Things that irrationally terrified you as a child

[Various Artist]

Big old wooden wardrobes.

There was one in the corner of my bedroom that I particularly hated. I was concerned that if there was a monster in there I wouldn't be able to see it if it emerged when the room was dark, but I was also scared of seeing a witch on a broomstick outside the window if I kept the curtains drawn together. Monster inside or witch outside - I plumped for the latter which was why I slept with my curtains drawn apart long after the fear had dissipated.

I was also terrified of the wardrobe at the top of the staircase in my granny's cottage, but that was mainly because the wardrobe legs were riddled with woodworm and it could have toppled over and flattened me had I been going up the stairs when it fell.

Not a Narnia fan then I take it NS? Or does the lion cancel out both the witch and the wardrobe?

[Sporting]

Gutters and drains.

[Various Artist]

Minder is the one that sprngs to my mind. Also Rainbow.

Yes, for me the Thames ident is as tied to Rainbow – visually and sonically – as the 20th Century Fox one is tied to Star Wars.

[treibeis]

Franz Muentefering would have scared me as a child.

He's twelve years older than his father-in-law and his favourite food is tomatoes on buttered rye bread. These two facts featured in the quiz at my wedding do.

So there.

[treibeis]

In the TV adaptation of Carrie's War, there's a bit where, prior to punishing one of the kids, Mr. Evans says, "It's the strap for you. On your bare bottom."

This didn't frighten me at the time. What it did do, because Mr. Evans looked and sounded like every single one of the ten or so Welsh great-uncles I had at the time, was make me shit-scared of going to Swansea to "see the family", lest Great Uncle Albert/Malcolm/Terry/Whoever would take his belt to me.

[WOM]

Okay, so The Commander Tom Show ran on Buffalo channel 7. Tom Jolls was the news channel's weather guy, and doubled as Commander Tom to introduce cartoons and whatnot in the morning.

Every so often, they'd use that little door in the background with CT Show on it. He'd open it, and there would be some kind of freaky white...orb...head thing, and it would 'tell' him stuff, which he would listen to and then tell us. The thing didn't speak, but it spoke to Tom. Anyway, I don't remember exactly what it looked like or whether it even had a mouth or eyes. But it just sitting there inside the box, talking without speaking, used to freak the living shit out of me. I'd leave the room or hide behind the couch until the whole macabre experience passed and we'd be watching cartoons again.

[Nocturnal Submission]

Not a Narnia fan then I take it NS? Or does the lion cancel out both the witch and the wardrobe?

Actually, the missing portal of my childhood triumvirate of terror was the loft hatch, behind which lurked who knows what, but quite possibly a lion. Being chased by something emerging from there was my most common nightmare as a child.

Watching Black Christmas since has done nothing to diminish the memory.

[3 Colours Red]

I've banged on about the Scotch tape skeleton more than enough on here, so I'll mention instead the opening titles to Equinox - the way the camera panned then the flash of lasers as they eventually formed that disembodied lower half of a face, then the show's title spoken in what sounded like the Amiga 500's speech synthesis being run though a tin can.

Also daddy long legs - they would completely swarm our primary school every autumn and I was one of those stupid kids who believed the "most venomous bite" urban myth.

[Billy Casper]

The Herbs TV programme - specifically the owl.

A blue rubber hot water bottle that was shaped like a dog. It's face was less than friendly... I was so scared of it that I worried it would get angry with me if I didn't use it, so every night for a year or so I had to fill it up and take it to bed. Fun times.

[Moonlight Shadow]

Vampires....I could not fall asleep unless I had a thick layer of cloth around my neck. Surprising that I did not end up strangling myself in my sleep...

[San Bernardhinault]

There was a chipped off bit of paint on the bottom of the bathroom door exposing a bit of wood that I was convinced looked like a horsemen wearing a stovepipe hat, and I was convinced at times that he was out to get me.

Although the thing that always scared me most, the threat that always hit home hardest, was going to bed without dinner. The idea of missing out on food was terrifying.

[caja-dglh]

Moomins.

[ursus arctos]

This thread is giving me a better understanding of where you are all coming from.

I first understood the reality of Mutually Assured Destruction during a trip to the library with my mother when I as four.

I didn't really need anything else to terrify me.

[Sporting]

My father used to threaten me, if I badly misbehaved, with locking me in the cupboard under the stairs, where dark things, coldness and uncertainty lurked.

I didn't misbehave too much at home, at least not on the occasions my father was there.

[Giggler]

Escalators, after my mum told me an old woman in New York got dragged into one and mangled by it.

The perfect storm of the World In Action music and the drawing of Vitruvian Man with light coming out of him.

[Auntie Beryl]

The perfect storm of the World In Action music and the drawing of Vitruvian Man with light coming out of him.

Absolutely this.

[Nocturnal Submission]

Peter Woods, the newsreader

You must brick yourself every time a Morecambe and Wise retrospective programme shows the There Is Nothing Like A Dame number.

[caja-dglh]

This thread is giving me a better understanding of where you are all coming from.

I first understood the reality of Mutually Assured Destruction during a trip to the library with my mother when I as four.

I didn't really need anything else to terrify me.

I would argue that this was rational.

[ursus arctos]

As would (and did) I

[Artificial Hipster]

The Sparky book for Boys and Girls 1974 had a story in which a group of children discovered a time machine. In their first adventure they turned the course of the Battle of Waterloo in Wellington's favour by sabotaging Napoleon's arms supplies: "Ze cannonballs, zey are running away!" was probably the first bit of French I ever learned. Next they found themselves in Pudding Lane just as the Great Fire of London was breaking out. This whole section was scary enough with the children only just making it back to their time machine before both it and they were engulfed in flames, but what knocked me dead every time were the portenteous final lines of the strip as once more the children headed back in time, "to who knows where or when."

[Diable Rouge]

The Sparky book for Boys and Girls 1974 had a story in which a group of children discovered a time machine. In their first adventure they turned the course of the Battle of Waterloo in Wellington's favour by sabotaging Napoleon's arms supplies: "Ze cannonballs, zey are running away!" was probably the first bit of French I ever learned. Next they found themselves in Pudding Lane just as the Great Fire of London was breaking out. This whole section was scary enough with the children only just making it back to their time machine before both it and they were engulfed in flames, but what knocked me dead every time were the portenteous final lines of the strip as once more the children headed back in time, "to who knows where or when."

I can't remember the name of the book, it mainly had facts, jokes and puzzles, but there were some stories also and the climax of one similarly involved time travelling children going to Eyam - it didn't explain the history of the place, but the drawing did highlight it was a fatal decision.

[S. aureus]

Spiders and hyperdermic needles, both of which still do.
I was also terrified of MAD as a child, though I think I was in double digits before the potential of that sunk in.

[Jah Womble]

Good few of these aren't really 'irrational', no.

A lot of kids of about five-six years younger than I would probably say Animal Kwackers - I mean, those costumes were the stuff of nightmares.

I recall a very tall, thin (presumably alien) man in a white robe on an episode of Star Trek - that gave me the odd bad dream, I must say. I used to be bothered by the late-sixties theme music to Ask the Family as well - ie, the fairly well-known sitar piece, the name of which escapes me. (I had one or two very odd obsessions as a kid regarding TV: I never watched the show, but I always had to see the part in the opening titles of Bonanza where the map burns up.)

In terms of more general things, my mother told me that I used to get very upset as an infant by a friend of hers who (presumably briefly) wore sticking plasters above her eyes: apparently, I would cry or run a mile if she visited. (In the unlikely event that she's still alive, I'd like to take this opportunity to apologise.)

[Kowalski]

The massive electricity Pylons, I still can't walk near them / under the cables when I'm on my own.

[MsD]

Red Injuns in Westerns, which seemed to be on TV every day in the early to mid 60s. I don't know that it's an irrational fear, they were supposed to be scary in those films, and after your scalp. It was the whooping that did it.

I am over it now, thanks to long and frequent exposure to Kings of the Wild Frontier.