how mortally terrified I was of Michael Jackson.
... It seems hilarious in retrospect, actually.



Oh... and the Pink Panther.
Remember that old Pink Panther beginning sequence where he just appears as a shape.... and a face appears on it a short while later? And he has that blank, zombie-like expression? Well... that scared the crap outta me. I refused to watch the Pink Panther on that grounds. I figured that he could come out of anything pink, and so I'd avoid anything that looked the wrong shade of pink like the plague. This of course meant that I wouldn't go near girls at school if they were wearing pink clothing.... which got me in trouble a few times (and nobody understood when I said the Pink Panther would come out of her clothing).


For that matter, I was also afraid for a while that Inspector Gadget was going to climb out of the dustbin...... or that eating Sugar Puffs would turn people into the Honey Monster.
Those fears didn't last so long though.

.

Skeletons. Not that weird for a little kid, maybe, but I was terrified of them to the extent that...my brother had this set of kids' encyclopedias, about 20 A to Z volumes, and in about the second one was the entry on 'Bones', with a diagram of a human skeleton. And these encyclopedias were kept in the one bookcase in our old house, in the living room. And I not only wouldn't look in that particular book, I wouldn't go near the bookcase.

The odd thing is, these days I'm totally fascinated by human anatomy. I can't recall at what age skeletons stopped being spooky and started being cool. I suspect I got used to dinosaur skeletons before I started liking human ones.

The other thing was floral patterns. I've always 'seen' weird little kind of goblin faces in pictures of roses or any flower with that sort of complex structure, and nowhere was this clearer than on the curtains we had at home - my mother loved florals, but they freaked me out.

I was also scared of the dark. I was never, from the earliest age, allowed to sleep with any kind of nightlight, in the belief that I'd 'get over it'. Well, I'm thirty-nine, and while I'm OK if there's someone in the room with me (which as I'm married, there almost always is now), if I ever sleep alone I am still scared of the dark, and I still prefer to have some kind of light coming from somewhere. Make of that what you will.

The Boogie Man, my older sister would tell me he was looking in the windows to see if I was asleep yet, I am still afraid of the boogieman

When I was little, there was this card-board stand-up of a scary-looking cowboy at Wendy's.

And when I was three, there was this tiger at The Houston Zoo that locked eyes on me and roared. I thought it was going to smash through the glass and kill me, so I screamed and ran for my life. My parents had to chase me down. Sad thing is, I remember it clearly. And even today, I still do not like that particular tiger... The tigers at The Indianapolis Zoo are fine though.

When I was a child there was a tree on my grandparents' farm on the trunk of which a big white X was painted (this sign had something in common with drawing borders or something like that, I'm not sure after all those years) and I was lethally afraid of this sinister looking X (partly because my cousin's habit was pressing my face to this sign while she was informing me that worms are going to go out from it). I was also scared every time I was in close proximity of a car (specially if it was Syrena: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syrena). I wouldn never even touch a scythe as well because my mother, afraid I'd hurt myself - it's easy when you're a child on a farm, instilled in me fear of scythes.

I recall I was also afraid of one woman who worked in the kindergarten I attended, she was a cook there, I guess - her nose was dark red and once I heard our kindergarten teacher talking to someone that woman had burnt her nose and it's why. Not only did she look like a witch - it was my very first association when I saw her for the first time but she wasn't endowed with nice personality, she shouted at me several times, I remember.

I had a lot of irrational fears as a kid and my 2 kids do today

I was afraid to look in the mirror, and to this day, out of habit, I brush my teeth with my eyes closed.

Someone mentioned paisleys? And flower patterns? I could see faces in anything. Any kind of fabric or wallpaper or the leaves on the trees or anything. Not friendly faces, either.

I was afraid of a lot of things.

My kids. When one dd was smaller she was afraid of the moon and trees. Terrified. She is still afraid to be alone, at age 8. She's so afraid to be alone that I have to be in the bathroom with her and she sleeps with me.

My 10-yr-old is afraid of any kind of picture of a face, so I can't have any photos of my kids hanging up or any pictures of animals or any drawings. Actually, I think I was afraid of that, too, as a kid.

Let's see...

• Vacuum cleaners
• Toilets
• Old bicycles
• Vomiting
• Waterfalls
• Halves of flowers
• Showerheads
• The ocean
• People knowing why I was thinking about something (making the connection between one of my thoughts and another -- or even falsely doing so)
• A particular set of rhythmic noises
• A particular set of motions that could go with those noises

Okay, I just thought of another one. When I was little, I was afraid of a certain type of stairs. It was the kind where it just had the top part you walk on connected at the sides. I was always afraid I was going to fall through the "missing" parts.

I was mortally terrified of the carwash!
This may sound rediculous, but whenever we even drove bythe carwash, I would scream bloody-murder!
Also, I was afraid of Wasps (Still am),bees,heights(Definitely Still Am!),the dark, being left alone, not knowing where my mom was,That Chucky was going to get me in the middle of the night,a serial killer would break into my house and kill me,and anything that buzzed or made a sudden loud noise!

Yeah.....

You could say I was a messed up little kid!

The artwork on certain packs of cigarettes (I don't know what brands).

The old PBS "sound theme" they'd play during the "you are watching PBS..." bits. (YouTube link)

The sound of high pressure air being released.

Certain kinds of lettering or graphic arts styles (can't find any examples off-hand).

Ladybirds (or ladybugs if you're American)

Washing machines, and the strange noises they made

The sound you heard when someone lost the 'Gold Run' from the game show 'Blockbusters' Youtube link of someone losing the Gold Run