What scared you when you were a child?

[Julie]

Oh!  I know this one!

Ron and I have something in common, the fears of mirrors in the dark.  You look in and you're not sure what's looking back out at you.  I think it was the bloody Mary game at sleepovers that enhanced that one.  Now, looking into a mirror in the dark can induce a kind of trance state.  Neat.

When I was 7, I was attacked by a couple of crows on the playground at school. They pecked my head and I thought they were going for my eyes.   THAT fear lasted well into my 20s.  

Otherwise, I was a pretty tough kid, and wasn't afraid of too much.

[Dios-Flakk]

I forgot all about ti!  Waht scared me EVERY time I heard it?

 THE X-FILES THEME SONG

 If I heard it, I would run away covering my ears and hide under my covers.  It terrified me so badly.... :S  *ick*.

 Of course it didnt help that when I was young I came down and asked for a snack in time to see the side of a guys face pop all over someone elses, and then their face did the same.  Of course, it was the X-Files.  

:D  There ya ahve it, more to my messed up memories!



P.S  check out my short story located in *GASP* the topic I just put up about it.  If ya cant find it, then ftp://65.93.188.226/Feb4_Henley.doc
Enjoy!

[Slant]

Scary things from childhood?  Okay, you asked for it.

Shadows scared the hell out of me.  In particular, I was about four years old and looking into the dining room from the kitchen.  I saw a shadow (or something) that looked like a tall thin person with no arms and a long nose walking jerkily through the room.  I closed the door and ran to my mom asking who was in the house.  She told me nobody else was in the house and opened the door to the dining room, and nothing was there.  I spent so many years trying to rationalize what I saw.  It HAD to have been a shadow from an outside light source that had been going by the window, yet it was so real to me back then.  I am getting chills right now thinking about it.

I was scared of mutliations and deformities.  There was this one old movie about a circus and all I really remember was a bald-headed guy who had been attacked by something or other.  When his wife came to see what he was doing, he turned slowly to face her and his eyes had been gouged out.  That scared me so badly that I couldn't sleep for a week.  Also, we had a neighbor who we would see all the time at Publix who was missing his left hand.  Whenever I saw him as a kid I would just stare at his exposed stump and it would frighten me to no end.  People with hunch-backs or facial deformities would just make me tremble for no logical reason whatsoever.  I just thought that they were monsters who had come by to catch me by myself and do me harm.  

When I was bout six or seven, I woke up to find a huge-ass roach crawling on me.  I screamed and jumped up, trying to get it off.  For years afterward I would have nightmares of bugs crawling on my body, so vividly that when I would awaken from the nightmares I would have goose bumps on the areas where I had dreamt the roaches were crawling.

[greyorm]

So, what scared you most when you were a child?

Let's see:
The dark. I was terrified: sweaty, frozen, screaming, terrified of the dark.
That a friend locked me in his pitch black basement, told me there was a vampire down there, and then shut off the lights (which were at the top of the stairs of course) didn't help any.

I still don't like dark basements -- my heart races and I get hit immediately by the need to flee upstairs -- but I'm just fine in the dark anywhere else.

I couldn't face my wall while I slept or have my head touching my pillow because one night I awoke, picked my head up and saw a huge black snake slither across my pillow and down onto the floor. It felt palpably evil.

There are absolutely no snakes of that size where I used to live, but it seriously screwed me up for years as a kid because at the time I knew I was awake and it wasn't a dream. But of course, there couldn't have BEEN a snake.

Frankenstein stood just outside the door to my room, whether I had lights on or off at night. I had to cover my head with my blanket while sleeping or he'd get me. I could, however, go down the hall to the bathroom or to the kitchen without worrying about him...I only needed to worry about him when I was asleep. Otherwise he'd just stand there, and disappear when I got close.

I once saw a giant spider in our bathroom...I mean a GIANT spider, the size of a horse. The bathroom had also become a black-and-white jungle. I couldn't go pee until my parents got home and checked the bathroom for me -- I blame the old black&white Tarzan movie I was watching for this one.

My sister used to see little trolls and civil war soldiers dancing around little bonfires in her room and had to hide under her blankets so they wouldn't eat her.

Also, the number six really bothered me, I couldn't write it or look at it without crossing myself (blame the Bible -- I read Revelations).

[anonymouse]

Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark.

Read these books in elementary school. The stories themselves I could live with, but the art is incredibly fucked up. I'll never get over it. I remember, in particular, two things: one story about a corpse coming through a field, and another about larger and larger cats who could talk. I remember the specifics, too, but I'm trying really hard not to think about it now; it's very late and dark outside. =/

[Jason L Blair]

I got the Scary Stories trilogy (as a single-volume collected work) this past Christmas. I was not familiar with the books prior to that, but I wish I had been. There's some great mood in those books and the artwork fits it perfectly. Some of the stories are okay; some are truly inspired (and inspiring). It's worth a look-through (and a purchase, I would say). Good good stuff.

[FatesPuppet]

Okay, I'll admit it: I was a very sensitive child. It didn't take a lot to scare me (and having 6 older brothers and sisters - each with a slightly sadistic streak - didn't do anything to alleviate my fears). Also, whether a cause or a symptom, I used to have terrible nightmares as a child.

There were a few things that struck absolute terror into my heart:

-- Being in the dark, alone - things I could see were bad enough... things I couldn't see came from my imagination. You know: where the nightmares live. And, naturally, they'd only come after me when I was alone.

-- My closet - it was a long, narrow closet, with the door on the end of one of the long sides. It didn't have a light, and it had a 1' diameter hole in the wall near the floor.

Those were the two biggies... Between those two, I lost many hours of sleep as a child. I used to have recurring nightmares where I was dragged into the deep, dark hole in the wall in the closet by imp-like creatures (adopted by my inner demons from a 70's horror flick). In most dreams, I'd enter my bedroom alone in the dark, and when I tried to turn on the light, nothing would happen. Then they'd grab me, and drag me - too terrified to scream for help - into the closet...

Imagine my horror when, one night, I awoke with a start and jumped out of bed to turn on my light - and nothing happened. I don't recall too clearly my panic-stricken flight, but I can tell you that I was three rooms away - with all the lights on - before I stopped and looked behind me. After I'd managed to calm down, I made my way cautiously back to my room, and tried the light again... this time, it worked.

To this day, I still have no idea why the light didn't turn on the first time I tried it...

[A side note to Slant: Although I haven't seen it personally, I know several people - one of them my ex-wife - who've had encounters with a "shadow." In my ex's case, it was while we were dating. She was living in an apartment this big old house. One night, after hanging out with a bunch of friends, I left to drop a couple of them off and head home. (It was one of those nights where the wind almost seems alive, and you constantly see movment out of the corner of your eye - even indooors, out of the wind. I think we all had unsettling experiences that night, but none as bad as my ex's.)

After we left, she was going around shutting the lights of and getting ready for bed. When she went into the living room, she saw a shadowy form standing by the front windows. (It couldn't have been her shadow - the position of the light in the living room would have caused her shadow to be cast back into the hallway - and there was no light source behind her.) She said it stood there for a moment, then leapt through one of the side windows (which, by the way, were painted shut). She said she ran and watched it leap from the porch roof of her house onto the porch roof of the next, then disappear around the side of the house next door...

I've since talked to other people who - without having heard the above story before-hand - have shared with me tales of similar encounters. Mind you, I'm not a ghost-chasing fruitcake (not saying that all ghost-chasers are fruitcakes, either) - I'm a huge skeptic. I mean, I believe there's weird stuff out there, but I'll be the first to doubt second-hand accounts. But I've known too many people who've had strange experiences involving shadow-men to just discount them off hand...

So, take the anecdote as you will - just thought you'd like to know that you're not alone.]

~C~

[Neylana]

Gotta say that this is a fascinating topic.

Also gotta say that, even at the age of 22, I'm not too sure if all my Innocence is actually gone. I don't know how many times I've called friends in a panic, whispering into the phone "Come get me. There's noises in the living room. No, nobody's here. I'm scared. I even went out there with my sword. It would make me less scared if someone was breaking in." No, my first thought is not that someone is breaking in. It's usually ghosts or monsters or something. And yet, I desperately try to find some more "adult" reason for such things, because I'd feel a lot safer if monsters didn't exist.

Some people joke that I'm crazy. I personally think being afraid of anomalous noises is the smart way to do it, at least until it's proven (by me) that they're harmless.


But what was (or maybe am) I afraid of?

Zombies. I was certain there were zombies in my backyard. My backyard, growing up, consisted of a huge.... pit. Some might call it a hill, but it was really steep, and was more pit-like to me. It was impossible to mow the grass, it was so steep. At the bottom of the pit was blackberry bushes.

Some history: According to rumor, my yard (and the neighboring yards) was used as either a Native American battleground, or a Native American burial ground (the reports varied).

My sister once had a dream about finding an old skull with paintings on it under the blackberry bushes. I often swore I heard voices coming from the pit at night, and felt strangely pulled into the blackness (which always freaked me out). The backyard was creepy even during the day.

My bedroom window (which had a flimsy white lace curtain) was facing toward the backyard, and I often imagined zombies lumbering out of the pit and standing outside my window, staring at me. I also dreamt of zombies a lot, usually ending the dream by committing suicide just so I wouldn't become a zombie myself (how's that for a morbid childhood?).


My bedroom was set up really annoyingly. The window was across from the door. On the same wall was move closet (that I removed the door from because I felt safer being able to see in it), and a closet-like indent in the wall. I considered the window the greater of evils, so I had my dresser pressed against the closet and the useless wall indent.

Still, I often saw shadowy things (usually people-shaped) walking out of my closet as I walked down the hallway toward my bedroom (day or night). It just cemented my theory that closets are portals to other worlds (I often stepped inside the living room closet to take trips to Mars).

Luckily, I had an imaginary friend named Hugo. He lived under my bed (though I still wouldn't let my feet touch the floor anywhere near my bed when it was dark), and he was a 2-foot-tall spider with bright green fur on his back. Later, I found he could turn into a person if he wanted to talk to me. I also had my dad's Monster Repellent (just scented water in a spray bottle).

I was also afraid of birds, because I once had a very convincing dream that my dad went to let our cat in, and was attacked by a foot-and-a-half-tall kiwi bird.

Sadly, I was often afraid to go sleep in my parents' bedroom with them because of the Ewoks. Yes, you heard me right. Ewoks. These showed up before I ever saw anything Star Wars related. Every time I slept in my parents' room, an Ewok would walk up and stand at the side of the bed, next to me. Then it would STARE at me. It freaked me out. When I finally saw the Ewoks in Star Wars, I totally flipped out and refused to watch it ever again. But I never talked to my parents about them until I was in my late teens. Then I told my mom about the Ewoks in their bedroom. Her eyes went wide and she stared at me, a look of shock mixed with some fear on her face. Her only words: "You saw them too?"

Not something you need to hear from your mother.

I had a lot of very strange experiences when I was a kid, and had good reason (to mee, anyway) to fear a lot of things. Luckily, my parents were understanding, and never told me that I was wrong, and that what I was seeing wasn't exactly what I thought it was. They just tried to provide solutions and protection from the monsters I saw.

[Neylana]

Yay! Go figure. New here. Lots of stuff that I was afraid of.

Now for some dreams that I had with creepy regularity. I usually dream in color, but these dreams were black and white except where noted.

1) A scary sorceress is summoning (successfully) some sort of scary creature. I'm talking Lovecraftian-grade horror from beyond here. It was like a huge pulsing squid-tube with tentacles. It's 'mouth' was a big hole on the top that sucked things in.

2) I'm on a road, walking over a hill. At the top of the hill there's an old man with a broad brimmed hat waiting for me. When I reach him, he says something to me, but it's garbled, so I can't understand. Then he points down the other side of the hill. The road leads straight to a lake. There's a boy placing bricks at regular intervals along the road, heading toward the lake. In the lake, I can see a bright yellow light close to the shore, waiting for the boy. I don't know what the light is, but I'm afraid of it, and I call out to the boy to run away, but he can't hear me. I start running toward the boy as whatever is making the light raises itself above the water to strike.

3) This one was weird because it was just shapes. There's a village of happy little blue strings, bouncing around and dancing, with joyful music in the background. They fairly glow, they're so happy. Then huge logs (they look like logs... I have no idea what they really were) come and squash the entire village. It was really more horrifying than it sounds. This one especially made me wake up screaming and crying. Someone told me it was based on my fear of things bigger than myself harming me. Which may have been true, as I was small for my age (pick any age you want, I was small at that age in comparison to others of the same age), and often intimidated by large people.

I had at least two of these three dreams on a nightly basis, two months of every year. Always the same months every year. I actually started putting them on a calendar when I was 7, and was always correct in my estimation of what day they would start. The last year I had them was when I was 9. I still remember them with crystal clarity, and they still send shivers up my spine, thinking about them.

(Oh yeah... corrections on my previous post. My closet was on the same wall as the bedroom door. And it was my bed that I pushed up against the closet, not the dresser. My fingers get confused sometimes about what my brain is telling them to type. Yes, that's right, I slept with my head right next to the closet, that had no door. The closet being a portal was less scary to me than zombies reaching into the window to grab me. Besides, with my face that close to the closet, I could see into really well, and therefore have warning if something was going to come out and grab me.)

[Fade Manley]

1) Vampire bats. We used to read these little devotionals in the morning around the breakfast table, in which some interesting animal would be explained and a moral would be learned from something about it. One morning it was vampire bats, and the chapter finished (after talking about how they'd scoop off the tip of your nose and lap out the blood and you wouldn't even feel it) with the reassuring note that vampire bats only lived in South America. Which would have been much more reassuring if I hadn't been living in the jungles of Ecuador at the time... I slept with the covers over my head for months.

2) Running out of money. I don't know how typical of a childhood fear this is, but I used to have nightmares about the family never getting out of debt. We weren't exactly poor, especially compared to the people living near us, but I would get sick to my stomach every time my little sister asked my parents for something because I just knew that we would run out of money and go into worse debt. I didn't have any clear idea of what was bad about this, just that it was Bad.

3) Animal Farm. Read this book when I was in fourth grade because my older brother had it home for a class, and the cute cartoon animals on the front made me think it was supposed to be a cute, funny little book. It was horribly frightening to think of having people in charge lying and not being able to tell, or do anything about it, and everyone believing them.

4) All of my flying dreams were nightmares. I had done something Bad and someone was chasing me and I could fly, but only so long as I held my breath, and I kept coming a little lower every time... When I got older these became dreams that ended with falling endlessly through row after row of power lines.

I also had nightmares about everything being made of snakes, standing on the bed trying to avoid the floor as a river of snakes, and wrapped candies being snake eggs about to hatch... but that's probably to be expected when I grew up hearing about all the emergency flights to save people bitten by poisonous snakes.

[Neylana]

Little green goblins (approximately six inches to one foot tall) with scissors coming to cut off my toes. It is for this reason that I still fear having my toes uncovered.

[Jan_Schattling]

I have never had fear of my closet or someting under my bed becaus there were no closet in my room and there was no space under my bed.
My largest fear was that something horrible would come and grab my feet so i wraped my Blanked arounde my feet.

I still do this today and i am not able to sleep without a blanket on me.

Another scary thing was my floor. It was deep black and at night i wasnt able to see the ground. It was like having a portal into the abyss right next to my bed.
Thats why i started to cover the floor with white papers, so i had islands in the dark to step on when i wanted to leave the room.

And i still swear that in some nights there was no floor around the sheets of paper.

Jan