As a child, clowns, mimes and Santa Claus scared the crap out of me. But it’s common knowledge that every child hates those things, so they’re not even worth mentioning. There are, however, a couple of things as a child of the 80′s that freaked me out, even though they probably shouldn’t have. In no particular order:
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When I was 8 or 9, I somehow found a book on the Jonestown massacre in the library. It contained photographs.
Okay, I give myself permission to be freaked out by that. Let’s visit some other things that don’t reveal my fragile psyche, shall we?
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You know how when you finish watching a television show? After the credits stop rolling, they show these three second clips for the production company that has some graphic and a little sound blurb that was twice as loud as the show itself? Bumpers, I think they’re called. That shit scared me. Like, the cat from MTM Productions after the Bob Newhart show and how it would say “meow” in the old man’s voice? *shiver*
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Various “bad guys” from 80′s game shows: The Devil from that stupid slot machine game show, The Dragon from “Tic-Tac-Dough,” The Whammy from “Press Your Luck.” No lie, when someone got a whammy, I would run behind the couch and hide.
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Remember the intro to “Reading Rainbow?” For those of you not from the United States: basically, a woman would sing the lyrics “butterfly in the sky / I can fly twice as high / take a look / it’s in a book / reading rainbow.” All the while, an animated butterfly would transform real-life children reading books into horribly drawn animated images of wizards, mermaids and astronauts.
I didn’t want to be a badly drawn astronaut. It would be cold and lonely and my my spacesuit could crack and I would run out of oxygen and implode. And my face would be drawn all wrong. All because a fucked up multi-colored animated butterfly caught me with an open book.
As a result, I didn’t open a book for seven years.
Me? Issues? I don’t have issues.
when I was little – I made the mistake of watching kingdom of the spiders…..it was bad enough that Shatner had to sing in it. The scene that still haunts me was when he was climbing up the stairs of his house – a building already taken over by billions and billions of spiders. Plus those spiders were also crawling all over this man, as he was climbing up the stairs.
I could not sleep that night. For the next few months, I sleeped in a tight tight fetus position – trying to avoid any spiders that would go under my covers and crawl up my legs….
i think i love you.
Wow, from the Jonestown massacre to a Whammy.
That’s a wide spectrum, brutha!
I didn’t want to touch the bug pictures in Ranger Rick magazine because I thought they would bite me.
Aliens, especially ones that dropped from the ceiling like in the movie.
The night on Bald Mountain scene in Fantasia.
Chuckie. And staring-eyed dolls in general. Especially in the dark when staying at someone else’s house.
Pumpkinhead in Halloween. The scene with the drill still haunts me, and I covered my eyes for it!
One really whacked out short story that involved some sort of giant zombie moth trying to get at a little boy who’d pinned a weird moth to his wall — the stain under it kept getting larger and more creepy as the thudding of the moth on his window got louder every night… BRR!
What a bunch of disturbing things to have floating around in my brain!
I was born in ’63, so mine reflect that time:
1.Nancy Sinatra’s “These Boots Were Made for Walking.” The line “One of these days these boots are gonna walk all over you” scared the heck out of me.
2. Phyllis Diller. My older sister taped a picture of her above my bed (I was four or five and couldn’t reach it to get it down). I was sure she was going to get me during the night.
3. Penelope, my older sister’s pink stuffed dog, who was going to kill Tiger, my stuffed cat, during the night.
4. Barnabus Collins, from “Dark Shadows.”
My very conscientious parents allowed me, as a young child, to watch the 11 pm reruns of the Hitchcock show, but I freaked out the second time I watched Birds.
And the way my dog would watch my food.
Most episodes of the old Star Trek had something scary in them. But my big obsession was vampires.
I can’t even begin to compete with your amazing list, LYD-guy.
Him from the Powerpuff Girls scares the crap out of me now and I’m 21.
Bowie’s bulge rocks by the way.
For me, it was the new zoo review — every creepy costumed character and the weird humans. Plus the threatening way their theme song ended with the words “coming right at you.” I guess they’re still around doing their creepy song and dance http://www.newzoorevue.com
What did it for me Way Back When™ was the sound of a monster appearing in the computer game Temple of Apshai. Puttering along in the dungeon when… SUDDENLY… FREEEEOOOOOOOOOOWWWWWWWWWdiddleiddleiddleiddleWOMP!
Ok, not the 80′s, but Nickelodeon had this cartoon short called Insideout Boy.
*shudder* you could see his heart beating and things where slimy and gooey looking and…just not right!
Marjorie the Trash Heap and The Gorgs from Fraggle Rock. They always creeped me out. Oh and Travelling Matt bothered me. A fuzzy puppet thing in liveaction worldly stuff. It just wasnt natural.
I always hated that scene in the “Wizard of Oz” with the flying evil monkeys. I would always conveniently leave the room when it came on
Things that scared me in the 70′s-80′s:
1.OOMPA LOOMPAS
2.Bigfoot, in the Legend of Boggy creek
3.Bigfoot when he appeared in the 6 million dollar man
4.anything resemblnig a cockroache, after seeing “THE BUGS”
5.”The day After” about life after a nuclear war. This was out right about the time of the Falkland Island war between britain and Argentina, and I was convinced it was going to start world war 3, and we were all gonna die. And to think, I was only 12.
Things that scared me in the 70′s-80′s:
1.OOMPA LOOMPAS
2.Bigfoot, in the Legend of Boggy creek
3.Bigfoot when he appeared in the 6 million dollar man
4.anything resemblnig a cockroache, after seeing “THE BUGS”
5.”The day After” about life after a nuclear war. This was out right about the time of the Falkland Island war between britain and Argentina, and I was convinced it was going to start world war 3, and we were all gonna die. And to think, I was only 12.
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