What frightened you as a kid/teenager?

[saintmort]

That's the show.

I remember there was one where they were in a pro wrestling match and the one guy was suppose to lose his title to this a***ole guy, but he couldn't do it.

SO they have the match and in the end the guy with the title wins and then they find out the other guy was dead and had been for  95% of the match.

Even if you can make that story more interesting then it is, wrestling with a dead guy....ewwwww

[ErikJ]

For me it was 2 things
Men with beards freaked the hell out of me
And the commercial for Susperia scared me to death. I kept having nightmares of it for years until I bought the DVD and finally watched the movie.

[Bargle5]

Something that consistently gave me nightmares as a kid (8-10) was seeing movies/TV shows involving injuries to women's breasts. The scene from the beginning of Dr. No of the woman shot in the breast and another scene from a TV show where a woman was slowly stabbed between the breasts still stick in my mind.
This probably says something Freudian about me. Sigh.

[Steve Byczek]

Erik:What brought on your "beard phobia"?  Do you remember what the origin of this phobia was? Was it just men with beards in person or was it also men with beards in photographs and movies and t.v. shows? My cousin actually got scared of my Dad (her Uncle) when he grew a moustache. I am not sure if it was because she did not recogonize him after he grew it or if it gave him a sinister appearance ( he has a dark complexion and even though he is not Mexican,the moustache did kinda make him look Hispanic sort of like a chunky version of Pancho Villa). When my Uncle and Aunt and cousins came over for Thanksgiving dinner, she started to cry as soon as she saw him with the moustache, and eventually got so scared that she ran out of our house. My Mom and Aunt had to coax her back in when it was time to eat the turkey. LOL! They re-assured her the "scary man" as she kept calling him was the same old Uncle Mike.

Sincerely,Steve.

[Mofo Rising]

Mine are all stupid in retrospect.

SWAMP THING put me off apple juice, because Alec Holland was working with a bright yellow liquid before he was set on fire and then jumped in the swamp to turn into Swamp Thing.  I was served apple juice after seeing that, my mind made the connection, and I didn't drink it for years.

There was this revenge movie, I believe it was WIRED TO KILL but don't quote me, where this teenager takes revenge on some gang.  He breaks open a battery and the somehow turns the battery acid into white powder.  He then proceeds to sell this stuff to one of the gang as cocaine.  So this gang guy snorts the stuff and starts screaming.  The next image is this guy lying against a wall and every orifice in his head is leaking white foam.  That image scared the hell out of me for years.

Also, those "yip yip" aliens from SESAME STREET freaked me out.

[Steve Byczek]

Dr. Kobb...I recently saw "Black Christmas" and many scenes did disturb me and I am a 36 year old man. I can only imagine how frightened you must have been of this movie as a younger boy! Yikes!!!  Your anecdote about "Dawn of the Dead" reminded me of something similiar that happened to me when I was 11. I had a buddy that would hang out with me whenever he visited his grandmother's house. His grandmother lived on our block. My Dad took us to see "Zombie" (1979) which was basially an Italian imitation of Romero's "Dawn of the Dead". We so scared while watching this movie...we kept giving each other "pep talks" telling each other to "be brave...be strong..the movie is almost over with." When it finally ended...we were scared to enter the parking lot. I almost felt like clinging on to my Dad's arm! LOL! When our visits were over with,I would escort him back to his grandmother's house. Even though she only lived a few houses away from my parents house,on that particular night...the walk seemed longer than usual and very ominous. Every shadow and noise took on a whole new meaning! It was a creepy night,and boy was I glad to go to bed (with a nightlight,of course). LOL!

Sincerely,Steve.

[Dr. Kobb]

Ha Ha!  Your story about seeing "Zombie" reminds me of when my Dad took me to see "Alien"!  Scared the bejeebers outta me.  Much like with that "Black Xmas", it's now one of my all-time favorite horror movies.

 "Black Christmas" DOES hold up well, doesn't it?  'The Masher' is freaky as anything.  His M.O. scared the heck out of me as a kid.  I don't wanna spoil it for anyone who hasn't seen it, but the ending did me in as a kid.  Sleep did not come easily that night.  Some consider it one of the true forerunners of the 'slasher' genre that swept the `80's.

[odinn7]

The beard story is funny. My daughter used to be just the opposite of that when she was between 1 and 2 years old. I've had facial hair since 10th grade so from the moment my daughter could see, she was used to beards and such. Most of the men in the family have facial hair also. There was a family gathering where her grandpa showed up after shaving it all off. Well, she was scared sh*tless and didn't want anything to do with him. She also never liked being held or approached by guys without facial hair. She's over that now but it was amusing.

[Diablo44.]

odinn - The facial hair thing made me laugh, because it reminded me of my childhood. When I was an infant, my father had a beard. So one day he decided to shave it off. But he didn't want me to be scared of him without the beard or be freaked out by this "new guy" picking me up out of my crib. So he shaved off his beard in front of me. I just sat in my highchair by the kitchen sink while he shaved off his beard, saying, "See Robbie, it's still me! It's still Daddy!" It's one of my earliest memories. The thought it was pretty smart of the old man.

Rob
The KO Picture Show

[Texdar]

I remember a lot of sleepless nights after seeing the last story in the TV movie Trilogy of Terror.  The little Zuni fetish doll was pretty creepy chasing her around her apartment but what really got me was the end scene of her waiting for her mom to come over, squatting on the kitchen floor in her bath robe, stabbing the floor with a big butcher knife and having the same teeth as the doll.

 My light stayed on at night for a couple weeks after that.

[odinn7]

Diablo, that's a pretty funny story. Your father was quite smart to do that in front of you. Some people don't think like that.

[Steve Byczek]

I thought of a few more things that frightened me as a kid.

Has anyone on this board seen a made for TV version of "Dracula" starring Louis Jordan as Dracula?  It was a British made for TV movie, and I saw it for the first time during Halloween of 1979. The first scene that creeped me out was the weird shot of Dracula crawling on his castle wall. The second one was a sequence showing Dracula arguing with his brides over Jonathan Harker. The brides wanted Harker for themselves,but Dracula had other plans for him. Drac hands them a leather bag. The women open up the bag, and there is a live human baby inside the bag. They take the baby out of the bag,and literally eat him...flesh,bones,blood,and all! That scene really got to me the first time I saw this version of "Dracula". Boy was I disappointed when I recorded this movie off Public Televison several years later,and the "baby" scene was cut out! Both of these events take place in the Bram Stoker novel, in case you never read it.There was also another scene in this movie where Van Helsing drove a wooden stake through Lucy's heart,and the huge fountain of blood that came out really surprised me,and almost paralyzed my sister with shock! Watching this flick on a black and white portable TV set in my parents basement while experiencing a Halloween candy "sugar buzz" merely enhanced my viewing experience!!!

I remember the scene in "The Incredible Shrinking Man" where they showed the close-up of the giant spider's face,and its fangs were twitching and dripping venom scared me as well. Of course, when the "Shrinking Man" stabbed the spider with a weapon he made,I wasn't expecting to see blood drip out (in consideration of the fact that this movie was made way back in the 50s)

Since I was scared of clowns...I also was leary of "Jack In The Box" toys since they would make a large noise when "Jack" came out of the box. I would occasionally toughen myself up,and play with them in toy-stores,but no matter how prepared I thought I was,I always got startled when "Jack" jumped out of his box.  And guess what Jack's occupation was? He was dressed up as a clown. I think I did have a "Bozo the Clown" doll but rarely played with it. If you pulled the string he would say things like "I'm your old pal Bozo!" "How are you?" and other examples of "small talk". I wasn't scared of him all the time,but if I saw a clown in real life at a parade or a carnival and did my usual "clown phobia/anxiety attack", I packed "Bozo" away in my closet until I calmed myself down. Funny...I had no problem watching Bozo's TV show.





Keep on posting!
Sincerely,Steve Byczek

[akiratubo]

Basically, any kind of deformity or scarring scared the hell out of me as a kid.  People with bad burns, scars, amputations, or physical deformities would usually make me scream.  More than once, I'd be out with Mom and she'd have to cut short whatever she was doing to bring me home if I saw an amputee in a wheelchair, or somesuch.

The worst instance I remember is seeing a boy with some kind of horrible facial disfigurment.  I remember he didn't have a nose and his eyes were just empty holes.  That was the only time in my life I was simply frozen with horror.  Mom saw what was happening and dragged me to the cash register to pay and get me out of there.  I clung to her, with my face buried in her thigh, and stole nervous glances behind us to see if the boy was coming.  Then -- I HEARD him.  I heard him somewhere, back in the store, grunting.  But it was worse than that.  I could tell he was trying to speak but his mouth was too deformed for him to do so.  He was trying to speak ... but was too deformed to do so ...  The rest of it is a haze, but I think Mom picked me up and ran out to the car with me before I could start screaming.

I'm STILL like that.  Not as bad, thankfully.  Occasionally, though, it still gets to me.  My recent girlfriend had a baby nephew with a bad cleft pallette.  I could not be in the same room with him until his parents finally got it fixed.  Probably the worst that's happened recently is when I saw a young man at work who looked just like the kid from "Phenomena".  I'm not joking, he looked just like that little monster.  After trying to sputter out an answer to what he asked me, I had to tell him I was sorry and call someone else to deal with him.  From his expression and the look in his eyes, he knew it was because he was ugly.  I felt really bad about that.

Needless to say, any "body horror" movie usually scares the p**s out of me.  The 1986 remake of "The Fly", the end of its sequel where Bartok is dumped into that pit, the ugly guy from "Goonies".  The remake of "The Blob" where it showed people being melted inside of it.  The faces of Freddy and Jason used to scare me quite a bit.  There was an episode of the "Friday the 13th" TV show in which an aging model would use a cursed makeup mirror to cause rival models to become deformed that I never could watch all the way through.  And, good lord, that episode of "GI Joe" where the old woman was stealing other women's faces to make some kind of age preventive.  It ended with her falling victim to her own device and walking blindly about, clutching the blank veil of flesh that used to be her face, and trying to scream without a mouth.  Man, what kind of $#@!ed up episode of a kid's cartoon was that?

[akiratubo]

Oh yeah, I've got to mention this as well.

My parents got me a Howdy Doody ventriloquist dummy for Christmas when I was, oh, less than eight I'd say.  It had those blank eyes and those huge buck teeth.  They looked ready to bite off your fingers.  I only stuck my hand in it once, and was very disturbed to find out that it was ... strangely warm inside.

I played with it mostly by flinging it around and pretending to beat it up.  One morning, I awoke and stepped out of bed, right on Howdy Doody's face.  Of course, I slipped and fell, quite painfully.  It landed in a sitting position against the wall, staring right at me as I lay prone.  I HAD PUT IT IN THE CLOSET BEFORE GOING TO BED.  There was no way it could have gotten next to my bed.

For a few nights the terror escalated.  Sometimes I would wake up and hear ... something ... moving.  It would always be anywhere but where I put it come morning.  I even left it in the living room and closed my door once.  Yet THERE IT WAS in my chair, in my room, when I woke up.  Finally, I came to one morning and it was in bed with me!  Staring into my eyes, ready to bite out my throat with those vicious plastic teeth.

I took it outside and threw it up into the branches of the big tree in our back yard.  It caught there and was trapped.  I knew it would die and rot there.

And so it did.  Dad never got it down.  It stayed up there all winter, all spring, all summer, through snow, hard rain, and scorching sun.  By the end of summer, I had totally forgotten about the few days' terror it had put me through.

Until one day, one ordinary day, I was walking under the tree and something very hard and very heavy hit me on the head.  With stars in my eyes I spun around and turned my gaze toward the earth to behold the one part of the Howdy Doody doll that hadn't rotted away:  its head.  It stared up at me with only one blank eye now; the other had weathered away.  The rubber band holding its jaw shut had rotted and its mouth was hung agape, baring those teeth that were now rough and jagged from wear.

I quickly took it to the burn pile and incinerated it.  The one remaining eye held me in its gaze the whole time, the last part of the head to melt.  When it was over, there was nothing left but a flesh-colored puddle of plastic.  I couldn't sleep for a day or two.

[Susan]

TOP 10 LIST
Things that frightened the bejesus out of me as a KID (meaning age 15 and under). I was hard to scare when it came to movies because i watched alot of horror growing up. But i do remember specific instances and/or scenes:

10. My brothers jack-in the box toy - he had a really creepy one

9. "Jaws", I remember after seeing it i was scared to go to the toilet because jaws might be in there..lol

8. Ronald reagans finger on the button. Truly!

7. Poltergeist - specifically the scene with the kid and his clown. I used to imagine when i went to bed my toys came to life. When the realization came that they might want to kill me, i never slept with my toys again.

6. This still applies for me - any commercial that has food talking. Sandwhiches, dancing cookies - it freaks the hell out of me.

5. King Kong (the jessica lang remake) when kong steps on Charles Grodin. I don't know why, but this scene always gave me the willies. maybe it was the gleefull look on Kongs face as he did it

4. Legend of Bloody Mary

3. First time i read stephen kings "the boogyman". I'm a kid who loved the dark, in fact i can't sleep with any light in the room. After reading that short story I had to keep a nightlight in the room just to make sure the closet door was shut all the way.

2. The Shining. I made the gross error of watching this movie unedited on video when i was 6 as it was in my parents VHS collection. The images of the two little girls..."won't you come play with us danny, forever and ever and EVER" scarred my brain for life. But it's one of my favorites :)

1. Spiders. I used to love "Kingdom of the Spiders" and any type of b-spider movie. Then i moved to arizona where i lived with tarantulas and black widows, my entire perspective changed and i had subsequent nightmares about giant spiders ripping the roof off and eating me. :-o



Post Edited (05-17-05 17:58)