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Strange Things That Scared You (But Aren't Obviously 'Scary')

Me too, I liked it but then, for a while, my mother made us put sawdust on our breakfast cereal :puke2: It was some sort of bran that was "good for us"

Grape-Nuts isn't known as a bran source. Your description sounds more like one of the mass market American bran cereals (e.g., Kellogg's All-Bran). All-Bran is relatively soft, whereas Grape-Nuts are hard.
 
Grape-Nuts isn't known as a bran source. Your description sounds more like one of the mass market American bran cereals (e.g., Kellogg's All-Bran). All-Bran is relatively soft, whereas Grape-Nuts are hard.
Oh! You're right. I always thought it was made from bran.
 
It wasn't a cereal like All-Bran, it was a sawdust type powder that made breakfast a nightmare :yuck:

I think it was sold in the chemist (pharmacy) as a healthy additive.

I think it's what made me gay.
 
Oh, in that case ... You may be talking about wheat germ - a supplement consisting of the allegedly most nutritious part of wheat. It used to be sold in jars for adding to cereal or as an additive in cooking or baking.

Not long ago I went looking for wheat germ but couldn't find any at my local grocery stores.
 
Oh, in that case ... You may be talking about wheat germ - a supplement consisting of the allegedly most nutritious part of wheat. It used to be sold in jars for adding to cereal or as an additive in cooking or baking.

Not long ago I went looking for wheat germ but couldn't find any at my local grocery stores.

Keep yer germs to yerself!
 
I got a Haliborange tablet (assume from halibut liver oil) which was like a yummy sweet.

I remember those well. They were like medicinal orange Smarties, though a bit smaller. The orange flavour was concentrated in the outside shell, iirc; chewing them would unleash the fishy goodness from within. At least, they did not have liquid centres! At other periods, we were dosed with Brewers' Yeast tablets and a Cinnamon Essence, all, presumably, to stave off coughs and colds.

Back to scary/non-scary things. I have been trying to find the illustration which scared and fascinated me as a kid in school. Maybe it was really scary but I think it just belonged to that Victorian/Edwardian school of fairy and fantasy art. The book was a cheap schools-edition of John Ruskin's fable The King of the Golden River and the scene was of two old kitchen pots floating down a stream.

But they had faces! Bulbous and hideous faces!

I would go to that book, frequently, just to assure myself that the faces were still there, being evil. They never let me down, sending me off, with a perverse frisson, to read another book in order to forget . . . :reading::reading::reading:
 
I love this board!

I love how a thread about being scared of not-obviously-scary-things can travel the range to encompass discussion of varieties of breakfast fare laced with bran to the 'joys' of cod liver oil - via an escalator, of course!
 
I always feel that creature is actually using the blocks to spell out a message, like some sort of highly inconvenient Ouija board

Good point, and something Hoffine suggests he intended to convey ...

If you look closely at the image, you'll see two groups of blocks arranged in neat lines (in front of the clawed hands). From your point of view they spell out "Daddy" "No" when read from (your) left to right.

(The less clearly arranged 3 blocks in the extreme lower right-hand corner spell out "Duh", which may or may not have been intentional ... )
 
Good point, and something Hoffine suggests he intended to convey ...

If you look closely at the image, you'll see two groups of blocks arranged in neat lines (in front of the clawed hands). From your point of view they spell out "Daddy" "No" when read from (your) left to right.

(The less clearly arranged 3 blocks in the extreme lower right-hand corner spell out "Duh", which may or may not have been intentional ... )
The blocks in the foreground spell out
'daddy no' :oops:
Screenshot_20210219-132514.png
 
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Good point, and something Hoffine suggests he intended to convey ...

If you look closely at the image, you'll see two groups of blocks arranged in neat lines (in front of the clawed hands). From your point of view they spell out "Daddy" "No" when read from (your) left to right.

(The less clearly arranged 3 blocks in the extreme lower right-hand corner spell out "Duh", which may or may not have been intentional ... )

As if it wasn't terrifying enough already...

:eek:
 
I was read the 3 little pigs often as a young kid and in particular, the UK Ladybird version in the mid 70s. This particular edition was full of what I can only describe as utterly terrifying depictions of the wolf. It gives me the fear just searching the images on Google. I mean, come ON!!!!!

Little-Pig-Ladybird-by-Robert-Lumley-3.jpg


And if this wasn't enough, researching to find the above picture dredged up another Ladybird horror, "The wolf and the 7 Little Kids". This lovely image is shortly after the billy-goat had performed some sort of Cronenbergian surgery on the wolf, placing rocks in it's abdomen. My mother actually used to read me this shit as I was about to go to sleep!!

EWjL6LkXsAYSgaX.jpg


Sleep tight folks!
 
I was read the 3 little pigs often as a young kid and in particular, the UK Ladybird version in the mid 70s. This particular edition was full of what I can only describe as utterly terrifying depictions of the wolf. It gives me the fear just searching the images on Google. I mean, come ON!!!!!

View attachment 35643

And if this wasn't enough, researching to find the above picture dredged up another Ladybird horror, "The wolf and the 7 Little Kids". This lovely image is shortly after the billy-goat had performed some sort of Cronenbergian surgery on the wolf, placing rocks in it's abdomen. My mother actually used to read me this shit as I was about to go to sleep!!

View attachment 35644

Sleep tight folks!
The Ladybird edition of the 3 Little Pigs was my favourite book when I was little. I treasured that book. Loved the artwork.
This one:
61KJblbT42L._SX329_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg
 
Yep, I remember the wolf being sewn up with rocks ! But by that stage I had survived Grimms, Christian Andersen, Wilhelm Busch, Struwwelpeter and god knows what passed for suitable reading material by my German parents. But it wasn't the stories that were scary so much as some of the illustrations. I think it was the 'The Red Shoes' where the girl was made to dance and could only stop until she persuaded an axe-man to cut her feet off. Bottom of last page was a line-drawing of her staggering off on crutches - her spurting feet were still dancing on the top page of the next story.
 
I was on a Movie Forum years back when some-one wanted the name of a film he'd seen the Cinema trailer for. A kid was in bed (I think) on the top floor of a building and a passing giant briefly looked in through the window. Not scary as such as it was an animation but certainly unsettling for some-one of a certain age. We decided it could only be BFG (the Big Friendly Giant 1989, not the Disney one) although I never saw the trailer.
Then I found this image, again not scary but somehow unsettling.

Steps to Christ.jpg
 
Yep, I remember the wolf being sewn up with rocks ! But by that stage I had survived Grimms, Christian Andersen, Wilhelm Busch, Struwwelpeter and god knows what passed for suitable reading material by my German parents. But it wasn't the stories that were scary so much as some of the illustrations. I think it was the 'The Red Shoes' where the girl was made to dance and could only stop until she persuaded an axe-man to cut her feet off. Bottom of last page was a line-drawing of her staggering off on crutches - her spurting feet were still dancing on the top page of the next story.
I loved fairy tales once I started reading. My school library had "The Green (Red, Blue, Pink, etc) Book of Fairy Tales. Most of them were written pretty much as the original versions would have been. Eventually, I moved on to King, Barker, Stoker, Poe, you name them. I'm a great fan of horror and dark fantasy.:)
 
I'm sure I remember the wolf having the stones sewn into him, which made him so thirsty he went to the well for some water and fell in and drowned.

I remember being angry at the anti-wolf sentiments even then...
 
I loved fairy tales once I started reading. My school library had "The Green (Red, Blue, Pink, etc) Book of Fairy Tales. Most of them were written pretty much as the original versions would have been. Eventually, I moved on to King, Barker, Stoker, Poe, you name them. I'm a great fan of horror and dark fantasy.:)
If you are still interested in fairy tales, but with a darker bent, i can highly recommend John Connollys 'The Book of List Things', i have a signed copy with beautiful wood cut printed illustrations, im not sure if more recent copies have these or not.

s-l300 (1).jpg
 
I was on a Movie Forum years back when some-one wanted the name of a film he'd seen the Cinema trailer for. A kid was in bed (I think) on the top floor of a building and a passing giant briefly looked in through the window. Not scary as such as it was an animation but certainly unsettling for some-one of a certain age. We decided it could only be BFG (the Big Friendly Giant 1989, not the Disney one) although I never saw the trailer.
Then I found this image, again not scary but somehow unsettling.

View attachment 35651
I would watch the shit out of that thing fighting Godzilla....

And talking of childhood horrors, found this, the other day:

https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/entertainment/twisted-jimmy-savile-fans-still-22895410
 
If you are still interested in fairy tales, but with a darker bent, i can highly recommend John Connollys 'The Book of List Things', i have a signed copy with beautiful wood cut printed illustrations, im not sure if more recent copies have these or not.

View attachment 35677
I actually have this on "want to read" in Goodreads
 
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