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Posted: 08-08-2001 19:08 Post subject: CHILDISH TERRORS

Did anyone here when they were kids (or even as adults for that matter Smile

) have a ghost that lived in the toilet and if you didn't get downstairs before the toilet finished flushing, the ghost would get you and you'd DIE?

Or any other childish fears - I know that the fears I had as a child weren't as a result of being threatened with the bogey man or anything like that (there was also the red indian who would come and scalp me in bed if I didn't tuck my hair in under the covers)

Are these any relation to the 'invisible companions' that some kids have, do you think?

How do these ideas get into kids' minds (there's a certain influence from TV, etc, of course, but . . .)

Posted: 08-08-2001 20:19 Post subject:

Iremember as a small child not wanting to leave my shoes on the floor when I went to bed as I was sure a snake would crawl into them, where I got that idea is anyone's guess.

Posted: 08-08-2001 20:35 Post subject:

I never suffered from Toilet Terror, but I'm sure that over the years I've heard other people describe this, or something like it as one of their childhood horrors.

The best childhood terror story I know is about my younger brother, who, when he was very small, came in from the garden in a totally hysterical state. Eventually my mum calmed hime down enough for him to tell what had happened to him. He sobbed about this black thing that had been following round everywhere he went, no matter how much he ran away from it!
After a few questions it soon became clear that this hideous presence was, in fact,...........................his shadow!!

How we laughed! And how we mocked him about it till he grew bigger than the rest of us and could beat us up.

Posted: 08-08-2001 21:03 Post subject:

Or there's always the opposite effect; happily going round to your Gran's house for years before, at the age of eight, realising that *there isn't actually anyone upstairs, despite the footsteps you always hear*.

"That's Fred" my Gran would say, unhelpfully.

A non-terror that only resolved into one when I was old enough to think 'rationally'.

Posted: 08-08-2001 23:57 Post subject:

Posted: 09-08-2001 00:13 Post subject:

The last reply reminds me that not only did I worry about snakes under the bed but also a stain on the ceiling where the rain had leaked in, every night a different scary face.

Posted: 09-08-2001 03:34 Post subject:

My childhood fears were many and varied. The most memorable were 'The Snowbeast' and 'Dracula'

'The Snowbeast' was a truly terrible horror film (Jaws above the snowline sort of thing) which scared the crap out of me for years. It was ridiculous. It hardly ever snows in Aberdeen and the damn beast was too big to get into most of the buildings I spent time in. The worst part of it was that the incidental music in the film was a kind of sub-psycho screaching sound that sounded exactly like a school chair leg being dragged accross a wooden floor. Thus, every time someone in my class at school scraped their chair back i was plunged into abject terror.

I defeated this fear simply by watching the film again. It was a very bad film, and not scary in any way.

For some reason I also had an irrational fear of Dracula. I didn't even know who or what he was I'd just heard the name as a child and it stuck. Every time I heard an ominous creaking on the stairs as I was lying in bed at night I would freeze. I would lie there rigid, breathing as shallowly as possible, hoping that he wouldn't notice me or would think that I was already dead.

Then I read the book and the fear went away, although, bing a fortean, I asked for a silver crusifix for my next birthday......just in case.

Cujo
(my imagination is out to get me)

Posted: 09-08-2001 04:15 Post subject:

I guess we'd all quite like to find a movie or book that could
match the scares we had as kids.

What scares kids though can be difficult to predict. There was a page
in one primary school reading book that I could not bear to look at.
It was only an illustration of Ruskin's King of the Golden River, which
featured a jug and a plate with faces, talking, as they were carried
down a stream. But to me it was nightmarish.

Movies likewise might also turn out to be a disappointment when
seen years later. There is a 1947 movie called the Red House, an
Edward G. Robinson picture that scared me senseless as a sprog.
Reading accounts elsewhere I have seen it had that effect on others
too. It seems not to have been shown for years on UK telly. It can now be
seen for free online as a streaming video, but it won't run on my system:(

Perhaps it's just as well. Other accounts suggest it was a creepy melodrama
rather than a supernatural picture. All I know is the atmosphere got to me.

Standard horrors like the Hammer Frankenstein and Draculas seemed then
as now fairly tame but I was really freaked by Max Schreck as Nosferatu. The
more so because my first glimpses of it came in a compilation of silent
movies which were mainly comedies.

Not many movies scare me these days but here are three that do:
Vampyr by Carl Theodor Dreyer;
Onibaba by Kaneto Shindo, Japanese women and Samurai ghost;
Dead of Night by Cavalcanti and others.

Posted: 09-08-2001 09:23 Post subject:

I used to have a fear of things being open in my room! Every night before I went to bed I used to go round the room and make sure that every cupboard, drawer or door was closed tightly, that way nothing horrible could use this as an entrance into my room.

Someone earlier mentioned imaginery friends. I had one of those as well. My mum told me that I used to go and sit at the bottom of the garden for hours and not say anything. When i came back in she'd ask me what I was doing to which i would reply that I was talking to Wormy Friend. Apparently I described him as a big worm-like thing. I have absolutely no memory of this however.

Posted: 09-08-2001 09:25 Post subject:

Mind you, there's nothing like a good, old-fashioned clown for scaring the kids. I used to think they really looked like that, I didn't realise they used makeup.

Posted: 09-08-2001 11:48 Post subject:

Yep, the "toilet monster" was one of my many fears as a child. The genesis of this fear was probably the sound which the cistern made which resembled an unearthly scream. Like many children I also hated the wardrobe door being open or even ajar.

Someone also mentioned imaginary friends. I had a rather strange friend when I was around five or six, I believe. The 'friend' was a rather grisly dead chap with curly hair who wore a white robe (I had several dreams about him). He couldn't leave the house and could only be spoken to either in the attic, living room or my bedroom.

Posted: 09-08-2001 13:22 Post subject:

NEVER had any imaginary friends (not sure if that is sad or not( but count me in with the toilet thing. Especially at my Grans house.

Very Happy

Posted: 09-08-2001 13:56 Post subject: Rentaghost

Between the ages of about 5 and 6, I was convinced, at times, that I was a ghost, and therefore terrified of being found out by my parents.

It would be nice to say this was evidence of personal reincarnation, however, I think it was the result of watching one episode of Rentaghost too many. confused

Posted: 09-08-2001 14:32 Post subject:

I distinctly remember that at the age of three a small creature with spindly limbs and black sheeny skin dropped on me in my bed and started trying to attack me. My parents distinctly remember me making a huge row and rushing in to find me tangled up in my duvet...

I had a 3/4 mile walk to the school bus from the age of 8, along a narrow road through woodland with occasional houses. I distinctly remember there being a monster in the section furthest from any houses- it could clearly be heard crashing about in the woods (although a sceptic might have been of the opinion that it was actually the sound of squirrels and blackbirds, and was less a "crashing" and more a "scuttling".) I still feel a bit uneasy when I walk by there now.

It is interesting to notice how many of the childhood fears people have mentioned in this thread are similar to primitive superstitions and taboos. Is this evidence of some kind of superstitious behaviour hardwired into our make up?

Posted: 09-08-2001 15:14 Post subject:

Your parents didn't like you very much did they...that would scare the living daylights out of me....