October 31, 2003
Frights!
For Halloween, blogger Robot Johnny
lists 10 of the things that frightened him as a child. Funny stuff! Read on for my own list ...
Seven Things That Frightened Me As A Child
1. The photo of the world's smallest woman from The Guinness Book of World Records. For all I know, it may still be in there - a grainy photo of a normal-sized man standing next to a doll-like woman dressed Victorian style. I only glanced at it once, then had nightmares for months. The thought of it still makes me shudder.
2. The Shining. One summer while my family was staying with my grandparents', everyone decided to watch this movie on HBO. Knowing how easily freaked out I'd be, I ended up going into the adjoining room and drawing. Which I did, only ... I left the door open and ended up watching the whole thing anyway. Ohmygodohmygodohmygod.
3. The distant sound of someone getting murdered in the Ohio Players' song "Love Rollercoaster". One night when I was about 6 years old, we had a babysitter who played this record and told us the ghoulish tale of how a ghastly murder was accidently captured outside the recording studio. Turned out it was an urban legend, of course - but at the time it scared the bejeezus out of me.
4. The growing puppets and killer columns from "The Wiz". In the movie, the lead characters go down in the subway and encounter a creepy guy selling puppets that make weird sounds. He puts them on the floor and they grow into giant sized puppets that chase them around. To make matters worse, the subway columns break free and also chase them around. It's freaky!
5. The tunnel of horrors from "Willy Wonka". Johnny coincidentally lists this one, too - for good reason. Was that really a chicken beheading??
6. The "Sesame Street" Fisher-Price movie viewer cartridge. I had this toy as a kid (see pictures here) and loved it. Except for the Sesame Street cartridge. It creeped me out because I thought there were actual muppets inside this thing and oh my god how did they get in there.
7. H. R. Pufnstuf. I was the impressionable age of 3 or 4 when this was on. Not a good age to be exposed to a show about a giant talking ... thing with weird googly eyes that never stopped moving.
Posted by mhinrichs at October 31, 2003 11:04 AM
One thing that scared me when I was about 5 - there was an old black-and-white horror movie on TV that my older brothers were watching, and they didn't know enough to order me out of the room. The movie was one of those cheesy mutant insect flicks, with a giant spider living in a cave on the outskirts of town. The scene I remember is of spiderwebs as thick as a man's wrist, and one dead guy was being carried out of the cave. Because his blood had all been presumably sucked by the giant spider, his face was all... well... I still get the creeps about it.
All of the following is true.
Mine, in random order:
!) Cesar Romero as the Joker in the 60's Batman live action show. Big.Green.Hair.
!) Dracula Glow-In-The-Dark plastic model by Aurora. My best friend offered me a whole dollar to go into a dark closet with him for sixty seconds. No wa-a-a-y!
!) "The Amityville Horror" Paperback novelization w/ pictures of James Brolin trapped in the Little Red Room Underneath the Stairs.
!) Rat hairs found by some kid in a Reese's P-Nut Butter Cup. I KNEW I'd be next.
!) Beatles' "Revolution 9" played backwards by my creepy babysitter when I was 8 years old. I hid in the garage for an entire summer.
!) Cat-tails. I'm serious. Not tails of kitties-- the odd, hot-dog shaped weeds that my mom bought at the craft fair in the fall at the mall's annual Moonlite Madness sale.
!) Ken Kesey's "Sometimes A Great Notion"-- the movie with Henry Fonda. Because when ol' Henry is using a chainsaw to cut down a tree he SAWS HIS OWN ARM OFF I AM NOT FRIGGIN' KIDDING. (My dad used to cut trees down in back of our farm. I would cry and befg him to be careful.)
!) Getting left behind at the service station when I'm using the restroom and coming out to find my Dad has driven off and left me, alone, with no way to catch up to him. He did that once as a "joke" That is why I used to "hate" him.
!) My kitty being taken in one swoop by a marauding hawk not five feet from me, kitty crying, me helpless, never seeing kitty again. I told you we lived in the country.
!) My poop turned green after eating too much Jell-o and for a week I thought I was dying of some terrible radioactive cancer. Finally I told my Mom and she laughed and said that's what happened to her poop too.
And that is why I adore my Mom.
And she turned 61 today;
yep, a Halloween baby, and not scary at all.
As a child, for no apparent reason, I was absolutely terrified of Mummenschanz. And to wit, there's much to be scared of.
the only movie to ever give me nightmares was sssssss. not because the film was that scary, but because i was forced to go to bed before it was over so i of course got nightmares from it. to this day whenever i watch something scary,i always try to watch something funny or mindless to clear my mind of the scary stuff before going to bed.
i always found the sleestak in land of the lost really freaky. but pufnstuf never messed with my mind(at least not in a negative way).
the boat ride from willy wonka totally freaked me out, but i loved it. i still do actually.
When I was 5 years old, I begged my mom to take me to see "Hush, Hush, Sweet Charlotte", the gothic Grand Guignol thriller with Bette Davis and Olivia de Havilland. When Bruce Dern got his hand chopped off with a cleaver, I ran screaming into the lobby and wouldn't come back into the theater. I had nightmares about that flick for 5 or 6 years. When I finally saw it again on teevee, I laughed myself silly over how campy it was.
Hey, thanks for the link! I also enjoy your traumatic Halloween memories. I'm inspired to create my own traumatic Halloween comics now (including the time my father didn't think my Ghostbusters costime was "costumey" enough so he forced me to go with Groucho make-up on in addition to the jumpsuit and proton pack).
Hey, this is sorta stupid but im terrified of ear wigs i think its cuz my parents have this rubber huge centapeed and it looks like an ear wig and the wud scare me with it, anyway we have a pool a producer of them its so gross and stuff!
