When you were little, what were you afraid of?

Typical stuff. Monsters under the bed. As long as the sheet was over my head they could not get me.

Obese people freaked me out as a kid. They still do,, actually.

Death.

The basement. Heights. Carnival rides. Being the center of attention.

I also remember the prayer we were taught. "now I lay me down to sleep........". Great, let's scare the shit out of kids and make them think about death. Thankfully, my parent's were not that religious.

Insects, drunk people, a creepy painting of a woman in our living room, being different than everyone else.

Was it an original painting R6? Do you parents still have it?

The Dark.

I was always a fatty, so, full length mirrors.

I was afraid my carpet didn’t match my drapes. Grandma Harriet said that about Mom once.

Being kidnapped by a hippie. Not even sure why. Except it was the early 70s, lots of hippies and they seemed unpredictable

And the local band that my godfather drummed for that practiced in my great-aunt’s basement. Unpredictable hippies who played very loud music.

I was a sensitive child.

I was in grade school in the 60’s. Every class had at least one student who had missing limb(s). (Caused by drug pregnant mothers took for morning sickness) I remember being terrified of those poor kids. I hate admitting that! But after seeing them everyday and interacting with them thru several grades, I lost my fear.

The opening of Medical Center. It terrified me.

The car wash. Despite being in an enclosed, dry automobile, I felt like I could drown at any moment. And the large, vertical spinning brushes were the worst. They still disturb me.

R14 my little brother was terrified of carwashes.

R11 I still vividly remember some of the nightmares I had about hippies when I was around 3 or 4 years old.

I was terrified of spontaneous combustion. Ironic for a flaming little boy.

Was the hippie thing because of that Jeffrey McDonald guy?

I was terrified of being abducted by Satanists. I think 'Race With the Devil' helped crystallize my fear.

Burglars coming in to our house through the balcony. Heights. Roaches. Having to perform music in front of people. (I took a lot of lessons). The thought of dying and not knowing how I’d recognize my family in heaven if we had new bodies. The Rapture and getting left behind. Yeah, church wasn’t so much fun.

The big catalpa tree in John Woods’ front lawn at night. The black outline against the sky lookt like a cameo portrait of George Washington I had seen in a book. What if it came to life, and saw me watching it? What if it spoke to me about honesty? What could I possibly say?

Skeletons (the kind you DON'T keep in the closet).

Werewolves. Funny, because I've always liked wolves.

My dad's cock

My mom said I would shriek in terror at the sight of men in beards when I was little. I don't remember, but I believe her. The other usual stuff- the dark, the boogeyman, and terrified of losing my mother in the grocery store. Why does this last one seem to be so Universal in America?

Thunderstorms and tornadoes. Also homeless people.

My great uncle had several sets of steer horns on his wall. They looked demonic. I was four.

The future.

that would have been thalidomide i think, R12.

Really tall trees. I’d look up at them and get dizzy with anxiety. Giant, fat-trucked, gnarly-limbed eucalyptus trees were THE WORST! I felt like I’d get scooped up by their weeping branches and become trapped in the tree forever, if I got too close.

WHET the thalidomide kids BTW? It's like they were everywhere and then they disasppeared out in thin air.

The fucking flying monkeys.

Our cats’ night eyes

I was both terrified, but also exhilarated by the idea of seeing Bigfoot.

Everything... and everyone.

My parents

My father's family were weird Protestants but my mother's were moderate Catholics. I remember staying with overnight with my Protestant grandmother and overhearing her talking with her mother about the Rapture and burning in hell etc. Before elementary school. When I went home the next day I was really worried about that and I remember images of fire. When my mother and her mother got wind of those fears they were furious with their inlaws whom they thought had crazy beliefs anyway. I also remember my mother and her mother in the next room discussing how wrong it was to expose children to such ideas.

I was afraid of the dark. And of monsters. Especially those that lived under beds. 'The Outer Limits' provided a lot of fodder for my three to four-year-old fertile imagination.

I had special names for the monsters that terrified me. The one that I believed lived under my parents' bed was inspired by the amorphous globs from the OL episode 'Corpus Earthling.' I called it the 'Lada.' And the one I was most terrified of, the one I thought lived under 𝑚𝑦 bed, which looked like the crablike aliens from 'The Invisibles,' save for a long, long red feather which stuck out of its carapace, I called 'the Pecking Spider.'

In the OL, these roaring, crablike aliens were slow but inexorable. Not so the Pecking Spider. It was unbelievably fast. I dreamt that it was scurrying around my bed, extending its long, curved feather in an effort to get me; to be touched by the feather meant death, you see. So once I'd gathered the nerve, I leapt from the bed and ran like hell down the hall, into the living room, with the monster in hot pursuit. I ran up onto the divan and perched on the top of its back, but alas - that was insufficiently high enough from the floor. The Pecking Spider touched me with its long feather, and killed me dead.

my white trash relatives. Still am.

My own stunning beauty, so I had to hide it.

My father. Not his cock, just his rage, his fists, his heavy work shoes.

I was also afraid of UFOs for some reason.

"When you were little, what were you afraid of?"

Adults with poor grammar skills...still am...

"When You Were Little, Of What Were You Afraid?"

Go die in a ditch R41.

I was afraid of thunder and lightning and then my mother brought us to the movies to see Pinocchio and I got scared of the ocean and bodies of water. And then my mother took us to see Titanic, and That was IT. I was totally freaked out. I just went on my first cruise at age 58 three years ago. Yes, I'm old. Fuck you... There's a pandemic and there are fewer options. I like it here. Oh. Closed spaces and under ground caves and shit. Like we went on vacation to Italy about 10 years ago, and we had a tour scheduled to see some catacombs, and I started the tour and about ten feet in, I had a panic attack and had to leave. And I'm scared of suspension bridges and those scenic elevators that take you to the 70th floor, and I'm scared of heights, I guess. Also hate crowds. I'm talking masses of people.

[quote]And I'm scared of suspension bridges and those scenic elevators that take you to the 70th floor, and I'm scared of heights, I guess. Also hate crowds. I'm talking masses of people.

I hear ya R43. I had a panic attack once when traffic forced us to stop on a bridge for what seemed like hours. I will not go into glass elevators if it's past a 3rd floor and I haven't been to a festival in years because I can't stand masses of people. I'm not scared but I'm a sort of misanthrope. I like individuals and small groups but heaving masses of people just piss me off.

R41 has not updated her English since World War II.

For one hot summer, I was convinced my sister was a vampire. I went to sleep each night with a blanket over my neck, making with sweat like crazy.

But I survive any attempts to drain my blood!

When I was very little and got up in the morning I’d make a huge leap off the bed and come landing in the middle of the floor in my room, far away from the bed. This was, of course, because if I simply placed my feet on the floor next to the bed monster hands would reach out and grab my ankles (even in sunny morning daylight). By gaining some distance they couldn’t reach that far. My bedroom was on the second floor and the whole room would rattle when I hit the floor and my parents would yell at me for doing that repeatedly. But it was worth it!

Horror movies

The attic

The undertow

Getting separated from my parents or lost

Poison ivy and my alcoholic third-grade teacher.

Electric heaters. The glowing red wires. We had a heating fan in the ceiling of our bathroom. I hated to walk under it if it happened to be on. I would never turn it on myself. Even today the glowing red wires of a portable heater make me a little uneasy.

I would not eat rye bread when I was a kid, because I thought the caraway seeds in it were little bugs.

I also would not go near Muenster cheese, because it was made by The Munsters.

And today, I won't use stevia, because it is made by Stevie Nicks, who is a witch.

R41 Lol, I thought you were going to say you didn’t eat rye because of the Crucible.

Quicksand. After seeing it in so many movies or TV shows, I figured I was going encounter it a few times in my life. Most kids knew about it too, and I guess we all figured that if you stepped in it, that was the end of you.

Spare me 300-word comments, OCD fat hoes. If I want to read some rants like that, I will go to the NY Times comment sections. DL comments should be short, sharp and shocking!!

Fifty-four responses on a gay board and no one has said "vagina". You bitches are slipping.

Zzzzzzapp!

[quote]When you were little, what were you afraid of?

Vincent Price.

The Pit and the Pendulum was a life changer.

Vincent Price was a scary eldergay.

My father breaking in and killing us while we slept

Sunken boats, sunken airplanes, boat propellers, boat hulls, and helicopters. I still cant really look at them to this very day with out feeling uncomfortable. My parents think its past life death trauma since it was such odd things.

I saw The Ghost And Mr. Chicken on TV and nightmares for a month. "And they used Bon Ami!"

Being left alone.

The basement. All our canned goods were kept on shelves in the basement. Being sent there to fetch something was terrifying. I'd talk to myself in a really loud voice to keep up my courage.

Heights. I still am afraid of heights.

I remember being scared by Scooby Doo cartoons. I would have to watch them with one of my sisters, too frightening on my own.

-Large Marge from "Pee Wee's Big Adventure" scared the shit out of me. I'd have to leave the room when her rig was first shown.

-Hospitals

-Wilton, CT. Sounds silly, but Wilton bordered where I grew up. There was a restaurant in Wilton that was also on the Westport/Norwalk line. The Wilton one was actually closer to my house, but I would beg and plead with my parents to go to the Norwalk one because Wilton creeped me out.

I was terrified of going down the basement. Grandma had a steel cabinet on the landing where we stocked canned goods and onions and potatoes, but every once in a while she made me go down there for something. Once on the Saturday before Thanksgiving she got a live turkey, and it was in a crate down there and it got loose and chased me and I was screaming crazy.

Daleks and those mannequin aliens on Doctor Who. I would hide behind the couch (or settee) while they were on tv.

When I was about five years old, I believed there were alligators lurking in the bushes below my bedroom window. Prior to air-conditioning, our windows were open. They were screened, but I was convinced alligators could chew through screens and eat me. My mom told me to keep the closet door open. Alligators looked for shoes to eat, she said. It would distract them and I could sleep through the night.

Groups of hippies at the local park The canned (jarred) venison and salmon on shelves in my grandma's garage Earwigs Windows without curtains at night

There was some bizarre show with chimpanzees dubbed with human voices. Freaked me the hell out.

Masculine nuns.

R55 - bitch we had barely called from one...at that age it was our home town.

Hansel and Gretel. No way should that have been a children's story.

Two big things:

1) Being kidnapped. In 1972, a wealthy Minneapolis houswife, Virginia Piper, was kidnapped in broad daylight from the front yard of her home in the suburbs; she was ransomed for a million dollars (which her husband paid), and somehow was returned alive. It was a big story in the Twin Cities (it eventually became the inspiration for the movie "Fargo," because the Coen Brothers were so haunted by it too). My grandfather that year had sold his company, also for a million dollars, that year (which was a lot of money in 1972), and i was sure this somehow made me a kidnapping target. I was terrified I was going to be taken next.

2) Werewolves. I could hear the scratching of squirrels at night on the roof of our house (my bedroom was right underneath the roof), and I was terrified these were the werewolves I had seen on one of the "Kolchak: The Night Stalker" TV-movies.

The painting was an original. My mom’s good friend owned an antique store in Portland years ago. My mom bought the painting from her. I have no idea what happened to it, but it scared me so much that I had frequent nightmares about it. She also bought a beautiful French marble top sideboard with a hutch, that I now own. It is supposedly from the early 1800’s. I need to get someone out to appraise it.

Sleeping. Up until my late 20's I had horrible nightmares almost every night. I would wake up and be completely paralyzed with fear, both mentally and physically. I later learned from a doctor that I was experiencing night terrors, which are basically nightmares on acid. I have chronic insomnia because of this but fortunately I haven't experience any night terrors for many years. I rarely have pleasant dreams.

Clowns. I have been terrified of clowns my whole life. I can remember screaming at some kids birthday party when the clown arrived. I think I was about 5-6 then, but I was scared of them before that, and scared of them from that time on to now and I am 43.

[quote] And then my mother took us to see Titanic, and That was IT. I was totally freaked out. I just went on my first cruise at age 58 three years ago. Yes, I'm old.

If you are 61 now, you would have been 38 when "Titanic" came out in 1997.

"Mother, PLEASE! Billy Zane is going to MOCK my Post-Impressionist paintings! Let me leave the theater! HELP!!"

I used to love watching Candid Camera when I was a kid but at some point I became afraid that the camera was pointed into our bathroom window and some day I’d be featured on the show and everyone would laugh at me. So weird.

Dead people; we lived across the street from a graveyard. I had terrible nightmares they all came out of their graves and were chasing me, but for some reason my feet were stuck. Also, old people; most of the funerals were for elderly people.

R78 Christ, you think that was the only film called Titanic? You obviously don’t know the Robert Wagner oeuvre very well and his inspiration for killing his wife.

Vaginas. I was born Caesarian. I've never touched one and I don't plan to, not even a bucket list item...

Nuns

Some of these made me laugh really hard. And some are touching or even heartbreaking.

"There was some bizarre show with chimpanzees dubbed with human voices. Freaked me the hell out.

Lancelot Link, Secret Chimp. I actually liked this show, but I quickly grew bored of it.

I was actually scared of Scooby Doo cartoons and wouldn't watch them. Pretty much any "scary cartoon" or movie was too much. The closest thing to a scary movie I would watch was The Wizard of Oz.

My cousins would always get excited when The Birds would play on tv during the afternoon movie show. I would pretend to be excited too but would always manage to disappear when it came on.

In college, I took a film class about Hitchcock and had to write a paper on the Birds. During the movie, when the gas station explodes we had an earthquake and I jumped out of class (followed by most of the other students).

Of course, the first thing I noticed once outside was how many birds there were flying around.

We all had a good laugh about it. Even if we kept watching the skies.

Gym class

I was afraid of the big boys.

is it true kids were afraid of this?

[quote] You obviously don’t know the Robert Wagner oeuvre very well

Somehow I think I'll survive that, Mary.

The Clifton Webb Titanic came out in '53 years before R43 was born. Then there was A Night to Remember which came out in '58. R43 still had a couple of years to make his appearance.

And by the time R43 was a child the '53 Titanic would have been on tv. R43 please clear this up for us. What exactly did your mother take you to see that freaked you out? Ship of Fools? Was it Elizabeth Ashley's performance or simply the very existence of Jose Ferrer?

We saw the Clifton Webb Titanic. There was a tiny movie house in our neighborhood, an old independent, that showed old movies for a dollar. We went to see Titanic with BArbara Stanwyck, (who I LOVED to imitate in the privacy of my room, fake cigarette and all) and Clifton Webb and a very pretty Robert Wagner. Now fuck the hell off, Jeeez.

At 10 years old, i figured out what "death" was and it freaked me out. i was constantly asking questions about it to my parents. i had a hard time comprehending that we would just blink out/end.

My brother and i basically lived in 2 rooms that were in the basement and separated by an outside staircase to connect to the main house. i locked the door every night, pulled the curtains shut to the huge window facing the backyard and pulled the sheet over my head every to make sure a murderer wouldn't see me. it didn't help when i would sometimes wake up with a fucking cow head/skull right outside my window in the morning - my house was about 1 mile to a pit where they dumped cow remains after slaughter and our outdoors dogs would go and bring back remains.

Snakes - lived in East San Diego county and there were rattlesnakes all over. Sometimes they were in the trees and you had to watch yourself walking around the property, usually with a big stick to make noise and scare them away while you were out and about.

UFOs - we saw one one night when my parents were away...it was hovering over the valley ((we were up on a hillside) and we didn't know what the hell it was.

The thing that made weird, unearthly howls at night (probably bobcats/mountain lions), but to us kids it sounded like horrific demons at the time.

The Killer bees on their way to California

The Big Earthquake

Russia nuking us by accidentally pushing that big red button

Drowning.

The Titanic questioner thinks he's Sherlock Shithead

Sharks, shark attacks, and the ocean in general, thanks to JAWS.

Don't look, R70! Lancelot Link, Secret Chimp.

Seeing Devo perform on Saturday Night Live in 1978. They wore body bags and eye goggles and sounded insane. I thought it was a cult. I was probably in the 5th grade.

What was it about TV shows in the 60s and 70s that thought a chimp = great comedy?

Snakes , alligators and rats. The same things I fear as an alleged adult!

R98 It's funny you said this.

I always said this about seeing The B-52's on early Saturday Night Live in their early days, in the very late 70's. I was a little kid too, in grade school (but old enough to stay up and watch SNL on weekends). I had no idea what punk or new wave was. Just the way the music was droning and they had weird hair and made strange noises into the microphones seemed almost nightmarish, at the time. Late at night. It really bothered me! LOL!

Of course as I got older I became a fan.

The only thing I can think causes this phenomenon is like little kids at the mall that start crying when they sit in Santa or the Easter Bunny's lap because it's all so strange.

The last few posts reminded me of how scary I though Wendy O'Williams was when I saw her on Tomorrow with Tom Snyder.

That chimp show was pretty bad, but not as bad as Clutch Cargo. Anyone remember that show?

When I was a kid the Catholic mass was still in Latin, and the priest faced the altar, not the congregation. Ther priests were all old men with white hair and not friendly. Their voices echoed down the marble aisles in words we couldn't understand. They seemed to have god-like power which scared me, though it wasn't true; it was just their image and presentation that was intimidating.

[quote]Fifty-four responses on a gay board and no one has said "vagina". You bitches are slipping.

How could a child be scared of a thing he has never seen or heard of? Did your mom show her vag to you to scare you shitless, R55?

[quote] When you were little, what were you afraid of?

Caftans.

Earrings.

Communists walking down our street to take us over.

[quote]Communists walking down our street to take us over.

The pastor in our parish warned us for months that when Khrushchev came to New York, the Communists were going to hang us out to dry. I had recurring nightmares in which I was being attached to my grandmother's clothesline with super-clothespins.

Tony The Tiger yelling, "IT'S GREAT!" and the beginning of Underdog w/those deep bass drums.

I don't remember this, but according to my mom when I was a baby when the Electric Company would come on I would start screaming at Rita Moreno's, "HEY YOU GUYS".

The Hindenburg

My father.

We had the Goodyear Blimp in southern California, and I would wonder if it also would crash into flames, until I finally learned in school the history of it and about the difference between hydrogen and helium.

In the 80s, AIDS

I know this is illogical, but I thought just by being gay you'd develop it.

I saw how straight people talked about gay people who either had AIDS or were flaming and how they'd get it.

I guess either I wasn't flaming or they didn't care about my feelings by the way they'd speak around me.

I used to be afraid of being alone, but now I'm afraid of some jerk I fall for responding to me and I lie to myself and it ends horribly.

Not being molested by the hot priests at St. Fairies

My mom not being able to make a garden salad for dinner because the carrots and cucumbers always seemed to disappear

My sister deciding to count her tampons and realizing she had several missing

That my gaping hole would suction it’s self to my desk at school and I couldn’t leave for recess

That I would grow up to be a middle-aged whore for old Euro trash once my career as a homophobic, closeted Republican politician came to an end.

Kids have such active imaginations!!! My love box never did suction up my desk at school, it only became a cum dumpster for Paul Ryan and Jerry Falwell.

When I was a child I was afraid of certain things. Now I'm afraid of everything.

In the dark in bed the heat coming on made clanking noises and I thought it was robots I had seen on some show, robots that attacked people. They made the same noise. Big dogs also scared me if they weren't on a leash. Heights scared me, I was reluctant to climb trees. Nuns scared me, usually. Animal characters dying in Disney movies scared me, and UFOs, though I was fascinated by them.

The supernatural - evil ghosts, dark magic, etc. Basically, the invisible. Sometimes I’d get freaked out alone in the house and go over to our neighbors’, even at age 12 or so.

Big bugs.... like crickets. They really are kind of evil looking. But roly poly bugs were okay.

Getting shots.

Shots and therefore doctors. I remember him chasing me around the table with my pants down and a shot in his hand. My mom was laughing. I was freaking out.

Snakes, even though the only snake around was Garter Snakes.

my brother was afraid of flying bugs like flys and bees.

R 43: I so identify with you. Hugs

R 114: I hate being alone. After a long term marriage ended and my one “relationship” burned me, I will never trust a humanoid again.

Either way, I’m alone. So fuck this world ... life will end soon enough and then I can sleep.

Nuclear war and being bullied. And not necessarily in that order.

Ayatollah Khomeni.

R124 Are you a Persian refugee? I knew quite a few families who came to the US from there as kids and he loomed large over their fears.

The basement. Our old "octopus" furnace. It had a little door you could open to look into it and it was full of fire, like looking into Hell.

When I was little Father Michael used to take me for ice cream and then he would play with my tiny peen. I felt dirty and he said if I ever told anyone I would go to Hell and all my friends would find out and they would beat me to death.....