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Posted: 17-11-2010 21:32 Post subject:

Struwelpeter scared the bejeezus out of me. Years later I found the book and I could only pick it up by the corner and dump it in the bin. What sort of monster conceived that as a book for children?

Posted: 22-11-2010 23:56 Post subject:

I remember the Ladybird book of the Three Little Pigs used to terrify me. Especially the illustration of the wolf, slyly peering into the pigs house that was made of bricks.

I forgot about it for years and then my wife who is a teacher brought a copy of it back from school one day. Across 30 years of forgetfulness, the fear returned in a nanosecond. The wolf in question had a particularly long muzzle. I can recall having a nightmare as a five year old about it. I was sat outside the bathroom which was directly opposite to my bedroom at the time. My Mam was running my bath and she walked out if the bathroom and started down the stairs. As she did, a long muzzle started to menacingly emerge from behind the wardrobe. I tried to scream to my Mam not to leave me up there as I couldn't move, but I found that I couldn't shout/speak either. Fear ratchets up until I awoke in fits of tears.

Ah, great days.

Secretly threw the book out with the recycling! Heh, there'd be a size 11 and a rounders bat ready for said wolf if he showed up in my nightmares nowadays. Please, no references to Fortean Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals....that hairy bas*ard ahs got it coming to him.

Posted: 28-11-2010 17:16 Post subject:

some of my childhood terrors came from book stories.

a childrens book about ghosts i think it may have been an usbourne book. there was one page about a type of ghost that had a tiny tiny mouth and a mean look on its face. because they had such tiny mouths they couldnt feed properly and had to resort to residing in a living persons stomach and would get in when the person yawned without covering their mouth with their hand.
that freaked me out for years. i used to yawn with my teeth clamped shut my mouth as closed as i could make it and my hands over my mouth.

there was a short story in a book of horror tales. it was a man staying in a very old stone cottage and was told not to look at the ancient stones in the garden at night time. well he did and saw them moving and they saw him watching them and got him and turned him to stone.
i wouldnt mind reading it again does anyone know the name of the short story or the book?

a short story in a childs book about 2 children accidently breaking the panel hiding a fireplace in their home. and it started making a strange noise like it was talking to them. they started placeing objects inside and the objects would return with a strange worm button on them and the older brother decided to get in to investigate and he comes back unable to speak and is clearly insane and he has a worm button on his face.

some starnge short stories that id like to reread if anyone could help out with titles and authors

things that still make me uneasy as an adult.
the generic whitely striber type of alien.
the gas mask child in dr whos are you my mother episode.

Posted: 28-11-2010 21:30 Post subject:

Posted: 28-11-2010 22:00 Post subject:

Found it! It's called Swap-Shop (was Mr Fisk a Noel Edmonds fan? Or the opposite?), and here's a review:
http://vectoreditors.wordpress.com/2010/02/13/swap-shop/

Looks like some details have been distorted by my memory, but I got some of it right.

Posted: 29-11-2010 02:31 Post subject:

oh yeah i remember nicholas fisks books now. he wrote some pretty creepy stuff for a child. "todays" kids scary novels aint a patch on fisks and some other books from the 70's and 80's childhood.
i want to read a copy of this book so i hope to find one somewhere.

Posted: 29-11-2010 17:25 Post subject:

I have always loved ghost stories, even as a child, but what really scared me was a tape I had, featuring some kind of squirrell and its strange friends. All in German.
There was a mad professor, who had invented a pill that would clean up the environment somehow [I really can't remember] but the main character accidentally swallowed it, which turned him inside-out Shocked

, so the first side ended with him making these really squidgy noises and calling for help because he was turned inside out...I always stopped the tape there and never dared to listen to the second side until I asked my best friend to listen to it with me.
I was petrified and had my fingers ready on my ears. Basically others turned inside out and in the end someone made it all return to normal! Phew.
After that it became my most favourite tape.

Another thing that scared me was a picture in our large Lexicon, which showed a Japanese demon mask on an actor, the picture was from the 50's and I always skipped that page as it really freaked me out.

Strange what kids find scary, I didn't find my Devil-pupped scary, I used to kiss it and play with it all the time, I also used to read [since I was 5] the comic 'Gespenster Geschichten' [Ghost stories], which were really graphic. It seems kids find more subtle things scary. Things that have no explanation?

Posted: 11-04-2013 23:14 Post subject:

Posted: 11-04-2013 23:52 Post subject:

That reminds me of the Pete and Dud routine where Dud tells Pete that if he doesn't get to the foot of the stairs before the toilet has finished its flushing and filling back up again, he will die.

Posted: 12-04-2013 11:37 Post subject:

Not so much tv, we used to relish the Hammer horror films,presented iirc by Peter Tomlinson with his panda.
Places, the fields where you didn't go, the wind blew my cowboy hat into the field and my older sister had to get it, I can't remember the particular terror in the fields but none of us would go in there.
The thing in the local cemetery, backed up by reports of a ghost sighting.
Electricity pylons for some reason,lost in memory,especially those in a field Shocked

Posted: 16-04-2013 22:40 Post subject:

I've been thinking about the quite innocent things that actually used to terrify me.

My dad used to tickle me a lot in play fights which was fun, but it lead to recurring nightmares about 'the tickly man' coming down the street to get me. Think Mr Tickle from the Mr Men with the long arms but a human version. The dreams were horrendous!

My dad also liked to scare me by shouting 'RED EYES!' probably expecting me to imagine some werewolf type creature creeping about but what I always imagined was an old man in a flat cap with round glasses and red eyes staring through the window! Many a sleepless night with that too!

My dad has a lot to answer for bless him!

Posted: 17-04-2013 09:48 Post subject:

[quote="Ilikepencils"]My dad also liked to scare me by shouting 'RED EYES!' probably expecting me to imagine some werewolf type creature creeping about but what I always imagined was an old man in a flat cap with round glasses and red eyes staring through the window! Many a sleepless night with that too!
[quote]

Shocked

We lived by a forest which surrounded a reservoir when I was young, and my dad would take me and our dogs thought it several times a week for a walk. He used to love telling me about "Red eyes". They were a tribe of men who couldn't be seen in the trees as their skin was so dark and the only way to know if they were there was to see their red eyes. Shocked

They used to take naughty kids and tie them to trees and thats where the kids would stay forever. Sad

......They fuck you up, your mum & dad.......

Posted: 30-04-2013 22:17 Post subject:

Posted: 02-05-2013 15:54 Post subject:

Brrrr.... Yeh, maybe their father's told them about the red eyes? TBH, that forest that I mentioned before is a rather odd place, and I'm not sure why we visited it so often when we had loads of fields and farmland to wander about on. Shocked

Posted: 02-05-2013 19:40 Post subject:

I had a childhood fear of arranging my legs in a certain way when I'm lying in bed because I know (irrationally, of course) that if I lie like that, something awful will happen. I still can't lie like that and I'm in my 40s now. Shocked

I also can't BEAR it if there's a gap in the curtains when they are closed. My childish self has a name for that gap, but I can't bring myself to type it here and I never say it out loud in this context.

Blimey. Very Happy