When I was a kid, I was always terrified of being shot in the back with an arrow as I ran up the stairs in our house. So I would sprint up that set of stairs as fast as I could like my life depended on it. Every single time.
Clearly, I was a normal child and have now transitioned into a well-adjusted adult.
Okay, maybe not.
AskReddit users went on the record and shared their frightful childhood memories.
1. Freaked out by the peach.
“James and the Giant peach. Not the insects, but the actual peach.”
2. Don’t like that sound at all.
“The sound of a balloon popping i dont know why but that used to absolutely terrify me.”
3. Haunted by ET.
“Fucking ET, the Extra-Terrestrial. Used to give me nightmares that he was trying to stab me with a long butcher knife.”
4. Still fired up about this one.
“China dolls, but it’s not ridiculous and I’m 40 next week and still scared of them.
Right, so they’re toys, yes? So why do their EYES FUCKING MOVE? They can fuck off.”
5. Even the tiny ones…
“Spiders, even the tiny ones. I really have a severe arachnophobia.”
6. Beware of the wolves.
“Imaginary wolves. I grew up in a house in the woods. Our nearest neighbors were a mile away. Whenever I went outside to get something from my moms car or the mailbox or whatever I always imagined that a pack of wolves was on the prowl and if I wasn’t as fast as I could possibly go, they would eat me.”
7. Urban legend.
“Bloody Mary. Where you go into the bathroom, turn the light off, turn a round three times while chanting “Bloody Mary” three times and then look in the mirror and she will appear and scratches will be left on your face.”
8. From beyond…
“I was convinced the martians from Mars Attacks would eventually show up and vaporize us all. You couldn’t convince me otherwise.
My dad would say, “aliens aren’t real.” And I would counter with my paranoid logic, “But how do you KNOW that? You can’t know for sure.””
9. Don’t run in these.
“Courdory pants. When I was 3 or 4, my sister told me that if I wore them and ran, my crotch would catch on fire. I am 31 and still have a strong aversion to courdory.”
10. We’re under attack!
“As a toddler I would watch those trashy ultraviolent action movies they’d play on TNT. It was one of the few times he was ever chill/not screaming or hitting me or my brother, so we were all in.
Then military operations against our house became a very real fear. What if they use paratroopers??!!”
11. Stranger danger.
“The stranger danger stuff. Still waiting to be offer drugs, lol Was offered alchohol when underage, declined because 1. beer is gross and 2. I was watching a sick baby.
Well now as an adult lots of people in my life are strangers.”
12. Scared in general.
“The talking toilet from Look Who’s Talking. Gave me my very first nightmare where I couldn’t talk or run, I could just stare helplessly at this talking toilet, which was giant in my nightmare. I was 3 or 4 I think. For a while I was just scared of toilets in general.
I also remember being afraid of the country being invaded for no particular reason. My mom tried to reason with me that anything can happen, so it’s not worth worrying about. She said a plane could crash into the house at any moment too, but it probably won’t. This reasoning backfired because for a while I was scared of a plane crashing into the house randomly.
Oh and also, when I was 5, I thought a tornado drill was a tornado that could drill through the ground and get you through the floor…….I was a pretty scared child in general.”
13. He’s heeeeeeeere.
“I always thought Big Foot would decide to show up outside of my back yard door late at night.”
14. That makes sense.
“Purple gloves. I knew that if a doctor put on purple gloves, they were about to get a needle or do something that would hurt. I had a lot of anxiety with doctors and doctors offices, probably because I was born premature and spent the first three months of my life in the NICU and dealt with medical problems the first three to four years of my life.”
15. I definitely thought about this as a kid.
“The never ending timeline of eternity in the afterlife (if it exists).”
That brought back a flood of memories from when I was a kid, that’s for sure.
Do you remember the things that freaked you out when you were a child?
Share them with us in the comments! Let’s compare notes on this one!
