What was your most irrational fear as a child?
 

Mine was that I would never learn how to tie a neck-tie before I left home. Therefore, I'd need to buy every tie I'd ever own before I left home so they'd all be knotted.....smh :rolleyes:

That Bigfoot was real and would try to break into our house (my sister and I saw a TV special about Bigfoot and this was long before the current preponderance of pseudo-science "reality" shows, so we were pretty freaked out).

Clowns, and anything that wears a costume (basically if I can't see your face I freak out)
But I never exactly grew out of this fear...

Clowns.
Swallowing my tongue.
And at age 12, going blind. :D

Being trapped in a car and going backwards down the hill on the main road by my house. I still get a little nervous if I have to back down a hill.

And when I was 8 we had this book in our class reading corner that had a picture of a troll/zombie monster in a graveyard. It totally freaked me out. I was convinced it was going to sneak into my room at night between the drapes and get me if there was any light shining through the 2 panels. I still make sure the drapes are completely shut.

And I'm not sure if this qualifies as a childhood fear, but as a teenager, I was terribly afraid The Bomb would drop and I'd die a virgin.

Being buried alive (when would that EVER happen?)

As a kid, I had muscle spasms in my fingers and toes as I fell asleep. After seeing Leprechaun and having the bejeezus scared out of me, I was convinced there was a leprechaun living under my pillow and the tugging feeling was him trying to eat my thumbs when I fell asleep. For weeks, I slept with no pillow or covers so that all my appendages would be where I could see them.

I would not step over even the simplest of grates because there was this cartoon back then that featured Andy Panda. He walked on one in a factory and it collapsed, pretty much sending him to hell.

My sixth grade teacher showed the class a movie about a girl who was horribly burned and disfigured in an electrical fire. (I have no idea what the curriculum connection was there....) I then developed a terrible fear of electrical outlets and fires. I would religiously check all of the outlets in my room every night before I went to bed. Thanks, Mrs. Crandall.

I saw a show on tv with a woman in the "push" part of labor. After that, I was diligent about checking the toilet before flushing. I was terrified that I might inadvertently poop out a baby and then carelessly flush it away.

I saw a show on tv with a woman in the "push" part of labor. After that, I was diligent about checking the toilet before flushing. I was terrified that I might inadvertently poop out a baby and then carelessly flush it away.

As crazy as this is going to sound/read, I was afraid of wood ticks and parasitic worms when I was a kid. As I got older, I started to have a love/fascination for them. They're so amazing. I was also afraid of black holes and I thought Earth was going to get eaten by one. The things I was once afraid of, I am now fascinated by.

As I kid, I was deathly afraid of flushing the toilet. I was sure, very sure, that a monster was going to come out of the commode and grab me. So, I would flush and make a mad dash for the door.

When looking at large blue bodies of water on maps I would get a suffocating feeling as if I were drowning. Perhaps subconsciously I remembered being born; sometimes that feeling still occurs all these (mumble) years later.

I believed that the lane lines painted in the bottom of the pool were hammerhead sharks.

Lol!

This. From clowns to Santas to mimes to those freaky Easter Bunnies - they all must die. And my mil insists on giving me a Santa ornament every year. May she never find my ebay account!

Never outgrew the fear of going blind, either. Having my mother become legally blind did not help.

When I was a kid I was obsessed with everything that had to do with Barbie. One day when I was 6 my dad let me watch the movie Child's Play about the serial killer whose spirit inhabits a doll and goes to town killing people left and right. From then on I feared my dolls would come to life while I was sleeping and kill me. I used to rip every dolls head off and put the heads in one drawer and the bodies in another. I figured if they were going to kill me in my sleep they were gonna have to really work for it.

Tornadoes. Not an irrational fear in itself, but how I perceived and coped was irrational.
Every time the slightest bit of wind would come through I was sure the whole house was about to be blown away. Then I would go sit in a ball in one specific corner of the living room where I couldn't see directly out any windows.
I was a mess.

My parents wouldn't let me watch it so I sneaked into the room where my cousins were watching one day. I had (and still have) an absurd amount of stuffed animals, dolls, and toys. I laid awake every night for weeks convinced I was in a room full of murderers. You are not alone.
The only natural disaster to ever send me into a blind panic--you are also not alone. :(

bees, hornets, yellowjackets.

although i've never been stung (and to my knowledge do not have an allergy), i was was convinced i was going to be stung to death by a swarm.

actually had a recurring nightmare about the blue angels/thunderbirds performing a stunt which turned them from planes into a swarm of bees.

I had a fear, that if any arms or legs dangled off the side of the bed, something sinister from underneath would reach up and grab it. While that obviously is not true, I'm still funny about letting limbs dangle off the side of the bed.

To the tornado comment above--each time there was a tornado watch (which I often confused with a warning), I would go to my room and collect my baby dolls, My Kirsten American Girl doll and all of her stuff, and bring them to the basement (barbies were already in the basement) so they would not get blown away. :) Drove my mother NUTS! :)

I was absolutely convinced that my handwriting was so bad that I wouldn't be able to do things like drive a car and get a job when I became an adult. (Note, I also managed to fail typing in High School)

Someone explained black holes to me in undergrad and I'm still shook.

Mine are really effing weird.

As a child, I would get chills/goosebumps by seeing the Batman symbol (there it is - just got them as I typed it). Separately, the part of awards shows that do tributes to people who have passed away. Lastly, and this one still frightens me, that statues would out of nowhere start moving.

I was afraid of clowns, test patterns, and... quicksand. For some reason, I always thought quicksand would be a bigger part of my life. Anvils, too. Maybe I watched too many cartoons.

I still dislike clowns!

There is always one in every crowd: I wasn't afraid of anything. My mother about lost all her hair worrying over me. Some of the stunts I pulled, and the trouble I got into, were truly stupid and dangerous. My brother was afraid of the dark, so was my sister. Not me. Nothing scared me. Absolutely nothing.

I'm still pretty fearless. Except for rattlesnakes. Those suckers scare me big time.

The Planters Peanut Man who used to walk the sidewalk in front of the Planters Peanut Store in my hometown. I would start crying the minute my mother tried to go on that block.

With all due respect, WTF was wrong with your dad?

Standing at the top of staircases, or ascending stairs without backs (where you can clearly see through to the ground below), has always made my stomach knot and my hands and feet sweat. It's gotten much worse with age. I'm near phobic of falling.

Playing or watching others play platformers, like the Mario Bros. series, is stressful and physically painful. My friends get a kick out of my reactions. (Probably funnier to witness than experience.) I don't think it caused quite as anxious a reaction when I was a kid, but I remember coming into the living room with a glass of milk and seeing my mom playing Super Mario World on my SNES. The next thing I knew, my parents were shouting in alarm at me--I was so transfixed by the possibility of Mario falling that I'd stopped paying attention to my glass and I was slowly pouring the milk onto the carpet, oblivious.

*The big one: escalators, especially very fast ones. I was convinced the teeth would eat me. If my poor mom forgot to hold my hand stepping on to the escalator, I would stand at the top or bottom and sob, and she would have to make the full circle, grab me by the hand, and attempt once again to head to our destination (DC folks: the escalators at White Flint mall usually were the scene of this drama).

*When my mom would make me wear blue or red socks, I was miserable. Like, tears. I was convinced I looked like a boy. Please note, I *still* don't like colored socks, and I hate and avoid hosiery in general. I have many pairs of white socks for the gym, a few pairs of black socks for very cold days when I have on black pants and black shoes...and that's about it. Since I have been dressing myself, I don't think I have *ever* left the house in anything but white or black socks.

*John Merrick, the Elephant Man. A classmate did a report on him in 5th grade, and I was freaked out for MONTHS. (This was followed by a unit in a different class on the hangings of the witches of Salem. My parents were very confused about why they kept waking up to find me sleeping on their bedroom floor.) (Also note: 25+ years later, I STILL will not watch that movie.)

*A couple others have mentioned: the creature under the bed and stinging insects (Please note, I am 39 years old as I write this, and I have never been stung by a bee...largely because I flap my arms and scream).

*Also funny: My oldest friend was TERRIFIED of turtleneck shirts as a child, because she was afraid she would not come out of the other end.

I was afraid of store mannequins. I thought they would come to life and chase me.

I have heard that escalators result in a significant number of injuries every year, so I don't think your fear was irrational. My sister got her sneaker "eaten" by an escalator at a Hyatt Regency in Florida. She was with her first husband (an attorney) and my parents. There was a bent piece of metal at the bottom of the escalator, creating a small space that was just big enough to trap the tip of her shoe between the bottom platform and the stair teeth. Her foot was trapped and her husband had to work to rip her shoe off, while the escalator was still running and people were coming to help. My mom told me the story and I thought she was exaggerating, until I saw the shoe. The sole was sliced completely through...this shoe was mangled! I could not believe she wasn't injured. The hotel paid for a new pair of shoes.

...you realize you just put GammaGirl1908 back in counseling, right?

At least it wasn't at the Wheaton Metro station...

Some others:
Aliens. I can't remember the title of the book, but there was a nonfiction book published in the 80s or early 90s about a guy who claimed to be kidnapped by aliens. I made the mistake of reading a few chapters. I had nightmares for years about aliens and they still kind of freak me out.

Staircases without risers between the steps: I always felt like I was going to fall through the stairs.

Is that the one they made the movie from, Fire in the Sky, with that guy from Cutting Edge?

I think so!

I STILL hate those. There's a location of a gym that I sometimes go to that has a staircase with open backs, and I don't look down.

Re escalators: Ha @ Wheaton! Too true!

Come to think about it, that fear may have come from the time that I was at a hospital because my older sister was getting treated for something, and another patient was a kid whose foot got caught in an escalator. Not to be too graphic, but suffice it to say that he had on flip-flops, and... yeah. I didn't actually see it, but I heard the doctors talking. Hadn't thought about that in years until this thread.

Indeed, perhaps I should talk to a professional...

A co-worker of my dad's had his little girl lose 2 toes that way. She was 3 and wearing sandals and didn't step off at the end. Her toes went into the escalator, but they couldn't salvage them after they got her out of it.

"Listen, not a year goes by, not a year, that I don't hear about some escalator accident involving some bastard kid which could have easily been avoided had some parent - I don't care which one - but some parent conditioned him to fear and respect that escalator!"

-- Mallrats

Add me to the list of people who were afraid of escalators as a little kid. I was convinced that the teeth at the end of the escalator would eat me. After all, they were eating the steps, weren't they? So I would jump over the teeth rather than stepping off like a normal person.