Catweazle! I was 4 years old… he looked scary

Cruella De Vil, both Glenn Close’s rendition and the animated version. Funny now, but man did she scare me when I was little.

The Day After 1983

I was around 10-11 years old. the whole fuckin movie terrified me.

The original Salem’s Lot 🤣 the scene where vamp is standing outside the obvious 2nd story window out of nowhere, it gave me nightmares for months, I still hate looking out windows at night. I should try and give it a rewatch, I’m a horror glutton nowadays

The lift. I was eight or nine. I didn’t dare enter any lift for years.

One of my earliest memories of fear was being at a neighbor’s house when I was maybe 3 years old. I didn’t understand TV well, and whatever she was watching ended, followed by this intense low music and sound going high and the 80s Viacom V logo getting bigger. With “A Viacom presentation” text. I genuinely thought the V was coming to get me and I hid behind her chair.

Yeah, this fucker. Literally called “The V of Doom” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ON6VeY99tl8

Then it didn’t get me, and it was fine, but that damn Viacom logo scared the shit outta me.

When I was 10 I had nightmares from the episode “Detour” from X-Files. I previously moved to my mother and she and my stepfather had to work at night. We also had a dog, that barked a lot. So the setting was perfect… took me months to get over it :D

Unfun fact, the creators of Return to Oz researched the top psychological fears of children and carefully built their movie around them.

Saw it on TV in the basement alone on a Saturday, and it is one of the most unsettling things I’ve seen to this day.

In the movie “A.I. Artificial Intelligence” there’s a scene where a robot kid’s face starts drooping, like sliding off the frame or something, and that really got me.

Do you know which episode it is?

1. Signs - the aliens terrified me and I was scared walking to school for a long time
2. The scarabs from The Mummy - I thought they would come out from under the sink and the closets to eat me alive

I saw bits and pieces of Event Horizon on the old satellite dish when I was probably 6 or 7.

Sure wish I didn’t have eyes there either, lady.

When I was young, but not that young, there was a show called Duckman or something like that. I didn’t get the channel at home, but I was sleeping over at a friend’s house, and he got this channel, so it was on late at night.

In the episode the main character breaks up with a woman, and she’s like stalking him for revenge or something, I don’t remember the plot. But in one short scene he’s taking a bath to relax after the stress she’s been causing him, and she pokes her head up out of the bath water with crazy eyes and then pulls him under.

There was something about that I very much didn’t like. That was the only episode of the show I ever saw, but I’m pretty sure it was supposed to be a burnout comedy ala Beavis and Butthead or something, and I don’t even think this particular moment was meant to be scary. It was probably meant to be exaggerated and silly. But the crazy lady coming out of the water where she shouldn’t be able to be? Nope.

That fucked me up, on and off, for years. I’d just be laying in bed, and then the image or even the concept would come to me, and I’d feel uneasy. Despite not being in a bath at the time! Ugh.

Bingo

As a fundamentalist Southern Baptist, Ghostbusters terrified me.

I saw it again in my early 20s and was like - this scared me??? WTF?