A totally illogical fear you had as a child

It commenced when I started playing with my aunt’s ornaments. On a 1950s sea voyage via Africa to India she had gathered quite a lot of carvings, including a “negro lady” with nipples.

As a two year old I thought nothing about playing with said figure until I started becoming maybe a bit too rough, whereupon my cousin declared “if you don’t stop that lady might bite”. Well that stopped me truly in my tracks and set a minor phobia for next several years.

from the head of the elegant African carving I took it that every single detached head thingy could have the tendency to bite. Bear in mind this was 1960s where corpseless heads were in great demand to display hats.

Then my mother & her sisters decided to open a small hat company, so I was to be exposed to any number of corpseless heads.

i swear to heaven I saw such a head go like an automaton from pursed closed lips to open toothed smile in an instant right in front of me.

igCorcaigh

I... had to read that OP more than once.

johndaman66

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120154100#Comment_120154100

Same here and still unsure if I understand it.

For me it was the boogie man. Not sure if that's actually a logical fear for a child to have though.

EmmetSpiceland

Quicksand.

Graces7

"Creepie crawlies" as we called .. Far from a fan even now. I mean they are tiny

Ush1

Had a stairs with gaps in it and was convinced a hand would come out one day and grab my leg so I would boot it up and down the stairs like a mad thing.

Say Your Number

Seeing Earthquakes on telly scared the sh1te out of me, if only I knew there's virtually zero chance of a big one hitting here.

Gregor Samsa

As a corpseless-head negro lady carving with nipples, my main fear was children playing with me roughly. I would react by biting.

banie01

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120154121#Comment_120154121

This, the Bermuda triangle and being kidnapped by some weirdo in a van!

Dial Hard

Spontaneous Human Combustion.

I was also beyond terrified of Godzilla. Yes, the cartoon.

Leg End Reject

Monsters under the bed and the dark, but I knew I was safe as long as I was fully covered, I still sleep with the duvet pulled right up and don't like dangling a foot over the edge of the bed.

Schnooks

Circus clowns and the dark. I remember being at the circus aged 3 - 4 I think, and the clowns were going along shaking hands with everyone at the edge of the ring. Jesus I was terrified as they came towards me. Can't remember how I handled it, but i know I was crying and terrified!

Tabnabs

Something about a mirror, a dark room and "bloody Mary"?

NoviGlitzko

The dark. Mostly the fear of the unknown in the dark. Scarred the **** outta me.

Death, or more specifically corpses in coffins used to jilt me when I was younger.

I used to think giant sunflowers were freaky, funnily enough.

Ladybird25

Ants, I was convinced they would come over night and cover me up and giving me thousands of tiny bites that I could not do anything about. Really don't know where it came from but it tormented me for years.

Dslatt

Paintings of old ships

Loveinapril

Getting my feet measured for shoes. I thought they would chop my feet off. The Clarkes ad with the girl in the forest in the late 80's or early 90's freaked me out!

Gregor Samsa

I remember when I was about 7, firing a Matchbox car down our kitchen floor, and it went in under the stairs, were we hung coats, kept the ironing board, hoover, etc. I expected to just put my hand in and find it, but I didn't, so I started emptying stuff out. Eventually. I had the whole space emptied, and still no sign of my toy car. I said it to my mother, and she very casually said "Sometimes things just disappear" and told me the story of the Mary Celest . This whole explanation absolutely terrified me, until I was old enough to realise that things don't just disappear spontaneously.

Dial Hard

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120156075#Comment_120156075

I still really dislike clowns and I'm 40. And mimes. And the fcukers can 100% smell fear.

Padre_Pio

I had a fear that someone would jump through my bedroom window and get me. A ninja or a burglar.

Baybay

The house I grew up in had a T shaped hallway with the front door at the bottom of the T, my bedroom to the right of the T & the kitchen, living room etc to the left.

After dark, I galloped from my room to the kitchen in case God knows what might be at the front door, coming through the front door or already in the hall. It probably didn’t really help that the only light on was in the porch at the front door though there was a switch right outside my bedroom door that would have turned on big ceiling lights in all arms of the T!

Although as an adult I didn’t run past the door at night, I had to make myself walk normally so I guess my irrational childhood fear stayed with me & I just controlled it a bit more!

House is sold now & I don’t feel the same way about other doors, halls or porches but I can’t check if I’d still feel the same way.

Graces7

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120156170#Comment_120156170

In the light of that your username is briiliant....

Demonique

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120154766#Comment_120154766

One of our neighbours had staird with gaps, I used to go through one of the gaps halfway up legs first and dropped to the ground

When I was 13 the 1980s version of The Blob with Kevin Dillon and Dale from The Walking Dead was shown on either RTE 1 or RTE 2 (then network 2), I watched until the attack on the boyfriend in the hospital office, got freaked out and then spent the next few nights with the cover over my head to protect me, this was 1991/1992

I saw it in full about 5 years ago and the effects in the rest of the film are really ropey, hospital scene doesnt freak me out now but its still pretty gruesome

hullaballoo

I had a strange one that haunted me for years - being surrounded by rotisserie racks that they used to cook rotisserie chickens on in the supermarket (Quinsworth).

This kinda crack here:

JupiterKid

The dark at night - my room had a corner in it that I couldn't see fully around from my bed so my vivid and very active imagination would populate it with evil rotting corpses and monsters out to get me! Requests for a night light were ignored... (this was the 1980s and little boys were supposed to "man up" about these things).

Also car washes - the claustraphobic feeling as a small child aged 5 or 6 of being trapped in the car inside the car wash as the brushes came down would have me crying.

I also hated/feared circus clowns.

paddydriver

That Jaws was gonna come up out of my toilet and get me.. lots of the above too. If we ever got to go on a foreign holiday (which was probably only about twice for Malta 1980 and France 1983, with the caravan in tow..) I needed to know there was no risk from Volcano's, Earthquakes or Tidal Waves (Tsunami wasn't a word back then..). Quicksand was scary too

Pictures of old ships too.. used to go into Xtra-vision on way home from school to look at the covers.. was a movie called Death Ship in 1980 (I just Googled it) and that freaked me out.. along with the Cannibal movies too... not forgetting too that Xtra-vision always had hot girls behind the counter and they all got to drive nice jeeps.. I was barely 10 years old but knew what I was looking at!

ZX7R

Terrified of the noise from a flush toilet as a child.

Also was Terrified of a picture of the vergin Mary it was on the wall of my bedroom as a young child she always appeared to move her hand.

hullaballoo

Naturally enough my worst recurring nightmare has come true and I'm now surrounded by commercial rotisserie racks

Hellrazer

This is a weird one but mine was (still is) cheese.

To this day I wont eat cheese or even let it near my plate. I have been known to have a bit of a meltdown if I get a burger with cheese or am even asked to put it on one of the kids sandwiches / burgers.

It stems from a program I remember seeing as a young kid - I think it was Tomorrows world or something where they had this Italian cheese with like flies or maggots jumping out of it and crawling through it and as clear as day I can still see the maggots in this blokes moustache as he was eating this stuff. I know its not every cheese but that stayed with me for close to 40 years and I still wont touch the stuff or anything thats even touched the cheese has to be literally boiled before Ill use it again.

So you could say I have fromageaphobia.

bmc58

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120154100#Comment_120154100

I read it once and I thought what the fu€k.Skipped quickly to another thread.

Apiarist

Quicksand.

Also death from a nuclear blast, totally irrational, I should have feared that I would survive but then die within weeks from the radiation poisoning.

eggy81

Marshmallow man from ghostbusters. Used to have a fever dream that I was in an enclosed space with an ever expanding marshmallow man who expanded until everyone suffocated. Weird weird dream

Montage of Feck

Being abducted by aliens, particularly when driving at night. Maybe I was a bit young to be watching the x-files.

So most people’s fears involved clowns &/or the dark…

…where the above was my very worst nightmare. They were very popular in the 60s.

knucklehead6

Being involved in a shipwreck.

Any time we went on a boat I always kept my T-shirt tucked into my waistband because I KNEW that anyone involved in a shipwreck had a T-shirt with frayed zig zag type thing going on, so I figured that if I kept my T-shirt tucked in, it couldn’t get frayed/ripped and the boat would sail safely

cj maxx

I had none . but my brother would run out of the room and hide when The Incredible Hulk came on .

Worzel Gommidge! How was he seen as a suitable character for a children’s cartoon!

Jequ0n

“It commenced when I started playing with my aunt’s ornaments.”

Excellent OP. Credit where it’s due.

BrenMar

I used to be terrified that the school bus would overturn when the wheel mounted a high pavement turning a certain corner.

It worried me sick every morning and the driver never, ever managed to get round without doing it.

I should have walked.

corner of hells

Nuns , terrified of them , particularly when I found out they turn into bat's when they die.

freshpopcorn

My mother used say if I didn't behave a man would come and take me away.

Which lead to me having a fear of men coming to take me away. I'd have nightmare about a man driving me away in a van. Once he landed in a helicopter an my mother just handed me over.

saabsaab

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120157871#Comment_120157871

No Dougal, they do when they get very old not dead.

AllForIt

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120154321#Comment_120154321

Fear of creepie crawlies isn't irrational. It's ingrained because they can be poisonous, like being afraid of the dark because you can't see threats. Also in the dark the brain tries to make out faces from shadows, whether animal or human i.e. threats. One can't help being afraid, it's a survival instinct.

Archeron

For anybody that remembers it, the painting known as "the crying boy"

For some unknown reason, as a kid we had one of those hanging on the stairs in my house. The staircase was one step up to the right and then ten steps straight up with that horrible creepy thing staring at you all the way. The last two steps went to the right again, and I can't count how many times I tripped and fell up those two steps to get past the creepy little crying fcuker.

PsychoPete

The x-files theme music

Jequ0n

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120158156#Comment_120158156

My mother told me that if I got into a stranger’s car I’d be chopped up and eaten. She even explained (broadly) how the different parts would be cooked. Apparently the most sought after part was my dick so I was most worried about that getting fried. Needless to say I was very suspicious of strangers in cars. Fine if they didn’t have a car though.

I was also scared of fog for no reason whatsoever.

freshpopcorn

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120158354#Comment_120158354

When I was about four I use kick up a massive scene if we had to get a taxi. I'd loose the plot, kick the doors, etc.

o1s1n

My teacher being out sick and the class being split up for the day. Absolute terror.

captbarnacles

Had a poster for Nightmare on Elm Street 3 on my wall. Before falling asleep I was terrified Freddie would jump out of the poster and hundreds of minature Freddies would run towards me.

Eventually I had had enough and did the obvious thing .. I moved my wardrobe to cover the poster. It was still there years later.

thegame983

It.

I still see that damn clown when I go to the bathroom in the middle of the night.

Luminous clocks. My parents told me they had radiation in the phosphorous paint and it could give you cancer. (In truth it gave some of the factory girls who hand painted the luminous paint cancer if they licked the brush to wet them.) My parents wouldn’t have one in the house but I thought they were cool & magical, also fearsome too. My friend down the road had one in her house, and when I told that friend how dangerous they were she got worried.

The clock in question sat on the mantelpiece, on either side an armchair, one being favoured by her father, the other her aunt. The poor mother was too busy working to ever get sitting down in the living room. The kids generally sat on the sofa facing the dangerous clock, the rays coming straight at ya. So my friend formed a strategy. Reasoning that it was just not fair for the kids to get cancer, the clock had to be turned in another direction. Turning to the right meant the father would get cancer, so that wasn’t on either. She said there was only one thing for it but to turn the clock to face the maiden aunt, having no children meant she was the most dispensable person to occupy the room. So the clock got turned in the hope that the adults wouldn’t notice the valiant attempts of the life-saving measures taken by one of the children.