Childhood Fears

[Deleted]

Real or not,childhood fears can have a profound effect on us and the way we look at the world.
What do you recall being afraid of as a child? Did your parents help to calm these fears and how? When (if ever) did you outgrow this fear(s)?

[Deleted]

I did not have any irrational fears as a child but was wary of real dangers, such as the snakes around the house or ferocious looking dogs. Therefore my parents were really not of much use in this department.

I also understood how nightmares worked, so even though I might wake up terrified and want to get in bed with my parents when I was very small, I knew that it was not real and just needed the calming effect of snuggling up to my mother.

Now, she's the one I have to calm, and she needs snuggling just as bad.

[tillystar]

Apart from the Imps in the toilet issues I only really had one other fear.

I had a recuring nightmare that only came a couple of times a year and when it did it would stay with me all the next day and scare me. I dreamt that it was world war 3 and everyone in England was living in trenches and hiding from the Nazis and Japanese (I guess all this picked up from snippets of war info as I was very young about 4 when they started) and it was all down to me and if I handed myself over to the Japanese for torture it would end but I was too scared and felt so bad about not turning myself in and causing all this misery.

I would always go and sleep with my Mum and she would sing and tell stories until I forgot. Usually the next night too, as I said the fear would stay with me all of the next day.

Funnily enough I was talking to a friend recently and mentioned this and she noted it started around the time things got weird at home and said did I I feel responsible and I don't consciously remember feeling that but its funny how even now I take responsiblity for everyone's problems. I had never thought of it before but I think she maybe had a point. Either way, they were horrible and I can still remember images from those dreams so clearly.

I wasn't really scared of real things and ended up in hospital lots to prove it... After our first trip to A&E with Lil Star yesterday I can see history repeating itself here.

[tillystar]

Oh and my Mum, my brother and I used to intentionally terriy ourselves sometimes telling ghost stories until the early hours and then we would all be too scared and would all get into bed together and sing until it started to get light or we fell asleep. Sometimes clutching rosary beads!

I think my mum did it to entertain us but would end up scared herself! It was great fun though, in a warped kind of way

[traveler63]

Spiders!!!!!!My cousin (male) cornered my with a Daddy Long Legs and scared the crap of me( I was 6) and that was all she wrote on spiders. Still can't stand them. Mom was very helpful in comforting me and said they really wouldn't hurt me. There was no convincing me on that!!!!!

[Deleted]

There used to be a TV show on Sunday nights that we watched called Rescue 8,my brothers were real into it. One particular night the episode involved the rescue team all wearing gas masks. I was terrified at the sight of it and had subsequent nightmares about it for a long time.
The show ended right before bedtime and I remember my mother having to come in my room and calm me down.
I had three older brothers and they loved to instill all kinds of fear in me. Sometimes they were successful other times not.
At one time I had a fear of bad (loud)thunderstorms and would crawl under the bed.

[happytraveller]

Below our old holiday house in the mountains there's a cemetery. Next to the cemetery is a tool shed with concrete ground. There's a concrete lid in the ground and a pit underneath it and that's filled with (very) old human skulls and bones. When I was 8 years old my dad thought he would show me something interesting (he's a biology teacher) and took me to the shed and lifted the lid up. First there were some very big and ugly black spiders running away that had been sitting under the lid. Next thing I saw was an ugly brown scull "looking" up towards us and in each eye cavity was a black spider sitting. That's the picture I had in my head for the next few nights and it scared the shit out of me. From that moment on I was scared of sculls, any type.
But hey, I've forgiven my dad

[rikita]

i was scared of just about everything...

i would often read or tell my brothers stories until they were asleep - and then, when i was the only one awake, i felt like i was alone and started getting scared. i would hide under my blanket, staring out into the room in case a robber or a ghost came in. if i had to pee it would be really scary, i just didn't dare to go to the toilet. in the end i would finally get myself to stand up and go downstairs to go pee and tell my parents i was scared - but they'd sometimes comfort me, but usually send me back to bed. there was a toilet upstairs too, but i was scared of that one... once i was told by my brother about a movie a friend of his had seen where a person is pulled into the toilet - and that made me very scared. i would panic at the thougth of the door of the upstairs toilet being open or the lid up, wondering what might crawl out of it. i was very angry at my brothers when they didn't close the door and the lid (which they never did) and refused to go back to do so.

i was also very scared of airplanes flying over the house - we had military airplanes flying over it almost every night, practicing or something. i was always thinking they might drop bombs. when our teacher told us in second grade about nuclear bombs i was very panicking, especially when she told us that even locking yourself in a windowless room wouldn't be safe. also, each time i saw a military car, i would get away as fast as possible, always fearing a war might have broken out and they might shoot me.

after watching "the birds" i would refuse to sleep with an open window... but even stuff like the ghostbusters cartoon version would scare the crap out of me and cause me to not be able to sleep...

[Deleted]

I have a friend from childhood who was terrified of the image of Mr. Peanut,still is to some degree. She has no idea of it's origin.

[bixaorellana]

I was terribly prone to nightmares when I was a kid, and very afraid of the dark. We lived in Alaska when I was four and five in connected one-story housing with basements. The main heating system for our section of housing happened to be in our basement and its moans and groans didn't help my constant low-level terror.

One night my dad took my brother and me to town (Fairbanks) to see a kiddie movie. When we got there, it turned out that our information was incorrect and what was actually playing was "The Thing" (the original, w/James Arness). Oh please, Daddy, please, please, please -- we won't be scared, we promise!

Well, my brother was fine, but I was a basket case. We slept in the same room and the light was left on at my request. This was in the early Cold War years and we were on a US Air Force Base with the Evil Commies right across the Bering Strait. I guess there were air raid tests or something, because we'd have to turn out the lights sometimes. I can remember pulling the chenille spread up over my scared little head and thinking the pattern made by the raised parts were fingers of the monster coming to get me.

[Deleted]

I was terrified of bats as a child and outgrew it or so I thought. It seems that bats in the particular location I remember them being as a child came back to me last night while visiting the windmill across the street from my mother's house.There they were,and I had a near panic attack. And,it's ridiculous, as I keep two houses for bats in my garden in NOLA ,and encourage their presence.!! Maybe this belongs in irrational thread.

[hwinpp]

The only nightmare I can remember was when I was 8 or 9 years old and I realised we were all going to die and everything was going to end some time.

Very dramatic, I know

[lola]

That is scary, hwinpp.

I'm still not crazy about large dogs lunging at me with bared fangs, I must admit, though the only time I was ever bit was by a little yapper.

[cristina]

I was absolutely convinced that a hairy, dirty monster lived under my bed (only at night, though). So I would always run and jump into bed from as far away as possible if it was dark. Once, when my grandmother was visiting (and my bedroom doubled as the guestroom), I got up in the middle of the night for a not-so-awake bathroom run. And run, I did. It was a straight shot from the bathroom end of the hall right upon my bed. My graceful dive on to the bed my grandmother was, up until then, peacefully sleeping in, woke the whole house. No one has ever let me forget how I almost killed Nana.

The two movies that gave me nightmares, likely because I was far too young to have been watching them in the first place, were (already mentioned) The Birds as well as To Kill a Mockingbird. The latter one I didn't watch again until a few years ago when one of my children had to write about it for a school assignment. It wasn't as scary as a grown-up, so I can only think that that I must have identified with Scout and the attack on her.

Now, I have new, grown-up irrational fears to replace the monster under the bed. Like bridges. And cliffs. And anything else really high. But especially bridges.

[Deleted]

To think that the monster that scared you so much was just a shy dust bunny!

[spindrift]

When I was a child I was afraid of the dark. My mother had to leave my bedroom door slightly ajar and the landing light on. We lived in a 3 storey georgian house with a huge cellar underneath. Sometimes I had to go through the cellar to reach the back garden. This always terrified me because (like Bixa's story) old gas masks had been dumped there from the time of WW2. I remember them still. They were black and seemed very large with a breathing tube in the front. I used to rush through the cellar trying not to look at them.

I'm not afraid of the dark anymore.