Adults Share The Minor Things That Used To Scare Them When They Were Kids
Ready for a walk down childhood fear lane?
Childhood fears can be oddly specific, and sometimes the smallest things leave the biggest impression. A noisy machine, a strange face, or even a harmless object can feel absolutely terrifying when you are little.
In this collection, adults look back at the minor things that used to scare them as kids, and the answers range from funny to surprisingly relatable. Some of the fears are tied to movies, stores, and everyday places, while others are just the kind of random childhood logic that makes perfect sense at the time.
A few of these will probably bring back memories you forgot you had. Read on.
The full thread can be found here, but here are some of the best childhood fears.
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"Chuck E. Cheese. That giant rat used to scare the hell out of me. Once he jumped into the ball pit, and I thought I was going to die."
"Mirrors. That Bloody Mary thing, dude."
E.T. was apparently not a comforting childhood movie for everyone.
"E.T. When he screamed after being found in the closet, it really freaked me out. Then the scene where he turned ghostly white traumatized me. I still can't watch E.T. to this day."
That one clearly stuck for a long time.
"The movie Spirited Away. I was terrified of Yubaba and No-Face. Also, the scene where Chihiro’s parents transform into pigs haunted me for years."
"I used to be afraid of the workers behind the milk coolers in the grocery store. I can remember grabbing a milk for my mom and seeing people walking around back there, and I was completely disturbed by it."
Even a grocery store aisle could feel like a mystery zone.
It’s the same kind of family strain as asking a sister to rehome her aggressive pet snake.
"The drain in the bathtub. I'd use my hand to make all the water drain quietly instead of letting it yell at me."
"Mr. Blobby..."
"Car washes. Loud, claustrophobic, weird smells, everything would go dark... some scary stuff right there."
"When I was about 4, I asked my dad why he was sealing up an old cat flap. I was too young to know the word ‘drafts,’ so I spent about a year terrified that there were bands of feral giraffes wandering around England, sticking their heads randomly into people’s cat flaps."
"The gaps between boards on a pier."
"Flushing the toilet. For some reason, I was convinced that the devil could come out while it was flushing."
"My grandpa had one of those 'Uncle Sam Wants YOU!' recruitment posters. It hung up in his downstairs workshop, and nothing scared me like seeing that face and that finger pointing at me. I would have nightmares of a dismembered torso chasing me through my childhood home, a grizzled, war-ravaged bearded man screaming 'I WANT YOU!' as I fled."
"At the wave pool, I was without swimming goggles, and I tried to see what kind of mechanism was creating the waves at the very end of the pool, but I couldn't make it out with blurred vision. However, I was absolutely terrified of somehow getting sucked in or something through the metal bars that were preventing people from getting anywhere near anything that could actually harm them. Young me was very curious and very scared at the same time that day."
"Vacuum cleaners."
"Horses, mainly their teeth."
"When you pressed the release button on a tape measure and it retracted at what seemed like Mach speed at my hand. I got hit on the hand once and was terrified of those things forever."
Childhood logic is strange, but it is rarely boring.
After Chuck E. Cheese’s “giant rat in the ball pit” fear, see why someone refused to dog sit for a snake-owning friend in this AITA.
