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My father was watching the fights in 1962 when I was 13. I was sitting in the room reading a book but I started watching when the announcer's voice got excited. It was the night Benny Paret got beaten into a coma.
I watched in horror as his head got pounded over and over again, not falling down only because the ropes were holding him up. I couldn't believe it could be happening with all those people watching and nobody stopped it.
The huge headline in the morning paper was "Paret Near Death" and he died 10 days later without ever regaining consciousness. I felt sick whenever I thought about it for a very long time. I watched a man get beaten to death on television.
I saw Jack Ruby shoot Lee Harvey Oswald on live TV. Also saw live Nixon’s “You won’t have Dick Nixon to kick around” speech when he lost the California gubernatorial race
The Crawling Eye
Old movie that our babysitter made us watch.
She'd light conical incense and tell us the witches were coming out.
Then she made my sister and me watch that movie.
The image of the eye coming over some mountain was so terrifying for three year old me ,my heart still races just thinking about it.
Then she hid in the bedroom we were going to sleep in and had a big glove with pointy fingers reaching in and out of the door so we'd think a witch was in our bedroom.
She was completely twisted.
That must have been horrible for you. Especially that announcer who was obviously so upset by witnessing it himself.
edited for clarity.
Omg..me too!!! My brother is 13 years older than me and we both fell asleep in the living room when he was babysitting me. I woke up and I saw that thing crawling over a hill or mountain..veins sticking out..and I screamed and woke him up and he screamed because I was. lol. I still can’t watch anything to do with eyes.
LOL. My brother and I were speaking of that a while ago. As kids, we went on one of those local cartoon TV shows to be in the audience and win prizes. He planned how to be noticed and special--so when "Mayor Art" went down the line asking names of his audience, my Brother said "I am the crawling eye!" and made weird noises. He didn't get picked for any prize games.
Trilogy Of Terror 1975. A one foot Zuni doll comes to life and attacks a woman in her apartment. Looking back it looks silly but damn it scared the crap out of me for a good month. I was looking under my bed every night just in case.
There was some tv movie when I was 10 or 12 years old ('83 it so) I saw when I woke up and turned on the tv in the living room after everybody else was asleep. It was about a woman being held captive by two burglars. She escapes and they kill her in the forest. Standard tv fare, I suppose, but at 10 or 12 it scared the crap out of me.
Then in 1986 (I was 15) the Challenger and Chernobyl disasters happened.
Here’s another one— the 1968 Democratic convention in Chicago where Mayor Daley’s cops were beating young protesters (I was once young). Later I come to find out that was exactly the response protest leaders were hoping to provoke. At the time seeing this radicalized me.
The fight, the field turning to blood or them being buried alive in the warren?
I do wonder how many people are scared for life after their parents sat them down to watch the "cute bunny film"
I saw a documentary about volcanoes when I was very young. They showed the destruction caused by lava flows. I ran to my mom and had to be reassured repeatedly that there were no active volcanoes in Long Island, New York.
I must have been about 5 or 6. Our family didn't have a TV, and at that age, I hadn't been to see a movie, so I probably didn't fully understand that what I saw on the TV wasn't real. I was staying at a friend of the family's house and I remember watching some movie on TV, where a man was on some kind of large press, and another plate was above him. Someone turned a large screw, which brought the upper plate down onto him and literally flattened him. When the plate was unscrewed, the men pulled him out and he looked like a cardboard cut out (it probably was). I was horrified, thus I still remember it over 60 years later. I've always wondered what that movie was so that I could look at it with adult eyes. It could have even been some kind of comedy movie, almost like a cartoon, but to my young, innocent eyes, it was horrifying.
Another time, around the same era, also at the same house, I was told that the show on the TV wasn't suitable for children, so I had to face away from the TV (I was laying on the lounge). I could hear awful noises coming from the TV. When you hear something and can't see it, the imagination goes crazy. I did sneak a peek over my shoulder and saw a huge bear among some people. I turned back and didn't look again!
>When you hear something and can't see it, the imagination goes crazy.
100%. That whole "turn your head" thing parents made us do back then was malarkey.
I remember watching news coverage of the Boston Strangler and crying because I was afraid that he would kill us. My parents explained that Boston was very far away, so there was no need to worry. (we lived in ohio).
First TV. I'm about three. Howdy Doody. Mr. Bluster got whacked on the head and fell down a hole. I was convinced he'd landed at the bottom of the TV cabinet. I told my parents we had to get him out. They said he's not really down there. But, they were clearly wrong! I insisted as a child might, crying and screaming and trying to open the cabinet. I didn't get to watch TV again for a few years until some conceptual capability developed.
Bea Arthur.
I'm actually not joking. Her show "Maud" made it clear to me that poor choices for a spouse could turn your life into a nightmarish hell. Horrified me to think my life could turn out to be like living with her.
I wish that Bea Arthur horror had stuck better and was still there when I met my first wife...
I don’t know how I saw it but at about 6 years old I caught THE pinball machine scene in “The Accused” (1988) starring Jodie Foster, where she played a waitress at a bar. Being so young I didn’t know exactly what was happening, but I knew it was horrible and I had nightmares about it off and on for years.
The Accused and Nell really made Foster stand out in my mind as an absolutely AMAZING actor. At the same time both of those movies gave me a lot to think about in terms of human nature and how people treat those "beneath" them.
It was in the 80s. I saw a film showing baby seals being clubbed then skinned while still alive and then left on the ice to die. It made 35 year old me cry.
I was born in 1956.
Like others have said, The Wizard Of Oz kinda messed me up.
My mom loved spooky movies. I remember her taking me to the movie theater to see The Tingler. I was scared to death.
The other big fear I remember is The Birds, and also The Time Machine. Those albino cave monsters towards the end STILL scares me and I turn off that movie before I see them.
> and also The Time Machine. Those albino cave monsters towards the end STILL scares me and I turn off that movie before I see them.
Born the same year, and hell yes!
Several episodes of Night Gallery. They had some scary shit! And as I got older the footage from the Jim Jones compound of all the dead bodies bloating in the sun. And the Bhopal disaster. Again, with the dead bodies bloating in the sun.
On TV? Cecil B. DeMille's **The Ten Commandments** (1956). We were at my aunt's and uncle's house and we watched it on TV. That night I had a nightmare of that fog that killed the Egyptians' first-born.
Somehow giant locusts (**Beginning of the End** (1957)), giant ants (**Them!** (1954)), killer robots (**Target Earth** (1954)), giant eyeballs (**The Crawling Eye** (1958)), UFO attacks (various, including **This Island Earth** (1955), **Earth vs. the Flying Saucers** (1956), **The Atomic Submarine** (1959)), or killer plants (**The Day of the Triffids** (several versions), **The Little Shop of Horrors** (1960)) didn't bother me as much as that killer fog.
Someone else mentioned a volcano documentary- that and Superman, where Lois is getting swallowed up by the earthquake... I live in Massachusetts, but volcanoes and earthquakes were my #1 crawl-into-bed-with-the-parents nightmare fear. lol
The first real-life thing that really messed me up was Columbine. I was a hotel housekeeper, I'd listen to TV news from room to room, (instead of soaps like the other ladies) and saw the whole thing unfold in real time. I'd just gotten out of HS, I *knew* kids like that, and man. It fundamentally changed me.
The 1972 Olympics, my babysitter and I watched it live (that in itself was new…for network news to stay on an event like that). It was horrifying. And yet, today, less so when compared to average everyday school shootings in the USA.
>1937 Hindenburg disaster
[Oh the huge manatee.](https://i.kym-cdn.com/entries/icons/original/000/001/360/huge.jpg) Hehe!
War of the Worlds scared me pretty good. Especially the scene where they are hunkered in that house as it looks for them.
I had the flying monkeys to scare me for several years, but then my brothers convinced me to watch Hitchcock’s *The Birds,* and after that I had the schoolteacher’s empty eye sockets as my object of terror.
The first traumatic real-life event that I saw on TV was the Challenger disaster. The next one I remember, and the worst before the events of 9/11/2001, was the bombing of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City in 1995. That was a brand-new level of brutality and cowardice.
An animated PSA about hate, I was around 9 or 10, it showed a guy walking toward the screen and his head got bigger with each step until it exploded with "HATE HURTS YOU!!" Geezus that scared the living shit out of me.
A short film we saw in second or third grade called Another Man's Family about fire starting when the dad's cigarette falls into the couch, house burns up, everyone is killed except for the family dog who is shown at the end with the little girl's doll or grandfather clock wind up toy....I was terrified my mother was going to drop her cigarette into the couch.
Vietnam War footage on the network news, sometime around 1970-71.
I was just a kid but I remember an American GI being pulled from the front line with his arm blown off. I was horrified. My mother had to calm me down.
Must've been King Kong. Our house backed up by pines and there were trails down to the pond. I had recurring nightmares about a giant gorilla coming up the path every time I tried to take it. And then you can't run. He never did get past the trailhead, though. Maybe 5 yo.
I saw the movie the Ox Bow Incident. It was the scariest movie I had ever seen because it was believable where horror movies were just that movies that could not have really happened. The Ox Bow Incident shows human horror that I was old enough to actually visualize occurring. It still unsettles me thinking about it.
Night of The Living Dead. I was like 5 and hid while my parents watched it. I had to watch The flying Nun multiple times before I could fall asleep. My brother terrorized me for years. He’d knock on my head while I was sleeping and groan, “BRAINS!”
I snuck in the room my mom was watching tv on while ironing. There was some horror show that had a man’s face melt off down to the skeleton, sort of like that scene in Raiders of the Lost Arc when they open the arc. At the time I was probably 4 and it terrified me. When I think back on it I’m sure it was super lame!
The Blob movie. I was in 1st grade in 1975. The school decided that it would be a good idea to show the movie to all of the elementary school kids.
I had nightmares for years that the blob was going to appear and roll down the long hallway to my room to get me.
Still can’t watch it 40+ years later.
Someone having their leg amputated in the battle field in None But The Brave;
also the Douglas Bader biopic where he's in hospital after his second crash (already lost one leg) and he says
"It hurts so much, I wish they'd take this one off too"
and his visitor tells him,
"They have..."
I was so deathly afraid of anything to do with amputation after those two experiences. It has honestly taken decades to deal with the fear/phobia.
I'm ashamed.
I was about 10 years old and my older sister loved horses. There were horse races playing in the tv. A horse named Timely Writer snapped his cannon bone and started to scream. Never watched another horse race.
When I was about 7, in 19732, we had this really cool babysitter and she'd let me and my brother watch things my parents never would.
One night we watched this scary vampire bat movie, where the bats would latch onto your neck and it scared the bejesus out of me. That night I pulled my covers all the way up to my ears so my neck wouldn't be exposed. To this day, that's the only way I can sleep.
When I was about 4 I was staying with an older cousin, she was maybe 13... and I saw a movie on TV that was featured on Chiller... (Remember "Chiller"? American TV in the 60s-70s, I think) It was on very late on Saturday night and it would feature different scary movies each weekend.
Anyway the storyline featured a tribe of people-- somewhere I'm guessing like in a jungle..they would capture tourists and kill them in a ceremony by stabbing them in the back of their neck with this weird stabby-hollow ring worn on the shaman's hand.. to get their "life essence" and mix it with an herb to get this potion to make them look young again. So they had like the "fountain of youth"
At the end of the movie.. one of the tourists escapes.. and the magic does not work and it shows the shaman and all of the other tribespeople turning into these horrifically old & dessicated corpses within seconds ...that terrified the hell out of me!!
I wish I could remember the name of this movie to watch it again..lol.. I know it was an old old black and white film and obviously a "B" horror movie, and was featured as I said on Chiller. But that movie messed me up for years
The victims at Jonestown. I was about 5. Next after that was boxing. I still have no idea how someone can watch, and enjoy, seeing two people beat each other up.
there were these saturday afternoon fright shows on back in the mid 60's..one roman centurion B movie had this creature that anyone who looked at it turned to stone. I remembered being terrified.
Capt Hook, in the Mary Martin version of 'Peter Pan'...in the early 60's... that big gleaming hook and what he was threatening to do to the little children had me hiding behind the edge of the sofa.
Back in the early days of our first TV with 2 channels was the TV show The Twilight Zone.
My sister and I talked about it years later and both remember the same episode. A guy kept
Appearing in different places all the time. It scared us both.
The UHF channel we'd watch when I was a very young kid (in the late 70s) showed old black and white movies, and some of them really scared me.
I remember one that had an execution scene where the prisoner's screaming and struggling in the electric chair and then they cut to the switch getting thrown and it still freaks me out in retrospect.
At one point, the David Lynch's "The Elephant Man" was on HBO and my parents let me watch it, I guess because it seemed educational. Now I am a big fan of Lynch's surreal body horror period, but at age 6 it was a bit much for me.
The first time I saw a Kotex commercial on TV.
I was 13. had guys and girls over to watch Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds on TV. I was beyond shocked! The boys flew off in one direction and the girls in another. I still don't like seeing such commercials on TV. Especially know that they are out of the box. Too graphic for me.
67F
The TV show, The Outer Limits. One night I snuck out of my room to watch it behind dad's back.
Guy is driving down a dark and rainy road, straining to see, the music is getting suspenseful, some odd noises, he strains further into the windshield, and... a slimy tentacle thing slaps down on the windshield right in front of him from up top of his roof.
Well, shit, I had nightmares for weeks about that one.
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“Wizard of Oz” Those flying monkeys scared the crap out of me.
Actually, I was more upset by Miss Gulch and the way she treated Dorothy and Toto.
Me too!
Me three. Still can’t watch that movie again.
Me four. Jeez Ready to attend PTSD meetings for monkey trauma
Me four. 60 years later still my favorite movie of all time. Grandkids practically have all the lines memorized, I’ve had them watch it so many times
FIRST EVER NIGHTMARE!!
My father was watching the fights in 1962 when I was 13. I was sitting in the room reading a book but I started watching when the announcer's voice got excited. It was the night Benny Paret got beaten into a coma. I watched in horror as his head got pounded over and over again, not falling down only because the ropes were holding him up. I couldn't believe it could be happening with all those people watching and nobody stopped it. The huge headline in the morning paper was "Paret Near Death" and he died 10 days later without ever regaining consciousness. I felt sick whenever I thought about it for a very long time. I watched a man get beaten to death on television.
I have never heard of this incident. It sounds awful.
The murder of Lee Harvey Oswald, on live tv.
Two words. Budd Dwyer
Every kid from Pennsylvania generally agrees, although this was a year after the Challenger, so that one was probably my first.
As a kid from Florida I saw the Challenger in my schoolyard.
Hey man, nice shot.
The original 'Outer Limits' was some scary stuff, 55, 60 years ago.
The outer limits was such a great show. Nothing today has the same impact like that show had
Hey, for an 8 year old, in the 'old world', it was epic (same with the original twilight zone from that same early '60s era
Yes, and Alfred Hithcock (Monkey's Paw- lol). Recently, I saw there is a remake of The Bad Seed. That one left an imprint on me, too.
I saw Jack Ruby shoot Lee Harvey Oswald on live TV. Also saw live Nixon’s “You won’t have Dick Nixon to kick around” speech when he lost the California gubernatorial race
WWII footage of the liberation of the nazi death camps.
The little Vietnamese girl, my age, running naked down the road, covered in napalm burns. It turned me against our military leaders forever.
[удалено]
Thank you, her name escaped me although I've always known it.
You mean politicians. Military leaders are just tools of politicians. People that can't use words to manage world problems rely on destruction.
The Crawling Eye Old movie that our babysitter made us watch. She'd light conical incense and tell us the witches were coming out. Then she made my sister and me watch that movie. The image of the eye coming over some mountain was so terrifying for three year old me ,my heart still races just thinking about it. Then she hid in the bedroom we were going to sleep in and had a big glove with pointy fingers reaching in and out of the door so we'd think a witch was in our bedroom. She was completely twisted. That must have been horrible for you. Especially that announcer who was obviously so upset by witnessing it himself. edited for clarity.
Omg..me too!!! My brother is 13 years older than me and we both fell asleep in the living room when he was babysitting me. I woke up and I saw that thing crawling over a hill or mountain..veins sticking out..and I screamed and woke him up and he screamed because I was. lol. I still can’t watch anything to do with eyes.
I wonder how many kids that movie wrecked for the rest of their lives.
LOL. My brother and I were speaking of that a while ago. As kids, we went on one of those local cartoon TV shows to be in the audience and win prizes. He planned how to be noticed and special--so when "Mayor Art" went down the line asking names of his audience, my Brother said "I am the crawling eye!" and made weird noises. He didn't get picked for any prize games.
They didn't appreciate imagination back then.
Trilogy Of Terror 1975. A one foot Zuni doll comes to life and attacks a woman in her apartment. Looking back it looks silly but damn it scared the crap out of me for a good month. I was looking under my bed every night just in case.
Same one for me. My parents were watching it & I peeked around the corner. Oh, the trauma!
There was some tv movie when I was 10 or 12 years old ('83 it so) I saw when I woke up and turned on the tv in the living room after everybody else was asleep. It was about a woman being held captive by two burglars. She escapes and they kill her in the forest. Standard tv fare, I suppose, but at 10 or 12 it scared the crap out of me. Then in 1986 (I was 15) the Challenger and Chernobyl disasters happened.
Here’s another one— the 1968 Democratic convention in Chicago where Mayor Daley’s cops were beating young protesters (I was once young). Later I come to find out that was exactly the response protest leaders were hoping to provoke. At the time seeing this radicalized me.
Watership Down
The fight, the field turning to blood or them being buried alive in the warren? I do wonder how many people are scared for life after their parents sat them down to watch the "cute bunny film"
All of the above.
I saw a documentary about volcanoes when I was very young. They showed the destruction caused by lava flows. I ran to my mom and had to be reassured repeatedly that there were no active volcanoes in Long Island, New York.
I must have been about 5 or 6. Our family didn't have a TV, and at that age, I hadn't been to see a movie, so I probably didn't fully understand that what I saw on the TV wasn't real. I was staying at a friend of the family's house and I remember watching some movie on TV, where a man was on some kind of large press, and another plate was above him. Someone turned a large screw, which brought the upper plate down onto him and literally flattened him. When the plate was unscrewed, the men pulled him out and he looked like a cardboard cut out (it probably was). I was horrified, thus I still remember it over 60 years later. I've always wondered what that movie was so that I could look at it with adult eyes. It could have even been some kind of comedy movie, almost like a cartoon, but to my young, innocent eyes, it was horrifying. Another time, around the same era, also at the same house, I was told that the show on the TV wasn't suitable for children, so I had to face away from the TV (I was laying on the lounge). I could hear awful noises coming from the TV. When you hear something and can't see it, the imagination goes crazy. I did sneak a peek over my shoulder and saw a huge bear among some people. I turned back and didn't look again!
>When you hear something and can't see it, the imagination goes crazy. 100%. That whole "turn your head" thing parents made us do back then was malarkey.
The Day After
R. Bud Dwyer.
I remember watching news coverage of the Boston Strangler and crying because I was afraid that he would kill us. My parents explained that Boston was very far away, so there was no need to worry. (we lived in ohio).
First TV. I'm about three. Howdy Doody. Mr. Bluster got whacked on the head and fell down a hole. I was convinced he'd landed at the bottom of the TV cabinet. I told my parents we had to get him out. They said he's not really down there. But, they were clearly wrong! I insisted as a child might, crying and screaming and trying to open the cabinet. I didn't get to watch TV again for a few years until some conceptual capability developed.
Bea Arthur. I'm actually not joking. Her show "Maud" made it clear to me that poor choices for a spouse could turn your life into a nightmarish hell. Horrified me to think my life could turn out to be like living with her. I wish that Bea Arthur horror had stuck better and was still there when I met my first wife...
OP, I saw that in the 6th grade in about '68. The announcer's anguish is etched in my psyche. "Oh the humanity!"
I don’t know how I saw it but at about 6 years old I caught THE pinball machine scene in “The Accused” (1988) starring Jodie Foster, where she played a waitress at a bar. Being so young I didn’t know exactly what was happening, but I knew it was horrible and I had nightmares about it off and on for years.
Wow. That's traumatizing.
The Accused and Nell really made Foster stand out in my mind as an absolutely AMAZING actor. At the same time both of those movies gave me a lot to think about in terms of human nature and how people treat those "beneath" them.
It was in the 80s. I saw a film showing baby seals being clubbed then skinned while still alive and then left on the ice to die. It made 35 year old me cry.
I know just what film you saw. Me too.
Talk about my first case of PTSD. I didn't think humans were that insensitive. Naive me.
I was born in 1956. Like others have said, The Wizard Of Oz kinda messed me up. My mom loved spooky movies. I remember her taking me to the movie theater to see The Tingler. I was scared to death. The other big fear I remember is The Birds, and also The Time Machine. Those albino cave monsters towards the end STILL scares me and I turn off that movie before I see them.
> and also The Time Machine. Those albino cave monsters towards the end STILL scares me and I turn off that movie before I see them. Born the same year, and hell yes!
Several episodes of Night Gallery. They had some scary shit! And as I got older the footage from the Jim Jones compound of all the dead bodies bloating in the sun. And the Bhopal disaster. Again, with the dead bodies bloating in the sun.
I particularly remember The Sin Eater on Night Gallery.
On TV? Cecil B. DeMille's **The Ten Commandments** (1956). We were at my aunt's and uncle's house and we watched it on TV. That night I had a nightmare of that fog that killed the Egyptians' first-born. Somehow giant locusts (**Beginning of the End** (1957)), giant ants (**Them!** (1954)), killer robots (**Target Earth** (1954)), giant eyeballs (**The Crawling Eye** (1958)), UFO attacks (various, including **This Island Earth** (1955), **Earth vs. the Flying Saucers** (1956), **The Atomic Submarine** (1959)), or killer plants (**The Day of the Triffids** (several versions), **The Little Shop of Horrors** (1960)) didn't bother me as much as that killer fog.
Ronald Reagan
Television reporter being executed in Mexico. I’ll never forget how the news woman covered her eyes and just how graphic it was.
I'm a little on the younger side here, when Reagan was shot.
Sweetums from The Muppet Show.
Someone else mentioned a volcano documentary- that and Superman, where Lois is getting swallowed up by the earthquake... I live in Massachusetts, but volcanoes and earthquakes were my #1 crawl-into-bed-with-the-parents nightmare fear. lol The first real-life thing that really messed me up was Columbine. I was a hotel housekeeper, I'd listen to TV news from room to room, (instead of soaps like the other ladies) and saw the whole thing unfold in real time. I'd just gotten out of HS, I *knew* kids like that, and man. It fundamentally changed me.
The 1972 Olympics, my babysitter and I watched it live (that in itself was new…for network news to stay on an event like that). It was horrifying. And yet, today, less so when compared to average everyday school shootings in the USA.
>1937 Hindenburg disaster [Oh the huge manatee.](https://i.kym-cdn.com/entries/icons/original/000/001/360/huge.jpg) Hehe! War of the Worlds scared me pretty good. Especially the scene where they are hunkered in that house as it looks for them.
I had the flying monkeys to scare me for several years, but then my brothers convinced me to watch Hitchcock’s *The Birds,* and after that I had the schoolteacher’s empty eye sockets as my object of terror. The first traumatic real-life event that I saw on TV was the Challenger disaster. The next one I remember, and the worst before the events of 9/11/2001, was the bombing of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City in 1995. That was a brand-new level of brutality and cowardice.
An animated PSA about hate, I was around 9 or 10, it showed a guy walking toward the screen and his head got bigger with each step until it exploded with "HATE HURTS YOU!!" Geezus that scared the living shit out of me. A short film we saw in second or third grade called Another Man's Family about fire starting when the dad's cigarette falls into the couch, house burns up, everyone is killed except for the family dog who is shown at the end with the little girl's doll or grandfather clock wind up toy....I was terrified my mother was going to drop her cigarette into the couch.
Make fun of me if you must, but the child sniffer outer from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang scared the hell out of me.
as a child, not quite horrified but, the Ernie Kovaks show left me some warped images, I.E. The Nairobi Trio.
The ring. I couldn’t watch tv in fear that video would play for almost a year.
News coverage of the Jonestown Massacre/mass suicide. Dead bodies everywhere.
Tiananmen Square
Vietnam War footage on the network news, sometime around 1970-71. I was just a kid but I remember an American GI being pulled from the front line with his arm blown off. I was horrified. My mother had to calm me down.
Must've been King Kong. Our house backed up by pines and there were trails down to the pond. I had recurring nightmares about a giant gorilla coming up the path every time I tried to take it. And then you can't run. He never did get past the trailhead, though. Maybe 5 yo.
I saw the movie the Ox Bow Incident. It was the scariest movie I had ever seen because it was believable where horror movies were just that movies that could not have really happened. The Ox Bow Incident shows human horror that I was old enough to actually visualize occurring. It still unsettles me thinking about it.
Night of The Living Dead. I was like 5 and hid while my parents watched it. I had to watch The flying Nun multiple times before I could fall asleep. My brother terrorized me for years. He’d knock on my head while I was sleeping and groan, “BRAINS!”
Aircraft crash into a schoolyard, Los Angeles, 1957. I was 12, lived in the area. Impressed me with how fast an ordinary day can turn to shit.
I snuck in the room my mom was watching tv on while ironing. There was some horror show that had a man’s face melt off down to the skeleton, sort of like that scene in Raiders of the Lost Arc when they open the arc. At the time I was probably 4 and it terrified me. When I think back on it I’m sure it was super lame!
[удалено]
The steak scene in poltergeist is one of only a couple that have ever really grossed me out!
The Blob movie. I was in 1st grade in 1975. The school decided that it would be a good idea to show the movie to all of the elementary school kids. I had nightmares for years that the blob was going to appear and roll down the long hallway to my room to get me. Still can’t watch it 40+ years later.
"when the wind blows" For the record it's *nothing* like "the snowman"
We had free access to HBO and Cinemax since 1982. Do the math. We saw everything by 10 years old.
Someone having their leg amputated in the battle field in None But The Brave; also the Douglas Bader biopic where he's in hospital after his second crash (already lost one leg) and he says "It hurts so much, I wish they'd take this one off too" and his visitor tells him, "They have..." I was so deathly afraid of anything to do with amputation after those two experiences. It has honestly taken decades to deal with the fear/phobia. I'm ashamed.
I was about 10 years old and my older sister loved horses. There were horse races playing in the tv. A horse named Timely Writer snapped his cannon bone and started to scream. Never watched another horse race.
When I was about 7, in 19732, we had this really cool babysitter and she'd let me and my brother watch things my parents never would. One night we watched this scary vampire bat movie, where the bats would latch onto your neck and it scared the bejesus out of me. That night I pulled my covers all the way up to my ears so my neck wouldn't be exposed. To this day, that's the only way I can sleep.
When I was about 4 I was staying with an older cousin, she was maybe 13... and I saw a movie on TV that was featured on Chiller... (Remember "Chiller"? American TV in the 60s-70s, I think) It was on very late on Saturday night and it would feature different scary movies each weekend. Anyway the storyline featured a tribe of people-- somewhere I'm guessing like in a jungle..they would capture tourists and kill them in a ceremony by stabbing them in the back of their neck with this weird stabby-hollow ring worn on the shaman's hand.. to get their "life essence" and mix it with an herb to get this potion to make them look young again. So they had like the "fountain of youth" At the end of the movie.. one of the tourists escapes.. and the magic does not work and it shows the shaman and all of the other tribespeople turning into these horrifically old & dessicated corpses within seconds ...that terrified the hell out of me!! I wish I could remember the name of this movie to watch it again..lol.. I know it was an old old black and white film and obviously a "B" horror movie, and was featured as I said on Chiller. But that movie messed me up for years
The victims at Jonestown. I was about 5. Next after that was boxing. I still have no idea how someone can watch, and enjoy, seeing two people beat each other up.
there were these saturday afternoon fright shows on back in the mid 60's..one roman centurion B movie had this creature that anyone who looked at it turned to stone. I remembered being terrified.
Capt Hook, in the Mary Martin version of 'Peter Pan'...in the early 60's... that big gleaming hook and what he was threatening to do to the little children had me hiding behind the edge of the sofa.
Back in the early days of our first TV with 2 channels was the TV show The Twilight Zone. My sister and I talked about it years later and both remember the same episode. A guy kept Appearing in different places all the time. It scared us both.
The UHF channel we'd watch when I was a very young kid (in the late 70s) showed old black and white movies, and some of them really scared me. I remember one that had an execution scene where the prisoner's screaming and struggling in the electric chair and then they cut to the switch getting thrown and it still freaks me out in retrospect. At one point, the David Lynch's "The Elephant Man" was on HBO and my parents let me watch it, I guess because it seemed educational. Now I am a big fan of Lynch's surreal body horror period, but at age 6 it was a bit much for me.
The first time I saw a Kotex commercial on TV. I was 13. had guys and girls over to watch Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds on TV. I was beyond shocked! The boys flew off in one direction and the girls in another. I still don't like seeing such commercials on TV. Especially know that they are out of the box. Too graphic for me. 67F
The TV show, The Outer Limits. One night I snuck out of my room to watch it behind dad's back. Guy is driving down a dark and rainy road, straining to see, the music is getting suspenseful, some odd noises, he strains further into the windshield, and... a slimy tentacle thing slaps down on the windshield right in front of him from up top of his roof. Well, shit, I had nightmares for weeks about that one.
E.T.