Irrational Childhood Terror

[Spartacus Mills]

Hi there – long time lurker, etc etc..

Apologies if this sounds needlessly paranoid, insane or even somewhat mundane but this is the first time I’ve spoken about this and still affects me to this day.

When I was about 9 or 10 (around 1982-83), myself and my friend would regularly play in the woods near my house. On one occasion, we were just chatting as children do; what we watched on TV, what we had done that day, etc, when my friend told me a story about a record his brother had bought in which either the cover or a song (can’t remember which or it may had been both) depicted/spoke about a man falling from a tower.

So far, so ordinary.

However, the fear I felt when he told me the story was like nothing I’d ever felt (at the time or since), it shocked me to the core. Of course, being a young boy I tried to hide this from my friend but could not stop thinking about it. The next thing I remember I was running home through the fields adjoining the woods, panicked and terrified with the story playing through my mind.

That night, I couldn’t sleep, the story imprinted on my mind and I ran into my parents room in a blind panic saying I had a nightmare (I didn’t tell them about the story, thinking they would see it as foolish). Even now when I think about being told this story, I get a faint but deep feeling of panic and terror.

Why did something so seemingly mundane and ordinary scare me so much? Why does it still give me feelings of terror (albeit diluted through time)? Was it just an overactive imagination? Somewhat sinisterly and maybe I’m being paranoid here, but did something terrible happen to me in the woods that day that I have blanked out but now associate with the story, thereby triggering the fear? Your comments would be welcomed……

 

[David Plankton]

Perhaps you could go into more detail regarding the story you heard - if it's not to traumatic for you.

 

[blessmycottonsocks]

Sounds like the Tarot card The Tower, which often depicts someone falling from the tower.
Tarot cards have featured on prog rock and heavy metal album covers over the years. If you could identify the album or particular song, it would probably help dispel the bad memory.

 

[Spartacus Mills]

That's what's odd - I don't remember a specific story at all or any extra details, merely that the cover or the song showed/mentioned a man falling from a tower which that appears to be some sort of "trigger", if you will. There might have been more to it at the time, but I just don't remember - it's as if this childhood terror has masked the finer details.

Funnily enough, when I got a bit older and became aware of the Tarot tower card, that instilled the same feelings in me (and still does, albeit very slightly) and I do wonder whether that was something to do with it at the time. This friend's brother was into prog rock at the time, so that may be a viable connection. I've racked my brains for over 30 years trying to find out what the album was. A couple of years ago I attempted to get in touch with this old friend of mine but we parted ways not long after and he doesn't appear to be on social media.
(I do need to stress; I'm not obsessed by this incident, it just pops in my head from time to time and this forum seems to be an ideal platform to speak about it without seeming like a massive weirdo...)

Apologies for the vagueness - wish I could be a bit more specific but it's more difficult than I anticipated reaching so far back for an extended period of time!

 

[blessmycottonsocks]

Was he into electronic or Krautrock?
I recall Walter Wegmüller did a double album called Tarot, with a track for every major arcana Tarot card, including The Tower (or die Zerstörung) in German. It featured traditional Tarot artwork. You could try it out on YouTube to see if it sounds familiar.

 

[Ringo]

I can relate to what you're saying but can't offer an explanation as to what did or did not happen that day. It may have been that nothing very much happened but on the way home you maybe recalled the story and being on your own, you maybe freaked yourself out a little.

I have a similar feeling about a recurring nightmare (not a waking story or event). I had the nightmare lots when I was about 9 or 10 - usually when I was anxious, ill or feverish. It was a row of 10 shiny new red doors, each with a gold number on the front (1-10). There ware pennies or teardrops of water suspended in the air alternatively in front of each one. Whichever one I passed through took me into a a rubbish tip and I was propelled forward. At this point the dream became an animation and all the perspective and depth in the dream seemed like cardboard cutouts. It was like the Ken Burns effect on image slideshows. Suddenly an enormous spaceship (kind of saucer shaped, maybe Millenium Falcom shaped) would break up through the rubbish and ascend into the heavens. Even thinking about it now some 30 years later, I get a knot in my stomach.

EDIT: The animation aspect actually reminded me of the cartoon Ulysses 31 and I just searched on youtube for it. Check this out at 0:25 secs.

 

[Spartacus Mills]

Was he into electronic or Krautrock?
I recall Walter Wegmüller did a double album called Tarot, with a track for every major arcana Tarot card, including The Tower (or die Zerstörung) in German. It featured traditional Tarot artwork. You could try it out on YouTube to see if it sounds familiar.

Thanks, I'll check that out when I get home from work..

And Ringo, you may well be right; it may have been that very little happened, it could well have been the overactive imagination and sensitivity of being a small child led to a panic-attack type situation. It's just that the oddness of the situation (something so mundane scaring me so much) and the fact that it has stuck with me for so long has always puzzled me.

 

[Rabbit Will Run]

I think the image of someone falling from a tower is inherently terrifying, especially the artwork on most tarot cards! Towers always evoke a feeling in me, but it's more melancholy, although I'm sure it would be different if I was thinking about someone falling from one! I hate to be the one who says 'past lives' but after experimenting with self regression a few years ago I seem to have worked out/worked through a lot of irrational fears and odd personality traits. I wouldn't even say I'm a believer, definitely on the fence, and the hypnosis never seemed to put me under at all (I think I only saw two images that I didn't feel were coming from my own imagination), but I've always thought that even if my brain was just suggesting stories, then it was suggesting them for a reason and bringing up issues I needed to recognise. Anyway, DM if you want to explore that avenue, I have a file or two I can share.

 

[catseye]

Spartacus - how were you in the days following? (Not that you'd remember, probably, unless it was particularly traumatic). Just wondering if you'd been running a bit of a temperature, if you came down with something in the days after - I remember taking things much more to heart and dwelling on them to an insane degree when I was young and running a fever.

 

[EnolaGaia]

... And Ringo, you may well be right; it may have been that very little happened, it could well have been the overactive imagination and sensitivity of being a small child led to a panic-attack type situation. It's just that the oddness of the situation (something so mundane scaring me so much) and the fact that it has stuck with me for so long has always puzzled me.

As I understand it, the panic reaction was a response to being told about an image or scenario, and not the image / scenario itself. This would suggest:

(a) Your reaction could well have related to a prior fear / trigger or something within the context of the scenario in which your friend told you about the image. For example - had either of you fallen (or come close to falling ... ) from a tree in those woods?

(b) There's little point in attempting to identify or locate the image your friend was describing. If you never saw it, it can't serve as an effective target for desensitization. On the other hand, if you wish to attempt to desensitize yourself to such images you don't have to focus specifically on that one.

 

[GNC]

When I was a kid in the 1980s, I was listening to a radio nostalgia quiz which mentioned Quatermass. I'd never heard of it, and the presenter said in an offhand fashion, "Yeah, it was about a man who came back from outer space and turned into a tree". This HORRIFIED me, I had no idea what that would have looked like as a TV show, but I had a very troubled sleep that night because I couldn't get the notion out of my head. This sounds like the same mental mechanism you suffered at an impressionable age - I wonder if there's a proper term for it? Other than "the heebie-jeebies"?

 

[chicorea]

I'm digressing here, but I ask myself if the very point of the experience was that you realized, for a moment, that you could picture yourself falling from a tower. My hypothesis is that either if you imagine that you can fall or become a tree (or, in my case, that you never existed at all), you have a feeling of self annihilation, a thought of an end to your Self, that builds on your own mind. Again, hypothetically, this realization can be very shocking. As I said, I digress here...

 

[EnolaGaia]

I'm digressing here, but I ask myself if the very point of the experience was that you realized, for a moment, that you could picture yourself falling from a tower. My hypothesis is that either if you imagine that you can fall or become a tree (or, in my case, that you never existed at all), you have a feeling of self annihilation, a thought of an end to your Self, that builds on your own mind. Again, hypothetically, this realization can be very shocking. As I said, I digress here...

IMHO this isn't a digression at all ... It's a viable explanation for the OP's panic attack. The cited age (9 / 10) matches the age at which I finally understood that 'death' meant 'extinction of the self', and this realization upset me for some time (though not to the extreme the OP described).

 

[chicorea]

IMHO this isn't a digression at all ... It's a viable explanation for the OP's panic attack. The cited age (9 / 10) matches the age at which I finally understood that 'death' meant 'extinction of the self', and this realization upset me for some time (though not to the extreme the OP described).

Arriving to visualize a world where I was never born (it was a little later, maybe around 16), haven't paralyzed me, but it was a strong feeling. I remember that it was like touching something hot, you retreat immediately of your thoughts, but it feels too late, it's like being dragged to a void. I succeeded to lock this thought on a room of my palace of the memory, but it still scratches the door when I talk about it again.

 

[Ermintruder]

The cited age (9 / 10) matches the age at which I finally understood that 'death' meant 'extinction of the self'

Via the catalyst of @Spartacus Mills' post, you raise within me a now-obvious but previously-obscured revelation. The end of every childhood is at that very instant....the realisation of one's own inescapable mortality.

Up until that point, childhood subsists. There is then a reluctant subconscious pact made with Death, which stays totally-hidden in the drawer until puberty hits. Santa Claus is used as a proxy group-lie distraction, to paper-over this slo-mo death sentence, maintaining a safe childhood with clockwork trains and later, Porche Cayennes. Then for some of us, the immortality of genetic co-investment may be seen to beat the Reaper...in a sort of sense.

If we were back in a protosocietal world of dead-by-thirty, rampant infant mortality and wolves at the foot of the tree, I wonder how our minds would've worked back then? Risk-taking would be standard life. Suicidal thinking would be almost unheard of, as would be depression. Health and stamina would be amazing, as older people would all be dead.

Apologies, OP....The fundamental frightening aspect of falling to one's death is it's simple accessibility. And finality. The tools for doing the job are everywhere. Not in any come-hither way, more in an omnipresent obscenity fashion. Nobody ever looks up (or down) a tall anything, without contemplating their own demise. Even those who claim they don't, most certainly do.

 

[henry]

I have a similar feeling about a recurring nightmare (not a waking story or event). I had the nightmare lots when I was about 9 or 10 - usually when I was anxious, ill or feverish. It was a row of 10 shiny new red doors, each with a gold number on the front (1-10). There ware pennies or teardrops of water suspended in the air alternatively in front of each one. Whichever one I passed through took me into a a rubbish tip and I was propelled forward. At this point the dream became an animation and all the perspective and depth in the dream seemed like cardboard cutouts. It was like the Ken Burns effect on image slideshows. Suddenly an enormous spaceship (kind of saucer shaped, maybe Millenium Falcom shaped) would break up through the rubbish and ascend into the heavens. Even thinking about it now some 30 years later, I get a knot in my stomach.

lot of commonality with the big/small thread imagery here - sequenced numbers, tiny objects in suspension, huge objects, trash, propulsion of self (the stuck-in-a-pinball-game syndrome) ... the age is about right, the occasional recurrence into adult life

 

[Amoradala]

I've mentioned before on other threads that Benylin, the medicine often given to children when ill can cause hallucinations.
It is known to be abused by some (taken in high doses ) to give "Those individuals who are abusing Benylin often report a heightened sense of perceptual awareness, altered time perception and visual hallucinations."

https://www.addiction.com/a-z/benylin/

 

[Mythopoeika]

I love Benylin, but I think you'd have to ingest toxic doses for it to have such an effect.
Interesting idea though.

 

[FrKadash]

I hope posting album art with imagery similar to what you've described doesn't upset you, but your description reminds me of the artwork by Urs Amann on the cover of the 1975 album Picture Music by Klaus Schulze.

 

[smokehead]

Sitting On The Dock Of The Bay by Otis Redding for me.
It's what was on the radio after I came back from helping mum with the shopping, as we passed a house with kids playing outside, maybe my age or a little younger, she told me their mum had died.
That profoundly, profoundly, disturbed, terrified, upset me. Beyond what I would consider the normal fears of a child losing their mother, and it lasted for years but thankfully passed with time.
I'm no fan of heights, believing the fear of falling to be perfectly sensible rather than a phobia, however there is I believe a more severe form of vertigo where people claim they feel compelled to jump or step over the edge.
I can vaguely remember a tragic event where a man used to launch himself at the window of a high building to demonstrate the strength of the glass, on this occasion the glass didn't break but the whole frame popped out and he fell to his death. Stuff like that is haunting and understandably frightening

 

[escargot]

I can vaguely remember a tragic event where a man used to launch himself at the window of a high building to demonstrate the strength of the glass, on this occasion the glass didn't break but the whole frame popped out and he fell to his death.

That incident was reported in the FT magazine's strange deaths section. Must admit that after reading about it I stopped flinging myself at plate glass windows.

 

[Swifty]

That incident was reported in the FT magazine's strange deaths section. Must admit that after reading about it I stopped flinging myself at plate glass windows.

Something we've all done from time to time to be fair.

 

[JamesWhitehead]

flinging myself at plate glass windows

I well recall a tv programme from about fifteen years ago in which a group of people were coached to confront their phobias. In a climactic section, they were taken up a tower which had an observation-platform with glass panels which they had to lie on . . .

I could not bear even to watch it from the safety of my own sofa! It is only fairly recently with the arrival of those crazy videos of skateboarders larking about at high altitude that I have felt the same sense of horror.

Here is one such.

It seems a rational terror to me! :cry:

Edit: I have just forced myself to watch the linked video to the end. If exposure to one's terrors is meant to cure them, it didn't!

Live Leak is less extreme than it used to be but there is still a lot of horrid stuff on it, including daredevil stunts that go wrong. The ghoulish stuff is always flagged-up, I think, but as soon as an electric cable comes into view . . .

 

[Coal]

Edit: I have just forced myself to watch the linked video to the end. If exposure to one's terrors is meant to cure them, it didn't!

Only if you then block memory re-consolidation with a drug - and I don't think it's been proven to be 100% permanent though (An Abrupt Transformation of Phobic Behavior After a Post-Retrieval Amnesic Agent, Soeter and Kindt. 2015).

 

[Shady]

Sitting On The Dock Of The Bay by Otis Redding for me.
It's what was on the radio after I came back from helping mum with the shopping, as we passed a house with kids playing outside, maybe my age or a little younger, she told me their mum had died.
That profoundly, profoundly, disturbed, terrified, upset me. Beyond what I would consider the normal fears of a child losing their mother, and it lasted for years but thankfully passed with time.
I'm no fan of heights, believing the fear of falling to be perfectly sensible rather than a phobia, however there is I believe a more severe form of vertigo where people claim they feel compelled to jump or step over the edge.
I can vaguely remember a tragic event where a man used to launch himself at the window of a high building to demonstrate the strength of the glass, on this occasion the glass didn't break but the whole frame popped out and he fell to his death. Stuff like that is haunting and understandably frightening

I dont like heights but as a youngster always bloody well went up em, i also felt compelled to jump, but, it is always with a feeling that i could survive the said jump

 

[Coal]

I dont like heights but as a youngster always bloody well went up em,

Quite. Rescued by a helicopter once. I say "rescued", I was removed from the cliff, upon which I wasn't stuck at all, and given a right b*llocking.

 

[heisenbear]

Back in the early 2000s, I used to hang out with friends. And friends of friends. One of them, let's call him Darren, was into extreme sports and would do anything for a dare. One such dare involved abseiling 70 feet down a live railway tunnel airshaft. 9 of us piled into 2 cars and we set off one evening to undertake the dare. Darren had bought 100 feet of mountaineering rope, a step ladder, kit bags and a box of tools. The air shaft was located in the middle of a public woodland, so it was a matter of leaving the cars in the public car park and after a quick look to make sure no-one was around, carried all the kit into the wood. We found the shaft, up went the step ladder, up went Darren and another guy plus the rope and the kit bags and they unbolted part of the huge steel grille on top of the shaft. The rope got tied to a nearby tree and with us listening for the train horn which was always blown from the level crossing about a mile away, Darren abseiled down. I started to get a funny feeling. Right on cue, there came a faint 'HEE-HAAAW' of a train horn. We shouted 'TRAIN!' Darren faintly shouted something back. Something about being halfway down. A minute later, kit bags and litter blasted into the air as everything on top of the shaft grille was launched by the wind of the train charging into the tunnel. The abseiling rope started to whip. We panicked and waited. 5 minutes later, Darren poked his head over the edge of the shaft with a big grin on his face. He came down and we all decided we should scarper. But I was curious, so I climbed to the top of the ladder, peered over the edge of the shaft and made the fatal mistake of looking down into the 12-foot diameter, brick-lined hole. I froze completely. There was nothing between me and a 70 foot drop onto the faintly visible rails apart from a very rusty steel grid and a stone parapet that was maybe 100 years old. I tried to move but I found myself totally imobilised by fear of that deep, dark void. My friends started jeering. I was 15 feet up in the air, still stood on the step ladder. It took 10 minutes before I could move a muscle. I thought I would faint but something finally unscrambled my circuits and I descended the ladder, rung by rung until my feet were firmly on the woodland floor. Then my legs turned to rubber and I dropped like a rock. This was possibly one of the scariest things I've ever experienced to date.

 

[smokehead]

Nope. Couldn't get to the end of that video. I got as far as just past the skateboard. My knees were tying themselves into knots and I am confident
I will require therapy.

 

[Shady]

I made it thro it but the bottom and round the sides of ma feet throbbed with hurt at the bits where they jumped up a bit, terrifying stuff, one wrong move and you are dead

 

[Spartacus Mills]

Thanks for the replies re: my original post - I've been offline for a couple of weeks and so have just caught up. As I've been unable to sufficiently distance myself from my strange experience for many a year, it's good to see a community that will dispassionately rationalise it and provide insightful suggestions. Cheers!