Stupid things you were scared of when you were little.

[marc]

Re: Stupid things you were scared of when you were little.

Two things used to scare the **** out of me when I was young.
No.1. In winter walking home from my grandmother's home at night. On the one side of the road, was a clinic. The shape of the front of the building looked has though a giant monster was going to rise up and leap out! Directly opposite was Trealaw cemetery!!! At night, little lights would appear above certain graves. It was really uncanny. I would later realise it was the reflection of street lights on headstones.

No.2. Anybody who grew up in the Welsh valleys in the 1960s/70s/80s will remember the noise of coal trains. These were normally hauled by a class 37 diesel. The noise of this locomotive was like an almighty growl. During the day, it did not bother me. At night..... It was like a terrifying monster was going to come into the bedroom. I would lay there rigid with terror until it passed. This is rather ironic, has I had a fanatical interest in railways. Has a footnote, sometime ago, I watched a DVD with this type of locomotive on there. I turned the volume up sky high, closed my eyes, suddenly I was eight year old again. Has for the monsters.....Let sleeping dogs lay

[amethyst]

Re: Stupid things you were scared of when you were little.

Nuns saw The Sound of Music I was petrified going home I was hiding under the bedding couldnt sleep.

[victorbrunswick]

Re: Stupid things you were scared of when you were little.

The intro to Columbo.
In the US Columbo and McCloud were originally aired on alternating weeks as part of the NBC Sunday Mystery Movie and I used to think that the guy with the flashlight was scary.

[darren]

Re: Stupid things you were scared of when you were little.

To be honest victor i can see why it would scare u mate.
It aint a stupid thing at all to be scared of this.

Cybermen always scared me when i was younger far more than daleks did.
I think it was the fact they are human like well in a way they are humans just with all there emotions removed.
Even scarier in the old black and white stories.

the intro to columbo.
in the us columbo and mccloud were originally aired on alternating weeks as part of the nbc sunday mystery movie and i used to think that the guy with the flashlight was scary.

[havasack]

Re: Stupid things you were scared of when you were little.

The only thing I was really scared of was my dad being "laid off" as it was regularly on the local news that there would be job losses where he worked. Ghosts and such were sod all compared to real fears.

[zabadak]

Re: Stupid things you were scared of when you were little.

One of my earliest memories was having a scary dream about Cybermen!!!

[George 1978]

Re: Stupid things you were scared of when you were little.

I was so fascinated reading the memories in this thread, and I do feel very guilty bumping up an old thread, but I thought I would add some of my own, which I was scared of. I know that I probably need a psychiatrist or a counsellor after letting people know about these things, but I am sure that I am not unique in this sort of thing anyway.

1) I was also scared by the Anglia TV knight ident as well - I was so glad when they changed their logo for those yellow triangle ones in 1988. I just couldn't even watch programmes like Sale of the Century because of it. I suppose that I was glad that I didn't live in Norfolk or Suffolk.

2) The Thames logo, which probably stemmed from seeing Kenny Everett leaping through the logo. I am almost certain that the "nighttime" version of the ident was shown outside London as well.

3) The KP Nuts advert from 1983 (a still image from that advert actually appears on my avatar), based on the Lene Lovich song. I was wondering why I had this phobia of it, and found it on TV Ark and YT many years later and played it a few times. It was seeing the women cross their legs in a seductive way at the start of the advert while making this seductive noise, and the man dancing around seductively with the women, making me feel embarrassed, or perhaps even jealous because I wouldn't mind being an actor and doing things like that! I suppose it felt too adult-like for my young self to see back then.

4) A black plastic horse (which I think was part of my sister's Sindy doll set) which was on top of the bedroom wardrobe for many years, and then on the window sill - last thing at night the damn thing was in view of myself as I was in bed.

5) The storage space behind some curtains in my Infant School classroom - I went to a reunion at that school in the 1990s and I felt that it rectified my fears.

6) The fire PIFs on the TV including the one with the man trying to put a fire out on an armchair with a bucket of water in record time.

7) Old adverts on film where the audio starts a few seconds after the film does.

8) The Rovers Return fire episode of Coronation Street from 1986 - some ITV regions repeated it again the following day, and even Gordon Honeycombe mentioned it on the TV-am News as well.

9) I saw a cigarette explode when an actor dropped it on the ground in a film because there was petrol on the floor - I wasn't too familiar with what was flammable and what wasn't, and I used to think that all cigarettes used to explode if you dropped them.

10) School (cf number 5). Enough said.

11) Er…

12) That's it.


Do I really need to see the men in white coats, or am I completely sane?

[George 1978]

Re: Stupid things you were scared of when you were little.

By the way, I sympathise with everyone who has posted on here - it must have taken some guts to write it down in this thread.

[zabadak]

Re: Stupid things you were scared of when you were little.

After seeing Jaws, I had an irrational fear that nuclear tests would create a modified shark which could swim through land (not on it, through it!) and get me! Seriously, I had trouble sleeping for weeks!

[staffslad]

Re: Stupid things you were scared of when you were little.

A few of my childhood fears.....

1. A photograph in a Thunderbirds annual showing all the people and equipment used to rescue a single person from something or other. My child's mind saw in the photograph a very thin figure laying atop a stretcher and it scared me so much I would not look at it. When older, I could see that it was just how the material on top of the stretcher happened to be folded.

2. I went through a period of being scared of being left alone with my grandmother. Now I hasten to add that this was nothing to do with abuse or ill-treatment of any kind, my gran was wonderful. However, she had been very ill after her husband died and for some irrational reason I was terrified that she would become ill while looking after me and I wouldn't know what to do. Sounds daft now, but at the time it terrified me to be alone with her. Thankfully, it passed after a few months.

3. Balloons being popped. No idea where that one came from, but I hated balloons being popped such as at parties. I went to a neighbour's daughter's birthday party and had to come home as balloons were being popped. I would have been 5 at the time.

4. Having to go upstairs to turn on the electric blankets. In winter it was my job to go upstairs and switch on the electric blankets in my parents room and in mine. I was really young and had to climb on a chair to turn on the hall and stairs lights, then would run upstairs as fast as I could and switch on the blankets without turning on the lights in the bedrooms as I couldn't reach the switches and tazz it back downstairs.

5. I went through a phase of being scared of not being able to sleep at night. Again, no idea what started it, but I remember laying in bed, scared that I wouldn't be able to sleep. I would sometimes go in my parents room to tell them I couldn't sleep. It was just a phase and passed quite quickly from what I can recall.

[Trickyvee]

Re: Stupid things you were scared of when you were little.

This is so like my fear of the Blue Peter ship logo that would quickly zoom up to fill the screen at the end of the show credits. I used to quickly slink out the room before it came on.

[George 1978]

Re: Stupid things you were scared of when you were little.

After seeing Jaws, I had an irrational fear that nuclear tests would create a modified shark which could swim through land (not on it, through it!) and get me! Seriously, I had trouble sleeping for weeks!

I used to think that the actors in the film and were in the water where the shark was were literally eaten alive by the shark in the film - I suppose as a seven year old seeing the film pre-watershed, one assumes that what we see is real. And the sea water turning red after Jaws has had a "snack" does look a lot more realistic than anticipated. I wonder how many complaints of violence that LWT and the IBA received when ITV had shown that film pre-watershed on mid 1980s summer Saturday evenings? Great film though.

[Donald the Great]

Re: Stupid things you were scared of when you were little.

My greatest fear was of boarding school food. I recall while in junior school there was an incident where we were stalked by a deranged individual known as the Kingsgrove slasher. He did not slash people but rather women's clothes and bed sheets. He stalked our washing section for three nites before the police finally nabbed him. that was scary.

[Donald the Great]

Re: Stupid things you were scared of when you were little.

At boarding school I did the scaring by being the resident horror story teller. I had always had a vivid imagination so telling these spookie tales came easy to me. I took great satisfaction in scaring the life out of my fellow students. Hearing them scream as I relate how "the cemetery stone moved away and a dark, hideous creature slowly appeared".

[George 1978]

Re: Stupid things you were scared of when you were little.

I have noticed that a lot of Crimewatch UK episodes are on YouTube - I have been watching a few of them and it's amazing how much I remember from 25 to 35 years ago. I used to be allowed to stay up to watch it, and it's amazing how much I remember from the reconstructions. One seems to take for granted Nick Ross saying "don't have nightmares" at the end of each episode.