Objects in your childhood home which frightened you

[Sits]

My paternal grandparents, for reasons best known to themselves purchased a particularly unnerving “wall sculpture” of a Bandido chewing the stub of a cigar. When my Grandad died, Granny moved into my Dad’s house and the Mexican gent came with her. Dad mounted him on the wall above Granny’s chair. The picture above is the closest I’ve found with a search; ours was matt painted, more “authentic” in its finish, and to my eyes wore a far more menacing expression. Every time I looked at him he scared me.

[ChrisJ]

I’m not surprised. We have a Tibetan dance mask that had to be taken off the wall when the grandkids visited. But maybe that’s not surprising either. My gran had an old china doll that I refused to be alone with.

[Sits]

I have a feeling there’s an image there Chris, but I can’t see it.

[Amor de Cosmos]

When I stayed with my grandparents I slept in the room that had been my Father's bedroom as a boy. It was small. On the wall to my left as I lay in bed was a panoramic photographic of my Grandfather's regiment in WW1. Facing it was a window, with curtains that hung from a brass curtain-rod. Outside the window was a streetlamp. It's light shone through the loops between the curtain-rings and threw reflections onto the glass that covered the photograph. They looked exactly like a set of sharp teeth running the length of the wall. I always slept on my right side. I could never look to my left as I knew what I would see.

[Sits]

That’s etched in your memory isn’t it Amor? Makes me sad for the young you.

[Femme Folle]

Not at my own home, but at my grandparents' where I spent a great deal of time (they looked after me while my parents worked, from the time I was born until I started school). My grandfather had the head of a stag mounted on his bedroom wall. It had antlers and its eyes would follow you around the room. It was creepier in semi-darkness when you could see just a slight reflection of light off the eyes. I hated going in there at night because I could have sworn that I saw it move.

[Sporting]

Not an object, but a room. Will you allow me to indulge myself and ramble for a paragraph ?


The room was in Dowhills Road, Blundellsands, in the Liverpool area. My father got a job as a systems manager in the Giro bank in Bootle and moved us all from Highworth, (near Swindon; my father had been teaching at the Royal Military College in Shrivenham) to the north. Funnily enough, he was to meet his second wife in this bank; she worked in a different department.) In a stroke, I said goodbye to all my friends and never saw them again. Actually, this is not strictly true: I didn’t have the opportunity to say goodbye to anyone; it was forever thus when I was a kid; one day we were living in one town, the next we’d be unpacking in another.) The house in Dowhills Road was big, far too much so for our meagre collection of furniture to fill the various rooms. There was a Butler’s Pantry, along with three or four bedrooms, various rooms downstairs, including a small alcove where the telephone was kept. The previous occupant of the house had died on a railway line; some said it was suicide, and my mother often claimed to have seen his ghost at the top of the stairs. She also said that she had seen him looking out onto the garden from the room on the right at the top of the stairs. The room itself had a few pieces of junk and crap furniture in it. My mother was forever seeing ghosts and having out-of-body experiences and at the time I absolutely believed her (I mean, I still do, but in some way her otherwise very intelligent mind was skewed in some way, because spirits and all that don't happen, do they?) Anyway, I avoided that room as much as I could and when alone in the house (we were taught to be independent pretty young...or my mum was absent too often: the jury's out) I shut my eyes when going upstairs to bed, or even slept downstairs on a sofa to avoid doing so.

[Balderdasha]

These didn't scare me as a child (because they weren't present then), but they scare me now. My mum has a spare guest bedroom, painted yellow, with all of these 'dolls of the world' hanging from the ceiling.

[Patrick Thistle]

These didn't scare me as a child (because they weren't present then), but they scare me now. My mum has a spare guest bedroom, painted yellow, with all of these 'dolls of the world' hanging from the ceiling.

Sounds like she doesn't really want guests.

And when you say "hanging"...?

[Nocturnal Submission]

The big, old wardrobe in the corner of my childhood bedroom. Always expecting something unpleasant to creep out.

[ursus arctos]

Nothing to match the other contributions to this thread, but like many "good" Roman Catholics of their generation, my parents had a crucifix on the wall above their bed.

It was about eight or ten inches tall - a pewter Christ on a dark wooden cross. I believe that it was a wedding present (each of my parents was by some distance the least religious of their respective families) and I was always struck by the fact that my mother had kept the box that it came in, which she kept in her closet.

I took it down the night that my father died, soon after the funeral director had removed his body.

[caja-dglh]

For whatever reason BB board now hates me and I can't embed images.

Anyway - my grandmother had a collection of Murano glass clowns. To add to their glory, they were in a mirrored inset above the fireplace, making the collection of about ten or so become infinite.

When she died we each were given one. My wife has refused to let mine enter the country (I can't say I put up any fight)

[IMG]https://www.muranolampstore.com/wp-c...i-colorati.jpg[/IMG]

[ursus arctos]

[Balderdasha]

Sounds like she doesn't really want guests.

And when you say "hanging"...?

Haha, not quite that bad. They're all sort of dangling by threads attached to their backs / waists. All at slightly different heights just to annoy perfectionists as well as standard people who are creeped out by dolls. Which is a bit weird as my mum is the type of person who prides herself in adjusting pictures in other people's houses if they're even slightly crooked.

[Patrick Thistle]

JESUS FUCKING CHRIST

[ursus arctos]

Quite

ms. dglh is a wise woman

[ChrisJ]

I have a feeling there’s an image there Chris, but I can’t see it.

Soz. There should be. Internet kept timing it out. I was trying to post this:

[ChrisJ]

Also, UAs post has triggered the memory of my gran tucking me up with a hot water bottle, a song and a reminder of guzunder procedure (no indoor facilities until the mid-80s) and then leaving me to try to avoid the sight of the terrifying crucifix nailed above the bed.

[Femme Folle]

This thread should have a "Trigger Warning"

[slackster]

I had a Noddy night light which used to scare the bejesus out of me as a toddler. It was rubberised and just glowed menacingly.

[Billy Casper]

A blue hot water bottle in the rough shape of a bear with an unsmiling face. I had to take it to bed with me (even in the summer), because I thought that if I didn't it would be angry with me.

[elguapo4]

We had an outside toilet until I was about 12, and going in the dark was utterly terrifying, for a start it had no lock, and I'd sit there, trying to break the world record for the quickest shit, all the while expecting the door to crash open and the bogeyman to be there .

More mundanely, my Mother loved crime thriller novels, and I remember one had a man being stabbed in the back,on the cover. It freaked me out so much, she had to rip off the cover so she could read in peace.

[3 Colours Red]

One of my younger brothers had one of these:

I can assure you, this is just as terrifying even when the voicebox thingimajig isn't fucked.

[Amor de Cosmos]

I had a Noddy night light which used to scare the bejesus out of me as a toddler. It was rubberised and just glowed menacingly.

A rubber Noddy... Hmmm. My mind continues to boggle

[Sam]

I can't think of any personal contributions to this thread at the moment, but just wanted to say that that clown thing ursus put up a picture of is absolutely hideous. It doesn't scare me, but bloody hell it's ugly. People fill their shelves with some right shit, don't they? (No offence, dglh, although I don't get the impression you'll take any.)