Childhood scares

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I was reading an article in this month's Geek magazine about the wonderful site Kinder Trauma and it got me thinking about things that scared the crap out of you as a kid. The kind of stuff you never forgot, I thought what better way to kick off our Halloween countdown, seeing as all of mine relate to the early seventies. Here are just some of the items that had me scraping the poop out of my short pants back in the day:



When the boat turns evil on H.R. Pufnstuf: I couldn't have been more than 3 when I saw this movie, so it's not surprising that when the innocent sailboat Jimmy gets on turns evil, I firmly planted myself behind the couch. I still kind of get creeped out by that boat, it must have been powerful.







That ventriloquist dummy from Magic:


I'll admit I never saw the film until I was a teen but the ad campaign for it gave me nightmares. I always found Ventriloquist dummies creepy to being with, so this really didn't help matters much. A close second to Magic would be the ads for Killer Baby movie "It's Alive" (which they are remaking) the site of that creepy hand coming out of a crib was disturbing, I was a sucker for such things.




Sleestaks: If I ever get a chance to meet Sid and Marty Krofft, I won't know whether I should thank them or start swinging. I spent many a Saturday morning behind the couch because of these guys, eventually my fear turned into complete obsession, which is were I've been for the past 32 years.






Almost frigging every minute of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory: My parents probably had good intentions when they sat me in front of this (They also thought Animal Farm would be appropriate because it was animated, whoops!) I didn't jive with any of it, The OompaLoompas? Scary! Jack Albertson? Scary! The Ironic punishments? Terrifying, especially when Violet blows up, I've heard some people developed a fetish after seeing that, I think I prefer to be scared but to each their own....

The very sight of Jon Pertwee : Doctor Who was freaking scary when I was five and I respected/feared star Jon Pertwee and that haunting title theme. I remember my father mocling the show one Saturday night and I turned to my dad and said "No, don't make fun of Doctor Who!" I was actually worried for my father's safety.
Ten years later, I was sitting next to Jon Pertwee in a con suite, he was anything but scary.







The Robot Scene from Superman 3: If Richard Pryor wasn't bad enough, the film had a scene of a woman being turned into the most fantastically creepy robot ever, right in the middle of an effing Superman movie. Your guard is totally down and then BAM the producers shove in some good old fashioned nightmare fuel like a shiv in the back!

Well, that's all I care to drudge up seeing as I can't find a picture of my friend Paul's mom (she had crazy eyebrows man!) so tell me what scared the crap out of you in the 70's?

For more Fashion Mockery and 70's toy love visit us at Plaid Stallions.com


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[mego73]

The Magic dummy ad and It's Alive ad both creeped me out too. For a while, skulls used to scare me. Also in the bathroom in my home in 1974 (in Alaska) there was these tiles with white splotches. I was convinced I could see a creepy, scary face in those splotches and it was scary to go to the bathroom.

[ramsey37]

I remember very plainly seeing the TV commercials for this movie as a kid:

For some reason, it never failed to creep me out and give me bad dreams. I would literally run from the room when ever the ad started so I wouldn't see that image.
When I was in first grade, my parents let my sister and me watch "The Blob" with our next door neighbors. We both had nightmares for weeks, especially me. Think about it, the Blob can get you no matter what you do. It can squeeze through any crack to eat you up in your sleep!
I agree about the "It's Alive!" commercials, too. I think I was a teen by the time that movie came out, and the ads still gave me the willies.
And of course there's this scary lady:

I was a freshman in high school before I sat all the way through "The Wizard of Oz", all because I was terrified of the Wicked Witch as a child.
George

[jwyblejr]

Star Wars,to be more exact the scene where Luke returns home to find his aunt and uncle's remains. I was 6 or 7 when I first saw it in 1977 and ran straight to the bathroom.

[vulcan2074]

The EXORCIST. That Movie Scared me So Bad. I was so Freaked out I slept with a Bible after Seeing it.
Sammy

[SpaceCrawler]

The Exorcist was creepy. Not that I saw it as a tiny kid. But all the hype that accompanied it's release (stories of people passing out at the theater, etc) and just the concept - damn spooky to a little Catholic school kid.

Also, I saw a preview for Panic in Needle Park one time when I went to the movies, I think it was just some theater that replayed movies. The trailer to me seemed pretty damn scary. I looked on Youtube for the same trailer but the one there isn't the same I saw as a kid.

Jaws... Alien was "scare the sh*t out of you" scary.
And my older brother's King Zor, that he rigged up with thread to make the jaw move and stuck around the corner of our den and roar at me.

Sean

[Raydeen1]

A few things that scared me.

Darth Vader: I met David Prowse in the full suit at a car show. He scared the crap out of me. He was sweet as pie but when he walked down the aisle in he suit, he was so big and so imposing, myself and several other kids were shaking. I was 8 years old by this time and he still made me very nervous. lol.

Alien: I watched this movie at my uncle's house on Boxing Day. Dumb idea at 9 years old.

Damien: The Omen. This creeped me out big time. Not sure how old I was when I saw it but it really freaked me out.

The number 1 thing that scared me as a kid though.... Sleestaks. I had recurring nightmares for years about these things. Mind you, I believe I was only 4 or 5 when LOTL started on TV so pretty mcu anything remotely scary was blown out of proportion. These guys were a joy to watch but I paid for it every weekend.

[Marvelmania]

The ads forThe Exorcist, The Frog and especially the old movie The Gargoyles scared the poop out of me. Also Barnabas Collins from Dark Shadows freaked me out.

[Hotfoot]

The Legend of Boggy Creek. I still get chills when I sit on a toilet at night if its next to a window. (The creature sticks his hand in the window and the blinds retract and there he is) The night I saw the movie with my Uncle I rigged his window shade to a trip wire and when he went to bed the shade retracted and he let out a blood curdling scream!

Went to see JAWS and since the theater was packed they let everyone out the fire escape doors which led you around the back of the building which was next to a small lake. Even though this was in a Chicago suburb and there were no sharks around the sight of that water made everyone nervous! Someone threw a rock in the water and we all screamed!

Still get chills from the Exorcist.

Several years after Alien I had my first encounter with Cave Crickets crawling across the ceiling of my crawl space. If you have ever seen them with their long legs they look like miniature aliens. look at the rendering on this page Cave Crickets | Horticulture and Home Pest News than imagine a whole bunch of them crawling about a foot above your head in a dark crawlspace. You here a noise and shine your flashlight and they start moving and jumping.

[jwiz154]

"I think we're gonna need a bigger boat". That scene from "Jaws" when the shark rises out of the water while Chief Brody is throwning chum over the side. My parents took me to see this movie when I was only about 8 years old. For along time after that I was even afraid of the water in the bathroom!!

[Earth 2 Chris]

Ooh, those are good ones. I thought I was the only one freaked out by the computer chick in Superman III. I had a Starlog posterbook of the movie, and there was a pic of her in it. I used to skim over that page and refused to look at it.

Creepy gothic horror novel covers used to scare the beejeezus out of me. I got my comics from the drugstore up the street, and next to the comic/magazine rack was a spinner rack full of paperback novels. Seems like every one of them had some gothic typeface and a picture of a woman with blank eyes and a candle. I would try and turn the rack so I wouldn't see the fronts of any of the books.

At my beloved Ben Franklin's store, they had a rack full of GAF View-Master reels. The package for the Wolfman reel frightened me badly. He looked so angry!

But the number one thing that traumatized me as a kid...Lon Chaney Jr. My grandfather's TV was busted, so he came over to our house to watch "Abbot and Costello Meet Frankenstein". He was a huge A&C fan, and in the days before widespread video tape rentals, you had to watch it when you could. When ol' Larry Talbot began his transformation I literally had a panic attack and my parents had to turn the TV off. For years ANYTHING with a werewolf freaked me out beyond belief. I had to hide for a whole month while commercials for "An American Werewolf in London" aired.

Chris

[English Paul]

My huge Adam And The Ants poster that was on my wall above my bed falling on me during the night - now that was scary. It was ages before I came out from under the covers.

[toys2cool]

The EXORCIST we were forbidden from watching this movie,my mom was pregnant with my oldest sister and almost lost the baby in the movie theater while watching it

we would always watch the commercials during Halloween month on TV and finally my sister and I watched it hidden from my mom we kind of cracked up,we were 5 and 6

the ones that really scared the crap out of me were Ghost Story and Dawn of the dead

[nvmbrsdoom5]

Gosh, I could write a novel about the things that scared me as a kid. But I'll spare everyone here, no worries I was a bit of a wussy kid I have to admit.

Needless to say The Exorcist scared me. Still does, I'll admit. It's a deep psychological thing with me I guess. I can't look at Regan's face (once she's started becoming possessed) without getting a strong chill. Being that it's such an iconicly popular image, I come across it all the time in magazines, websites, etc. I can't stand it, haha.

My mother had a hard cover book of it as well, and it had this dust cover with some weird image of a Mary statue on the front. I HATED that pic. I've always had a weird scary vibe from statues as it is. That's a whole 'nother story I won't get into now, lol.

Let's just leave it at anything related to The Exorcist scared the bejeebus out of me!

Some of those old Ben Cooper/Collegeville mask & costume sets used to freak me out too. I remember one particularly that had black hair and a pasty vampyric face, always saw that one every Halloween in the 1970s, and it both intrigued and frightened me.

The movie Salem's Lot really got to me as a kid too, mostly because young kids were victims as well. I was really afraid of some kid floating up to my window and scratching at it for a lil' while there after seeing that flick.

Going back even earlier, when I was probably pre-school age, I can recall being pretty scared of this one Sesame Street cartoon short, where the little kid gets lost riding his tricycle and goes past a bunch of pyschedelic weird stuff (with appropriately trippy music playing) and then comes across this psych-out guy with a yo-yo and a scary laugh. I don't find it scary now, but as a 3 year old it was rather unsettling, especially sandwiched between my blissful SuperGrover and Ernie & Bert sketches!

[nvmbrsdoom5]

The EXORCIST we were forbidden from watching this movie,my mom was pregnant with my oldest sister and almost lost the baby in the movie theater while watching it

I was just having a discussion last night about this movie and it's impact it had on society. I think it's hard for younger people today to understand, maybe because they've been so desensitized, but I'm truly fascinated by the whole Exorcist phenomenon and how it deeply affected so many people when it came out. Noone had seen anything like it before, and it was more than so many people could handle at once. Anytime something comes along like that, some person, thing or event....The Beatles, Star Wars, The Exorcist, Manson, Kennedy, etc.....that leaves an impact and seemingly changes things forever after, really interests me.

Sorry about the tangent, just wanted to say it

Glad your mom and sis wound up being ok!!