What Really Scared You As A Child?

ILoveYourVibes

I honestly think my reasoning was sound. The Ice cream van sounds like a siren. And the lion looks like he will eat you.

El Gato De Negocios

The Wheelers in Return to Oz



The room of heads, also in Return to Oz

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VnIdI8iiK1M

The Skeksis from The Dark Crystal.



The Cyborg woman scene in Superman 3



The ghost librarian in Ghostbusters



Kids movies in the 80s were dark as fcuk.

The Freddy long arms scene from Nightmare on Elm St also has a special place in my psyche.

ILoveYourVibes

Statutory Ape wrote: »

The Wheelers in Return to Oz



The room of heads, also in Return to Oz

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VnIdI8iiK1M

The Skeksis from The Dark Crystal.



The Cyborg woman scene in Superman 3



The ghost librarian in Ghostbusters



Kids movies in the 80s were dark as fcuk.

The Freddy long arms scene from Nightmare on Elm St also has a special place in my psyche.

Nothing in comparison to the music from the Ice Cream man.

Wibbs

Aglomerado wrote: »

Nuclear war for me too, and I was in my 30s when I first saw Threads. Imagine if I'd seen it back in 1984! I'd have been a gibbering wreck!

I did and I was.

Kylie Rapping Web wrote: »

Picnic at Hanging Rock.

Masterpiece of atmospheric horror that one.

Wanderer78

Statutory Ape wrote:

The Freddy long arms scene from Nightmare on Elm St also has a special place in my psyche.

Freddy in general, scared the sh1t outta me

Feisar

The demons in my head.

Here be dragons

Archeron

At the end of the intro to Bosco, a weird puppet thing used to pull on a blind cord pull that was attached to his head and then it would open the show. That puppet haunted my dreams.

The scene in jaws where the kid on the inflatable mattress was sucked into the water and then blood sprayed directly up out of the water.

Michael Jackson's thriller

893bet

One two Freddie’s coming for you....terrified me. Still don’t watch them.

SimonTemplar

The opening of Are You Afraid of The Dark with its creepy imagery

https://youtu.be/6b2G8ySKNgA

Kylta

My parents. When they found out I was up to mischief.
And pennywise was far scarier in the book than he ever was on screen.

JasonStatham

The scene in Indiana Jones where the guy drinks from the holy grail. Even today that gives me a shudder haha.

razorblunt

Unsolved Mysteries theme song, only when the show was finished, especially if it finished on a really creepy story.
I think Sky One used to follow up with X-Files then, two bad episodes in a row and you were up the stairs like lightning!


Also, the baby snatching ghost in Ghosbusters 2. Saw that recently enough and still creeped me out.

boardlady

The wardrobe in my bedroom. It came from my grandparents house and was really dark wood and ornate carving. Probably a bloody antique worth money but I hated it for every second it stood in my bedroom. If you didn't turn the key in the door properly, it would slowly open again but could take ages - you might have undressed and got into bed before you noticed, in the dark, that the bloody door had crept open.

Also, the fact that my parents insisted on turning off all lights at night. Just one light left on would have saved me from years of misery. And now that we are all grown up and gone, my mother sleeps with the hall light on!

Doctors room ghost

_Whimsical_ wrote: »

Quicksand occupied the minds of a lot of children of the 80s and early 90s.
I think it was a really cheap stunt in low budget 1970s tv shows that were recycled 10 years later on RTE. I definitely remember Wonder Woman and 1960s Batman having a few run-ins with it.

The horse drowning in quick sand in the never ending story scared a lot of kids.
The bad bastard wolf involved didn’t help things either

monkeysnapper

Mine was a program called "V" that was a tv show about alien lizards that had human skin on , and they eat hamsters ....

There was a few clips of them ripping the skin off them exposing the lizard underneath.....

It was totally terrifying and exciting all at the same time .

If ur brave enough here is a video below of the horrors

https://youtu.be/QihkWmS7dTI

Wibbs

That BBC "Threads" TV flic in the early 80's that others have mentioned, jaysus yeah. Because it seemed like a real possibility that WW3 could kick off and this wasn't the US of A it felt much more "local".

The main attack scene.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MrHoMSRZOS4

Though the aftermath scenes were truly chilling and shot in a way that never gave you a break or feeling of your average story.

Another I saw around the same time was Herzog's Nosferatu and the opening credits are haunting and terrifying at the same time.

The earliest fear I can remember is walking as a toddler on a very windy beach in Kerry with my parents and clutching so tightly to my teddy bear, because I was afraid he'd blow away and be lost in the sea. I was terrified and kep holding him tightly in the car as we drove away. I didn't lose him, he's safe and sound in a wardrobe today.

Sardonicat

Ah, Threads. Genuinely traumatising to watch that as a twelve year old. The woman wetting herself when she saw the mushroom cloud is the one scene seared into my brain, for some reason!

As a small child I was absolutely petrified of airplanes. Not flying on them but those passing overhead. I thought they would either fall out of the sky or bomb us. I've no idea where I got the fear of being bombed from. I guess my folks must have let me watch a film about The Blitz when I was little or something but the fear persisted in force til I was about 7. I would become hysterical if a plane flew over and try to hide Even now, I can feel physical anxiety symptoms if a plane passes low or the rescue helicopter flys over my house on the way to the hospital up the road. It's the sound, I think, so low and droning and ominous.

Errashareesh

Saw Threads in about 2005 - the aftermath is the worst part IMO. Humanity has to start from scratch but in a highly contaminated atmosphere with contaminated water and crops. And the children are animalistic. One young girl doesn't bat an eyelid when her mother dies of leukaemia - she just carries on. And she is raped but still doesn't pay much heed. They're kinda like feral cats.

After that I watched The War Game (similar - preceded Threads), The Day After, and the terrifying Protect & Survive public information series. No silver lining whatsoever. Better off dead.

I remember being scared of nuclear war breaking out when I was a kid at the time of the 1990/1 Gulf War but that fear - while still there some bit due to the Cold War being so recent - was dissipating.

Can't imagine the terror in the '80s. Especially with Chernobyl. Threads and The Day After made the news. Understandably so.

Terminator/Judgement Day paint a terrifying picture too.

Nesta99

.anon. wrote: »

Billy Mitchell from EastEnders is a rat.

With an accent like his its a miracle he survived up North!

As it happens im also still scared that Eastenders will suck every ounce of good mood and humanity out of me.

EmmetSpiceland

The Deadly Ernest Horror Show when it showed an old ‘Hammer Horror’ film about a haunted tennis court.

Nesta99

Errashareesh wrote: »

Can't imagine the terror in the '80s. Especially with Chernobyl.

Meh, it wasnt a constant in the forefront of the mind. Not like it would have been for my folks in previous decades with the Cuban Missile Crisis, tanks rolling in to Budapest, Vietnam and Korean proxy wars with WWII still in recent memory then. Chernobyl did stop us from being allowed outside occasionally if it was raining depending on the winds, there were news reports of sheep in Donegal with 5 legs. Sellafield was th big nuclear concern especially with perestroka and glasnost improving east/west relations

And we were all focused on being terrified by HIV/AIDS public health campaigns, the afroe mentioned ads from Northern Ireland, The Troubes in general with the bombing campaign in England. Fear of the country being bankrupt, mass emmigration and with massive dole queues the prospect of food vouchers was truly scary and used to good effect by parents as a motivation for kids in school 'Think of the food vouchers!!! If ye dont work hard at school you'll be on butter vouchers...' Most had never seen them but were terrified by them!!

Dial Hard

Godzilla. Like, the crappy cartoon version that also had Godzuki. I genuinely had to leave the room when they pushed the button to summon him. My siblings thought it was absolutely hilarious and still do.

Zebra3

Absolute b@stards.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SESI19h4wDo

Tired Gardener

Mr Noseybonk... not sure what they were thinking with that one!

But Nuclear war was the ultimate fear.

Yester

I had a golliwog that scared me. I kept hiding him but he always found his way back. I don't know where he is now but I wouldn't be suprised if he turned up again someday.

matchthis

That monster coming through the portal in Howard the duck. That and getting my Sunday clothes dirty

Jimmy Bottlehead

Yester wrote: »

I had a golliwog that scared me. I kept hiding him but he always found his way back. I don't know where he is now but I wouldn't be suprised if he turned up again someday.

Don't worry, he'll be cancelled quick if he appears in 2020.

Irish_peppa

There used to be a "childrens programme" in the early 8os these alien type shape shifters who drove an old black hearse and oozed slime it was utter knightmare fuel "under the mountain" knightmare stuff

ShatterAlan

RedXIV wrote: »

1930s king kong movie I saw when I was 4 or 5, and in particular this scene (55 seconds in) where kong gets mad and stamps on someone. Had nightmares for years about it

He used to bite people in half as well i think or bite off their their legs and discard the rest. Freaked me out.

Aglomerado

Sardonicat wrote: »

Ah, Threads. Genuinely traumatising to watch that as a twelve year old. The woman wetting herself when she saw the mushroom cloud is the one scene seared into my brain, for some reason!

As a small child I was absolutely petrified of airplanes. Not flying on them but those passing overhead. I thought they would either fall out of the sky or bomb us. I've no idea where I got the fear of being bombed from. I guess my folks must have let me watch a film about The Blitz when I was little or something but the fear persisted in force til I was about 7. I would become hysterical if a plane flew over and try to hide Even now, I can feel physical anxiety symptoms if a plane passes low or the rescue helicopter flys over my house on the way to the hospital up the road. It's the sound, I think, so low and droning and ominous.

I was 8 the time of the Chernobyl disaster and it genuinely scared me. Especially when watching the progress of the radiation cloud across Europe on the news. I later became obsessed with a book called Children of the Dust by Louise Lawrence. It's a teenage novel but is essentially Threads in book form. Yikes.
Planes not so much but I grew up near Shannon airport and the flight path was over our house. Concorde used to come in regularly in the mid 80s and the noise from it used to terrify me, it was like really bad thunder.
It flew over once or twice in 2000 when I was going home from work as well and I remember pulling over the car so I could look up at it. The sound brought it all back..that said I would love to have had the chance to go on it.