Scared of weird things when a kid

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Oh, I have a good one...

When I was around 6-8 I was worried that the ghost of Thomas Jefferson was watching me as I slept at night.



I think back on that... and really, WTF.

I have a few:

Clowns, needles, toilets that won't flush, garbage disposals, closets that are open in the dark. Those seem to be sort of common.

I'm also terrified of faceless mannequins, or faceless people in my dreams.

I'm also scared of... ice-cream trucks. That probably comes from a dual incedent when I was 5; I had gotten an ice cream one day and ate the whole thing right there, and when I went to throw away the trash in the bin on the side of the truck, I realized that it was actually painted to look like you were putting trash inside a clown's mouth. It had *bright* candy-red colored lips and black eyes. In the end, I had a dream that night about swimming in a river of blood and someone threw me a life saver, which turned into the clown mouth, stained with bright red blood. It ate me.

Irrational fear maybe? I was 5, so maybe that's reason enough.

I was afraid of eyes. I couldn't sleep because I could make out eyes in the pattern of the curtains on the window. Also had nightmares of a giant eyeball chasing me.

going on the monkey bars
ghosts
being alone in rooms of houses I didn't live in....(because of ghosts)
A fear of things moving by themselves....(as if by ghosts)
going to the bathroom by myself...not that I wanted an adult in the stall with me...that is pretty disturbing...but I was scared of ghosts in public bathrooms.....really public bathrooms were places of mystery and horror.....I was terrified of the ladies bathroom at my dad's work because there was a stand-up cardboard sign of of a creepy cartoon guy in a trench coat that read "The Bad guys are coming"...this sign made it impossible for me to go to the bathroom there...and i had to have somebody go in and hide the sign before I could go to the bathroom.

I was afraid of the vacuum because it was loud. I was also afraid of electrical outlets, because I thought when a plug wasn't in the top it looked like scary face. I was also afraid of the gear shift of the car because I heard horror stories of kids pulling the shift and the car wrecking.

also, i remember (it was not a fear, but an anxiety) i had a worry about the dark looking coco pops in my bowl.

on the one hand, they could be the yummiest, crunchiest, chocolaty and condensed "pops" in the bowl.
on the other hand, they could be the broken off abdomens of dead flies that were in the box.

i could not bring myself to eat them.


i met a girl who was NT (and i guess still is) in a sound studio, who was morbidly afraid of snails.
when she revealed that to me (in a sombre way) i shrieked with laughter.

she was not impressed, but i asked her how she could possibly doubt her ability to outrun a snail.

she said that she did not want snails looking at her.

so her reasoning was that their eyes are on the ends of stalks and the stalks bend and weave around, and when they are touched they retract.
she thought of that as very alien like.

she knew that as she strolled down her path through the garden to her front door, that she was being "scrutinized" by at least a dozen snails, and it made her shudder and have to hurry inside where they could not see her.

i wonder what she has to hide from snails.
"i do not care what a snail thinks of me" i told her, but she went away.

-----

i am scared of an asteroid impact. (but i do not fear that one is going to happen in my life)
i always dreamed this when i was a child and still dream it sometimes.

i am in my experiments room late at night about to go to bed, when i notice that it seems to be getting light outside.
the blinds are down.
then, rapidly, it looks like helicopter search lights shining through the blinds.
then 1 second later it is like the sun has come back up.

then an instant later, it is so bright outside, that i dare not open the blinds to see what is happening.

it will burn my eyes to see.

i realize that there has been a strike.

the light outside then dims after a few seconds, and i open the blinds to see trees burning and plastic wheelie bins on fire.

there is no vibration or sound.

i know the seismic wave will arrive first, then the air pressure shock, then the ejecta will rain down in a bombardment.

the seismic wave is enough to throw all the water out of lakes into the surrounding hillsides, so i know i will not even survive that.

so... how long to wait for the seismic shock to get here? about 5 mins?

what an awful wait of only 5 minutes that would be.

When my son was about 3, he was absolutely terrified of Mr. Peanut. (For anyone that doesn't know, Mr. Peanut is a cartoon dancing peanut. He has arms and legs and a face and he wears a monacle and a tophat. He's in commercials for Planters Peanuts).

I had an active imagination as a child... perhaps, too active.

here is a short list of my childhood fears:

Alphie (the robot, children's educational toy) had a face that gave me nightmares.

curly red hair scared me.

the johnny carson announcer guy's voice scared me.

black mildew really scared me. (still kind of does lol)
Public toilets. Not because I thought anything was to come out of them but rather the loud noises of pressurized toilets would hurt my ears.

I was almost certain that my parents had been replaced by alien beings who were wearing disguises to represent my parents.

I was afraid of the vacuum because it was too loud but also because an older sibling told me that if you would vacuum without shoes on, the vacuum would rip off your skin.

An old quilt that my dead great grandmother had made long before I was born. It was on a shelf in my parent's closet. I was terrified of this quilt for no logical reason.

In grade school, I always felt as if I was being watched when I went to the restroom at school. I would hold it as long as I possibly could and if I had to use the toilet, I used to cover myself as best as possible even in the stalls. I wouldn't feel this way anywhere else.

Ants. Still, to this day. I hate hate hate ants. I can handle spiders alright and a few ants in small numbers but a mass of ants swarming over anything and I lose it. I've tried to explain it but the best I can do is to say that I get a panic/static feeling and it is nearly intolerable.

Garbage disposals. I still fear these. I tried once to overcome this fear by using one while doing the dishes... but... unfortunately, I didn't notice how wet my hands were when i flipped the switch. BzzZZZzz

I had a few more odd ones but nothing that is worth writing about, to be honest.

Stairs. Clowns. China dolls. Masks. Injections. Numbers 3, 9. Green (The colour, still got this one to a lesser degree.) Cupboards, nooks, dark, shadows. Bad words (not swearing just any word that could be wrong?! Some are indistinguishably just bad words, not to be used or written.) Failure. Heights. Small spaces. Butter, Apples and Bananas (turned out to be allergies/intolerances.) Showers. Black ink pens. Moving things in my room, change. Oh and an odd one, the gelatine corner shop eggs

As a child, and even today as an adult, I still get terrified when I am around mixers, blenders, rolling things or anything you can get your hand knarled off by. It's bizarre I know but it's the truth.

I have this one memory as a child. This was about 1976, I was 4 years old and my brothers were setting up a makeshift house of horrors in the basement. And every time they turned off the lights it became pitch black. I couldn't see anything. And for some reason I screamed my head off every time they flipped the lights off. Even when I knew they were going to do it. It scared me every single time. (Eventually they told me to just get my ass out of the basement!) LOL

But I have no lingering fear of the dark as an adult.

When I was a child I was terrified of little people... I still don't know why, I'm not anymore (thankfully, cause it's pretty mean. heh) but as a child it was a huge fear of mine. My son freaks out about a lot of things, but the only fear I can think of is small places. God forbid I try to go down a small hallway, into an elevator, up a small staircase... it's actually a pretty bad fear of his and he's only 3. I've been head butted because of taking him into an elevator so hard I couldn't see straight. =/
He's autistic, btw.
Edit- I just remembered another fear. I used to pray every night that aliens wouldn't abduct me. This fear came to be because I was so interested in UFO's and aliens that I was terrified that they would make note of me and abduct me. OH. Coy fish. They used to terrify me and they still kind of do, I don't understand why. But I always get a really uneasy sensation if I am near a thing with coy swimming. I think they're pretty, but like I said, they make me uneasy. I've been afraid of heights since I was a kid, but that's not too unusual... I'll edit again if I think of anymore.

i hated and still do - robots that are in any way made to resemble living creatures however fake in fact more so if they are fake looking. Same with shop dummies and always had a fear that i would see a person with no face.

I always used to be scared on tvs that were turned off in case they suddenly turned on. And have a big fear still about turning plug sockets on wth electrical items plugged in in case they fire up and scare me.

I was terrified of shops and this fear has just adapted and changed as i grew up for example i can enter a shop by myself and buy most stuff but im really panicky about buying certain things - odd stuff for example topping up my electric card. I get anxious if im buying alcohol cos i look young and am usually asked for id which although i have makes it more awkward for me. I also ave a thing about petrol stations - i can only do part of the process for example can fill the car if someone else goes to pay or can go to pay if someone else fills the car.

The only wierd thing that I was afraid of as a child was an obese teenager named 'Toby' who lived across the street. His mental development seemed to have stopped at an early age, and he would wander all over the neighborhood, saying 'Hi' to everyone, and rubbing his own crotch. For obvious reasons, all of our parents told us to stay away from Toby.

When a young girl's body was found near the river, Toby was one of the first people picked up. He was held first for questioning, then for his own protection (police had to stand guard at his mother's house). The real murderer was found about a week later, but even though Toby was officially cleared of all suspicion, he and his mother still received death threats.

Then one day, we saw a 'For Sale' sign in front of their house. They had moved out in the middle of the night.

After a few years, Toby's reputation had reach the level of an Urban Legend. "If yer makin out on a deserted road, then Toby's gonna gitcha!" was the basic story. For a long time, if kids and teens wanted to scare you, they'd suddenly point behind you and shout, "Omigawd! It's TOBY!"

I still cringe a little every time i hear that name.

I was scared of the vacuum cleaner for years, I refused to walk up or down stairs until my mother forced me to do so and I would hide from any vehicle with a loud exhaust (I still don’t like loud vehicles) and this…



The mid ‘70s Little Golden Books logo, it’s in the lower left and corner. It’s a ‘g’ and a ‘b’ that look like a pair of eyes. I can remember sitting in my aunt's shopping cart and being scared senseless as we would go by the display case for the books because the logo seemed huge and I thought it was staring at me.