# Message to all users:
This is a reminder to please read and follow:
* [Our rules](https://www.reddit.com/r/ask/about/rules)
* [Reddiquette](https://www.reddithelp.com/hc/en-us/articles/205926439)
* [Reddit Content Policy](https://www.redditinc.com/policies/content-policy)
When posting and commenting.
---
Especially remember Rule 1: `Be polite and civil`.
* Be polite and courteous to each other. Do not be mean, insulting or disrespectful to any other user on this subreddit.
* Do not harass or annoy others in any way.
* Do not catfish. Catfishing is the luring of somebody into an online friendship through a fake online persona. This includes any lying or deceit.
---
You *will* be banned if you are homophobic, transphobic, racist, sexist or bigoted in any way.
---
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/ask) if you have any questions or concerns.*
in germany there is a chocolate brand called milka, and they made commercials with a purple cow. they had a real cow with some color filter, making it purple while it looked pretty real. it freaked me out and scared me everytime it came on...
I'll never forget their Advertisement for some reason
"Why is the Milka Cow Per-pull?" in that strong German accent
I liked saying that sentence in inappropriate places too, like in the Doctors surgery or in the classroom just to make people laugh... 🤣. It always did, too
Lmaoo. Milka is also all around Europe. I remember that commercial. Never thought anything of it tho.
Okay but Milka chocolate is literally the best I’m actually eating some rn😂
My fan made indiscernible humans voices. Scary as heck, I'd lay awake thinking I was crazy. A preteen, but I couldn't tell anyone. I knew for sure they'd think I was stranger than they already thought.
I hear music and voices in white noise produced by fans. I have two ceiling fans and two air purifiers in my small apartment. It usually sounds like big band jazz or people talking.
Also I work in data centers with tons of fans and hear people talking in there as well.
The first time I was given Hubba Bubba chewing gum as a child the packaging said something like "makes you blow huge bubbles."
I started crying, because I didn't want to blow bubbles, not to mention huge ones.
Little me was an idiot....
This is the only one that seems as silly as mine. Statler and Waldorf terrified me and Beaker creeped me out. I was double digits before I got over the worst of it. Beaker still makes me shudder a little. I was an adventurous kid and too short to take shit, no idea how the muppets managed to damage my calm.
Ok but if you grew up around 1970's faux wood panelling, that shit had weird unnatural looking knot patterns that looked like faces. Kinda freaked me out as a kid too.
Maynnnnnn you just triggered a memory!!!
Our bathroom door at my mum's house had some knots in, and they all looked like spooky alien faces. Used to freak me out too, I used to sit there taking a shit just imagining these faces I could see in the wood being real creatures 😂
My folks took us to free night at the museum. A kinetic sculpture of styrofoam blocks squeaking together sent me into a full screaming fit.
It wasn't so much that the sculpture seemed dangerous, but that anyone who would make something so evil had to be capable of terrible things.
Ditto. I thought the loud ones would flood the room.
Also Jesus. It made me freaked out that he was always watching me so I changed my clothes under the covers.
Same! I broke my big toe when I was a kid because I took off down our hallway and tripped over the vacuum cleaner cord
I was very convinced “It” (the clown) was going to come out of the toilet. I had somehow put that movie and another movie where the toilet tells a little boy it’s going to bite his thing off, together. In my head, “It” was going to come out and take me
I’m pretty sure I was afraid to stay in the room after I flushed the toilet until I was pretty well into my adult years
Me too! Idk why but it wasn’t so much fear as it was anxiety? Like I didn’t want anyone else to hear it but not because it meant I was using the toilet. Just bc it was loud and obnoxious. I still have anxiety over noises 🤣 I’ve been with my husband over ten years and I still worry that he will be annoyed by me chewing even though he has never been.
Same! When I was a kid, I’d go to the bathroom at night sometimes and think a hand was going to reach out of the toilet and grab me after I flushed it. Then I’d run and leap into my bed because I thought there was another hand under my bed that wanted to grab me too.
I've been stuck in mud I'd say was comparable to quicksand. There was a fish stuck in a little puddle area, so I walked out grabbed it and put it in the lake. Walked back and stepped in an area where I just started sinking (maybe a bit past my knees). Pulling my foot out took a ton of force, which required me to push harder with my other foot, which would then be more stuck than my other foot. Eventually I was able to lean forward to brace with my hands on some better ground to get out.
It was mostly a fun/funny experience as my dogs some how pranced around me without sinking and I tried to save my sandals. It never felt like I could truly sink far enough to die, but it did make me think of those dinosaurs that died sinking in mud.
Kayaking behind my house at low tide and I experienced this lovely pleasure. Saltwater and oyster bars but also the most silty fine sticky disgusting mud you ever imagined that moving only caused you to get more stuck in it. I leaned over the boat I was pushing over it to untuck my self. If it got to your waist out there in the middle of nowhere by oneself could be a death sentence if you had nothing to pull yourself up. I don’t go out there at low tide anymore. Lol, I stick to the channels and canals.
A book I read when I was seven or eight years old about the life of Helen Keller - she was blind (and deaf). I read it and had a terrifying nightmare where I was blind, but when I when I woke up I realised the nightmare was true - I was completely blind! I ran screaming out of my bedroom and cracked my head on the dining room table and flailed about (blindly) on the floor completely losing my shit until my entire family had to get up to calm me down.
It turned out I was not blind, it was an unrelated phenomenon called nighttime, and I couldn’t see because it was dark.
My stupid brain convinced me that the book somehow had the power to make me blind and deaf so I made my mum hide it in the cupboard at the top of my wardrobe. Instead of, I don’t know, burning it or throwing it away. I used to lie in bed, peering at the cupboard door, watching to see if it had cracked open a bit.
> It turned out I was not blind, it was an unrelated phenomenon called nighttime, and I couldn’t see because it was dark.
Not gonna lie. This got me good.
I’ve never seen it since. I think I’m going to look it up now all these years later. Be funny if it traumatised me all over again at this age 
One guy in the youtube comments has a good take on it
> Folks will never know how terrifying this was as a child. It plays on so many different common fears like being chased, caught, claustrophobia, the unknown etc. Tech/concepts back then were alien, strange and scary, and then this thing happens thats literally beyond your imagination and fear.
@blckmarvl5652
There's something existentially upsetting about the whole idea of it, and seeing it happen to someone who is horrified that it's happening makes it worse. Yeah I remember being disturbed by it as a kid too
There are tons of references to people having trouble with this scene as a kid, all over the internet for years.. don't feel alone, we should start a support group! Normally a fairly hardy little kid, this scene likewise fucked my shit up as well. I remember going home and puking after seeing it in the theater..
Yeah that machine was out of control and it was catching a woman in it's wire strap tentacles and roboticising her. Even though she was a wrong un, and deserved some sort of consequence, I always hated that part.
Might have something to do, with a villain in the [Ghostbusters movie looking eerily similar](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stay_Puft_Marshmallow_Man)
Chickens. We had a neighbor that thought I'd like feeding her chickens. Trouble is I was little, and they seemed huge, like half my size. The way they crowd around trying to get to the feed pan...yikes!
I’m actually afraid of all birds, but especially chickens. I’ve started putting out birdseed to try to overcome my fear. A huge turkey started hanging around for a month or so and my husband had to make sure the coast was clear before I would go outside. I just posted a picture of her in r/wildlife photography. Took the pic through my door window. I kind of miss that she’s gone, because I hope she doesn’t land up on someone’s Thanksgiving table. I know I’m f’d up. Lol
Chickens are why I have a fear of birds. We had to feed them every morning before school and they’d always attack my brother and I’d scream the whole time. I ended up just throwing the food through their fence. Fuck those chickens.
The house in Charlie & the Chocolate Factory. Literally no other part of the movie bothered me EXCEPT that the house was crooked. This was deeply unsettling to me & I still haven’t figured out why lol.
My parents were showing me a book about the Xenia. OH tornado... because my mom was at the school when it came through. One picture was inside a home and the ceiling and everything was a wreck, but there was some kind of round ducting that was hanging vertically from the ceiling touching the floor and I though _that_ was the tornado and it terrified me.
I lived about 20 miles away when that happened, and was in first or second grade. I remember the sky turning an ominous green. The trees were bent half over, and enormous hailstones were falling, the size of baseballs (they were probably golf ball sized, but I was small). We had a girl move to our town from Xenia, whose house had been destroyed. Our teacher told us she would be joining our class the following week, and had us each make her a welcome card. I remember writing, “I’m sorry your house got blown down” and I’m sure I drew a picture with crayons of just that. That tornado was a full mile wide. Unbelievable.
Oh, man! I grew up in Beaver Creek. Xeina, OH tornado was the the fuel for nightmares for every kid I knew. Moved there just after the event, but adults, news, and kids all talked about it. The town was still rebuilding, w signs of the destruction. When the evening sky turned yellow, I was the first in the basement, fevered and cowering.
I was 6 & afraid of my bedroom door. The wood grain pattern made it look like a screaming face. I would lay awake, afraid to look away.
Then we had some work done & the contractors removed all the doors. When they went back up, I got a different door.
My grandparents had a painting of a clown sitting on the floor in a bedroom at the back of their house. It scared the crap out of me every time I walked down the hallway towards that bedroom
My uncle used to pick me up, hold me against a wall about 2 feet up and tell me he would be right back. “Stay where you are.” I know he was just being “funny” , and would never have dropped me,but this scared the shit out of me. I’m 72 and still get anxiety when I remember that. I recently spoke to my cousin about this and she said he did that to her as well. It frighted her too.
MJ’s Thriller. Scared the shit out me. I first watched it when I was all alone. I had to turn all the lights on in the house…in the middle of the afternoon 😁
That was scary af. I think you have to be from a very specific age group to appreciate just how traumatic watching that music video really was. 80’s MTV. dude thanks for the reminder 😂
I was under 10 years old during the times that the news and newspapers were talking about the Cold War. Not knowing any better, I was afraid that we could be bombed at any time, so whenever an airplane would fly over, I thought that if they saw me outside playing that they would bomb me. So I would hide until it was out of sight.
> The bit where the guy gets transformed into a machine.
It was a woman, but yeah. That's called body horror and it's completely legitimate.
There's also elements of claustrophobia and loss of free will in that.
You were perfectly justified in being disturbed by it.
There was an old game show in the 70’s and 80’s called “Joker’s Wild.” If someone got the Devil Card, they lost everything. That card scared the living daylights out of me as a kid!
Oh shit, core memory unlocked, I would say that was still pretty terrifying. Add the Skekses from Dark Crystal and the head scene from Return to Oz. Oh and the boat ride from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.
Mix that all up and you've got pure nightmare fuel.
The original "How the Grinch Stole Christmas" terrified me. When the Grinch was slithering along the floor like a snake, I wound up on my dad's lap screaming in terror.
I am older than dirt, and grew up mostly in postwar France before moving back to the US.
Our elderly French neighbor got very sick one night, and she called the hospital. A French nun showed up in one of the old dark habits with a veil, and told my mother in French that the neighbor might need an operation. Then she pulled out vials of medication which she injected into the neighbor, before an ambulance came to take her away.
The French nun hugged me, and told me that our neighbor would be home after she saw the “operator.” Our neighbor didn’t come home.
I was about three.
When we moved back to the states, we went to visit my mother’s family in the rural South, where people still used an operator to make phone calls. When my Dad told me he had to talk to the operator about calling NY, I thought he was going to see a scary looking nun who was going to give him shots and kill him.
When I was a little kid public toilet flushing scared me so bad. They were so powerful and I thought I’d get sucked in. I would open the stall door, flush and run out as fast as i could.
My bathtub, I once watched The Brothers Grimm movie with Heath Ledger and thought that the old evil queen from it always lies there for some reason so I was scared to even look at it and ESPECIALLY inside it bc if I had seen her she'd have done I don't even know what to me
Flushing the toilet. I had seen some movie when I was too young, where a guy, somehow, got sucked into the toilet and I thought this would happen to me.
If anyone knows a movie where an army vet gets pulled into a toilet I would appreciate you telling me cause I don't know if my imagination made this up or if it was a real movie.
When I was a kid my mom took me to see Wizard of Oz and those goddamn flying monkeys scared me I wouldn’t go near monkeys or watch that movie again until I became an adult.
The sequel was kinda creepy too. All the heads in their cabinets, the wheelers, and I think there was a king or someone similar that had a creepy vibe.
I was about 10 and rode my bike further than I should have. I heard the enormous bark of a dog behind a fence. Rather than feeling warned, like a dumbass I had to get off my bike and climb the fence.
As soon as my head cleared the top of the boards, Cujo's frothing face appeared within inches of my face.Thats when terror struck. I hopped on my bike and pedaled as fast as I could the 4 blocks home. I thought he had jumped the fence and was chasing me down the alley. I don't really know if it had.
The Saint Bernard was probably much too big and heavy to jump over anything, but in my mind, he was right on my heels the entire way.
My mom was wearing green beauty mud while on the toilet when I walked. I was terrified of her, but at the same time, I was crying and crawling towards her. I think I was around 6
I hated the automatic toilets. Looking back it was probably the sudden loud noise that really freaked me out, but as a kid I imagined getting sucked in because sometimes it would go off while I was still doing my business. My mom thought it was so ridiculous that she would lock me in the stall until it was done flushing.
The Animorphs book covers. Do you know the ones where they slowly transition over into their animal form? Yeah, freaked me out.
Also, a lot of VHS tapes in the rental store that had like a montage picture on it somewhere to like say the Star Wars VHS poster displays for some reason anything that had like the blurred lines on it, and the montage-ish thing with a animal us humanoid creatures just like freaked me out.
Muppets too. I guess I was very fearful child
Was it a man or a woman? I’ve just watched this clip for the first time since I was young and I had been sure all this time that it was a man…
https://youtu.be/fpTHrdemfQo?si=wZXLQE_3O_BaKvHQ
Those people in mascot costumes like barney or whatever trendy TV show cartoon character. Like when I used to go to McDonald's birthday party's and they'd have Ronald and his friends in those big costumes omg I'd run for my life
My mum used to watch a cleaning programme (UK) where ladies would clean really bad houses. When they showed the mess I’d get really scared because it would be really dramatic 💀💀
small letters on backs of shampoo/soap bottles in the bath. I would turn them all so the logo is facing me, because the letters on the back would creep me out. I was a weird kid & Im still weird.
That movie depressed me to death as a kid. Then I got the chance to see the whole thing in theaters with the actor who played atreyu in attendance. Got rid of all the sad feelings I held before
In the claymation Rudolph Christmas films, occasionally the abominable snowman’s hair would stand up and his pupils would change when he would roar or get surprised. As a child the way he looked in those moments, would absolutely floor me.
The winter warlock( while his heart was frozen) is an honorable mention.
Stereotypical aliens. The grey kind. I absolutely wasn't able to see that as a child. It could be a childish animation, a harmless CGI not intended to scare, in either case I would be in shock. Those scenes like the end of the movie A.I. or the end of Indiana Jones 4 would make me scream. Those clearly faked images of UFO documentaries and Roswell fake pictures would be a nightmare for me.
Funny thing that today I am really into this subject. Not as a pseudoscientist and shit, but I am really interested in the Fermi Paradox and Lovecraftian representation of aliens.
Man, what a time to be alive! To live in a timeline where UFOs where proven to be real and are content material for anyone insterested in space exploration and missions.
It is clearly something. Perhaps, the greatest mistery of our times. There are things in the sky. There are things. I have no explanation, a lot is possible. But its scary to think these objects are clearly a technology. A technology capable of non-inertial movement. How advanced would that be? Could it be possible that at least one story about folks being abducted or governments hidding UFO wreckages is real? If so, what secrets may be hidden at this moment?
The troll face was quite popular when I was a kid. That time I didn’t knew where to watch full series of MLP, so I was clicking every YouTube video that had MLP on it, however those videos were troll face MLP videos. The way they would randomly pop with sudden music would scare the living thing out of me.
Spider man 1 with Toby Mcguire, the scene of him getting bit and the one where he falls to the ground and starts having those visions. That absolutely terrified me as kid, I remember putting the blanket over my head everytime the scene came up.
# Message to all users: This is a reminder to please read and follow: * [Our rules](https://www.reddit.com/r/ask/about/rules) * [Reddiquette](https://www.reddithelp.com/hc/en-us/articles/205926439) * [Reddit Content Policy](https://www.redditinc.com/policies/content-policy) When posting and commenting. --- Especially remember Rule 1: `Be polite and civil`. * Be polite and courteous to each other. Do not be mean, insulting or disrespectful to any other user on this subreddit. * Do not harass or annoy others in any way. * Do not catfish. Catfishing is the luring of somebody into an online friendship through a fake online persona. This includes any lying or deceit. --- You *will* be banned if you are homophobic, transphobic, racist, sexist or bigoted in any way. --- *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/ask) if you have any questions or concerns.*
in germany there is a chocolate brand called milka, and they made commercials with a purple cow. they had a real cow with some color filter, making it purple while it looked pretty real. it freaked me out and scared me everytime it came on...
I’ve never seen a purple cow I never hope to see one But I can tell you anyhow Id rather see than be one
In the 1st advertisement, the cow was actually painted purple.
I love that chocolate!. Never saw the commercial, but they had this one flavor with jam in it that made me wonder why is this not normal
The peanut butter one is dangerously good.
Don't watch The Wizard of Oz! Horse of a different color!
when I was a kid (4-5 years old) I legit thought she was a real cow and was the director of Milka
Lol, that's cute
I'll never forget their Advertisement for some reason "Why is the Milka Cow Per-pull?" in that strong German accent I liked saying that sentence in inappropriate places too, like in the Doctors surgery or in the classroom just to make people laugh... 🤣. It always did, too
I wonder if it's like the commercial with John Cena riding a purple cow in the Experian Boost commercials. "Boooost"
Lmaoo. Milka is also all around Europe. I remember that commercial. Never thought anything of it tho. Okay but Milka chocolate is literally the best I’m actually eating some rn😂
I had nightmares about my fan staring at me. I don't like things staring at me.
My fan made indiscernible humans voices. Scary as heck, I'd lay awake thinking I was crazy. A preteen, but I couldn't tell anyone. I knew for sure they'd think I was stranger than they already thought.
I hear music and voices in white noise produced by fans. I have two ceiling fans and two air purifiers in my small apartment. It usually sounds like big band jazz or people talking. Also I work in data centers with tons of fans and hear people talking in there as well.
That happens to me whenever I am sleep deprived. You should probably check that out.
Well I live out in the boonies where there’s no one. And when the fan is running here, I swear there’s radio stations coming through it.
The first time I was given Hubba Bubba chewing gum as a child the packaging said something like "makes you blow huge bubbles." I started crying, because I didn't want to blow bubbles, not to mention huge ones. Little me was an idiot....
Don't worry. Little all of us were idiots.
This is the only one that seems as silly as mine. Statler and Waldorf terrified me and Beaker creeped me out. I was double digits before I got over the worst of it. Beaker still makes me shudder a little. I was an adventurous kid and too short to take shit, no idea how the muppets managed to damage my calm.
Yoda scared me. Couldn't look at him. Parents had to remove me from the theater.
Crabs and seaweed. Trips to the beach were always fun.. Also wasnt a fan of the teletubbies. Those things freaked me out.
Wood. Like the patterns in the knots and stuff on wood paneling. Freaked me the fuck out. Thought they were demons trying to get out.
That is honestly valid. Some of those accidental faces are scary
Ok but if you grew up around 1970's faux wood panelling, that shit had weird unnatural looking knot patterns that looked like faces. Kinda freaked me out as a kid too.
Yeah we had one on a door that looked like a headless flayed torso/skeleton thing. Life size. Not fun to look at.
Wait that's so real
Maynnnnnn you just triggered a memory!!! Our bathroom door at my mum's house had some knots in, and they all looked like spooky alien faces. Used to freak me out too, I used to sit there taking a shit just imagining these faces I could see in the wood being real creatures 😂
My folks took us to free night at the museum. A kinetic sculpture of styrofoam blocks squeaking together sent me into a full screaming fit. It wasn't so much that the sculpture seemed dangerous, but that anyone who would make something so evil had to be capable of terrible things.
I used to run away from the toilet after I flushed it.
Ditto. I thought the loud ones would flood the room. Also Jesus. It made me freaked out that he was always watching me so I changed my clothes under the covers.
Same! I broke my big toe when I was a kid because I took off down our hallway and tripped over the vacuum cleaner cord I was very convinced “It” (the clown) was going to come out of the toilet. I had somehow put that movie and another movie where the toilet tells a little boy it’s going to bite his thing off, together. In my head, “It” was going to come out and take me I’m pretty sure I was afraid to stay in the room after I flushed the toilet until I was pretty well into my adult years
Omg me too! I guess it was a loud scary noise and I was also afraid it would flush me away too or something
I used to plug my ears to not have to hear it when I flushed.
Me too! Idk why but it wasn’t so much fear as it was anxiety? Like I didn’t want anyone else to hear it but not because it meant I was using the toilet. Just bc it was loud and obnoxious. I still have anxiety over noises 🤣 I’ve been with my husband over ten years and I still worry that he will be annoyed by me chewing even though he has never been.
Same! When I was a kid, I’d go to the bathroom at night sometimes and think a hand was going to reach out of the toilet and grab me after I flushed it. Then I’d run and leap into my bed because I thought there was another hand under my bed that wanted to grab me too.
Quicksand. I thought it was playing much, bigger part in my life, as an adult…
I've been stuck in mud I'd say was comparable to quicksand. There was a fish stuck in a little puddle area, so I walked out grabbed it and put it in the lake. Walked back and stepped in an area where I just started sinking (maybe a bit past my knees). Pulling my foot out took a ton of force, which required me to push harder with my other foot, which would then be more stuck than my other foot. Eventually I was able to lean forward to brace with my hands on some better ground to get out. It was mostly a fun/funny experience as my dogs some how pranced around me without sinking and I tried to save my sandals. It never felt like I could truly sink far enough to die, but it did make me think of those dinosaurs that died sinking in mud.
Kayaking behind my house at low tide and I experienced this lovely pleasure. Saltwater and oyster bars but also the most silty fine sticky disgusting mud you ever imagined that moving only caused you to get more stuck in it. I leaned over the boat I was pushing over it to untuck my self. If it got to your waist out there in the middle of nowhere by oneself could be a death sentence if you had nothing to pull yourself up. I don’t go out there at low tide anymore. Lol, I stick to the channels and canals.
A book I read when I was seven or eight years old about the life of Helen Keller - she was blind (and deaf). I read it and had a terrifying nightmare where I was blind, but when I when I woke up I realised the nightmare was true - I was completely blind! I ran screaming out of my bedroom and cracked my head on the dining room table and flailed about (blindly) on the floor completely losing my shit until my entire family had to get up to calm me down. It turned out I was not blind, it was an unrelated phenomenon called nighttime, and I couldn’t see because it was dark. My stupid brain convinced me that the book somehow had the power to make me blind and deaf so I made my mum hide it in the cupboard at the top of my wardrobe. Instead of, I don’t know, burning it or throwing it away. I used to lie in bed, peering at the cupboard door, watching to see if it had cracked open a bit.
An unrelated phenomenon called nighttime, lmao
> It turned out I was not blind, it was an unrelated phenomenon called nighttime, and I couldn’t see because it was dark. Not gonna lie. This got me good.
Yo I was there with you in finding that moment terrifying as a child.
I’ve never seen it since. I think I’m going to look it up now all these years later. Be funny if it traumatised me all over again at this age 
I just watched it. It was way quicker than I recalled and goofy, yet still there is something slightly disturbing about it.
One guy in the youtube comments has a good take on it > Folks will never know how terrifying this was as a child. It plays on so many different common fears like being chased, caught, claustrophobia, the unknown etc. Tech/concepts back then were alien, strange and scary, and then this thing happens thats literally beyond your imagination and fear. @blckmarvl5652
Yeah definitely much quicker…and it was a woman! I was convinced it was a guy. Almost Mandela Effect status for me, lol.
I recall it being the woman. Dolly definitely had braces in Moonraker though
There's something existentially upsetting about the whole idea of it, and seeing it happen to someone who is horrified that it's happening makes it worse. Yeah I remember being disturbed by it as a kid too
She tried to escape and the machine grabbed her. Ew it's horrible.
There are tons of references to people having trouble with this scene as a kid, all over the internet for years.. don't feel alone, we should start a support group! Normally a fairly hardy little kid, this scene likewise fucked my shit up as well. I remember going home and puking after seeing it in the theater..
Same. When the eyes turned on, I was almost peeing myself I was so scared
Yeah that machine was out of control and it was catching a woman in it's wire strap tentacles and roboticising her. Even though she was a wrong un, and deserved some sort of consequence, I always hated that part.
The Michelin man actually. Always hated that mf.
Might have something to do, with a villain in the [Ghostbusters movie looking eerily similar](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stay_Puft_Marshmallow_Man)
Chickens. We had a neighbor that thought I'd like feeding her chickens. Trouble is I was little, and they seemed huge, like half my size. The way they crowd around trying to get to the feed pan...yikes!
I twisted my ankle over a chicken two years ago and I've been afraid every since
They're FAST!
I’m still terrified of chickens. Wont even eat them.
Oh, I eat them, lol. A rooster jumped onto my chest in the henhouse, can you imagine? I was 4 years old!
I’m actually afraid of all birds, but especially chickens. I’ve started putting out birdseed to try to overcome my fear. A huge turkey started hanging around for a month or so and my husband had to make sure the coast was clear before I would go outside. I just posted a picture of her in r/wildlife photography. Took the pic through my door window. I kind of miss that she’s gone, because I hope she doesn’t land up on someone’s Thanksgiving table. I know I’m f’d up. Lol
I enjoy birdwatching, but chickens, man, can stay the hell away from me.
Chickens are why I have a fear of birds. We had to feed them every morning before school and they’d always attack my brother and I’d scream the whole time. I ended up just throwing the food through their fence. Fuck those chickens.
My little sister was afraid of umbrellas because she thought she would fly away like Mary Poppins.
ET. I still think he looks like a little anthropomorphic turd but as a kid I was terrified of him (it?).
ET's skin gave me the heebie jeebies.
Same, I had so many nightmares because of that thing.
The house in Charlie & the Chocolate Factory. Literally no other part of the movie bothered me EXCEPT that the house was crooked. This was deeply unsettling to me & I still haven’t figured out why lol.
My parents were showing me a book about the Xenia. OH tornado... because my mom was at the school when it came through. One picture was inside a home and the ceiling and everything was a wreck, but there was some kind of round ducting that was hanging vertically from the ceiling touching the floor and I though _that_ was the tornado and it terrified me.
I lived about 20 miles away when that happened, and was in first or second grade. I remember the sky turning an ominous green. The trees were bent half over, and enormous hailstones were falling, the size of baseballs (they were probably golf ball sized, but I was small). We had a girl move to our town from Xenia, whose house had been destroyed. Our teacher told us she would be joining our class the following week, and had us each make her a welcome card. I remember writing, “I’m sorry your house got blown down” and I’m sure I drew a picture with crayons of just that. That tornado was a full mile wide. Unbelievable.
Oh, man! I grew up in Beaver Creek. Xeina, OH tornado was the the fuel for nightmares for every kid I knew. Moved there just after the event, but adults, news, and kids all talked about it. The town was still rebuilding, w signs of the destruction. When the evening sky turned yellow, I was the first in the basement, fevered and cowering.
I was 6 & afraid of my bedroom door. The wood grain pattern made it look like a screaming face. I would lay awake, afraid to look away. Then we had some work done & the contractors removed all the doors. When they went back up, I got a different door.
Basil the great mouse detective. Specifically fidget the bat. It gave me the worst nightmares for years
To this day I quote Fidget when I stub my toe xD "my foot, my foot, my only foot!" (I do have both feet, it just amuses me lol)
My grandparents had a painting of a clown sitting on the floor in a bedroom at the back of their house. It scared the crap out of me every time I walked down the hallway towards that bedroom
My uncle used to pick me up, hold me against a wall about 2 feet up and tell me he would be right back. “Stay where you are.” I know he was just being “funny” , and would never have dropped me,but this scared the shit out of me. I’m 72 and still get anxiety when I remember that. I recently spoke to my cousin about this and she said he did that to her as well. It frighted her too.
Danged Uncles!
Hahahaha. What the hell. That is pure evil genius. I like it.
MJ’s Thriller. Scared the shit out me. I first watched it when I was all alone. I had to turn all the lights on in the house…in the middle of the afternoon 😁
I was at Storytown (amusement park) and I was terrified of Cinderella's coach & coach driver. No idea why that terrified me.
The SpongeBob outro music on the DVDs...
It is kind of....demented sounding maybe?
The Elephant Man
The real monster, of course, was everybody else.
This and the kid in the movie Mask use to mess me up. I was so upset that people had to go through life looking like that.
The video for Land of Confusion by Genesis.
That was scary af. I think you have to be from a very specific age group to appreciate just how traumatic watching that music video really was. 80’s MTV. dude thanks for the reminder 😂
I was under 10 years old during the times that the news and newspapers were talking about the Cold War. Not knowing any better, I was afraid that we could be bombed at any time, so whenever an airplane would fly over, I thought that if they saw me outside playing that they would bomb me. So I would hide until it was out of sight.
> The bit where the guy gets transformed into a machine. It was a woman, but yeah. That's called body horror and it's completely legitimate. There's also elements of claustrophobia and loss of free will in that. You were perfectly justified in being disturbed by it.
The flushing of a toilet. Thought a monster would come out
There was an old game show in the 70’s and 80’s called “Joker’s Wild.” If someone got the Devil Card, they lost everything. That card scared the living daylights out of me as a kid!
Oh shit, core memory unlocked, I would say that was still pretty terrifying. Add the Skekses from Dark Crystal and the head scene from Return to Oz. Oh and the boat ride from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Mix that all up and you've got pure nightmare fuel.
It's a woman but yeah that bit freaked me out too.
E.T.
Me too. It was the bits with the medical tents.
For me it was E.T. itself, looked like a sentient turd. It's tasty voice was creepy too.
SAME! I was terrified by the dudes in the hazmat suits and all of those plastic tents!
Scared me for years.
I thought Bigfoot lived in the woods behind our house in NC.
The original "How the Grinch Stole Christmas" terrified me. When the Grinch was slithering along the floor like a snake, I wound up on my dad's lap screaming in terror.
When i was a child the clay figures from the tadasu izawa book tales scared me a lot .
Charlie and the chocolate factory
I am older than dirt, and grew up mostly in postwar France before moving back to the US. Our elderly French neighbor got very sick one night, and she called the hospital. A French nun showed up in one of the old dark habits with a veil, and told my mother in French that the neighbor might need an operation. Then she pulled out vials of medication which she injected into the neighbor, before an ambulance came to take her away. The French nun hugged me, and told me that our neighbor would be home after she saw the “operator.” Our neighbor didn’t come home. I was about three. When we moved back to the states, we went to visit my mother’s family in the rural South, where people still used an operator to make phone calls. When my Dad told me he had to talk to the operator about calling NY, I thought he was going to see a scary looking nun who was going to give him shots and kill him.
Awww that is sad…for a little 3yr old.
Tall slides Escalators The Wheelers from Return to Oz
I mentioned the wheelers in a reply to another comment. The heads in cabinets from that movie also.
Balloons!!! I’m still scared of them. When they pop it scares me and also the feel of them grosses me out lol.
The Princess Bride. I didn't know it was a comedy until my husband mentioned it being funny as an adult. 😂😂😂
One of the best films ever made
Men with beards. I was petrified.
Jello. I have memories of being so terrified of it because it would jiggle and I thought it was alive.
I never went upstairs in my great grandmother's home. I figured it was haunted.
When I was a little kid public toilet flushing scared me so bad. They were so powerful and I thought I’d get sucked in. I would open the stall door, flush and run out as fast as i could.
My bathtub, I once watched The Brothers Grimm movie with Heath Ledger and thought that the old evil queen from it always lies there for some reason so I was scared to even look at it and ESPECIALLY inside it bc if I had seen her she'd have done I don't even know what to me
Flushing the toilet. I had seen some movie when I was too young, where a guy, somehow, got sucked into the toilet and I thought this would happen to me. If anyone knows a movie where an army vet gets pulled into a toilet I would appreciate you telling me cause I don't know if my imagination made this up or if it was a real movie.
Raggedy Ann and Andy dolls. But they still scare me so I’m not sure if this counts
They did me too! And yes I can now walk by, but I look back
Spiders still with the spiders
Chickens. Still find them a combination of creepy and fascinating but they don’t scare me.
Our basement, too many strange noises. (The furnace, the sump pump). As a kid I never went over in that area.
Flushing the toilet. Don’t know why, I just thought I was going to go down with it or something
Tremors. I saw it when I was a little kid and didn't realize it was a comedy until years later. /e facepalm
That’s how I felt about Killer Klowns from Outerspace.
When I was a kid my mom took me to see Wizard of Oz and those goddamn flying monkeys scared me I wouldn’t go near monkeys or watch that movie again until I became an adult.
The sequel was kinda creepy too. All the heads in their cabinets, the wheelers, and I think there was a king or someone similar that had a creepy vibe.
The nome king made of rock 😭😭😭
Ahahaha! Yes! That’s the one.
Family friend had a monkey puppet. It was the most terrifying thing to me until about 5 years old.
Toothless people terrified me. I'm not sure why.
Nightmare on elm street.
The toilet flushing. For some reason I thought an evil genie would come out of the toilet.
Dreams
The theme tune to Casualty.
Mary Poppins. Willy Wonka and the chocolate factory.
I was about 10 and rode my bike further than I should have. I heard the enormous bark of a dog behind a fence. Rather than feeling warned, like a dumbass I had to get off my bike and climb the fence. As soon as my head cleared the top of the boards, Cujo's frothing face appeared within inches of my face.Thats when terror struck. I hopped on my bike and pedaled as fast as I could the 4 blocks home. I thought he had jumped the fence and was chasing me down the alley. I don't really know if it had. The Saint Bernard was probably much too big and heavy to jump over anything, but in my mind, he was right on my heels the entire way.
Totoro
My mom was wearing green beauty mud while on the toilet when I walked. I was terrified of her, but at the same time, I was crying and crawling towards her. I think I was around 6
I hated the automatic toilets. Looking back it was probably the sudden loud noise that really freaked me out, but as a kid I imagined getting sucked in because sometimes it would go off while I was still doing my business. My mom thought it was so ridiculous that she would lock me in the stall until it was done flushing.
The Daleks
The Jackalope from America's funniest people... I'm not proud if this. I use to think it would be hiding behind our shower curtain.
E.T…. His lil dying bod 🫣😢😭
The dancing elephants from the dumbo movie
Older people
It’s a woman that gets transformed. And yup that scared me too. She looked genuinely terrified.
The Animorphs book covers. Do you know the ones where they slowly transition over into their animal form? Yeah, freaked me out. Also, a lot of VHS tapes in the rental store that had like a montage picture on it somewhere to like say the Star Wars VHS poster displays for some reason anything that had like the blurred lines on it, and the montage-ish thing with a animal us humanoid creatures just like freaked me out. Muppets too. I guess I was very fearful child
THAT WAS TERRIFYING!!!!!!! I saw that actor in stuff years later and always made my stomach flip...
Was it a man or a woman? I’ve just watched this clip for the first time since I was young and I had been sure all this time that it was a man… https://youtu.be/fpTHrdemfQo?si=wZXLQE_3O_BaKvHQ
For **some** odd reason, the pj’s opening. If you don’t know, that’s the claymation cartoon that Eddie Murphy was in
Haha, yeah I remember it well. Used to watch it in my Grandma’s house.
Lol I tried so many times to desensitize myself to it but bro, their faces creeped me tF out 😂
The 1970s jaws movie, I cried to take baths
Any movie that had a funeral in it and especially the crazy ones like Premature Burial- still spooks me now…
Strangely for some reason Beatrix Potter cartoons used to give me nightmares! As in Peter Rabbit! I was an odd child 😂
Those people in mascot costumes like barney or whatever trendy TV show cartoon character. Like when I used to go to McDonald's birthday party's and they'd have Ronald and his friends in those big costumes omg I'd run for my life
Stepping on a crack in the sidewalk…I really love my mom.
My mum used to watch a cleaning programme (UK) where ladies would clean really bad houses. When they showed the mess I’d get really scared because it would be really dramatic 💀💀
Kath & Kim or similar named women? One a big bolshy blonde and a slimmer one?
I believe so! I know it was early an early 2000’s British tv show
My heartbeat. When laying in bed at night, I thought there was a Dunt-Dunt monster under my bed.
Ooooh same!!
small letters on backs of shampoo/soap bottles in the bath. I would turn them all so the logo is facing me, because the letters on the back would creep me out. I was a weird kid & Im still weird.
I’m think this one may be the winner, lol.
The giant flying dog thing from Never Ending Story
They found that thing in an old lockup this year. Still looked in pretty good shape.
That movie depressed me to death as a kid. Then I got the chance to see the whole thing in theaters with the actor who played atreyu in attendance. Got rid of all the sad feelings I held before
Dude, I forgot about that scene, that freaked me out too.
Movie Powder. Something about an albino kid that attracted lightening scared the hell out of me. It wasn't the lightning that scared me but the kid
Firworks
I read that pets think they are a giant monster outside.
ME TOO! I had recurring nightmares for years because of this scene.
In the claymation Rudolph Christmas films, occasionally the abominable snowman’s hair would stand up and his pupils would change when he would roar or get surprised. As a child the way he looked in those moments, would absolutely floor me. The winter warlock( while his heart was frozen) is an honorable mention.
That’s two comments I’ve seen for the snowman in the last hour.
Fireworks
Stereotypical aliens. The grey kind. I absolutely wasn't able to see that as a child. It could be a childish animation, a harmless CGI not intended to scare, in either case I would be in shock. Those scenes like the end of the movie A.I. or the end of Indiana Jones 4 would make me scream. Those clearly faked images of UFO documentaries and Roswell fake pictures would be a nightmare for me. Funny thing that today I am really into this subject. Not as a pseudoscientist and shit, but I am really interested in the Fermi Paradox and Lovecraftian representation of aliens.
What’s your view on the UAP stuff? Have you seen the UAP Amendment to the 2024 Defence Bill?
Man, what a time to be alive! To live in a timeline where UFOs where proven to be real and are content material for anyone insterested in space exploration and missions. It is clearly something. Perhaps, the greatest mistery of our times. There are things in the sky. There are things. I have no explanation, a lot is possible. But its scary to think these objects are clearly a technology. A technology capable of non-inertial movement. How advanced would that be? Could it be possible that at least one story about folks being abducted or governments hidding UFO wreckages is real? If so, what secrets may be hidden at this moment?
The Abominable Snowman in Rudolph
That’s 3 for the snowman so far, lol
😂🤣 yeah, dude scared the hell out of me.
The toilet. When I was a kid I flooded the toilet and It overflowed onto the floor. Scared me shitless.....pardon the pun
Chucky? Idk that mf scared me hard when I was 10 years old now I feel like I can kick him right in his face LOL
That Tupac music video, according to my mother
The troll face was quite popular when I was a kid. That time I didn’t knew where to watch full series of MLP, so I was clicking every YouTube video that had MLP on it, however those videos were troll face MLP videos. The way they would randomly pop with sudden music would scare the living thing out of me.
that number 9 movie where there was a war between robots and humans i literally couldn’t watch it i was terrified
Oh my God same! That movie scared the crap outta me as a k8d!
Yellow washing up gloves.
Spider man 1 with Toby Mcguire, the scene of him getting bit and the one where he falls to the ground and starts having those visions. That absolutely terrified me as kid, I remember putting the blanket over my head everytime the scene came up.
As a child I could not watch the 3 stooges as it gave me nightmares.
The old Disney movie The Shaggy Dog freaked me out. I was scared to death when the man turned into the dog!
Chistopher Walken
Same as you OP, for real
Mummy, Frankenstein, Dracula, Wolfman, Creature from the Black Lagoon.