Your odd childhood fears

Everybody had 'em as a child, fears that would make others scratch their heads. For me, it was a fear of being lost while driving through East St. Louis. My mom would frequently point out stories in the paper about bad things happening in East St. Louis and would say, "You sure don't want to get lost while driving through East St. Louis!" So whenever we'd cross the Mississippi into Illinois, I'd slump down in the back seat a bit, even if we were nowhere near East St. Louis.

I guess there are explanations for that fear. My fear of test patterns? Not so much.

Your turn.

 

THERE'S FUCKING SNAKES ON THIS FUCKING THREAD!

 

Bees, my grandparents' dungeon-like basement (it still kind of gives me the creeps), and the undead sea captain played by Richard Kiel in the early 80s HBO staple/Hudson Brothers vehicle "Hysterical!"

 

Fixed.

 

The witch from The Wizard of Oz.

Still creeps me out, plenty.

 

I was always freaked out by films that mix animation and live action. Very strange but just creeps me out for some reason.

 

My childhood home had one of those three-foot by three-foot green power boxes in the front yard. I'm not entirely sure what it did, but when you got close enough, you could hear it hum. It was locked shut in the front and occasionally checked by the power company, and they'd open it up on a rare occasion.

Anyway, to convince children not to play near it, the front had a label with a sketch of a giant ball of electricity - lightning bolt arms and legs and a giant growl - reaching out and "shocking" a kid nearby.

The image of "Mr. Electricity" just downright haunted me until the age of 12 or so. The fears were incredibly irrational, too. For example, I thought that if I fell asleep with my head turned to the window and didn't lay completely flat, "Mr. Electricity" would come through the window with his pals and get me.

Other great sources of fright when I was a kid included an episode of "Unsolved Mysteries" where kids were playing in their closet and disappeared, never to be found again, and the scene where Large Marge goes psycho in "Pee Wee's Big Adventure."

 

So this would bother you then?

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