what was your most terrifying, childhood, imaginary horror?

Question

What scared you the most, as a child, alone in bed at night?

Answer 1

When I was 4-5, I was sure there were green hands that lived in our window a/c unit. I went around the table to avoid it becaus eI thought if I walked near it, the hands would grab me. Not sure what they would do once they got me, but hey, I was 4.

Then I dreamt that there was a mallard duck floating outside my window (we did have ducks that hung out in the back yards on my block) and he made the hands go away. My mom told me I was dreaming, but I swore up and down that it was all true. So after the duck "saved" me, I went downstairs and stuck my tongue out at the air conditioner.

Was I smoking crack or what??

Answer 2

I used to have a night-terror dream. I was playing some kind of God-game on the surface of the sun. I had all these building blocks to work with, and unlimited amounts of time, so I built the most wondrous and beautiful structures I could conceive, castles in the air, whole cities hung upside down, hanging gardens and glittering natural vistas, an entire planetoid built from my own imagination, and then, finally I was done. When I turned to take in the entirety of what I had created, I saw only a vast white checkerboard plane, monotonously covering everything in its tedious sameness. Then I heard the voice of my opponent, who seemed like He was the Sun or God or both, LAUGHING at me, taunting me as only God can do. I began to scream uncontrollably. My parents report that I used to have this night-terror frequently when I was very young. I could never tell them what the dream was all about, indeed I never knew until later. But everytime the image of the sun would appear on the TV,
it would send me into a fit of screaming. When I was a young man in my early 20's, I developed a technique that allowed me to remember my dreams. You have to learn to lie motionless for a few moments when you first awaken, because if you give in to the impulse to move your body, this distracts you away from whatever dream you were having. Lie still and rehash your dream a couple times, then move. Anyway, the night terror returned one last time when I was sleeping one night in the barracks in Heidelberg, Germany, and do to this technique I had developed, I was able to finally bring the night-terror into my waking consciousness. It has never returned since, but I have often thought on the message that the terror contains, and feel there is a profound look into the character of this life I have been leading. I am thankful, that it has not returned, however, "under the sunset". Sincerely, Eagle.

Answer 3

when I was five years old I had a nightmare that my bed was surrounded by stacks of cinder blocks with the open cells upright. I could see my door was open and a light on in the hall, I could hear my parents but they couldn't hear me. As I tried to reach the door my legs kept falling down the open cinder block cell and getting cut. If you have never felt the edge of a block it is quite sharp especially to soft skin and it will scrape you pretty good. Anyway I was screaming and calling for my mom or dad to come get me but they wouldn't come. By the time I got to the door my legs were gone and there was blood everywhere. Now I know you will have a hard time believing I was five when this occured but it is the truth and I have remembered it for almost 30 years now. That was, without a doubt, my most terrifying childhood memory.

Answer 4

I lived in a house that was haunted when I was between the ages of 8 and 12. We had spirits in the house, in particular one who was a lonely old lady ( who I believe was a previous owner or occupant). when I was downstairs home alone, I would hear someone walking along the hallway, creaking the floorboards in the exact right way so I could tell which direction she was going in. She spent a lot of time in the master bedroom. The scary part is, my mother and I were the only ones to have the gift of second sight, and my brother and father never sensed, heard, felt or saw this lady. She would move things in the kitchen, and she would peek into doorways. One night, when I was 12, I was laying down in bed, cruled into a ball with the blankets over my head ( oh did I forget to mention that I was positively PHOBIC about ghosts because of my sensitivity to them?) and she came in my room, and proceeded to pull the blanket off of me slowly and "make the bed" ( using kind of like ghost sheets, not my sheets) over my head, as if I weren't there! I seized up, yanked the blanket back over my head, and used some shielding magick that I had just learned during my year and a day of study of Wicca to make her leave me alone. From then on, I never saw her, only sensed her and heard her until we moved out. To this day, I have nightmares about being forced to spend the night in that house again. * shudders* Poor old lady.. I think she was just puttering around, not really trying to hurt anyone. I wish her peace.

Answer 5

Mandrills, they are in the baboon family (http://eduinc.tripod.com/sitebuildercontent/sitebuilderpictures/mandril.jpg) I saw them on some nature program. They aren't exactly the nicest creatures in the world and are known to eat other animals. After that I had repeated nightmares about being chased by them and eaten. It was always one of those kind of dreams that you can't run fast enough or get away. Those things terrorized me for years. Also that dragon from Disney's Sleeping Beauty and the final cartoon from Fantasia, with the Night on Bald Mountain music, gave me several nightmares over the years as well.

Answer 6

My older brother had a fishtank. It had tropical fish, but the Angel fish ate everything except the neons. The only thing he would allow them to be fed was brine shrimp. Which is a thin block of frozen mush of fish smell, that you scraped into the water. OK so anyway he left for college, and I inherited the care and feeding of the fish. But they evidently never liked their home, because they loved to jump out. Onto the shag carpeting, where their gills encased the carpet pile and they became one with both the universe and the carpet.

So I started to have nightmares about flying fish. They were everywhere, and you really didn't want them landing in your hair. Thank god the last fish finally died.

Answer 7

This is going to make others laugh like crazy! When I was a child, I dreamt of being in my dark bedroom room at night. There was a peculiar light coming out of the front (living) room where the TV was. Suddenly, I felt my body was being dragged from bed to there. There was a bloody image of Mr. T (A-Team) on the TV screen. Then, I WAS SWALLOWED BY THE TV!!!

Answer 8

When I was young, probably 6 or 7, my mother was very depressed. She had divorced my father and moved up from Missouri to Ohio to live with her parents bringing my sister and me with her.

When we were alone she would talk to me about killing herself and then she would say, "But it wouldn't be right leaving you kids here." I never quite knew what she meant by that until she one day finished it by saying, "...I'd have to take you with me."

From that time on, I was on my guard. I knew she had a small chrome pistol. I had seen it. It had been my grandfather's. I knew where the bullets had been (in a desk drawer) but then they were gone.

Every night for a couple months, I would pile my pillows in a shape that looked like me in my bed and I would crawl under my bed to sleep. Eventually I just slept at the foot of the bed with the pillows still piled up like my body in the bed.

She never did come up the stairs with that gun. She married my step-father which in a way was almost worse.

Answer 9

When I was 7, my parents gave me the smallest bedroom, which had served as a nursery for my two younger sisters. I did not want to be in that bedroom b/c it was in the same room as the attic access. The double doors to the attic were in my closet. The handle to the attic doors was a lion/beast's head with an open mouth and a ring in the mouth. I was convinced that instead of a doorway to the attic, it was a portal to another dimension and that these weird black shadow people would come out of there at night and watch me sleep and I was convinced that one day they'd take me with them. I remember one night I heard something in the attic and I was convinced the shadow people were coming for me, so I ran screaming bloody murder to my parents in the middle of the night and my dad was ticked and decided to "prove" to me that there was nothing in there...so he storms into my room and yanks open the attic doors and *WHOOSH* out fly 3 or 4 bats...yeah, like that didn't traumatize me as a child...b/c I was now convinced the shadow people were now vampires...EEEP! *hides under the covers*

Answer 10

Clowns!! Especially those with big, bright red hair. I watched Stephen King's "It" when i was eight, and i was terrified for years. My parents had to drag me kicking and screaming to the circus to proove to me that clowns are 'just really nice people hiding beneath a thick, thick layer of make-up and not some monster with long, sharp teeth going around preying after little kids'. Yeah, right!! I still don't trust my parents on that, though...