Scariest Things I Encountered as a Kid

I saw this top ten list on wired.com, of the top ten things scariest things that they watched as a kid.

http://www.wired.com/geekdad/2009/10/the-10-scariest-things-i-watched-as-a-kid/


I was reading through it and decided to follow suit, stretching to movies and games.


10. Gollum from the animated Hobbit movie
Yes, this is just like on Andrew Cardon's list. As I read that, I remembered this exactly. We own this on VHS, and I remember not wanting to watch it as much as my older brother did because this scared the crap out of me. So sinister, so eerie and evil.

9. The black goo from Little Nemo: Adventures in Slumberland
Man, I haven't seen this movie in years. What I remember is a little boy who sleeps a lot on a bed that is a bit like a magic carpet that takes him places. This movie had everything: a (literally) giant train conductor with a toy train, a seemingly drunk clown (voiced by Mickey Rooney) and a flying bed. There are happy moments and adventurous moments (I think I remember a train driving through his home at one point, but perhaps that was another movie). There are also moments that are scary as hell! Especially this one part where this black goo takes over in a sinister way...much like the monster from LOST, but animated version and more liquidy.
(scroll to 4:25)



8. The wheelies in Return to OZ
One night in the nineties, I was watching the Disney Channel. Apparently, back then, something as sinister as Return to OZ was able to find screen time on this channel. If you are unfamiliar, Return to OZ is a sequel to the famous Wizard movie, starring a young Fairuza Balk as Dorothy. The girl is in a mental institution for her crazy claims of going to OZ ("treated" by electro-shock a la One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest), she ends up going back to OZ and encounters a headless queen and these crazy wheelie things that are the nightmarish equivalent to the flying monkeys. The fact that this was (I think) made for children is scary in itself.



7. The ghosts in Nancy Drew and the Haunted Mansion computer game
First off, let me just say how much I love the ND computer games. They are tons of fun and still are challenging to me now, years after I first discovered them at my library. Well, I remember back when I first started playing these, and I think the Haunted Mansion one may have been the 2nd or 3rd one I ever played. NONE were as scary as this. Seriously. Of course, because it is in a haunted mansion, there has to be scary stuff that happens. In the first-person game, you walk through the house and click on various interactive objects. However, sometimes in this game, you would be walking through the hall and a ghostly image of a woman would appear in a mirror accompanied by an eerie wail! Or I remember one distinct part on the staircase when I was looking at a picture frame and a booming voice yelled something, amidst the otherwise quiet game soundtrack. Scared the crap out of me.



6. The floating bodies in the Titanic: adventure out of time game
Speaking of video games, this awesome Titanic game also puts you in first person, in a flashback of someone from the 40s who tries to go back in time and prevent what happened in the ship's final hours. It has really great graphics, and (trivia!) these graphics are actually used in many documentaries about the ship, because they are such accurate replications of what it looked like! Anywho. Towards the end of the game, when the clock begins to tick to the ship's fate, you hit the iceberg and there is a short montage of people screaming on the ship and then there is a scene, underwater, of two dead bodies of drowned victims. Seriously?! I thought this was rated E for everyone!!! Actually, I think it was released way ahead of those ratings. But it was ahead of its time and still is fun today. PS: I completely forgot about the guy who dies in the Turkish Bath by electrocution! THAT WAS SCARY AS HELL!

5. The entire movie of Titanic
Speaking of the famous ship, this movie was pretty traumatizing for me as well. The movie came out when I was in 3rd grade or so, but because of all the hype, I insisted on watching the movie. All was fine during the intermission when we switched VHS tapes (!) but after taking out the second tape, I remember being scared to go to sleep. I mean, I was like, 9, and I just watched a movie where thousands of people either froze to death or drowned. I remember that month after the movie: no sweet dreams at all. Yes, I was sitting up in bed for nearly a month after watching this movie ONCE, due to the traumatizing deaths.

4. The doll girl from the one episode of Are You Afraid of the Dark
The Tale of the Doll Maker was one of the most creepy episodes of this show. Hell, the opening credits to this show scared me alone. But I have rewatched a lot of these episodes recently, and a lot have lost the scary factor. But, this one is still creepy. I think full-grown adults would think this is creepy. A girl gets trapped in a doll house and she slowly gets turned into a doll. The part where she pulls out her now-porcelain arm is scary as crap! But, in the end, all is happy again. PS: (Trivia!) Joanna Garcia is one of the campfire crew...



3. A series of scary story books that I can't recall the name of...
I used to read a ton of scary stories as a kid. This series was my favorite, because they weren't about zombies, vampires, or ghosts, but instead they were about various other creepy things. In one story, a girl gets rid of mice in her house by pushing the mouse cage (live mouse inside) into a trash can filled with water, then puts on the lid until it drowns. Eventually, the girl is attacked by a multitude of mice, who corner her to her pool, then proceed to crawl on the auto-close cover for the pool. She dies in a larger version of the way she kills the mice.
In another story, a smart student at school notices a drop in grades. Since the teachers grade on a bell curve, there is a benefit to the okay students if everyone else is dumber. A kid catches on to this and concocts a spray that causes people's brain power to drop dramatically, making them stupid and therefore causing them to die in absurd ways (like not being able to avoid oncoming traffic). The main character had allergies so she never inhaled the spray, but in the end she stupidly takes medicine, clearing up her nostrils and causing her to inhale the poison. She dies by walking into oncoming traffic.
But even though they were creepy and scary, they were enjoyable. If only I could remember what they were called!


2. The illustrations in the book "Scary Stories to tell in the dark."
Again, I loved scary stories. But these books creeped me out. The stories weren't even that sinister, but the drawings sure were. Their watery, ink-dripped sketches had such an unearthly feel that I felt scared just holding the books when I was alone. Someone ALWAYS had to be in the room with me. You know, in case those pictures came to life.







1. The POD PEOPLE from The Invasion of the Bodysnatchers (1978)
I didn't even see the movie in its entirety but I remember the distinct fear that I felt after seeing part of it on TV. Pods of aliens that ate people in a mucusy shell? SCARY. The hollow, throaty scream of the aliens as they point at their next victims? NIGHTMARISH. Looking back, though, I wonder if I was more scared of the aliens, or the macabre mug of Jeff Goldblum.