childhood fears - what were yours?

When I was little I heard my grandmother tell a friend about a movie - years later I realized it was the shower scene from Psycho she was describing. Anyway, listening to that was enough to make me scared of taking a shower. I loved showers and still do - but for quite some time I had to keep my eyes open, no water running over my face - had to watch out for killers with knives!

And the thing under my bed used to grab my foot! I can still feel it right at me heel! *shudder*

Funny Seed that is exactly what I tell my little daughter. I show her under the bed and say how could anything even fit under there.

1977, deep in the woods behind our house in Northern maine...

My friends and I were playing hide and seek and I was in a particularly thick pine grove.

The hairs on the back of my neck stood up and this funky odor wafted past my nose. The smell of rotten flesh and musky hair.

I do not believe I have ever run so fast, so far since.

I know in my heart of hearts that bigfoot was spying on me.

I had this recurring nightmare, I still shudder when I think of it ... it came back every - well, not often - perhaps a couple of once-a-months in a row then slowing down to every few months or year?

Last time I had it was out of the blue, many years later - post-childhood.

The thing is - and here's where it gets tricky - it was abstract. It was an abstract dream. Which left me helpless in explaining what scared me so (scared me to the point of not daring to go to bed or fall asleep).

All I know is that there were sharp edges - sharp angles and arrow-shaped things - they were around me, floated past perhaps? Or just around me, hurting me - hurting me when they (unavoidably) touched me. And they made everything around me (a kind of dull, gloomy semi-darkness) - harsh, hostile.

I must have had other nightmares too, tho probably not (much) more than other kids, I dunno - but this is the one that terrorised me. Years after I regularly had it I could still physically feel the terror I'd felt at the thought of that dream coming back (because, also, it had the habit of simply picking up where it left off if I woke up and then fell asleep again).

Ah yeah - (weird, how one forgets and then is triggered) - there was this thing about, just a shape on a chair in the other corner of the room (probably just the way clothes were hung on it or lied crumpled on top of it) - that could scare me senseless, some times -

Funny/weird/interesting to see how many of the fears described on this thread are rather similar, and how often they take the shape of something - amorphly shaped and - like a half-finished picture -

Ach! Worst dream, not quite so abstract--but weird.

Anyway, it gave me the most frightened, sense of impending doom, rapid heartbeat. And, I can't figure out why.

The scene is a peaceful, silent, snow-covered landscape. Forest in the background, an open field in the foreground. It is nighttime. Suddenly, out of nowhere, a white bird flaps it's wings furiously in my face.

That's it.

Go figure.

Nimh, yours is neat. Most people's subconscious creates objects easily explained to your conscious to define the mood brimming beneath the surface.

Your subconscious doesn't seem to feel the need to go tot he trouble. Just unavoidable, pointy objects. <thinking>

I, like many childern, had and still do, an over active imagination. i would see a scary movie and see the creature in my everyday life. i saw Predator and swore up and down that I sw the clear version of the creature in the trees while waiting for the bus. Once a tree stump became a gunners turret shooting at me. it was crazy. but thats me

Well, I can imagine the fright - the shock of it.

It's also very filmic ... like in a Sokurov movie or something.

But then, thats what such filmmakers do I guess - mobilise and visualise the subconscious.