The previous page was getting really long, so I've moved some of the last page over here and will continue on here. More silly childhood fears. Night of the Twisters: Ah, this little made for TV movie. It was filmed to air while Twister was in theaters for families who couldn't afford to go to the theater. The book it's based on is actually from the 80s, but the film version makes many changes, some of them clearly meant to make it "compete" with Twister. Three scenes scared me. The first tornado scene. This is the most realistic Tornado scene I've ever encountered in a film. I say that as someone who has lived through a tornado while in a car, in two different stores, outside on a nature trail, and in a house where a tornado dropped a tree through it. I have lived this scene. I thought about this scene in the movie while I was living out something similar in real life. It scared me as a kid, but I hadn't exerienced being in a tornado yet when I saw it back then. This scene isn't scary to me as an adult, even though I've lived through something very similar (trade out baby with pets). Given that the book was based on a dramatization of a real experience, I think that's why this scene works so much for me even now as an adult. The second scene is when the kids find the dead man. This film was presented as an account of a disaster. I'd seen dead bodies in other movies, but this one hit different because of that. It felt too "real", too unsafe. The third was the tornado escape scene at the end when the car gets sucked up into the tornado. It's soooo cheesy looking now, but that scene scared me so much as a kid because it's something that could just happen, you know? The fact that the mom says the name of the family that got sucked up right before we see them get sucked in and we are left to presume they died and these aren't bad people or anything, just really unlucky people who didn't quite make it...that fucked me up so much. This was the most frightening thing to me in the movie and was one of my top most scary scenes in a movie as a kid. Not because of how it looked, but because of what it told me about the nature of reality. This movie and me living in a tornado heavy area is why I always had a bag prepared as a kid to take with me whenever the sirens or the TV alerts went off. Getting hit by a meteor: I blame TV shows that would talk about freak accidents and how people just minding their own business would either narrowly avoid death by meteor or were killed by one. Sure was a lot of stuff back then that seemed to be made to make me afraid of extremely unlikely events! There are no people: I'll wake up one day, and there won't be any people. Anywhere. None. I'll be the only person in the whole world. I'll wander alone, endlessly, forever alone in a state of unchangingness because somehow without people, time won't exist either. It'll always be day. Night will never come again. No more dreams. No more seasons. No more rain. Everything will remain empty and in place, forever. I don't know where this idea came from, but it was common in my early childhood nightmares. Nothing is real: I'll wake up one day in a hospital and they'll be giving me some medicine for some kind of mental illness or I'll be waking from a coma, and everything I would have lived up to that point and experienced would have all been fake. None of it was real. I'd been dreaming/hallucinating the entire time. I'm sure I got this from some kind of movie or TV show. It's a pretty common idea, but I don't remember what the "source" of this fear is anymore. I am not real: I'm a figment of someone else's hallucination or imagination or dream, and when they're freed from it, I'll cease to exist. A variant of the previous fear, basically. Little Monsters: A shitty, gross movie from the end of the 80s. I saw it once, and apparently once was one too many. One of my second cousins demanded I watch this with him. It was his favorite movie. When I watched it, the movie didn't scare me. I just thought it was gross, obnoxious, and stupid. Which pretty much sums up what that cousin was like, TBH. However, that night I had a nightmare about going to the monster world. Of course, my dream version of it was significantly more creepy than what was actually in the movie. My mind took that concept and just ran with it to the scariest place it could take it. This made-up location based on the monster world ended up being a regular location in my nightmares until around sixth grade. I don't know why that location inspired so much...after the fact...terror, but it did. Looking at the location in the movie now, I still don't get it. Because what I dreamt about didn't really look anything like that set! Also, as an adult, I got to say this movie is definitely fucking awful. This dream isn't a dream: I had a fear both in waking and while dreaming I might encounter something so surreal and dream-like, I'll think it's a dream because of that while gradually descending deeper into some unknown, strange but real space. Like entering the Twilight Zone or something like that. And by the time I realize it, it'll be too late to go back. I won't remember how I got there or the path back will be gone and I'll be trapped forever in this scary, other place. Little kid me thought a place like that could always be lurking around the corner, and you could just stumble into it without knowing. The Neverending Story 2: This was another "most of this movie" type of movie. A lot of people were afraid of that wolf in the first one, my brother included, but that scene never creeped me out. Nothing in the first film did. But the second one? Acid water, creepy monsters like the garthim in The Dark Crystal, a boy gradually losing all of his precious memories, the creepy dragon, both of the boys in this movie having moments where they nearly fall to their deaths, the waterfall, the laser, one of the boys dying, just the way everything with the evil group's stuff looks aethetically, it's the whole movie. Even the good people scared me with their flowy movements and masks. And then there's the dad reading on, unable to help his son at all. Unrelated, but like Labyrinth and The Dark Crystal, this movie was also loaded with tons of synesthetic "textures" for me. I'd rewatch it a lot just to physically feel how certain parts of the movie look. (And by feel how it looked, I don't mean sensations that would make sense for what I was actually seeing. These were consistent feelings for each "trigger", but completely unrelated to what the triggered thing was. I'm not sure how I'd even describe some of these sensations, actually.) This also caused a little mini fear of worrying if I made a wish, there was some machine somewhere emptying out my memories, so I better not wish for too many things. I didn't even have an item I thought could cause this, like in the movie. I just thought somehow I could be connected to one without knowing it. Very strange. Edit: I forgot about this, but at some point, I actually did have a replica of the auryn. Not sure why I forgot when I wrote this up originally. My father had bought it for me. No clue where he got it. I eventually lost it when we moved after third grade. I don't think I had it for more than a year. I never wore it. I kept it hidden, and was afraid of making wishes on it, but I did make a few wishes before I lost it. I don't think any of them came true, LOL. Totally forgot about that, but remembered it recently thinking back on the movie. Jumanji: Another really bad movie that scared the shit out of me as a kid. Mostly just the first half of the film. I would often leave the room when this came on, but if it got past the halfway mark I'd watch the rest because I didn't find anything in the second half scary. As an adult, I can say this movie has nothing creepy in it and is just...really, really bad. The special effects have aged really badly and looking back at what else came out in this time period, they were bad even back then. Kid me was just too stupid to notice. Little Shop of Horrors ('86): This one absolutely terrified me so much as a child I never actually got all the way through the movie. The scene that would always do me in was when Audrey II is trying to eat Audrey. I'd either quickly change the channel or run out of the room. I'd have nightmares about Audrey II. Seriously, recurring nightmares about this damn plant. The nightmares weren't even related to the movie aside from Audrey II being there, lurking somewhere out to get me. Usually in some dark place, like a cave or deep underground that I would stumble into somehow. Eyes in the vent: Regardless of whether the air vent is on the floor or on the ceiling, looking over one day and there's just a pair of eyes staring back at you through the vent. That someone could be staring at you at any time through there, for months on end. Maybe whatever is attached to those eyes comes down at night when you're fast asleep. Maybe they're planning on killing you. Who knows wat they're up to. Obviously, I've never seen anyone looking back at me from the other side of a vent. Fatal Frame: The first game. I got it for Christmas one year and decided to play it early in the morning before anyone else was awake. Eventually, I only played it when other people were around because playing it alone freaked me out too me. LOL. Imagine getting scared by those shitty PS2 era graphics. This one's extra embarassing because I was twelve at the time. Way too old to be scared by a game. Devil May Cry 1: Pretty much all the enemies in this except Virgil scared the shit out of me. I also only played this game if someone else was in the room. Also twelve for this. LMAO. Land of the Lost ('91-92): I saw this when I was a really little kid on Nick, I think. I watched the entirety of it, but it is much longer than I remember from looking up info on this later. In my head, it was only a short mini-series in the 3-6 episode range, but it was actually over twenty episodes with two seasons. Haha, I have no idea why I misremembered that so badly, because I usually have a pretty good memory even with early childhood stuff. Anyway, it was the T-rex. It scared me most in the episode where they think they're back in the present in their old neighborhood and the T-rex eventually shows up there and they all run away as the neighborhood disappears. I rewatched this and it looks so bad and so fake. The dinosaurs don't even look like they're on screen with the actors at all. Haha, maybe they wanted to remain true to the original TV show which also had god awful effects even for its time and even by kid show standards. I'm pretty sure the only reason the T-rex scared me is specifically because I was so young when I saw it. It's so dumb. There was a moment in this episode though that I realize is why I would feel a little extra "unease" playing Shadow of the Colossus against Phaedra/Kirin. It's funny how things so trivial from so far back that you forget about can still linger on in the depths of your mind. Journey to the Beginning of Time: This film has a bit of an interesting history with the US version having extra scenes from the original for some dumb reason. Obviously, the version I saw as a kid was the US edit, but I don't think that really matters much. The scene in question that scared me the most was the scene with the terror bird. This was so scary to me when I was like, five. I've rewatched this more than once as an adult and I just don't get it. However, as a kid even into my teen years, terror birds in movies scared me. This is the source of that fear and it makes no sense. I don't even know how I ended up watching this movie from the 50s in the first place. I'm pretty sure I saw it on TV. PBS's The Dinosaurs!: Animation from this early 90s feature was used as stock footage in a lot of 90s-00s dinosaur related shows and specials, even though much of what was in it quickly became outdated. This is one of my really early memories, being afraid of this special. I was under five for sure, because I saw this at the first house we lived in and we moved houses the year I was four, so I was four at both houses but would be five at the seocnd house. I doubt my memory is from below age four though. I am assuming this memory is from age four. I saw this on TV with my parents, because my dad was always forcing me to watch and read dinosaur stuff. For some reason, this special left me unnerved for a long time after. Throughout my entire early childhood, from I assume age four up to my last year of elementary school, I'd occasionally think back on this special and get unnerved all over again. The memory of what was in it faded, but the feeling didn't. What had scared me so much was a combination of things, the violence and harsh reality of nature often seen in dinosaur media, and the existential dread that violence and the end of the dinosaur reign brings in thoughts to myself. At any time, for no reason, regardless of what I do in life, it could all end horribly and there's nothing I can do about it. There is no true safety in life. I'm just an animal on a violent planet in an uncaring, violent galaxy in a vast, empty universe I can never live long enough to understand. Dinosaur stuff always got me thinking about time, death, the universe, and the uneasy chaos of life. I think this one would creep up on me the most not because of what was in it, but because it was merely one of my first exposures to such things. Previous