What is/was your greatest childhood fear?

My fear is reading a thread title with the improper use of your. Truly horrifying.

But seriously something similar happened to me. I was using a boogie board out on some small waves when I was younger, and one large wave came out of nowhere. I was dragged under in a riptide and completely lost my sense of direction, having no idea which way was up or down while I was pulled away from shore. I managed to get to the surface and back to land, but I've never really liked going out into the water since.

I had a debilitating fear that my mom was going to die or leave me. I had a few reasons for the fear but mostly it was just extreme anxiety.

I am also arachnophobic and always have been. Fucking spidery bastards.

I've had a fear of lightning since childhood.

Also, as a kid, I had a recurring nightmare of a witch-like woman who could create purple strings with her hands, which she'd use to ensnare you. Fortunately, those nightmares have ceased.

I also had a near drowning experience as a kid. As a result, I also have that fear of large bodies of water. I could never shake it. I know how to swim, but I still get anxious and have a hard time doing it.

I also had the large body of water/dark water fear - and I didn't even have to nearly drown to pick it up. Of course it was mostly cured when I swam across a river in a fit of stupidity one afternoon, but only mostly.

Getting lost and being unable to find my way back. I grew up in a pretty safe suburb when I was little, and my parents let me play in the yard frequently. One day I decided to go down the road, and find out what was down there. I got turned around and couldn't find my way back.

I was only gone for maybe 20 minutes before my parents found me. I wasn't even that far away, but to a little kid it seemed pretty scary.

I used to have recurring nightmares in which I was falling sideways along the road and unable to control where I was going, just kinda fall/flying out of control, further and further away.

Cobras. Maybe blame it on GI Joe cartoons. I was freaking terrified that cobras would somehow get under my bed and bite me.

Rotting corpses or skeletons. It took me a really, really long time to get over my overpowering fear of the sight of a corpse in any state of decomposition. This lasted well into my teenage years. It made movies like Indiana Jones, Ghostbusters, Batman, etc. hard to watch for me or I had to cover my eyes at those parts. It was so bad that my dad had a science magazine with a picture of the Iceman on the cover and I couldn't look at it.



This picture would have immobilized me with terror.

What if you went a museum with exhibits that showed real mummies? Nightmare scenario for you?

I ask because I remember going to the British Museum, in London, and looking at their mummies, and being slightly unnerved that I was looking at a 2000-year-old dead guy.

Spoilered because I'm not a total douchebag, but still enough of one to know you'll look anyway...

Chucky from Child's Play. Mostly because I had a doll that looked a lot like it. My mom wouldn't let us throw it out because she kept insisting I'd grow out of it. By the time I did (when I finally watched Child's Play) I was 10 years old and too older for the damn thing.

makare said:

I am also arachnophobic and always have been. Fucking spidery bastards.

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funny thing about that... I was reading a paper on that in which it was laid out like this. people laugh when we are afraid of little spiders, we scream and run, we are naturally wired to be afraid of them. why is that? because at some point in the far past there was something that looked or moved like a spider that if it got to us would kill us in a instant. This means for practical purposes that when it was warmer on this planet, much warmer, there was a LARGE creature that was spider like that would attack us. now we know that largest size that an arthropods body can support on our planet is about 1-1.5 feet in dimension.(don't count the giant deep water arthropods, thats a little different since they have gills. the limiting factor is their cardiovascular system. land arthropods don't have lungs, they have air-holes to exchange gas all over their bodies) in very warm parts of the world(Australia, South America) there are spiders of this size. Basically, the planet has been MUCH COOLER with the ice ages and the insects have been much smaller for most of our modern existence on this planet, but we are getting warmer, and if we keep getting warmer we may see those giant eight legged freaks again!

Bowielee said:

Spoilered because I'm not a total douchebag, but still enough of one to know you'll look anyway...

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I like how you made my purple lightning, effectively combining the two things I posted about. That was a nice touch.

I guess mine would be needles. A hurtful visit to the doctor's to get my vaccinations, and I was afraid of the things for a good long while. They're long, they're sharp, and people want to stick them into your flesh. Ugh! And what was worse to a young child, my parents were just sitting there, letting that dude hurt me and not doing a thing to prevent it! One of the most embarrassing memories from my childhood is of me and two of my classmates in elementary school going to the nurse's office to get a vaccination for something. I kind of lost it there, and broke down.

I've long since grown out of that fear, but I remember being truly terrified of needles.

These fucking things.... It was a Kleenex dispenser. My Grandmother had one of these in nearly every room of the house. If you had the sniffles, she was sure to put one on the nightstand near your head. Nothing like having a victim of a decapitation sitting on the freaking end table smiling sweetly at you in her death....

Also the in the converted garage there was a picture of her Great-Grandfather with his two brothers, they looked like Civil War Veterans, that had their picture taken when they were in their 70's. They were just some really hard, haggard looking men. The picture was lit throughout the night from the street lamp. So it was basically the only thing you could see in that large room, was these stern men and a baby's head....

When I was child I fell in gravel somewhere and scraped my knee. I also got the gravel stuck in would so my mom had to tweeze the teensy rocks out.

After that the night mare started and has persisted into my adult years. In it I am just hanging out somewhere, like my back yard, when my hands begins to get itchy. I scratch the back of it and it feels...wrong. Lumpy. Hard.

Sometimes, around this point, I realize I'm having that nightmare again and I try to ignore the feeling...however it goes beyond itchy. It burns and pricks. I NEED to touch it, to relieve it. So I scratch and the flesh tears away. Sometimes I sob like a little kid, other times I'm trying to convince myself to just stop.

There's no blood, just flaking flesh, as if I'm made of dried leaves. Then I see it. A twisted, black pine cone looking thing is in my hand...and it's taking root.

I always wake up around this time. I don't see what the roots do.

My husband loves making fun of this nightmare because it is silly.

The room I slept in growing up is the same room that my grandma died in... still scares me to think about it and I swear I heard shit all the time in there

Aww, guys, I want to cuddle you all!

I'm on the 'afraid of spiders' train. I'm getting much better about it - I can now kill them on my own. But I can't help but whine and cry about it. I remember when I was little my friend and I had a sleepover and didn't want to sleep. So, we were playing 'detectives' and went wandering around the basement. We were looking for just a bunch of random things and saw a white lint looking thing on the ground. Army crawling over to it, we shove our faces super close to it, which I'm pretty sure we were maybe2-3 inches away from it. Then it sprouts its legs and starts running. I'm pretty sure it was a spider and remembering that just gives me the heebeejeebeez.

Like I said, I am getting better about that, but now I'm also quite afraid of the thought of being stuck in a room and having it fill with water. I'm a good swimmer, I love to swim, but that thought....just...no. I have near panic attacks when I watch scences like that in movies. (Thank you The Guardian..)

Spiders, dogs, wide open spaces, crowds, the crushing ennui of middle-class mediocrity.

I still have an abnormal fear of clowns.

A few years ago, I was at a Habs summit (basically another forum I post in have a gathering of Hab fans meeting up and spending a day together, tours, breakfast, drinks, dinner, hockey game, charity events etc...).... and as we left the breakfast place I suddenly got accosted by 3 clowns on the sidewalk. One comes up to my face and gives me a hard time for wearing the Habs jersey and goes, "You're wearing that toilet seat the wrong way" (the C logo).

I just froze there for a few seconds in fear of these clowns.

I was at a friend's kid birthday party last year. Suddenly this really fat clown comes in and starts to play gags on people. I had to GTFO of there.

Gusto said:

Spiders, dogs, wide open spaces, crowds, the crushing ennui of middle-class mediocrity.

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Quick, someone play The Shins!

Sorry. I know what you mean, honestly. Though I don't have a problem with dogs until they bite.

I am also afraid of deep water.

Centipedes, especially these bastards.

Look at those soulless eyes. You know it's waiting for me to sleep so it can use those thousands of little legs to burrow into my brain and start commanding me.
Gah!

Emrys Holy fuck that is upsettingly gross.

Chad Sexington said:

Emrys Holy fuck that is upsettingly gross.

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I know! And I use to live in the deep South with all manner of snakes, spiders, alligators and other nasty creatures. They didn't bother me a bit, though I didn't go out of my way to play with them. I move to Kingston, ON and find a 4" house centipede undulating over my floor one night, ululating and waving little scimitars around. And when I tried to catch it, did it run away like a normal insect? Oh no, this thing rushed me! I've hated the little buggers ever since.

Emrys said:

Centipedes, especially these bastards.
Look at those soulless eyes. You know it's waiting for me to sleep so it can use those thousands of little legs to burrow into my brain and start commanding me.
Gah!

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Google : desert spiders .... I dare you.

Aren't some centipedes poisonous?

Anything worm...ish... bothers me. Centipedes, millipedes, caterpillars... even things like snakes. Something about the way they move causes this extreme distress in the core of my being. It's totally irrational.

Quotemander Prime said:

Aren't some centipedes poisonous?

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Yeah, but these aren't. They're actually beneficial and eat stuff like silverfish and other bugs in your house.
Doesn't make me any kinder to them.