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Childish Terrors

I remember being scared of loads of things as a very young child, including the dredgers in the docks (I was born in Hotwells in Bristol) and the Beardsley prints on the stairs, I remember my father having to carry me past them as I refused to on my own. The dredger fear was transferred to the man in the tractor with a hedge cutter attachment when we moved to the countryside. And I made a name up for him, and the monster in the pipes - the house I was born in was 200 years old and probably had the original plumbing.
 
Can you say the name, marionxxx or are you like me and bunnymousekitt? :lol:

My younger sister had a terrifying nightmare when she was little, involving a witch who chased her and said a particular short sentence. I had to promise my sister that I would never, ever say that sentence to her because she would be so unutterly terrified. It's good insurance :twisted:
 
I've never mentioned them or written them down, they are silly childish names, best be safe and keep them secret ;)
 
marionXXX said:
...the Beardsley prints on the stairs,..
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I'm not surprised! Beardsley was a brilliant artist, IMO, but his works are not exactly comforting.:shock:
 
marionXXX said:
I remember being scared of loads of things as a very young child, including the dredgers in the docks (I was born in Hotwells in Bristol) and the Beardsley prints on the stairs, I remember my father having to carry me past them as I refused to on my own. The dredger fear was transferred to the man in the tractor with a hedge cutter attachment when we moved to the countryside. And I made a name up for him, and the monster in the pipes - the house I was born in was 200 years old and probably had the original plumbing.
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I also feared the dredger. I lived about 1.5 miles from the Tyne and occasionally you could hear it. The thing is I never saw it which I think would have eased my fears. I don't think I actually knew what it was. I just remember my parents saying "Listen, you can hear The Dredger" and the name alone conjured up visions of some horrific entity. In those days dredgers were loud, howling and groaning as the buckets moved around.
 
I don't know, 'Don't fear the Dredger' doesn't have quite the same ring to it. I don't think it would have been a hit :)

I'm afraid I've always been the sort of person who, on hearing a strange noise in the night, wants to go out and find out what it is. It's a miracle I haven't been abducted by aliens. Mind you, some people probably wish I had been.
 
For some reason I cannot explain I was absolutely terrified of sailing ships when I was young. I don't mean yachts like posh people have as I do enjoy sailing but big multi masted sailing ships.

Whether I saw one on the tele, a photo in a magazine or most scary of all for real. Absolute and complete terror always ensued.

Consequently for most of my life I have stayed away from places where sailing ships might be found.

Only once did I forget this sub-coscious rule when I moved to a flat in the docklands area of London not far from Tower Bridge. This was back in the 90s I might add when normal people could afford to rent a flat there. Anyway I was on my way home from the supermarket and I decided to take a slightly different route back to the river to cross Tower Bridge. Walking round a corner I was suddenly presented (at extremely close quarters) with not one but two full sized sailing ships. I instantly broke out in a cold sweat and had the overwhelming urge to run. This was very strange as I was 29 at the time and surely should have left this terror back in my childhood. I did turn around and walk away and never went home that way again from the supermarket.

Moving on a few years and I was living in Sydney, taking the river catamaran from my home in Meadowbank to the centre of the city for the first time, the catamaran stopped at its final pier in fornt of 4 enormous sailing ships. Again they made me feel nervous although the fear factor was nowhere near as srong.

Now at the age of 48 if I see a sailing ship on the tele they still make me feel nervous or mildly frightened.

I have no idea why I have spent my life being frightened of sailing ships.

I am also frightened of poisonous snakes but that makes sense to me - I have no idea why this issue with ships with multi-masts.

Perhaps I was press-ganged in a previous life ... any other ideas?
 
XBergMann said:
I have no idea why I have spent my life being frightened of sailing ships.

I am also frightened of poisonous snakes but that makes sense to me - I have no idea why this issue with ships with multi-masts.

Perhaps I was press-ganged in a previous life ... any other ideas?
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..or attacked and killed by pirates;

..had to abandon ship for some reason, and you were cannibalised by the remaining crew in a make-shift lifeboat when the food ran out;

..were serving in a Navy in a sea battle and died of horrendous wounds, maybe under the surgeon's knife;

..your ship was wrecked and you were dragged down when it sank?


If you go the 'previous life' route, there's no end to the ways you could have met a grisly death in sailing ship days!
 
I've never been on top of a mast on a sailing ship, but when I see a photo or a clip taken from that vantage point looking down at the deck, I do feel an uneasy vertigo. Not the same thing, probably, but that's my story.
 
Indeed rynner2, I have never set out to discuss such an irrational fear before but a thread entitled Chlidhood Terrors seemed the perfect place.

i am not a great believer in this past life stuff and i grew up in the fenlands of Cambridgeshire miles from the sea.

So why do sailing ships freak me out?

Wierd stuff. luckily there aren't any in kiev where I live now.
 
Young children can pick up ideas, good and bad, very easily, and an early traumatic experience can set off a life-long fear. If the experience happened when the child was young enough, it might be forgotten, or pushed out of their mind, with the fear still remaining.

I have first-hand knowledge of this. I saw a really horrible thing when I was nearly 5, and ever afterwards I was afraid of the thing, even though I forgot the original incident. Perhaps my little mind couldn't cope with the awful memory.

Anyway, I had this minor phobia and then suddenly, as an adult, I remembered the horrible incident. It didn't stop the fear but at least I knew where it came from! ;)

So... a fear of big sailing ships might have come from some long-forgotten childhood trauma. Someone might have read you a slightly frightening story from a well-illustrated book, which would give a visual association of the ships and a feeling of fear. You might even have caught a bit of a scary TV programme about tempests or shipwrecks. It doesn't have to be any more dramatic than that for a small child.

I bet if you were hypnotised, it'd all come back to you. Or in time, when your subconscious thinks you're ready, the memory may surface of its own accord. ;)
In fact, if you can ask your parents they'll probably have an idea about what happened.

Much as I love the weirdness of life, I don't think phobias come from anywhere except our own minds, with a little help from the environment.
 
Earwigs.

Heard a terrible tale as a toddler, told by my much older sister, that a young boy had been sleeping when an earwig crawled into his ear. Days later the boy felt somewhat unwell, which led to severe pain in his ear and eye. It was later discovered that the earwig had munched through his sinus cavity and gnawed its way around the back of his eyeball. As if this wasn't enough, it finally burrowed into his brain and began to devour that, too.

I am only half certain that this is a tall tale to this day, and my sis says she can't quite remember it.

But around the age of 10 to 13 I often slept with honking great headphones over my ears. When this became too uncomfortable I purchased a very fluffy pair of earmuffs to sleep in, to protect me from such a hideous fate.
 
I'm a retired Infant teacher. I do remember a child in my class who had to have an insect removed from his ear at our local A&E dept -I'm not sure that it was an actual earwig. :)
 
Was it The Twilight Zone which had the story of the insect burrowing through a man's ear into his brain and out the other side? He's very relieved when it emerges, then gets the bad news: the insect was female and it's laid eggs in there. Or is that an urban myth?
 
XBergMann said:
For some reason I cannot explain I was absolutely terrified of sailing ships when I was young. I don't mean yachts like posh people have as I do enjoy sailing but big multi masted sailing ships.
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Can't recall if I've mentioned this before, but I'm scared of derelict ships/boats. I'm normally up for any exploration going, but you wouldn't catch me poking around inside an old beached boat or ship - part submerged or actually sunk would be worse. This goes right back to childhood when we stayed at a holiday chalet at Point Clear in Essex - there was an inlet with a couple of abandoned barges rotting in it - I hated even going past them in the car. Brrrrrr.... gives me shivers remembering.
 
Yup, it's funny how, even when you know exactly how your fear came about and that what caused it is relatively harmless, it still scares you. What you learn as a child stays with you.
 
gncxx said:
Was it The Twilight Zone which had the story of the insect burrowing through a man's ear into his brain and out the other side? He's very relieved when it emerges, then gets the bad news: the insect was female and it's laid eggs in there. Or is that an urban myth?
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Not sure, I got the impression she meant a neighbour, but I was about 4 when she told it to me - and it stuck with me ever since, so I possibly embellished it as a child or just assumed the boy was local. This would have been around 1978 when I was 4 yrs old.

Not sure why I only got scared enough to wear earmuffs around the age of 10 though!
Maybe it had remained dormant and woke up as a new terror then.
 
I was also frightened of sitting on soft chairs for a while because I was convinced it would hurt them. I was about 5 when this happened, and people found it hilarious, but I took it very seriously indeed!

Sometimes I even felt guilty walking on tarmac, in case my weight hurt the ground.

It was as if I had this weird empathy for inanimate objects that began to frighten me due to all the possibilities of causing harm. I do seem to have grown out of it by age 6 though - however, I do still get the odd pang when walking on grass!
 
I remember also (someone else mentioned this on page 1) being scared at a young age to put my shoes on the floor at night for the fear of something crawling into them. But this was down to watching some Australian show about the dangers of scorpions. Not really an issue in N. Ireland but it spooked me pretty good.

I vividly remember waking one night by the screams of my sister who said that a gold hand had come out of the top of her bed and tried to grab her. My Dad rushed in, and found her bed had been moved also. To this day he is still convinced that there was no way she could have moved the bed herself as he had much trouble putting it back. She was 7 at the time. She still protests this happened.
 
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-hampshire-31091363

A primary school head teacher has apologised after parents complained children had been upset by being shown Michael Jackson's Thriller video.

Year Three pupils at Berrywood Primary School, Hedge End in Hampshire were shown the 1983 video, containing its famous zombie dance sequence...
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I suppose it would be scary if you weren't prepared for it through its cultural ubiquity. Little did we know how scary Jackson would really get.
 
A programme I think was called 'The Tree' from the 70s absolutely terrified me. I think it followed some boys home to kill them. My brother used to tease me till I cried. All I remember is park railings and rustling leaves.
Also a book I read called 'Charlotte Sometimes'. A girl at a boarding school wakes at night and sees a window shadow on the wall that shouldn't be there and knows she has gone back in time.
I now remember how scared I was at the time and had pretty much forgotten till I read these posts.
 
I still remember my first nightmare from when I was very little. I was lying in bed and at some point during the night a giant teddy bear slowly loomed over me and vomited milk from it's mouth, nostrils and eyes all over me. Make of that what you will but I switched to liking robots more after that.
 
jimv1 said:
I still remember my first nightmare from when I was very little. I was lying in bed and at some point during the night a giant teddy bear slowly loomed over me and vomited milk from it's mouth, nostrils and eyes all over me. Make of that what you will but I switched to liking robots more after that.
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Clearly, you were experiencing pre-cognizance of Akira. It's the only possible explanation.
 
When I was teaching Preps, the parents of one of the boys came the day after Anzac day to complain.
They said he had had nightmares about the soldiers fighting and he shouldn't have been shown such scary pictures.
The thing was, we hadn't had any program for the Preps so perhaps he'd seen something on tv.
 
Inspired by the Moomintrolls thread, I decided to try to conquer my childhood fears of H.R. Pufnstuf by watching an episode. It's about time, no? Ha. Lasted maybe 2 minutes before I caved. Also, I'd forgotten that everything on that blasted island is alive. *shudder*

Sid and Marty Krofft Arrgh :mad:
 
As daft as this is gonna sound the daleks frightened me, i used to hide behind the settee, i was only young then. When i was sixteen i was a big Tom Baker fan, i went to the Dr Who exhibition at Blackpool, i stood at the entrance and refused to go in as i had heard the dalek voices and figured they were loose, my friend pushed me in, and as i entered nervously i saw that they were safe behind a low wall and running on tracks, i was now feeling brave and leant on the wall, unbeknown to me, one of the tracks ran along the front of the said wall, and i caught one coming at me from the corner of my eye, you have never seen anyone move soooo fast. needless to say, when i stopped running and slowly went back, the other people were laughing at me :p
Dont really have that fear now, much, i just see them as the big salt pots they are :p
 
When I was little, we had a small triangular shelf high up on the bathroom wall. It was too high for me to see what was on it and I'd convinced myself it was something very nasty. I never felt comfortable seeing that shelf.
Another time, I heard a factory siren and someone told me it was a monster and I'd run and hide every time I heard one - for some reason I imagined it was an enormous polar bear about ten storeys high.
 
When I was young, we had an outside toilet (archaic even then) and for some reason it used to absolutely terrify me after sundown. I could walk out into the yard quite happily, but as soon as I entered the toilet the hairs stood up on the back of my neck. It was like there was some kind of presence there. (Though why it would be hanging out in an outside toilet in a terrace house in King's Lynn is quite beyond me.) It felt really oppressive.
 
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