As a kid I was terrified of atom bombs and thought I could cause an atomic reaction by accidentally splitting an atom. So I was terrified every time I used scissors or cut my nails.
When I was 8 I was terrified of Ozzy Osbourne; I was so hesitant to even say his name that I called him "Evil Joe". I've also had a longstanding fear of accidentally shape-shifting into the form of a character I hate, namely Wario.
i can’t believe you had like legitimate trauma about toilets flushing and overflowing meanwhile i was afraid of automatic toilets because loud noise hurty
The toilet flushing and overflowing is a fear of hers I lived through and it was an automatic flush lol. The toilet in my dorm hall kept flushing and flushed continuously for over 2 minted until it ended up flooding our whole floor. Me and another girl rushed to stuff towels underneath everyone’s door to avoid the water going into their rooms (I had to break into my friends dorm to pick up chargers and more off her floor so no one got electrocuted) 😂😂😂
same but very specifically with automatic hand dryers in public bathrooms (those little things that blow air out when you put your hands under them) i absolutely could not stand their noises and being in a bathroom with one of those and no paper towels made me so angry
I still remember I had to cover my ears in science class for days after learning that 😭😭 I couldnt read or hear anything about space for months because of that
Man I remember staying up late with my dad while he watched the history channel when I was little and an episode about the sun's death started playing. I had never been so filled with dread. It didn't help that it straight up showed how that would end humanity lol
very specific but I could not STAND second hand embarrassment. Like whenever I would see a character in a movie/cartoon do something embarrassing/humiliating I would get so uncomfortable that I needed to leave the room whenever it happened.
when i was 9 i was literally afraid of the color brown like i’d literally have nightmares as a kid where i would just run around my house and everything would turn brown and i’d wake up crying 😭
lmao it’s fine 😭 i got over it eventually to clarify it was a specific shade of brown (like a lighter orange-y brown?) and i genuinely don’t remember how i got that fear, maybe through a dream
I remember being terrified of Hot Topic in the mid-2000s because my cousins who went there a lot convinced me it was a store for vampires. Whenever we'd go to the mall I would refuse to go near it because I was so scared.
Oh thank god I'm not alone in this lol, my sibling and I both were scared to go in there but only because we saw people dressed as skeletons in there. Like, full face of skeleton makeup and clothes. I love Hot Topic now tho lol
As a kid I was absolutely TERRIFIED of the book "the bad case of the stripes" Like, real existential dread. Every time my kindergarten teacher would read it I would have a full on meltdown and I'd have to sit in the office till it was over. It was so bad that I remember after I took a nap at home after school, I woke up in a panic and was running around the house trying to get it out of my head. My mom and dad tried to help, but I was inconsolable. Some of my classmates used to blackmail me with it because they knew I was scared of it. When I was in the second grade this one kid brought it out because he knew it would bother me and I think I just started hysterically sobbing. It was really bad. Even nowadays looking at the cover of the book disturbs me, but it's not as bad as before.
I was also terrified of this book so I feel you. In kindergarten we watched a story time video of it being read. I found the illustrations so disturbing and also had serious existential dread about it. I couldn’t get it out of my head and was terrified the class would pick it again another day. One day they did and I went immediately panicking to the teacher and she let me go to the other side of the classroom, so I spent the duration of this video facing away from the smartboard panicking with my head in my hands. I’ve seen the illustrations again since and still think some of them are pretty disturbing for a kids book. The painting style is really uncanny.
OH MY GOD I CRIED WHEN THEY READ IT IN FIRST GRADE. we would have activities where we'd rotate around the room doing other things, and one station was listening to the audiobook for it and I would cry and refuse to listen to it. Worst part was my teacher tried to force me even if only for a little bit, it was terrifying for me I had nightmares of turning rainbow for years. Now I'm gay, so idk you decide the amount of irony in that turnout
i don’t know how this idea started or even why tbh but as a child i was terrified of… the doodlebops watching me use the bathroom. the doodlebops were totally fine (i even had a toy! like a keyboard or keytar i think the girl had?) but specifically when i used the bathroom i had to pause/mute the TV so i couldn’t hear them or think abt them and sometimes i even cracked the door a little to make sure no one was out there. i have literally never said this out loud to anyone but i feel like if anyone gets this they would be in this comment section.
When I was a kid I had a fear of escalators that went down. I was always nervous to fall when getting on one, and I always had the idea in my head of me falling down on one and getting my hair caught in between the steps, unable to move as it kept going down. I still pause before getting on an escalator because of this.
I was confident my feet would get stuck on an escalator and I’d get sucked under the escalator and squished. To be honest I still kinda don’t like escalators 🫣
I was literally so terrified of escalators as a kid that I was stuck at the top of one crying at a mall while my mom and sister were at the bottom, and suddenly a totally random stranger threw me over his shoulder and took me down to them.
As a kid I was terrified of the X-Files theme song. I'm pretty sure the reason why is because it would air sometime around my bedtime, and all I knew about it was that it was a scary show about monsters and aliens, so it became the literal soundtrack to my nightmares. For YEARS randomly hearing the music would trigger a panic response, including a time only a couple years ago when I happened to be walking down the hallays in my house with the lights off, not knowing that my perents were having an X-Files marathon, and when it suddenly started blasting through the house I immediately dropped into a defensive stance. Now, after having watched several seasons of the show myself I've gotten over it through exposure, but I'll never forget the pants-shitting terror that gripped me that night, lmao
I absolutely HAD to change the channel or leave the room if xfiles was about to air. I couldn't do the theme song (or the creepy imagery) either. but now as an adult... oh that's my jam
i had the same fear but because of the simpsons episode where mr burns turns into that freaky alien and they parody the x-files. I had to leave the room and once put my head under the water in the bath because i could still hear the music.
@@jenniferch3ck i used to be afraid of that episode too! it wasn't because of the x files but because i was afraid of et and mr burns reminded me of him
same. It’s Whales for me. I blame Pinocchio but I might have been a penguin in a past life because killer whales are monsters and idk why everyone is so freaking chill about it :c
Me with my phase as a child where I was scared of the wind. Seeing the leaves move on the trees would make me nauseous with fear and want to stay inside I think I was more afraid of a tornado/hurricane starting…. But I also lived someplace where those never happen
I’ve said this before, but for some odd reason, TV logo bumpers really spooked me as a kid… even some that aren’t even considered “scary” to a lot of people!
I was terrified for the longest time of a toy called Jake the Snake. It was a remote controlled green snake that could move around and even lunge. The worst part was that my brother would chase me around the house with it. I'm sure I knew that there wasn't a way for the toy to hurt me but that didn't matter
As a kid I was terrified of the concept of hell (a fairly reasonable fear tbh for a 6 year old growing up in Sunday school) but the cherry on top was the fact that I was scared because I believed, vehemently, at six years old, that I was already damned to hell. Needless to say; not a Christian now
@@Clodsire_loverI think it might be a belief that all children are pure and innocent therefore will go to heaven regardless and when you hit certain age you don't have that privilege anymore. It sucks but I heard a story like that from ine person
@@ЮлияПопова-ч5ю8хit depends on the sources you look at/people you ask Rules on what people think sends you to hell range from "you won't go to hell if you're not bad, and all children go to heaven because they can't really be bad yet" (no Christianity/other God worshipping religion really even needed) to "if you're not baptized as a baby/join into MY sect of this religion then you'll burn forever!!!" Possibly even applies to newborns who're "dead on arrival" (be it literally or only living for a very short amount of time. Either way probably couldn't really be baptized) Belief systems are just crazy like that
My church leader told me that all gay people go to hell, I was 6. So needless to say I thought I was dammed to hell. I was so traumatized that I tried to convince myself I was straight for 6 years straight, I sent myself into a depressive spiral and just general depression. All that to say, thats a completely justified fear
When you spoke about fear of being out of control with electronic devices, blue screens ect. I realized this makes sense for my fear of gaming glitches. I have a terrible, unrelated fear of in-game water and the void, but any sort of camera glitch, getting out of the map/playable area/ losing control over a game makes me freak out so badly to this day. I am legit scared to play The Sims 3 because of that.
I used to be scared of void and deep water more when I was a child, like the inside of the big piramide in Minecraft or the galaxy view in Spore. Now it still is inside me but mostly when I play Space Engine and see big ass star, or worse, when in past game versions you could go through the texture of the planet and physically be inside of the live size planet. Instant alt f4
I have this faint memory (or maybe a nightmare) of trying to play a dvd and the menu screen saying “hurry up and press play!” and being so scared of technology acknowledging my existence or talking to me out of no where. Even now I get a bit startled when a game will talk directly to the player out of no where. The fear of being out of control of devices was so real
I find it very uncomfortable but I kinda like it for that reason. If I wasn't somewhat bothered by things like test maps in video games, I would find them less interesting
Also we had that Smeagol doll when I was a kid and would hide it around the house to surprise each other. We also told my aunt we got a kitten and wrapped Smeagol in a blanket and then acted like we were going to show her the cat, but she got Smeagol'd instead. You would have hated my house. Edit: the Kidpix "oh no" is the ultimate jumpscare, change my mind.
Angela Anaconda is so scary back then to me. I was so terrified, and it was understandable to me because it had incorporated realistic faces that were grey. The illusion of it being seemingly realistic but also unrealistic at the same time just made me scared.
This reminded me... I was weirdly afraid of styling heads when I was a kid???? Like the kind that would look like a giant barbie head or something that you'd style the hair of, they freaked me out to no end. If a friend of mine as a kid had one in their room, I wasn't going in there. I even had nightmares about them where I would be turned into a styling head against my will lmao 😭
oh, I hated those too! especially when I'd go to beauty supply stores with my mom and the wig displays were just a HUNDRED or more of those wig heads lining the walls, floor to ceiling. they still creep me out a little bit
I used to have one but I watched The Ring over my parents' shoulder and just COULD NOT stop feeling it LOOK at me in the dark. I literally grabbed it in the middle of the night and stuffed it in the garage 😭
I had never heard of that show before and now I wish I still didn't. Also what kind of name is that, even, Angela Anaconda sounds like the alias of an adult movie star.
Weirdly, I always see people mention how creepy this show was and I honestly don't remember being bothered by it in Germany as a kid? So I looked up both versions, and oh wow, for some reason the german dub is way less uncanny valley. Maybe the fact it's already dubbed helps with the suspension of disbelief or something, but the original feels way creepier somehow.
@@oomflem I also grew up with the German dub and don’t remember it being scary. But I think we had the VHS tapes when I already was a bit older, maybe around 10. That could also have helped.
For some reason, even worse than the Dark Harvest episode for me was the *meat* one. Called Rise of Meatboy or something. Zim and Dib get infected with some kind of microbe that slowly turns them into edible meat, like salami. Their skin changes color, their features swell and distort, and dogs start trying to bite them. The episode ends with the two of them turned into giant, inanimate sausage links wearing clothes, sitting in an alley as dogs bark in the distance. It disturbed me so horribly as a child. I remember hiding on the stairs leading to the basement, secretly watching as my brothers laughed at the episode, terrified but unable to look away. Nightmares for years.
It’s called Bolognius Maximus. Between that, Bloaty’s Pizza Hog, The Sad Sad Story of Chicken Foot, and the career day ep where Zim works at McMeaty’s I wouldn’t be surprised if IZ were responsible for turning some kids vegetarian
Oh my God, I was petrified of Invader Zim as a kid because I saw this episode and the Teen Titans episode where Beast Boy gets a job in a fast food place and my brain combined the two into some horrific nightmare scenario where all I could clearly remember about any of it was "green dude + meat = trauma"
@@morganorwhatever I was lowkey uncomfortable with meat as a child and eventually gave it up entirely as an adult. I would not be at all surprised if Invader Zim had something to do with it.
I agree! Dark Harvest is, of course, disturbing, BUT the main effect it has on me is nausea. Watching someone vomit out harvested intestines, only to slurp them back up like spaghetti is not something you should watch before, during, or after eating. 😅 I think the Halloween special takes the cake when it comes to fear. I rewatched it this past October, and I was legitimately terrified. Being trapped inside your own mind and losing your sanity has always been a fear of mine.
i distinctly remember being absolutely terrified by this video of a cgi hippo singing the lions sleep tonight with a dog dancing next to him as a kid,, like legit that shit made me cry it was so scary
i remember that shit it was literally so unsettling to me too my family would always play it and i wasnt terrified so id go along with it but id secretly always feel looming discomfort every time it was on
OH MY GOD I FORGOT ABOUT THAT i was scared of it too! i had this thing when i was a kid where i'd just be so scared of things that felt too old for me. like, that video felt like it was for adults, and that i wasn't supposed to be watching it
THANK YOU for mentioning Angela Anaconda... how on EARTH did they think that character design was ok, they freaked me out too. Never watched it, didn't want to see it
My weirdest fear when I was a kiddo was me being scared of butterflys. I saw the sponge bob episode about wormy, and I got absoulty terrified from the close up realistic footage of a realistic butterfly, I honestly think it was more so the loud noise in the show that scared me.
I fully understand being afraid of Dark Harvest. It’s a wonder to me that Zim was allowed to air on Nickelodeon at all, let alone that episode. I’ve enjoyed that episode as an adult but if I’d watched it as a kid it would have been traumatic
I would repeatedly try and convince my parents that Invader Zim wasn't terrible and bad. The episode that would always be playing when I convinced them to give it a try... was Dark Harvest. Every. Time.
The dying birthday card one is valid. I personally don't think I've ever been scared of them cause the only one I was ever given was a Hoops and Yoyo Hamster Dance card. BUT the idea of hearing a distorted version of a song you know play from a thing you thought was safe from that IS pretty unsettling imo
i completely relate to all of these fears, especially the glitch/crash screens, for some reason i have still not gotten over it and they terrify me to this day. also it’s comforting to know so many kids simultaneously felt the terror of the sun possibly exploding in our lifetime
those sound strips on roads were my ultimate favorite thing as a kid. my dad called them "mooing strips" and would sometimes drive through them on purpose just for the moo
this reminded me of my fear of the stairs at my elementary school. super old catholic school, very long stairways that you could see all the way down. now that i think about it i was afraid of a lot of things at my dusty old catholic school lol
I live in a one story house and had so many nightmares about trying to go an bathroom upstairs but the steps being so small and the door being right on the ledge.
Discovering your channel was almost eerie, you're the first youtuber that seems to have had the exact same cultural upbringing as me. It's like tailor-made nostalgia for zillennials Edit: totally forgot to mention I was also unreasonably unsettled by Austin Powers as a child. I didn't watch the movies until my mid 20's.
is that what we're called? i have no idea bc i'm not a millennial but i also def am not gen z, i'm nothing like them, born in 1999 and also relate to Li SO much
@@tokyotrashbbyGen Z starts at 96 or 97. Definitely Gen Z but old enough to remember and experience the same things millennials did. Zillennials are 96(97)-02.
About spontaneous human combustion, I vividly remember seeing that on TV, maybe Discovery or History Channel. It was also a huge fear of mine. Nowadays i am mature enough to know that it's still scary but there is nothing we can do about it. Growth!
I remember my dad was watching something on Discovery or History that showed some guys eyes exploding, and the colour grading was really weird so it looked like his eyes were full of black goo. That scared me a lot as a kid
I had this fear too I read about it in a book once & then a few years later I saw something on TV saying that it wasn't a myth & it could happen and explained science why it could happen. I forgot about till this video.
as someone who grew up with their dad being in law enforcement, i was told a lot of scary stuff about drugs a lot throughout my childhood. i'd say the topic as a whole was less of a fear and more of a morbid fascination (i feel that morbid fascinations can often connect to childhood trauma), but at night i was always scared someone was gonna like, break into my room and try to give me pills in my sleep to get me addicted. think i stopped worrying about this by the time i was in middle school. sidenote, this weird fascination with drugs as a kid was so intense that i remember making a "movie" with my zhu zhu pets where the baby of the family gets addicted to drugs and has an overdose (don't worry the doctors gave her a magical cure), and in the next part, the dad buys the mom a car to apologize for the whole incident, and then while driving her new car the mom hits one of her own kids. was i okay in 2009
I had an intense fear of the undead as a small child, which was understandable but manifested in a number of specific ways. There was a golf course by my house that I would get confused with a nearby cemetery, and when we drove past either one I would go into a panic. We had a Veggietales VHS that I refused to watch when I realized the logo on the tape were “skeleton” versions of Bob and Larry. I cried when my godmother gave me a pirate-themed I Spy book because it had a Jolly Roger flag on the cover, which I proceeded to keep covered with a taped piece of paper for several years.
Oh my god I had the same fear. It wasn't like the wrapped up mummies or skeletons, it was the shriveled up dessicated ones. A lot of my elementary school classrooms had books about mummies where they showed actual images of the unwrapped dead. Now i find it fascinating, but back then, if someone was reading one of those books, I'd run out of the room. Skyrim came out when I was 13 and I still would not play it because I couldn't get past the draugr in Bleak Falls Barrow. I didn't pick it back up until I was an adult, and then I became obsessed with it.
As a young teen I was terrified of the Gorillaz. I would sometimes watch Adult Swim when my parents were asleep and one day they played the music video “Clint Eastwood” and my young mind was terrified of the artstyle and visuals. I was raised on Disney so i guess I wasn’t used to such a style at the time. It’s silly to think about today since they’re now one of my favorite bands now. 😂
Lol, I was just thinking about how it wouldn't surprise me if someone had been. I really liked them as a kid (and am just getting back into them) but I also found the artstyle unsettling at first. And first time I heard of them was some text presenting them which had the headline "Gorillaz - the band that does not exist" or something like that and for some reason I thought that sounded creepy xD
I was also a really sensitive kid and had a lot of strange fears such as: - the goat from Hoodwinked - the rumor weed from Veggie Tales - the monkey from Toy Story 3 - emptiness/void, an example of this being an empty level in LittleBigPlanet - gremlins, after watching that movie I was constantly afraid of one jumping out at me at night - the grim reaper, specfically from the Sims 2 and a game called Crystal Maze. It was kind of like Pac-Man except 3D, you played as a girl running around temples collecting gems while avoiding enemies but if you took too long the grim reaper would show up and make these CREEPY whispering sounds and chase after you. I always made my dad play it for me lol - speaking of the sims 2 I was also afraid of the social bunny, the burglar (I got robbed a LOT), and whenever your sims had a mental breakdown from low aspiration and that therapist would drop down from the sky.. yeah. - animatronics, specifically Halloween decorations and Christmas decorations. I had a nightmare as a kid about being in Walmart and seeing an animatronic of the Grinch, I think it tried to haunt me. I also had more serious fears because my dad never really filtered himself around me and would go on rants about these things like - global warming/climate change, I remember him telling me by the time I got to the age I am now the world would be so different. - the end of the world - a civil war breaking out, or another world war - being bombed - nuclear powerplants
I was horrified of the Mr. Burns as an alien episode of the Simpsons. I remember coming home and turning on Fox to see it was that episode and I began to sob like crazy
Bugaboo creek was a themed restaurant near where I lived that had this absolutely chilling animatronic pine tree. It had this huge gaping mouth and I was convinced it ate children. I would edge around it as far away as a I could never turning my back on it. Sometimes my dad would kind of nudge me towards it which did not help.
@@NumeroLetter Its eyes also would rarely both be working at the same time and would kind of twitch and blink out of sync. For some reason upkeep was not a priority for the animatronics. There was also a scheduled musical performance where all the animatronics would perform at once.. it was frightening. The complimentary bread was really good though I miss Bugaboo🥲
I never heard of Bugaboo Creek Steakhouse before, so I looked it up… never in my life, had I seen a tree animatronic so terrifying; not even the ones at a Rainforest Cafe I’ve been in, nor a storytelling tree animatronic at a mall from my grandparents’ former home town 😂
You were honestly a really smart kid for being worried about getting burned using this sort of toys. I remember wanting a children’s oven so bad ever since I saw it on curious George even though I have accidentally burned myself on the stove at least twice before
I was terrified by the song “the sweet escape” by Gwen Stefani (now one of my favorite songs) and the Space Cows from Spyro Enter the Dragonfly - these lasted for years too beyond my childhood for no reason
It's funny that you used The Mask as your example. I was TERRIFIED of this movie as a kid, like my parents had to block the TV when a commercial for it came on cuz it freaked me out to the point of tears. I still have not seen it almost 30 years later because it activates a fight of flight mode in me.
My weirdly specific childhood fears: -I was creeped out by a hot air balloon decoration that hung from my bedroom ceiling after having a dream where every room in my house was full of them -an episode of curious George where he gets sick and has a dream about singing germs. I didn’t understand the “it was all a dream” trope because I was like 2, so I thought it was actually happening to him in real life. -the episode of sid the science kid with the song about decay. Why did they have to make it so graphic? -the “heffalumps and woozles” scene from Winnie the Pooh -this one episode of the hello kitty animated series where whenever hello kitty responded to her mom with “yeah what?” a monster only she could see appeared -any episode of a show where the plot revolved around a character hiding something bad from their parents -a specific Sesame Street scene where Bert and Ernie were playing the “got your nose” game, and since they were puppets there was a gag with Ernie holding Bert’s actual nose, then it cut to Bert with no nose
@@NataliasClips I didn’t even find the character scary, I found the concept of seeing something that no one else was able to see scary also the fact that you referred to it as “the fart” 💀
@@phantombobaI was about to say that this belonged at the bottom of the tier list, but being able to see something that no one else can see makes this more unferstandable
I had the complete expansion pack of the first Sims on our Windows XP desktop computer. Over time the computer got old and slow and all that stuff and a lot of times when I'd play the game it completely froze to the point the whole computer had to be restarted. I always had a big sense of dread for the whole day/evening after it. Not to mention that the Sims 1 in itself is creepy anyway, with the damn burglar sound effect, cockroaches, the monster potion, phone call pranks, the clown painting and general uncanny gameplay. Also I feared going out of bounds of my lots and having my screen be just one whole grey square.
Things I was scared of as a kid: 1. Art Attack - i used to love this show but then they did a skit where a bust talked and the concept of an all-white decapitated head talking terrified the shit out of me to the point where i just stopped watching it altogether. 2. The sun exploding and/or engulfing the Earth is a fear I can relate to. I remember once at school there was a lunar eclipse so the sun looked huge ans i was convinced that we were all going to die. This was in the year 2012 also so I thought the world was gonna end. Also, whenever i heard a loud plane overhead, I thought i was hearing the sun move closer to the Earth. 3. Dying in Super Mario 64. There would be a blackout screen where bowser laughs and idk something about it scared me so much. 4. When Toad says "foul" in Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Games. I forgot what minigame this was but the voice sounded nothing like Toad and it was really loud so I thought Toad got possessed (?????) 5. Michael Jackson. I just thought he looked terrifying. And after he died i was scared that he was going to haunt me. 6. The song 'I wish it could be Christmas everyday'. I hated when the singer yelled "ITS CHRIIISTMASSSSSSS" towards the end. I hated loud noises and yelling and something about his raspy old man voice shook me.
my most prominent dumb childhood fear was definitely the thx sound. i was so terrified of it as a kid that i would refuse to go to the theater even if i was assured said sound would not be appearing and i would force my mom to mute the beginning of any movie with the symbol on the case AND would leave the room just in case it messed up somehow. i understand why it would be scary to a kid but i still have no idea how this took precedent over any other loud uncomfortable sound
Oh you are not the only one! Everytime that would come on, before I’d watch any movie with that logo in the beginning, I would bring a blanket with me so I can cover my ears with it.
I was also scared of Angela Anaconda! My sister told me that the characters on the show were the stolen faces of bad kids, and if I didn’t do what she wanted, she’d call the show and they’d come steal my face 😅
One weird childhood “fear” I had for a while was 80’s-related content, particularly live action movies. I never had any problems with animated content (in fact, I adored Muppet Babies, Garfield, All Dogs Go To Heaven, Heathcliff, etc,.), the games were either fun or boring at worst, and the music just sounded weird to me. The live action movies, however, always gave me this really creepy and weird vibe. It was almost like everything felt icky and foreboding, not helped by the grainy and smoky look of them. It was like everything had this feeling unlike what I was experiencing as a 2000’s child, and not in a fun way. I think it might’ve stemmed from watching Goonies and Ghostbusters as my earliest 80’s movie experiences, especially the first one. Sloth and the idea of a kidnapped kid’s hand being pulverized in a blender by some greasy ass crooks terrified me, and the ghosts in Ghostbusters (especially the gargoyles and the ghost librarian) freaked me out so bad that I actually would get anxiety by either being left alone in a large basement or in a maze of shelves similar to the NY library’s basement. I don’t have this problem anymore (and in fact, the grimy look of them can especially be effective in 80’s horror movies of that era, or even dreary stuff like “Come and See” where a “cleaner” look would look off putting given the context). However, I’m not sure if I 100% blame myself for little me’s apprehension to 80’s movies here. 😂
same omg! always thought this was a me thing hahaha. to this day i don’t really like 80s movies for that EXACT reason. labyrinth, gremlins, never ending story, fraggle rock, goonies….. terrible vibes! grey and desolate and freaky
More than afraid, I was so repulsed by this stuff! It always just looked unclean. Still feel this way about early tapes, especially yellowed/green ones
I vividly remember watching a movie with my parents where a couple wakes up in bed to see the entire house lit up with spectral goo and I was terrified to open my eyes while sleeping for many years after that. Nowadays I kind of wish I could figure out what that movie was.
green goo? i remember watching a trailer for a movie where a couple siblings found a green jelly-looking glob of goo and brought it home and the thing wreaked havoc in their home. im not sure if it wqs supposed to be comedy or horror but i remember being scared of it😅
@@byggrynsgroet After posting this comment I went searching for the movie and turns out it was based on a true crime, and the goo was luminol! There were hundreds of comments from other people saying that it traumatized them in the exact same way it did for me LOL Something about goo was a central fear in the 90s and early 2000s so I totally relate to you not being sure if yours was meant to be scary or not hahah!
man i had a toilet related fear too... it started when i was fairly young, maybe 5ish years old. for the next solid 5 years, i was terrified of the sound the toilet made after flushing. not the flush itself, but the minute of hissing that comes after. for a while i was convinced that there was a creature of some sort inside that could grab me and pull me into it. i would always look at the toilet while washing my hands so as to be sure that there was nothing there. at some point though i stopped believing in the creature, but the sound still scared me until i was like 10. now i realise how absurd this fear truly was lol
for me i had to be out of the bathroom before the toilet water had "refilled" after my flush. im not talking the actual visible flush itself, but when the water looks still but you can audibly hear water rushing through pipes after the "visible flush". if i was still in the bathroom after that was done, some kind of eldritch horror would come up from the toilet and kill me😀
Oh, I love Invader Zim! Such a fun show. Dark Harvest is actually one of my favourite episodes, but I can absolutely 100% understand why it unsettles people.
I cannot BELIEVE someone else was terrified of what would happen after neglecting their pixel chix. I thought I was entirely alone on that front. We got mine second hand from a flea market, so mine came pre-neglected. I had to get my dad to reset it while I cried I’m pretty sure.
I slammed the like button at the Austin Powers fear. Kids minds are so fun! The weirdest fears I had were the 6 Flags Guy and Mrs. Doubtfire. I Unfortunately, took a bit of that into adulthood lol. Lovely video!
i have a list of “childhood trauma.” i feel like this video taps into so many unspoken discussions about our childhood. -the loading sound from mario kart 7 -when the 3DS would exit out of the system settings and the double screens turning black as it returned to the home menu -the 3DS error screen from not being able to connect to the internet -the lion’s gate lion. especially when paired with a pink panther cartoon that would air on boomerang. -robot chicken. just robot chicken. -THE GODDAMN THX LOGO -this one live action video on youtube of the “smurfs” where gargamel eats two smurfs and then the ending credits of that video scared me even more -the ending credits to “jacks big music show.” my BIGGEST reason for childhood trauma. -the few times a virus infected the old family computer and a loud alarm sound with a voice warning me of said virus -this stylized statue of some old man that stood inside the entrance of a diner i would go to often -the very loud alarm sound that would play on the tv to announce something important -“hi, i’m paul!” if you know, you know. -the “abc_123_ogg” and “mus_smile” audio files that you could find in the file directory of undertale
I used to be terrified of cows. I had like a ZhuZhu pet thing, one of those mouse toys that Rolled around and made silly little noises and shit. Well one of my favorites made a cow noise, but man did I love that mouse so instead of not playing with it, I memorized the pattern of the sounds so I knew that after the cat sound, it moo’d so as soon as it meowed i would crawl out of the room, hide in a corner with my ears covered for exactly 6 seconds before going back to the playroom and continuing
the fear of sun exploding is a classic. i was really into reading encyclopedias as a kid so i had it too! as well as some other ones. three of the most notable include being afraid of a volcano spontaneously forming right at our doorstep, spontaneous beginning of a new ice age and being trapped in my room by a glacier (i thought that the glacier would enter the building through the entrance like a distinguished being it is, then fill all the rooms up with ice, and block all the ways out of the house. i practiced gnawing on the wooden frame of my bed in case i would have to survive this event without food stashes), and a fear of breaking the earth's crust and unleashing the burning magma hell upon my hometown. this one was caused by a diagram showcasing earth's cross-section, on which the crust (of course) appeared to be paper thin. i was SO disturbed by other kids digging holes in the ground
I used to get really freaked out by the sudden black screen when a VHS tape ended to the point I refused to watch movies alone until we got a DVD player, I can't even tell you why it scared me so bad but it's was a similar kinda fear to when I'd get an error screen on our PS2 cuz the disc was all scratched up, something just felt *off* about it man
I always thought quicksand was going to be a bigger problem in my life than it turned out to be, also tv shows like mr. meaty, robot chicken and Naruto freaked me out
I got so afraid of wasps, hornets, bumblebees and anything in that direction that my worst nightmares to this day are a) there is one *huge* wasp on the other side of the room or b) a swarm of wasps completely surrounds and kills me slowly. Yes, they also appear in my daymares. When I was in primary school, my mother watched a report on unsafe lifts in Berlin (think doors closing even if your finger is still there, having to physically force doors open etc.) and the next night, I dreamt that my father and I took the lift to the basement to get something and ended up falling to our deaths. It is more than a decade later and, although I can enter lifts again, I still feel extremely uncomfortable in them.
this unlocked my own childhood fears i forgot about, while i wasnt afraid of automatic toilets i have vivid memories of being in first grade and thinking the bathroom was haunted because the automatic sinks would go off when no one was there so i refused to use that restroom at school
I was a very anxious child. A short list of my odd fears include: any odd toilets - especially on planes or boats, boats in general (I lived on an island), the sea (again, I lived on an island), our kitchen because I once saw a rotting potato under the counter, our basement because it was messy, holes because I was afraid to fall into them, vomiting, escalators, elevator doors, spinny doors, and so much more
I was (and still am) disturbed by the loud THX intro but I feel like that's valid tbh (I'm autistic and don't handle loud sounds well) my brother on the other hand used to be scared of animatronics, specifically dancing Santas. My mom couldn't even drive by a Krogers that had a Santa there that's how bad it was (he's improved since then obviously)
Was anyone else absolutely terrified of the Numberjacks?? The music that they played when they introduced the villains would send me running from the room screaming
One of my weirdest, most irrational fears was the opening song of ‘The Sopranos’, of all things. My parents used to watch it but I was absolutely not allowed to even see it (for good reason I guess) but they would watch it in a room close enough to my bedroom that I could HEAR it, and I would always feel really panicked by the opening song, like I was listening to something forbidden. The song still makes me feel unsettled by listening to it! 😅
There legitimately wasn't a lot that truly scared me, only one thing persisted until today. But regarding the toilets: I personally loved automatic toilets, but was deathly afraid of these stupid loud blow dryers for your hands, no thank you! Also Hasslehoff with beard and white suit, because in Knight Rider he played a guy like that and was an asshole. A crazy asshole I still carry an irrational fear of, the guy activates my fight or flight. Also blue eyes. I don't know, I always thought people with them looked as though they were wanting to kill me X'D
Omg I hated those blow dryers! When a bathroom only had those loud blow dryers sometimes i would just leave without drying my hands… it got so bad that eventually i came up with a technique where i move my hands up and down so the noise isn’t as loud constantly. These days they’re still a pet peeve of mine and I almost never use them if there’s the choice to use paper towels instead.
when I was kid I was terrified of stop motion movies like Chicken Run and the Wallace and Gromit movies, usually I'd just be extremely uncomfortable when I saw them playing and change the channel asap but I still remember one or two times where I just straight up left the room bc I didn't want to be there with them playing LMAO. tbh I'm not sure where this fear comes from and I'm not afraid of them anymore but I still think they're just hard to watch so to this day I have not seen the movies mentioned above even though a lot of people love them. I also think its kind of curious how it didn't apply to every stop motion movie, for example Coraline is part stop motion but the animation didn't make me uncomfortable, I really don't know why
I did like the Wallace and Gromit episodes but I think as a kid I thought they were kinda creepy too. Chicken run anyways because of the whole thing of them going to get killed XD and Wallace and Gromit had a movie about Wallace being a were rabbit and I was SOOO scared of that😭
I had several of these as a kid, but two that immediately come to mind are the early 2000s honeycomb cereal commercials (I thought it would actually turn you into a bee, and the cgi/ mascot were so freaky) and the gremlins. Really any older movie where the monsters/creatures were done with puppets, like labyrinth, gremlins, the never ending story, etc. Freaked me tf OUT.
I became insanely scared of the inclement weather warnings broadcasted on the radio as a kid because I was listening to my shower radio on Radio Disney and all of a sudden, the loud "EERRRRRRR" sound pierced the air and made me drop to my knees in the shower, tuck and cover and everything bc I was convinced my radio was haunted or smth.
my fear as a child was the dragon/lion dance--im chinese so every year we'd celebrate chinese new year and we'd see the performance but i was smol and dragon was big and loud so i'd just cry. the fear lingered until high school and while im not afraid of it now, i'd still rather not see it (even tho it's hecking cool and i love it in theory lol)
I swear, one of the more vivid fears I had as a child was the opening scene from A Very Goofy Movie when Max's dream turns into a nightmare as he transforms into a friggin eldritch horror of a giant version of his dad... That final HUH-YUCK still sends chills down my 31 year old spine...
Omgggg I think I was afraid of that too! 😂 That and the scene where they’re floating down a river in their car and they’re about to go down a waterfall or something? I forget what it was exactly, but I remember being so terrified of that scene 😮
Top 3 irrational childhood fears: 1. Woody from Toy Story. I saw some DVD bonus features where there were animation bloopers where Woody came detached from his animation skeleton and it was so scary I couldn't sleep. 2. The Sims... but in Spanish. I was over at a friends house and she installed The Sims for the first time and it was unexpectedly in Spanish rather than in English. I was very very young at the time so I have to think just that it was something I didn't expect that freaked me out moreso than the fact that it was specifically Spanish. I studied Spanish later and it was fine. 3. The Windows 95 startup jingle. Dommmmm ding... ding... ding... I used to have to run down to the other end of my house every time I turned the computer on so I wouldn't have to hear it.
when i was like. i wanna say six, i had a dream about one of my classmates coming out of my wall in plush form and moving on her own and constantly following me, and upon waking up i was 1) scared of that classmate for a couple of days and 2) TERRIFIED of EVERY SINGLE ONE of my beloved plushies during the night, i was convinced toy story would happen to me but in an EVIL and Fucked Up way . this fear continued to haunt me until about 19 when i could finally deal with having plushies in my room without making sure they couldnt see me at night (thank you masky makeship plush for curing me i love you)
I had a fear of that one scene from "A Christmas Story" where the kid got his tongue stuck to the flag pole. I thought they had to rip his tongue off to free him! So every year I would hide behind the couch or run out of the room and start crying as soon as the scene started. A couple years ago my mom sent me a Christmas card....with a screenshot of that scene on it. 🤦♀
Omg I love the little cat Ichimatsu. You must've been in that fandom in 2015 and 2016. Those plushes came out during the first season of that show (or you got it second hand).
there was an episodes of martha speaks (which i was obsessed with as a kid) where they tell each other scary stories on a rainy evening and one of them involved artichokes. i was absolutely terrified of artichokes because of that
i think the irrational fear of random inanimate objects is probably linked to fear of lack of control, the unknown/unfamiliar, and getting in trouble for breaking something because you don't know how to use it. I used to be scared of the microwave because ours has always been a bit broken and I still have stress dreams where I can't get it to turn off
Idk if it was because the scale of my favorite characters was way off or what - but when I was a child I was TERRIFIED of character costumes. No Easter bunny, no characters at Disney World…I would freeze in fear when I saw them.
audio uncanny valley is a HUGE thing for me, even to this day. text to speech still fucks me up pretty bad, dunno what it is. i think i know the origin, but knowing that doesn't help lmao i'm pretty sure my first exposure to TTS-like/glitchy audio was the 90's cartoon ReBoot. it's not common in the show, but in an early episode one of the characters gets a magnet stuck to their face and their voice starts glitching out + they turn transparent and glitchy (like the sims examples). pretty sure i just watched the episode at much too young of an age or something because i don't think it's supposed to be scary? still got me pretty bad! it's a frustrating fear i have because i love weird internet themed stuff + TTS can be used to give an amazing vibe. the mind electric is an incredible song, but the TTS in it freaks me out for example.
One thing I recently found was this bootleg Disney DVD that had a loud song that came on as the intro and as a kid I was absolutely terrified of it and would beg my mum to turn it off. I only recently just found it in my house and uploaded it and turns out others were looking for it for so long too
I had a similar automatic toilet fear, or just general public toilet fear. One day I had the thought, "what if a shark just jumped out of the toilet and bit me?" and for about 6 months I would get up from ANY toilet outside of my own home and flush as fast as I could to prevent any sort of thing with teeth from grabbing me. I was also afraid of sleeping next to a window because I thought Nosferatu was going to crawl through the window and get me. I was definitely one of those kids who was able to talk themselves into being afraid of something they never had been before....
It's always nice to see someone whose many childhood fears are equally bizarre and incomprehensible as your own. I share a few on this list and empathize with most of the ones I don't. As a kid, I had a friend who was terrified of escalators, and I always thought it was really funny. Then I learned that escalators can kill people in gruesome ways and it became my own phobia. Wonderful! 💀
I was terrified of talking stuffed animals. I vividly remember sitting on the kitchen floor sobbing while my parents removed the voice box of a stuffed Scooby Doo. Removing the batteries was not enough. I was also terrified of the game Operation and couldn't go near a closet that once had that game in it, even after I knew the game was removed
omg I was also scared of Operation even though I had never played it myself. The thought of the buzzing and pieces jumping out was just too much for me. I was also too embarrassed to tell anyone though, so it was a sort of go to the bathroom when an ad came on for it situation. I remember one of my friends getting it as a birthday gift and I was thinking "please do not make this part of the party" and thankfully it was not
invader zim was terrifying to me too, i also had to regularly leave the room because the grossness of some of these 2000s shows made me feel so uneasy. there was a short on nickelodeon about a fly going into someone's ear and getting caught in the earwax. why
OMG as someone who grew up with life size Star Trek cardboard cutouts around the house, I'm SO glad to see someone else's family did the same thing haha!!! I was personally afraid of mummies because of how decomposed they looked (either from a museum visit or from a documentary) and combine that with having watched CSI all my life (aka probably too young) I like, regularly had nightmares of my parents getting murdered by a rotting mummy corpse?? I remember crawling out of bed at night when someone used the bathroom to see if the mummy was about and my mom being like,,, ok kid calm down LMAO
Kind of similar to the land before time thing, I was absolutely TERRIFIED of the air conditioner in Brave Little Toaster. I would hide behind the couch somehow lol.
I don't know when it started, but I became super scared of the the scene in Tangled where Mother Gothel fell out of the tower. Every time we watched the movie I'd get up and either go to the toilet or the kitchen and act like I wasn't scared. I have one very clear memory of walking into the little broom closet (which I was also afraid of after it got dark outside), reaching for my hello kitty lego set and bringing it into the living room when the scene was over, starting to build like nothing happened. I was probably around 10 years old already. I actually have a lot of movie fears. I was scared of every version of A Christmas Carol, the original one, the Mickey Mouse one, the Timmy Turner episode, I really don't know why. Maybe it was too much existential dread for me or it was the ghosts, but I was always super uncomfortable and scared. This is more niche, but there's a german kids show called Woozle Goozle, and it's about Beni and Woozle doing experiments and teaching world facts. Woozle is a blue dog looking kind of puppet and in one episode he confesses that he has a brother / cousin who's name was something similar like Zoozle or Moozle or whatever. But the Woozlings are wild animals, Woozle is just a very civilized Woozling. So he warns that his relative could be a little wild. They made his puppet a weird muddy green and he was gurgling and growling like a zombie and he had a super deep voice. I was very scared or that thing. xP I don't even really remember what this was from but I watched something where the characters ate or were fed so much that they became big and round and almost mindless, just wanting more food.... the loss of control fear seems to be a major fear for most of us. I was and still am scared of the dark, but the most scary thing is my imagination. I used to be terrified of our walkway after it got dark because it went around the corner of our house and I was convinced that if we get to our door, a bear will unexpectedly pop out and attack us. I had always been scared of bears (my mom thinks it's because we always watched a family channel on TV that showed movies in the evening and I was there when the part in Merida came up where the Mom is the bear and being violent or something idk, I've never actually watched it until this day 😅)
I didn't "have" a Teddy Ruxpin exactly but there was a Teddy Ruxpin doll (plus the weird caterpillar creature from the same franchise, which was even worse) in the back of my parents' closet that scared the absolute shit out of me as a kid. For some reason they also deeply fascinated me so I remember repeatedly sneaking into my parents' room to peek in the closet, seeing them in the shadows, and then fleeing in terror. Kid logic is wild
god yeah the dying sun thing is spot on, i remember watching an episode of doctor who about it and had nightmares for a week. another thing that scares me for some reason is just a singular giant eyeball staring at me (just the thought of it makes me nauseous)
As a kid I feared the cheese from Diary of a Wimpy Kid so much, not the cheese in the books tho but in the movie? I don’t know it just felt way more sinister and scary in that😭 My fear thankfully didn’t last long but it was so bad I had to run to another direction when I saw Diary of a Wimpy kid books in library
As a kid I was terrified of atom bombs and thought I could cause an atomic reaction by accidentally splitting an atom. So I was terrified every time I used scissors or cut my nails.
I was scared that I would accidentally crush an atom and make an explosion if I stomped on the ground but that fear only lasted like 2 years
Wow, that's actually a really random and crazy fear. I think I'd probably have that fear as a child, too.
Accidently splitting atoms 😭
i had this same fear because of a spongebob gag i saw when i was way younger lmfaoo
Same!!! Every time I cut paper or anything I tensed up!
When I was 8 I was terrified of Ozzy Osbourne; I was so hesitant to even say his name that I called him "Evil Joe". I've also had a longstanding fear of accidentally shape-shifting into the form of a character I hate, namely Wario.
your fears are valid, but omg the way you phrased this is just so funny. "evil joe" is too good lmao, and wario shape-shifting is gold. im sorry
HOWLING this one takes the cake 😭😭
Omg no not Ozzy 😂😂😂 he's so harmless! Also omg accidentally shape shifting, that's a first one for me 🤣
@@mr_selfdestruct i dont mean to ruin the mood, but ozzy isnt harmless.. he nearly strangled his wife sharon to death
@@mr_selfdestruct My dad told me he bit the head off a live bat once and I never looked back
i can’t believe you had like legitimate trauma about toilets flushing and overflowing meanwhile i was afraid of automatic toilets because loud noise hurty
same and now I know I'm autistic
i'm still afraid of the loud noise i hate those toilets so much
The toilet flushing and overflowing is a fear of hers I lived through and it was an automatic flush lol. The toilet in my dorm hall kept flushing and flushed continuously for over 2 minted until it ended up flooding our whole floor. Me and another girl rushed to stuff towels underneath everyone’s door to avoid the water going into their rooms (I had to break into my friends dorm to pick up chargers and more off her floor so no one got electrocuted) 😂😂😂
same but very specifically with automatic hand dryers in public bathrooms (those little things that blow air out when you put your hands under them) i absolutely could not stand their noises and being in a bathroom with one of those and no paper towels made me so angry
@@jamdeluxe7456 same!! I would get anxious if other people were also in the bathroom just because I knew they’d use the automatic stuff
I love how so many of these just read as "I was a neurodivergent child" to me, who was also a neurodivergent child.
i'm so glad i'm not the only one who was deeply frightened by the hypothetical death of the sun 😭
I thought that shit was happening TOMORROW I was so stressed at 7 yrs old
I still remember I had to cover my ears in science class for days after learning that 😭😭 I couldnt read or hear anything about space for months because of that
We fr were acting like the sun was gonna “die” the NEXT day.
oh fr
Man I remember staying up late with my dad while he watched the history channel when I was little and an episode about the sun's death started playing. I had never been so filled with dread. It didn't help that it straight up showed how that would end humanity lol
very specific but I could not STAND second hand embarrassment. Like whenever I would see a character in a movie/cartoon do something embarrassing/humiliating I would get so uncomfortable that I needed to leave the room whenever it happened.
i feel that so hard omg, i absolutely hated watching anything when there was someone else in the room bc the second hand embarrassment was insane
I had the same thing!!
when i was 9 i was literally afraid of the color brown like i’d literally have nightmares as a kid where i would just run around my house and everything would turn brown and i’d wake up crying 😭
WHAT 😭
I’m sorry but I’m dying laughing
I am laughing right now. I’m so sorry for that though.
lmao it’s fine 😭 i got over it eventually
to clarify it was a specific shade of brown (like a lighter orange-y brown?) and i genuinely don’t remember how i got that fear, maybe through a dream
@@better4096 lmao like a terracotta color??? hahaha like the world turned sepia or something
I remember being terrified of Hot Topic in the mid-2000s because my cousins who went there a lot convinced me it was a store for vampires. Whenever we'd go to the mall I would refuse to go near it because I was so scared.
Oh thank god I'm not alone in this lol, my sibling and I both were scared to go in there but only because we saw people dressed as skeletons in there. Like, full face of skeleton makeup and clothes. I love Hot Topic now tho lol
To be fair, there’s been this trend of “edgy ‘vampires’” to this day? I never understood that, even with the existence of the Twilight book series
I was too afraid to go in spencers as a kid because of the chuckie dolls they had 😂
Nahhh the vamps are in the back takin a nap. They're out on night shift security
As a kid I was absolutely TERRIFIED of the book "the bad case of the stripes" Like, real existential dread. Every time my kindergarten teacher would read it I would have a full on meltdown and I'd have to sit in the office till it was over. It was so bad that I remember after I took a nap at home after school, I woke up in a panic and was running around the house trying to get it out of my head. My mom and dad tried to help, but I was inconsolable. Some of my classmates used to blackmail me with it because they knew I was scared of it. When I was in the second grade this one kid brought it out because he knew it would bother me and I think I just started hysterically sobbing. It was really bad. Even nowadays looking at the cover of the book disturbs me, but it's not as bad as before.
I was also terrified of this book so I feel you. In kindergarten we watched a story time video of it being read. I found the illustrations so disturbing and also had serious existential dread about it. I couldn’t get it out of my head and was terrified the class would pick it again another day. One day they did and I went immediately panicking to the teacher and she let me go to the other side of the classroom, so I spent the duration of this video facing away from the smartboard panicking with my head in my hands. I’ve seen the illustrations again since and still think some of them are pretty disturbing for a kids book. The painting style is really uncanny.
I looked it up because i never heard of it and it made me a little nauseous lmao. What was the author thinking.
I had the same experience!
OMG when I was little I was terrified of it because of the page where there were weird things growing out of her face or smth, now I love it!
OH MY GOD I CRIED WHEN THEY READ IT IN FIRST GRADE. we would have activities where we'd rotate around the room doing other things, and one station was listening to the audiobook for it and I would cry and refuse to listen to it. Worst part was my teacher tried to force me even if only for a little bit, it was terrifying for me
I had nightmares of turning rainbow for years. Now I'm gay, so idk you decide the amount of irony in that turnout
i don’t know how this idea started or even why tbh but as a child i was terrified of… the doodlebops watching me use the bathroom. the doodlebops were totally fine (i even had a toy! like a keyboard or keytar i think the girl had?) but specifically when i used the bathroom i had to pause/mute the TV so i couldn’t hear them or think abt them and sometimes i even cracked the door a little to make sure no one was out there. i have literally never said this out loud to anyone but i feel like if anyone gets this they would be in this comment section.
When I was a kid I had a fear of escalators that went down. I was always nervous to fall when getting on one, and I always had the idea in my head of me falling down on one and getting my hair caught in between the steps, unable to move as it kept going down. I still pause before getting on an escalator because of this.
I CANT BELIEVE I FUCKING FORGOT ESCALATORS!!!!!!!!!!
I was confident my feet would get stuck on an escalator and I’d get sucked under the escalator and squished. To be honest I still kinda don’t like escalators 🫣
I'm still terrified of escalators
My mom had to push the emergency stop button on one particularly steep escalator because my sister and I were too scared to walk down it
I was literally so terrified of escalators as a kid that I was stuck at the top of one crying at a mall while my mom and sister were at the bottom, and suddenly a totally random stranger threw me over his shoulder and took me down to them.
As a kid I was terrified of the X-Files theme song. I'm pretty sure the reason why is because it would air sometime around my bedtime, and all I knew about it was that it was a scary show about monsters and aliens, so it became the literal soundtrack to my nightmares. For YEARS randomly hearing the music would trigger a panic response, including a time only a couple years ago when I happened to be walking down the hallays in my house with the lights off, not knowing that my perents were having an X-Files marathon, and when it suddenly started blasting through the house I immediately dropped into a defensive stance. Now, after having watched several seasons of the show myself I've gotten over it through exposure, but I'll never forget the pants-shitting terror that gripped me that night, lmao
I absolutely HAD to change the channel or leave the room if xfiles was about to air. I couldn't do the theme song (or the creepy imagery) either. but now as an adult... oh that's my jam
i had the same fear but because of the simpsons episode where mr burns turns into that freaky alien and they parody the x-files. I had to leave the room and once put my head under the water in the bath because i could still hear the music.
@@jenniferch3ck i used to be afraid of that episode too! it wasn't because of the x files but because i was afraid of et and mr burns reminded me of him
Same!!!!
Me too!!!
Watching this does help to remind me I'm not the only one that is scared of things that aren't supposed to be scary.
same. It’s Whales for me. I blame Pinocchio but I might have been a penguin in a past life because killer whales are monsters and idk why everyone is so freaking chill about it :c
@@loverrlee no but Pinocchio is traumatizing
Me with my phase as a child where I was scared of the wind. Seeing the leaves move on the trees would make me nauseous with fear and want to stay inside
I think I was more afraid of a tornado/hurricane starting…. But I also lived someplace where those never happen
I’ve said this before, but for some odd reason, TV logo bumpers really spooked me as a kid… even some that aren’t even considered “scary” to a lot of people!
I was terrified for the longest time of a toy called Jake the Snake. It was a remote controlled green snake that could move around and even lunge. The worst part was that my brother would chase me around the house with it. I'm sure I knew that there wasn't a way for the toy to hurt me but that didn't matter
As a kid I was terrified of the concept of hell (a fairly reasonable fear tbh for a 6 year old growing up in Sunday school) but the cherry on top was the fact that I was scared because I believed, vehemently, at six years old, that I was already damned to hell. Needless to say; not a Christian now
Why did you think you were already damned!? What the hell was your Sunday school teacher teaching you?!?
@@Clodsire_loverI think it might be a belief that all children are pure and innocent therefore will go to heaven regardless and when you hit certain age you don't have that privilege anymore. It sucks but I heard a story like that from ine person
@@ЮлияПопова-ч5ю8хit depends on the sources you look at/people you ask
Rules on what people think sends you to hell range from "you won't go to hell if you're not bad, and all children go to heaven because they can't really be bad yet" (no Christianity/other God worshipping religion really even needed) to "if you're not baptized as a baby/join into MY sect of this religion then you'll burn forever!!!" Possibly even applies to newborns who're "dead on arrival" (be it literally or only living for a very short amount of time. Either way probably couldn't really be baptized)
Belief systems are just crazy like that
My church leader told me that all gay people go to hell, I was 6. So needless to say I thought I was dammed to hell. I was so traumatized that I tried to convince myself I was straight for 6 years straight, I sent myself into a depressive spiral and just general depression. All that to say, thats a completely justified fear
Oh, yeah, I forgot about this fear I had...damn. I'm also not a Christian either...not really religious at all, but I am considering Wicca.
When you spoke about fear of being out of control with electronic devices, blue screens ect. I realized this makes sense for my fear of gaming glitches. I have a terrible, unrelated fear of in-game water and the void, but any sort of camera glitch, getting out of the map/playable area/ losing control over a game makes me freak out so badly to this day. I am legit scared to play The Sims 3 because of that.
YES
I thought I was the only one!!!!!! I used to have nightmares about arcades filled with only boot up/crash screens.
I used to be scared of void and deep water more when I was a child, like the inside of the big piramide in Minecraft or the galaxy view in Spore. Now it still is inside me but mostly when I play Space Engine and see big ass star, or worse, when in past game versions you could go through the texture of the planet and physically be inside of the live size planet. Instant alt f4
I have this faint memory (or maybe a nightmare) of trying to play a dvd and the menu screen saying “hurry up and press play!” and being so scared of technology acknowledging my existence or talking to me out of no where. Even now I get a bit startled when a game will talk directly to the player out of no where. The fear of being out of control of devices was so real
I find it very uncomfortable but I kinda like it for that reason. If I wasn't somewhat bothered by things like test maps in video games, I would find them less interesting
I had a fear of "part of your world" from The Little Mermaid. I always thought Ursula would suddenly appear. It took me years to get over that fear.
Also we had that Smeagol doll when I was a kid and would hide it around the house to surprise each other. We also told my aunt we got a kitten and wrapped Smeagol in a blanket and then acted like we were going to show her the cat, but she got Smeagol'd instead. You would have hated my house.
Edit: the Kidpix "oh no" is the ultimate jumpscare, change my mind.
haha ur family is like, "GET SMEAGOLED"
Angela Anaconda is so scary back then to me. I was so terrified, and it was understandable to me because it had incorporated realistic faces that were grey. The illusion of it being seemingly realistic but also unrealistic at the same time just made me scared.
The uncanny valley
automatic toilets were truly the bane of my existence as a child
even as an adult they are the bane of my existence. although horrifying as a child, now they're just annoying 😭
Same, and hand dryers as well
This reminded me... I was weirdly afraid of styling heads when I was a kid???? Like the kind that would look like a giant barbie head or something that you'd style the hair of, they freaked me out to no end. If a friend of mine as a kid had one in their room, I wasn't going in there. I even had nightmares about them where I would be turned into a styling head against my will lmao 😭
oh, I hated those too! especially when I'd go to beauty supply stores with my mom and the wig displays were just a HUNDRED or more of those wig heads lining the walls, floor to ceiling. they still creep me out a little bit
I used to have one but I watched The Ring over my parents' shoulder and just COULD NOT stop feeling it LOOK at me in the dark.
I literally grabbed it in the middle of the night and stuffed it in the garage 😭
Talking about Angela Anaconda has unlocked a deeply hidden trauma I had regarding how horrifying that show looked.
I had never heard of that show before and now I wish I still didn't.
Also what kind of name is that, even, Angela Anaconda sounds like the alias of an adult movie star.
@@mimicmeyimagine, you go in for the Digimon movie and you gotta see that before the film starts
Weirdly, I always see people mention how creepy this show was and I honestly don't remember being bothered by it in Germany as a kid? So I looked up both versions, and oh wow, for some reason the german dub is way less uncanny valley. Maybe the fact it's already dubbed helps with the suspension of disbelief or something, but the original feels way creepier somehow.
@@oomflem I also grew up with the German dub and don’t remember it being scary. But I think we had the VHS tapes when I already was a bit older, maybe around 10. That could also have helped.
For some reason, even worse than the Dark Harvest episode for me was the *meat* one. Called Rise of Meatboy or something. Zim and Dib get infected with some kind of microbe that slowly turns them into edible meat, like salami. Their skin changes color, their features swell and distort, and dogs start trying to bite them. The episode ends with the two of them turned into giant, inanimate sausage links wearing clothes, sitting in an alley as dogs bark in the distance. It disturbed me so horribly as a child. I remember hiding on the stairs leading to the basement, secretly watching as my brothers laughed at the episode, terrified but unable to look away. Nightmares for years.
EXACTLY!! everyone always talks about how scary dark harvest was, but I always thought the goddamn sausage disease was wayyy more disturbing
It’s called Bolognius Maximus. Between that, Bloaty’s Pizza Hog, The Sad Sad Story of Chicken Foot, and the career day ep where Zim works at McMeaty’s I wouldn’t be surprised if IZ were responsible for turning some kids vegetarian
Oh my God, I was petrified of Invader Zim as a kid because I saw this episode and the Teen Titans episode where Beast Boy gets a job in a fast food place and my brain combined the two into some horrific nightmare scenario where all I could clearly remember about any of it was "green dude + meat = trauma"
@@morganorwhatever I was lowkey uncomfortable with meat as a child and eventually gave it up entirely as an adult. I would not be at all surprised if Invader Zim had something to do with it.
I agree! Dark Harvest is, of course, disturbing, BUT the main effect it has on me is nausea. Watching someone vomit out harvested intestines, only to slurp them back up like spaghetti is not something you should watch before, during, or after eating. 😅 I think the Halloween special takes the cake when it comes to fear. I rewatched it this past October, and I was legitimately terrified. Being trapped inside your own mind and losing your sanity has always been a fear of mine.
i distinctly remember being absolutely terrified by this video of a cgi hippo singing the lions sleep tonight with a dog dancing next to him as a kid,, like legit that shit made me cry it was so scary
i remember that shit it was literally so unsettling to me too my family would always play it and i wasnt terrified so id go along with it but id secretly always feel looming discomfort every time it was on
wtf same. we got shown that video some time at primary school and it made me so scared
OH MY GOD I FORGOT ABOUT THAT i was scared of it too! i had this thing when i was a kid where i'd just be so scared of things that felt too old for me. like, that video felt like it was for adults, and that i wasn't supposed to be watching it
LMAO i legit watched that video all the time and i’m amazed anyone else remembers it
@@clovertchi that was the la bomba hippo!
My massive fear as a child was when cds would skip! I started sobbing the first time I had it happen
Oh my gosh YEAH!! Relatable!!
THANK YOU for mentioning Angela Anaconda... how on EARTH did they think that character design was ok, they freaked me out too. Never watched it, didn't want to see it
My weirdest fear when I was a kiddo was me being scared of butterflys. I saw the sponge bob episode about wormy, and I got absoulty terrified from the close up realistic footage of a realistic butterfly, I honestly think it was more so the loud noise in the show that scared me.
Fun fact, the close up in the show was actually a horsefly! They thought the actual butterfly wasn't creepy enough X)
the Angela anaconda fear is SO real I made my dad go into my room and turn the TV off for me idk why it was so visceral for me as a child
I fully understand being afraid of Dark Harvest. It’s a wonder to me that Zim was allowed to air on Nickelodeon at all, let alone that episode. I’ve enjoyed that episode as an adult but if I’d watched it as a kid it would have been traumatic
I would repeatedly try and convince my parents that Invader Zim wasn't terrible and bad.
The episode that would always be playing when I convinced them to give it a try... was Dark Harvest.
Every. Time.
The dying birthday card one is valid. I personally don't think I've ever been scared of them cause the only one I was ever given was a Hoops and Yoyo Hamster Dance card. BUT the idea of hearing a distorted version of a song you know play from a thing you thought was safe from that IS pretty unsettling imo
i completely relate to all of these fears, especially the glitch/crash screens, for some reason i have still not gotten over it and they terrify me to this day. also it’s comforting to know so many kids simultaneously felt the terror of the sun possibly exploding in our lifetime
THAT PARTICULAR HOOPS AND YOYO CARD WAS AN ARTIFACT IN MY MEMORY LOST TO TIME UNTIL THIS VERY MOMENT
those sound strips on roads were my ultimate favorite thing as a kid. my dad called them "mooing strips" and would sometimes drive through them on purpose just for the moo
this reminded me of my fear of the stairs at my elementary school. super old catholic school, very long stairways that you could see all the way down. now that i think about it i was afraid of a lot of things at my dusty old catholic school lol
I live in a one story house and had so many nightmares about trying to go an bathroom upstairs but the steps being so small and the door being right on the ledge.
Discovering your channel was almost eerie, you're the first youtuber that seems to have had the exact same cultural upbringing as me. It's like tailor-made nostalgia for zillennials
Edit: totally forgot to mention I was also unreasonably unsettled by Austin Powers as a child. I didn't watch the movies until my mid 20's.
Same here! XD we're the gen Z softie gang I guess💀
is that what we're called? i have no idea bc i'm not a millennial but i also def am not gen z, i'm nothing like them, born in 1999 and also relate to Li SO much
@@tokyotrashbbyGen Z starts at 96 or 97. Definitely Gen Z but old enough to remember and experience the same things millennials did. Zillennials are 96(97)-02.
1998 and I feel like I'm way too young for millennials but also too old for gen z
About spontaneous human combustion, I vividly remember seeing that on TV, maybe Discovery or History Channel. It was also a huge fear of mine. Nowadays i am mature enough to know that it's still scary but there is nothing we can do about it. Growth!
I remember my dad was watching something on Discovery or History that showed some guys eyes exploding, and the colour grading was really weird so it looked like his eyes were full of black goo. That scared me a lot as a kid
thats why you dont hold in your farts! thanks, south park!
dude the history channel….i was scared to death of it🤣🤣it always had some disturbing existential shit playing, 1000 ways to die, 2012 etc
I had this fear too I read about it in a book once & then a few years later I saw something on TV saying that it wasn't a myth & it could happen and explained science why it could happen. I forgot about till this video.
as someone who grew up with their dad being in law enforcement, i was told a lot of scary stuff about drugs a lot throughout my childhood. i'd say the topic as a whole was less of a fear and more of a morbid fascination (i feel that morbid fascinations can often connect to childhood trauma), but at night i was always scared someone was gonna like, break into my room and try to give me pills in my sleep to get me addicted. think i stopped worrying about this by the time i was in middle school.
sidenote, this weird fascination with drugs as a kid was so intense that i remember making a "movie" with my zhu zhu pets where the baby of the family gets addicted to drugs and has an overdose (don't worry the doctors gave her a magical cure), and in the next part, the dad buys the mom a car to apologize for the whole incident, and then while driving her new car the mom hits one of her own kids. was i okay in 2009
I had an intense fear of the undead as a small child, which was understandable but manifested in a number of specific ways. There was a golf course by my house that I would get confused with a nearby cemetery, and when we drove past either one I would go into a panic. We had a Veggietales VHS that I refused to watch when I realized the logo on the tape were “skeleton” versions of Bob and Larry. I cried when my godmother gave me a pirate-themed I Spy book because it had a Jolly Roger flag on the cover, which I proceeded to keep covered with a taped piece of paper for several years.
I too am inconsolable when passing by a golf course
hey man..... you know there's a skeleton inside you, right now?
@@byggrynsgroet N-no way, r-r-really? Like, zoinks! 😱
I was like that too!
Oh my god I had the same fear. It wasn't like the wrapped up mummies or skeletons, it was the shriveled up dessicated ones. A lot of my elementary school classrooms had books about mummies where they showed actual images of the unwrapped dead. Now i find it fascinating, but back then, if someone was reading one of those books, I'd run out of the room.
Skyrim came out when I was 13 and I still would not play it because I couldn't get past the draugr in Bleak Falls Barrow. I didn't pick it back up until I was an adult, and then I became obsessed with it.
As a young teen I was terrified of the Gorillaz. I would sometimes watch Adult Swim when my parents were asleep and one day they played the music video “Clint Eastwood” and my young mind was terrified of the artstyle and visuals. I was raised on Disney so i guess I wasn’t used to such a style at the time. It’s silly to think about today since they’re now one of my favorite bands now. 😂
Lol, I was just thinking about how it wouldn't surprise me if someone had been. I really liked them as a kid (and am just getting back into them) but I also found the artstyle unsettling at first. And first time I heard of them was some text presenting them which had the headline "Gorillaz - the band that does not exist" or something like that and for some reason I thought that sounded creepy xD
OMG I WAS TERRIFIED OF 2-D!!! I had a terrible nightmare with the "Feel Good" music video that played on MTV 😭 now I'm a huge fan though!
I was also a really sensitive kid and had a lot of strange fears such as:
- the goat from Hoodwinked
- the rumor weed from Veggie Tales
- the monkey from Toy Story 3
- emptiness/void, an example of this being an empty level in LittleBigPlanet
- gremlins, after watching that movie I was constantly afraid of one jumping out at me at night
- the grim reaper, specfically from the Sims 2 and a game called Crystal Maze. It was kind of like Pac-Man except 3D, you played as a girl running around temples collecting gems while avoiding enemies but if you took too long the grim reaper would show up and make these CREEPY whispering sounds and chase after you. I always made my dad play it for me lol
- speaking of the sims 2 I was also afraid of the social bunny, the burglar (I got robbed a LOT), and whenever your sims had a mental breakdown from low aspiration and that therapist would drop down from the sky.. yeah.
- animatronics, specifically Halloween decorations and Christmas decorations. I had a nightmare as a kid about being in Walmart and seeing an animatronic of the Grinch, I think it tried to haunt me.
I also had more serious fears because my dad never really filtered himself around me and would go on rants about these things like
- global warming/climate change, I remember him telling me by the time I got to the age I am now the world would be so different.
- the end of the world
- a civil war breaking out, or another world war
- being bombed
- nuclear powerplants
i loved that mountain goat
I was horrified of the Mr. Burns as an alien episode of the Simpsons. I remember coming home and turning on Fox to see it was that episode and I began to sob like crazy
Bugaboo creek was a themed restaurant near where I lived that had this absolutely chilling animatronic pine tree. It had this huge gaping mouth and I was convinced it ate children. I would edge around it as far away as a I could never turning my back on it. Sometimes my dad would kind of nudge me towards it which did not help.
Lmaoooo this place was so scary for 3 year old me
I love animatronics, so I just googled this guy, and I can see why you'd be scared of him!! He's kinda spooky!!
@@NumeroLetter Its eyes also would rarely both be working at the same time and would kind of twitch and blink out of sync. For some reason upkeep was not a priority for the animatronics. There was also a scheduled musical performance where all the animatronics would perform at once.. it was frightening. The complimentary bread was really good though I miss Bugaboo🥲
I never heard of Bugaboo Creek Steakhouse before, so I looked it up… never in my life, had I seen a tree animatronic so terrifying; not even the ones at a Rainforest Cafe I’ve been in, nor a storytelling tree animatronic at a mall from my grandparents’ former home town 😂
I just looked it up and it’s so cursed 😭 why did they think kids would like that?!
You were honestly a really smart kid for being worried about getting burned using this sort of toys. I remember wanting a children’s oven so bad ever since I saw it on curious George even though I have accidentally burned myself on the stove at least twice before
I was terrified by the song “the sweet escape” by Gwen Stefani (now one of my favorite songs) and the Space Cows from Spyro Enter the Dragonfly - these lasted for years too beyond my childhood for no reason
What was it about sweet escape that you found scary lmao
It's funny that you used The Mask as your example. I was TERRIFIED of this movie as a kid, like my parents had to block the TV when a commercial for it came on cuz it freaked me out to the point of tears. I still have not seen it almost 30 years later because it activates a fight of flight mode in me.
My weirdly specific childhood fears:
-I was creeped out by a hot air balloon decoration that hung from my bedroom ceiling after having a dream where every room in my house was full of them
-an episode of curious George where he gets sick and has a dream about singing germs. I didn’t understand the “it was all a dream” trope because I was like 2, so I thought it was actually happening to him in real life.
-the episode of sid the science kid with the song about decay. Why did they have to make it so graphic?
-the “heffalumps and woozles” scene from Winnie the Pooh
-this one episode of the hello kitty animated series where whenever hello kitty responded to her mom with “yeah what?” a monster only she could see appeared
-any episode of a show where the plot revolved around a character hiding something bad from their parents
-a specific Sesame Street scene where Bert and Ernie were playing the “got your nose” game, and since they were puppets there was a gag with Ernie holding Bert’s actual nose, then it cut to Bert with no nose
BRO YOU ARE SCARED OF THE FART FROM GROWING UP WITH HELLO KITTY?!?!
@@NataliasClips I didn’t even find the character scary, I found the concept of seeing something that no one else was able to see scary
also the fact that you referred to it as “the fart” 💀
@@phantombobaI was about to say that this belonged at the bottom of the tier list, but being able to see something that no one else can see makes this more unferstandable
You have actually reasonable fears as a child.
I was scared of the LaLaLoopsy movie and Mr Noddle from Elmo’s World.
Hated LaLaLoopsey bc I had seen Coraline before that movie and I was horrified
I had the complete expansion pack of the first Sims on our Windows XP desktop computer. Over time the computer got old and slow and all that stuff and a lot of times when I'd play the game it completely froze to the point the whole computer had to be restarted. I always had a big sense of dread for the whole day/evening after it. Not to mention that the Sims 1 in itself is creepy anyway, with the damn burglar sound effect, cockroaches, the monster potion, phone call pranks, the clown painting and general uncanny gameplay. Also I feared going out of bounds of my lots and having my screen be just one whole grey square.
Things I was scared of as a kid:
1. Art Attack - i used to love this show but then they did a skit where a bust talked and the concept of an all-white decapitated head talking terrified the shit out of me to the point where i just stopped watching it altogether.
2. The sun exploding and/or engulfing the Earth is a fear I can relate to. I remember once at school there was a lunar eclipse so the sun looked huge ans i was convinced that we were all going to die. This was in the year 2012 also so I thought the world was gonna end. Also, whenever i heard a loud plane overhead, I thought i was hearing the sun move closer to the Earth.
3. Dying in Super Mario 64. There would be a blackout screen where bowser laughs and idk something about it scared me so much.
4. When Toad says "foul" in Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Games. I forgot what minigame this was but the voice sounded nothing like Toad and it was really loud so I thought Toad got possessed (?????)
5. Michael Jackson. I just thought he looked terrifying. And after he died i was scared that he was going to haunt me.
6. The song 'I wish it could be Christmas everyday'. I hated when the singer yelled "ITS CHRIIISTMASSSSSSS" towards the end. I hated loud noises and yelling and something about his raspy old man voice shook me.
my most prominent dumb childhood fear was definitely the thx sound. i was so terrified of it as a kid that i would refuse to go to the theater even if i was assured said sound would not be appearing and i would force my mom to mute the beginning of any movie with the symbol on the case AND would leave the room just in case it messed up somehow. i understand why it would be scary to a kid but i still have no idea how this took precedent over any other loud uncomfortable sound
Oh you are not the only one! Everytime that would come on, before I’d watch any movie with that logo in the beginning, I would bring a blanket with me so I can cover my ears with it.
Omg I forgot I was scared of that 😭
I was also scared of Angela Anaconda! My sister told me that the characters on the show were the stolen faces of bad kids, and if I didn’t do what she wanted, she’d call the show and they’d come steal my face 😅
I also stopped playing my Tamagotchi after it died 💀 I was scared by the death screen too. Unlocked a memory for me.
One weird childhood “fear” I had for a while was 80’s-related content, particularly live action movies.
I never had any problems with animated content (in fact, I adored Muppet Babies, Garfield, All Dogs Go To Heaven, Heathcliff, etc,.), the games were either fun or boring at worst, and the music just sounded weird to me.
The live action movies, however, always gave me this really creepy and weird vibe. It was almost like everything felt icky and foreboding, not helped by the grainy and smoky look of them. It was like everything had this feeling unlike what I was experiencing as a 2000’s child, and not in a fun way.
I think it might’ve stemmed from watching Goonies and Ghostbusters as my earliest 80’s movie experiences, especially the first one.
Sloth and the idea of a kidnapped kid’s hand being pulverized in a blender by some greasy ass crooks terrified me, and the ghosts in Ghostbusters (especially the gargoyles and the ghost librarian) freaked me out so bad that I actually would get anxiety by either being left alone in a large basement or in a maze of shelves similar to the NY library’s basement.
I don’t have this problem anymore (and in fact, the grimy look of them can especially be effective in 80’s horror movies of that era, or even dreary stuff like “Come and See” where a “cleaner” look would look off putting given the context). However, I’m not sure if I 100% blame myself for little me’s apprehension to 80’s movies here. 😂
same omg! always thought this was a me thing hahaha. to this day i don’t really like 80s movies for that EXACT reason. labyrinth, gremlins, never ending story, fraggle rock, goonies….. terrible vibes! grey and desolate and freaky
More than afraid, I was so repulsed by this stuff! It always just looked unclean. Still feel this way about early tapes, especially yellowed/green ones
I vividly remember watching a movie with my parents where a couple wakes up in bed to see the entire house lit up with spectral goo and I was terrified to open my eyes while sleeping for many years after that. Nowadays I kind of wish I could figure out what that movie was.
green goo? i remember watching a trailer for a movie where a couple siblings found a green jelly-looking glob of goo and brought it home and the thing wreaked havoc in their home. im not sure if it wqs supposed to be comedy or horror but i remember being scared of it😅
@@byggrynsgroet After posting this comment I went searching for the movie and turns out it was based on a true crime, and the goo was luminol! There were hundreds of comments from other people saying that it traumatized them in the exact same way it did for me LOL
Something about goo was a central fear in the 90s and early 2000s so I totally relate to you not being sure if yours was meant to be scary or not hahah!
man i had a toilet related fear too... it started when i was fairly young, maybe 5ish years old. for the next solid 5 years, i was terrified of the sound the toilet made after flushing. not the flush itself, but the minute of hissing that comes after. for a while i was convinced that there was a creature of some sort inside that could grab me and pull me into it. i would always look at the toilet while washing my hands so as to be sure that there was nothing there. at some point though i stopped believing in the creature, but the sound still scared me until i was like 10. now i realise how absurd this fear truly was lol
I was always scared there would be something in there that was going to grab me and drag me down “flushed away” style as a kid
for me i had to be out of the bathroom before the toilet water had "refilled" after my flush. im not talking the actual visible flush itself, but when the water looks still but you can audibly hear water rushing through pipes after the "visible flush". if i was still in the bathroom after that was done, some kind of eldritch horror would come up from the toilet and kill me😀
omg i also was scared of something grabbing me from the bowl, like i always imagined a lobster pinching my butt
Oh man I hate this hissing. And the fact I like in a state that does in deed have things come up and out of toilets doesn’t help.
Oh, I love Invader Zim! Such a fun show. Dark Harvest is actually one of my favourite episodes, but I can absolutely 100% understand why it unsettles people.
I cannot BELIEVE someone else was terrified of what would happen after neglecting their pixel chix. I thought I was entirely alone on that front. We got mine second hand from a flea market, so mine came pre-neglected. I had to get my dad to reset it while I cried I’m pretty sure.
I slammed the like button at the Austin Powers fear. Kids minds are so fun! The weirdest fears I had were the 6 Flags Guy and Mrs. Doubtfire. I Unfortunately, took a bit of that into adulthood lol. Lovely video!
GIRL I WAS SCAREARED OF AUSTIN POWERS TOO 😭😭
his presence truly was strong
i have a list of “childhood trauma.” i feel like this video taps into so many unspoken discussions about our childhood.
-the loading sound from mario kart 7
-when the 3DS would exit out of the system settings and the double screens turning black as it returned to the home menu
-the 3DS error screen from not being able to connect to the internet
-the lion’s gate lion. especially when paired with a pink panther cartoon that would air on boomerang.
-robot chicken. just robot chicken.
-THE GODDAMN THX LOGO
-this one live action video on youtube of the “smurfs” where gargamel eats two smurfs and then the ending credits of that video scared me even more
-the ending credits to “jacks big music show.” my BIGGEST reason for childhood trauma.
-the few times a virus infected the old family computer and a loud alarm sound with a voice warning me of said virus
-this stylized statue of some old man that stood inside the entrance of a diner i would go to often
-the very loud alarm sound that would play on the tv to announce something important
-“hi, i’m paul!” if you know, you know.
-the “abc_123_ogg” and “mus_smile” audio files that you could find in the file directory of undertale
I used to be terrified of cows. I had like a ZhuZhu pet thing, one of those mouse toys that Rolled around and made silly little noises and shit. Well one of my favorites made a cow noise, but man did I love that mouse so instead of not playing with it, I memorized the pattern of the sounds so I knew that after the cat sound, it moo’d so as soon as it meowed i would crawl out of the room, hide in a corner with my ears covered for exactly 6 seconds before going back to the playroom and continuing
I had a bunch of zhuzhu pets and I think I had the one u were talking about
the fear of sun exploding is a classic. i was really into reading encyclopedias as a kid so i had it too! as well as some other ones. three of the most notable include being afraid of a volcano spontaneously forming right at our doorstep, spontaneous beginning of a new ice age and being trapped in my room by a glacier (i thought that the glacier would enter the building through the entrance like a distinguished being it is, then fill all the rooms up with ice, and block all the ways out of the house. i practiced gnawing on the wooden frame of my bed in case i would have to survive this event without food stashes), and a fear of breaking the earth's crust and unleashing the burning magma hell upon my hometown. this one was caused by a diagram showcasing earth's cross-section, on which the crust (of course) appeared to be paper thin. i was SO disturbed by other kids digging holes in the ground
I used to get really freaked out by the sudden black screen when a VHS tape ended to the point I refused to watch movies alone until we got a DVD player, I can't even tell you why it scared me so bad but it's was a similar kinda fear to when I'd get an error screen on our PS2 cuz the disc was all scratched up, something just felt *off* about it man
I always thought quicksand was going to be a bigger problem in my life than it turned out to be, also tv shows like mr. meaty, robot chicken and Naruto freaked me out
I got so afraid of wasps, hornets, bumblebees and anything in that direction that my worst nightmares to this day are a) there is one *huge* wasp on the other side of the room or b) a swarm of wasps completely surrounds and kills me slowly. Yes, they also appear in my daymares.
When I was in primary school, my mother watched a report on unsafe lifts in Berlin (think doors closing even if your finger is still there, having to physically force doors open etc.) and the next night, I dreamt that my father and I took the lift to the basement to get something and ended up falling to our deaths. It is more than a decade later and, although I can enter lifts again, I still feel extremely uncomfortable in them.
this unlocked my own childhood fears i forgot about, while i wasnt afraid of automatic toilets i have vivid memories of being in first grade and thinking the bathroom was haunted because the automatic sinks would go off when no one was there so i refused to use that restroom at school
I was a very anxious child. A short list of my odd fears include: any odd toilets - especially on planes or boats, boats in general (I lived on an island), the sea (again, I lived on an island), our kitchen because I once saw a rotting potato under the counter, our basement because it was messy, holes because I was afraid to fall into them, vomiting, escalators, elevator doors, spinny doors, and so much more
I was (and still am) disturbed by the loud THX intro but I feel like that's valid tbh (I'm autistic and don't handle loud sounds well) my brother on the other hand used to be scared of animatronics, specifically dancing Santas. My mom couldn't even drive by a Krogers that had a Santa there that's how bad it was (he's improved since then obviously)
Was anyone else absolutely terrified of the Numberjacks?? The music that they played when they introduced the villains would send me running from the room screaming
One of my weirdest, most irrational fears was the opening song of ‘The Sopranos’, of all things. My parents used to watch it but I was absolutely not allowed to even see it (for good reason I guess) but they would watch it in a room close enough to my bedroom that I could HEAR it, and I would always feel really panicked by the opening song, like I was listening to something forbidden. The song still makes me feel unsettled by listening to it! 😅
There legitimately wasn't a lot that truly scared me, only one thing persisted until today. But regarding the toilets: I personally loved automatic toilets, but was deathly afraid of these stupid loud blow dryers for your hands, no thank you!
Also Hasslehoff with beard and white suit, because in Knight Rider he played a guy like that and was an asshole. A crazy asshole I still carry an irrational fear of, the guy activates my fight or flight. Also blue eyes. I don't know, I always thought people with them looked as though they were wanting to kill me X'D
I was scared of loud blow dryers too XD
Omg I hated those blow dryers! When a bathroom only had those loud blow dryers sometimes i would just leave without drying my hands… it got so bad that eventually i came up with a technique where i move my hands up and down so the noise isn’t as loud constantly. These days they’re still a pet peeve of mine and I almost never use them if there’s the choice to use paper towels instead.
i used to scream at the hand dryers and the sound of water being loudly sucked down a plughole
The rollercoaster fear is so valid, I'm still terrified of them tbh
when I was kid I was terrified of stop motion movies like Chicken Run and the Wallace and Gromit movies, usually I'd just be extremely uncomfortable when I saw them playing and change the channel asap but I still remember one or two times where I just straight up left the room bc I didn't want to be there with them playing LMAO. tbh I'm not sure where this fear comes from and I'm not afraid of them anymore but I still think they're just hard to watch so to this day I have not seen the movies mentioned above even though a lot of people love them. I also think its kind of curious how it didn't apply to every stop motion movie, for example Coraline is part stop motion but the animation didn't make me uncomfortable, I really don't know why
I did like the Wallace and Gromit episodes but I think as a kid I thought they were kinda creepy too. Chicken run anyways because of the whole thing of them going to get killed XD and Wallace and Gromit had a movie about Wallace being a were rabbit and I was SOOO scared of that😭
I had several of these as a kid, but two that immediately come to mind are the early 2000s honeycomb cereal commercials (I thought it would actually turn you into a bee, and the cgi/ mascot were so freaky) and the gremlins. Really any older movie where the monsters/creatures were done with puppets, like labyrinth, gremlins, the never ending story, etc. Freaked me tf OUT.
I became insanely scared of the inclement weather warnings broadcasted on the radio as a kid because I was listening to my shower radio on Radio Disney and all of a sudden, the loud "EERRRRRRR" sound pierced the air and made me drop to my knees in the shower, tuck and cover and everything bc I was convinced my radio was haunted or smth.
ME FUCKING TOO
I still hate those to this day, like it’s warning me of either a disaster that will screw over my entire life, or even an actual apocalypse!
my fear as a child was the dragon/lion dance--im chinese so every year we'd celebrate chinese new year and we'd see the performance but i was smol and dragon was big and loud so i'd just cry. the fear lingered until high school and while im not afraid of it now, i'd still rather not see it (even tho it's hecking cool and i love it in theory lol)
I swear, one of the more vivid fears I had as a child was the opening scene from A Very Goofy Movie when Max's dream turns into a nightmare as he transforms into a friggin eldritch horror of a giant version of his dad... That final HUH-YUCK still sends chills down my 31 year old spine...
Omgggg I think I was afraid of that too! 😂 That and the scene where they’re floating down a river in their car and they’re about to go down a waterfall or something? I forget what it was exactly, but I remember being so terrified of that scene 😮
Top 3 irrational childhood fears:
1. Woody from Toy Story. I saw some DVD bonus features where there were animation bloopers where Woody came detached from his animation skeleton and it was so scary I couldn't sleep.
2. The Sims... but in Spanish. I was over at a friends house and she installed The Sims for the first time and it was unexpectedly in Spanish rather than in English. I was very very young at the time so I have to think just that it was something I didn't expect that freaked me out moreso than the fact that it was specifically Spanish. I studied Spanish later and it was fine.
3. The Windows 95 startup jingle. Dommmmm ding... ding... ding... I used to have to run down to the other end of my house every time I turned the computer on so I wouldn't have to hear it.
"Spontaneous human combustion" got me LOL. It reminded me how I'm afraid of heads exploding
i used to be so terrified of the king from cinderella that I used to make my mom skip all the scenes he was in when we watched it on dvd😭
when i was like. i wanna say six, i had a dream about one of my classmates coming out of my wall in plush form and moving on her own and constantly following me, and upon waking up i was 1) scared of that classmate for a couple of days and 2) TERRIFIED of EVERY SINGLE ONE of my beloved plushies during the night, i was convinced toy story would happen to me but in an EVIL and Fucked Up way . this fear continued to haunt me until about 19 when i could finally deal with having plushies in my room without making sure they couldnt see me at night (thank you masky makeship plush for curing me i love you)
I had a fear of that one scene from "A Christmas Story" where the kid got his tongue stuck to the flag pole. I thought they had to rip his tongue off to free him! So every year I would hide behind the couch or run out of the room and start crying as soon as the scene started. A couple years ago my mom sent me a Christmas card....with a screenshot of that scene on it. 🤦♀
Omg I love the little cat Ichimatsu. You must've been in that fandom in 2015 and 2016. Those plushes came out during the first season of that show (or you got it second hand).
I've seen countless nightmares about computer/phone viruses and would probably still jump out of my skin if I'd encounter an og blue screen of death💀
there was an episodes of martha speaks (which i was obsessed with as a kid) where they tell each other scary stories on a rainy evening and one of them involved artichokes. i was absolutely terrified of artichokes because of that
I remember the sentient oatmeal thing from that same episode unsettling me
i think the irrational fear of random inanimate objects is probably linked to fear of lack of control, the unknown/unfamiliar, and getting in trouble for breaking something because you don't know how to use it. I used to be scared of the microwave because ours has always been a bit broken and I still have stress dreams where I can't get it to turn off
Idk if it was because the scale of my favorite characters was way off or what - but when I was a child I was TERRIFIED of character costumes. No Easter bunny, no characters at Disney World…I would freeze in fear when I saw them.
My brother was scared of those when he was a baby/toddler
I hated them too!!
audio uncanny valley is a HUGE thing for me, even to this day. text to speech still fucks me up pretty bad, dunno what it is. i think i know the origin, but knowing that doesn't help lmao
i'm pretty sure my first exposure to TTS-like/glitchy audio was the 90's cartoon ReBoot. it's not common in the show, but in an early episode one of the characters gets a magnet stuck to their face and their voice starts glitching out + they turn transparent and glitchy (like the sims examples). pretty sure i just watched the episode at much too young of an age or something because i don't think it's supposed to be scary? still got me pretty bad!
it's a frustrating fear i have because i love weird internet themed stuff + TTS can be used to give an amazing vibe. the mind electric is an incredible song, but the TTS in it freaks me out for example.
One thing I recently found was this bootleg Disney DVD that had a loud song that came on as the intro and as a kid I was absolutely terrified of it and would beg my mum to turn it off. I only recently just found it in my house and uploaded it and turns out others were looking for it for so long too
What was that lost media?
I had a similar automatic toilet fear, or just general public toilet fear. One day I had the thought, "what if a shark just jumped out of the toilet and bit me?" and for about 6 months I would get up from ANY toilet outside of my own home and flush as fast as I could to prevent any sort of thing with teeth from grabbing me.
I was also afraid of sleeping next to a window because I thought Nosferatu was going to crawl through the window and get me.
I was definitely one of those kids who was able to talk themselves into being afraid of something they never had been before....
It's always nice to see someone whose many childhood fears are equally bizarre and incomprehensible as your own. I share a few on this list and empathize with most of the ones I don't. As a kid, I had a friend who was terrified of escalators, and I always thought it was really funny. Then I learned that escalators can kill people in gruesome ways and it became my own phobia. Wonderful! 💀
I was absolutely terrified of ghosts in the sims, I would run away from the computer and hide under a blanket
I was terrified of talking stuffed animals. I vividly remember sitting on the kitchen floor sobbing while my parents removed the voice box of a stuffed Scooby Doo. Removing the batteries was not enough. I was also terrified of the game Operation and couldn't go near a closet that once had that game in it, even after I knew the game was removed
omg I was also scared of Operation even though I had never played it myself. The thought of the buzzing and pieces jumping out was just too much for me. I was also too embarrassed to tell anyone though, so it was a sort of go to the bathroom when an ad came on for it situation. I remember one of my friends getting it as a birthday gift and I was thinking "please do not make this part of the party" and thankfully it was not
invader zim was terrifying to me too, i also had to regularly leave the room because the grossness of some of these 2000s shows made me feel so uneasy. there was a short on nickelodeon about a fly going into someone's ear and getting caught in the earwax. why
OMG as someone who grew up with life size Star Trek cardboard cutouts around the house, I'm SO glad to see someone else's family did the same thing haha!!!
I was personally afraid of mummies because of how decomposed they looked (either from a museum visit or from a documentary) and combine that with having watched CSI all my life (aka probably too young) I like, regularly had nightmares of my parents getting murdered by a rotting mummy corpse?? I remember crawling out of bed at night when someone used the bathroom to see if the mummy was about and my mom being like,,, ok kid calm down LMAO
Kind of similar to the land before time thing, I was absolutely TERRIFIED of the air conditioner in Brave Little Toaster. I would hide behind the couch somehow lol.
I don't know when it started, but I became super scared of the the scene in Tangled where Mother Gothel fell out of the tower. Every time we watched the movie I'd get up and either go to the toilet or the kitchen and act like I wasn't scared. I have one very clear memory of walking into the little broom closet (which I was also afraid of after it got dark outside), reaching for my hello kitty lego set and bringing it into the living room when the scene was over, starting to build like nothing happened. I was probably around 10 years old already.
I actually have a lot of movie fears. I was scared of every version of A Christmas Carol, the original one, the Mickey Mouse one, the Timmy Turner episode, I really don't know why. Maybe it was too much existential dread for me or it was the ghosts, but I was always super uncomfortable and scared.
This is more niche, but there's a german kids show called Woozle Goozle, and it's about Beni and Woozle doing experiments and teaching world facts. Woozle is a blue dog looking kind of puppet and in one episode he confesses that he has a brother / cousin who's name was something similar like Zoozle or Moozle or whatever. But the Woozlings are wild animals, Woozle is just a very civilized Woozling. So he warns that his relative could be a little wild. They made his puppet a weird muddy green and he was gurgling and growling like a zombie and he had a super deep voice. I was very scared or that thing. xP
I don't even really remember what this was from but I watched something where the characters ate or were fed so much that they became big and round and almost mindless, just wanting more food.... the loss of control fear seems to be a major fear for most of us.
I was and still am scared of the dark, but the most scary thing is my imagination. I used to be terrified of our walkway after it got dark because it went around the corner of our house and I was convinced that if we get to our door, a bear will unexpectedly pop out and attack us. I had always been scared of bears (my mom thinks it's because we always watched a family channel on TV that showed movies in the evening and I was there when the part in Merida came up where the Mom is the bear and being violent or something idk, I've never actually watched it until this day 😅)
I didn't "have" a Teddy Ruxpin exactly but there was a Teddy Ruxpin doll (plus the weird caterpillar creature from the same franchise, which was even worse) in the back of my parents' closet that scared the absolute shit out of me as a kid. For some reason they also deeply fascinated me so I remember repeatedly sneaking into my parents' room to peek in the closet, seeing them in the shadows, and then fleeing in terror. Kid logic is wild
god yeah the dying sun thing is spot on, i remember watching an episode of doctor who about it and had nightmares for a week. another thing that scares me for some reason is just a singular giant eyeball staring at me (just the thought of it makes me nauseous)
As a kid I feared the cheese from Diary of a Wimpy Kid so much, not the cheese in the books tho but in the movie? I don’t know it just felt way more sinister and scary in that😭 My fear thankfully didn’t last long but it was so bad I had to run to another direction when I saw Diary of a Wimpy kid books in library
10:53
the ddlc soundtrack for the section about not being in control of computers is a nice touch