Had you some irrational fear as a kid?

[JuanSnz]

The OPERATION board game terrified the absolute hell out of me.  Up till I was about 11 or so.
Something about the angry, creepy look of the patient and the loud BUZZ if you touched the sides just freaked me out.  Even the box got to me, with the doctors gleefully digging inside the patient.

Yep, is a kind of creep. But I think that definitely could improve the game if along with the buzz there is a scream, or depending on the body zone you touch, a little chuckle, like 'don't make me tickle'.

Do you mean, Anubis sneaking in your house take someone to the Underworld, like the Grim Reaper?

No, my fear wasn't so cogently defined, Anubis was just archetypally scary to me at four and a half.

And according to the Egyptian Book of the Dead, Anubis doesn't come for you, you go to Anubis so he can weigh your heart to see if you've done more good than bad in your life. If you've been good you safely cross the path into paradise beyond a sea of reeds; if not a giant crocodile eats you and that ends your existence.

Sounds fair to me.

Actual footage of Anubis at work:

Error 404 (Not Found)!!1

OK, now I understand.
But in any case, how a little girl of four and half had fear of a Egyptian god with head of jackal and human body, that when you died, ripped off your heart, and weighting it against a feather, and according to your actions, determinate if you go to some kind of Heaven or if you deserve to be eaten for all the Eternity by a giant crocodile?

Yes, make more sense than Santa, the Tooth Fairy, a rabbit that lay eggs of chocolate, and all the cast from Shrek

[JuanSnz]

No, I meant the birds.  I think it was a typing reflex... I used to be a Baseball fan. 

Oh. Could be more irrational if actually is the Baseball team.

[ER]

The OPERATION board game terrified the absolute hell out of me.  Up till I was about 11 or so.
Something about the angry, creepy look of the patient and the loud BUZZ if you touched the sides just freaked me out.  Even the box got to me, with the doctors gleefully digging inside the patient.

Yep, is a kind of creep. But I think that definitely could improve the game if along with the buzz there is a scream, or depending on the body zone you touch, a little chuckle, like 'don't make me tickle'.

Do you mean, Anubis sneaking in your house take someone to the Underworld, like the Grim Reaper?

No, my fear wasn't so cogently defined, Anubis was just archetypally scary to me at four and a half.

And according to the Egyptian Book of the Dead, Anubis doesn't come for you, you go to Anubis so he can weigh your heart to see if you've done more good than bad in your life. If you've been good you safely cross the path into paradise beyond a sea of reeds; if not a giant crocodile eats you and that ends your existence.

Sounds fair to me.

Actual footage of Anubis at work:

Error 404 (Not Found)!!1

OK, now I understand.
But in any case, how a little girl of four and half had fear of a Egyptian god with head of jackal and human body, that when you died, ripped off your heart, and weighting it against a feather, and according to your actions, determinate if you go to some kind of Heaven or if you deserve to be eaten for all the Eternity by a giant crocodile?

Yes, make more sense than Santa, the Tooth Fairy, a rabbit that lay eggs of chocolate, and all the cast from Shrek

There used to be a TV show called Tales of the Gold Monkey that had a scene wherein an Egyptologist was poring over ancient artifacts and some cultist in an Anubis mask came and got him. Boy oh boy that did it for me!

[Paquita]

I'm right there with you dude.  When I was little, like daycare age, under 6, I remember many times when I was alone, I would get terrified that when I went back into the other room where my family was, they would all be replaced with life-sized voodoo doll looking things called mimis.  Just dead-like sitting there with sewn on faces.  Almost more terrifying was the voice in my head that I imagined was Guy Smiley from the Muppets telling me the mimis were going to be there. It stopped happening when I was in grade school, but I remember having to hardcore pump myself up to be super brave to go into the other room.  Sometimes if I would hear my families voices or laughing it kind of broke the fear and I would be able to run and leave the room. Ha!  Now that I wrote that out I know that sounds like a fake reddit creepypasta but it's 100% the truth.     

I have a cousin that was terrified of places with tall ceilings when he was little because he thought he was going to fly up.

There's also an irrational fear of buttons that runs in my family.  It was bad for me when I was little, but thankfully my mom had it too and didn't force me to wear buttons.   I'm not going to lie, I don't like them much now, but I won't ugly-cry if I see them anymore.

The tied up skeleton you mentioned reminds me of the bog mummies or Otzi.  I think a lot of tabloids like Weekly World News would feature them on the cover a lot in the 90's.

[JuanSnz]

I'm right there with you dude.  When I was little, like daycare age, under 6, I remember many times when I was alone, I would get terrified that when I went back into the other room where my family was, they would all be replaced with life-sized voodoo doll looking things called mimis.  Just dead-like sitting there with sewn on faces.  Almost more terrifying was the voice in my head that I imagined was Guy Smiley from the Muppets telling me the mimis were going to be there. It stopped happening when I was in grade school, but I remember having to hardcore pump myself up to be super brave to go into the other room.  Sometimes if I would hear my families voices or laughing it kind of broke the fear and I would be able to run and leave the room. Ha!  Now that I wrote that out I know that sounds like a fake reddit creepypasta but it's 100% the truth.     

There's also an irrational fear of buttons that runs in my family.  It was bad for me when I was little, but thankfully my mom had it too and didn't force me to wear buttons.   I'm not going to lie, I don't like them much now, but I won't ugly-cry if I see them anymore.

This remains me the 'Coraline' film: buttons sewed as eyes, parents like dolls... Yeah, I think I could have that fear if the movie would be released in my childhood.

[FatFreddysCat]

Thanks to 70s/80s television and movies, I was terrified of quicksand when I was a kid. It seemed like every cop/action adventure show ("CHIPS," "Charlie's Angels," "Emergency," etc.) had a scene where someone fell into quicksand and had to be rescued.

From this, I naturally assumed that random puddles of quicksand were literally everywhere, just waiting to swallow me up if I wasn't careful. When walking outside, I made sure never to stray off of the sidewalk. :D

[JuanSnz]

Thanks to 70s/80s television and movies, I was terrified of quicksand when I was a kid. It seemed like every cop/action adventure show ("CHIPS," "Charlie's Angels," "Emergency," etc.) had a scene where someone fell into quicksand and had to be rescued.

From this, I naturally assumed that random puddles of quicksand were literally everywhere, just waiting to swallow me up if I wasn't careful. When walking outside, I made sure never to stray off of the sidewalk. :D

I wonder if Erik Estrada fell in a sandbox with motorcycle and everything...

[Trevor]

Looking back to the middle seventies (when I was about nine or ten) an irrational but real fear I had was that a police squad car or Land Rover would pull up outside my house and my Dad wouldn't get out of the car, but some top brass police officer would to tell my Mom my Dad had been killed in action.  

Dad served in this unit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_South_Africa_Police#Under_the_British_South_Africa_Company

[JuanSnz]

Looking back to the middle seventies (when I was about nine or ten) an irrational but real fear I had was that a police squad car or Land Rover would pull up outside my house and my Dad wouldn't get out of the car, but some top brass police officer would to tell my Mom my Dad had been killed in action. 

Dad served in this unit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_South_Africa_Police#Under_the_British_South_Africa_Company

Trevor, when I read your post where you said that you'd grown up during a civil war, I didn't know that the war was so close to you and your family!
I hope that nothing bad has happened to your dad in those years.

[Trevor]

Trevor, when I read your post where you said that you'd grown up during a civil war, I didn't know that the war was so close to you and your family!
I hope that nothing bad has happened to your dad in those years.

Thanks for the nice words: Dad developed PSTD after the war ended and passed in 2008, sadly. He was a good man and I still miss him.

That's one of the reasons I get so mad when I read or hear of "celebrities" saying they were so stressed that they developed post traumatic stress disorder: they should try serving their countries and see how they deal with that.