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Like, as a child, my irrational fear was never a big clawed monster under my bed, but a man, a simple man could have been any one, under my bed ready to kill. The monster in my closet was always a person in a mask, the scratches at my door where always mental patients, and so on. I still occasionally fear being stalked from the shadows, though really I should have grown out of this by 14. I find that the root of this fear staying so longs is because, in part, its logically. With monsters, you grow up, realize they only exist in your head. But people, they exist, they in a sense ARE monsters, and are undeniably real. Any one else have this problem?

Nope, I was always scared of monsters as a child. I felt much better when I discovered that we drove them all to extinction.

Tornado's. That was what scared me gak less as a child.

Now I love them.

I was always scared of undetected congenital defects. I can shoot a werewolf or a mental patient.

 Bromsy wrote:
I was always scared of undetected congenital defects. I can shoot a werewolf or a mental patient.

Murica

 Bromsy wrote:
I was always scared of undetected congenital defects. I can shoot a werewolf or a mental patient.

I always did carry a gun with silver bullets whenever I'd go into the woods hunting.

Just in case...

Much like Stephen Colbert I fear only one thing;

 LordofHats wrote:
Much like Stephen Colbert I fear only one thing;

My name is Bear.

My name is Bear.

 LordofHats wrote:
Much like Stephen Colbert I fear only one thing;

Bears are destroying american values, goddammit!

Michael Myers for me, which counts as sort of a person.

I watched a lot of horror movies in my youth - well, I still do. Anyway, although I always enjoyed them, I was never particularly, you know, scared by them. The sole exception has been Michael Myers from Halloween 1&2. Not the parts where, you know, she's hiding in a closet and he's trying to get her? No, the parts that freak me out are when someone is having a conversation in front of a window, and you see him outside staring.

I was also terrified of Sleestaks when I was a kid. As my mother tells it, I'd always ask my older brother, "hey, wanna watch Land of the Lost?" like, no big deal. Then we'd watch it, but I'd stand behind the couch peeking over it from behind him.



In my defense Sleestaks were legitimately terrifying.

 LordofHats wrote:
Much like Stephen Colbert I fear only one thing;

Clearly you've never heard of manbearpig.

Please. No one takes manbearpig serial.

 LordofHats wrote:
Please. No one takes manbearpig serial.

Manbearpig is super real guys! I'm super cereal!

Nope. Monsters and men are not nearly as scary as orchids that are actually just lures for giant subterranean tulips that burst ouf of the ground and swallow you, paralysing you with a burst of gas then slowly digesting you in acid.

 Furyou Miko wrote:
Nope. Monsters and men are not nearly as scary as orchids that are actually just lures for giant subterranean tulips that burst ouf of the ground and swallow you, paralysing you with a burst of gas then slowly digesting you in sexy acid.

fix'd

Spiders, feth those guys...

In general though, horror movies have always scared me and I stay scared for way longer than I should, no idea why though. Like I'll still remember a horror movie and be afraid of it for weeks after.

As a child though I was always afraid of someone putting overs over the pool when I was under the water.

Not really, I always was extremely afraid of vampires, but they don't really exist. I will have to admit though that I am sometimes still afraid of being stalked in the dark as well.

The future.

Oh, and abandoned buildings, deep woods in the middle of the night, and fraternities.

On that last one, I have always thought of frats as nothing but syndicated and organized gangs of violent sadists with entitlements. I know that's not the truth, but I still don't like them. People who identify with their frats after college and make it some sort of talking point are awful. Almost as bad as Marines, heh

 Hive Fleet Cerberus wrote:
Like, as a child, my irrational fear was never a big clawed monster under my bed, but a man, a simple man could have been any one, under my bed ready to kill. The monster in my closet was always a person in a mask, the scratches at my door where always mental patients, and so on. I still occasionally fear being stalked from the shadows, though really I should have grown out of this by 14. I find that the root of this fear staying so longs is because, in part, its logically. With monsters, you grow up, realize they only exist in your head. But people, they exist, they in a sense ARE monsters, and are undeniably real. Any one else have this problem?

I hear ya. Humans are the real monster, and they are very very real.

I fear nothing because I am fear itself!

Except clowns. Clowns are freaking scary!

People are freaking scary, I agree. Also, I fear velociraptor attacks. They happen frequently in my area.

 timetowaste85 wrote:
People are freaking scary, I agree. Also, I fear velociraptor attacks. They happen frequently in my area.

Velociraptor attacks are no joke, they can open doors.

 timetowaste85 wrote:
People are freaking scary, I agree. Also, I fear velociraptor attacks. They happen frequently in my area.

Those happen all to often where I live. Some one really needs to take action against them. If we let these pre-historic reptiles terrorize us, whos to say the T-rexs wont start?

Stephan King once said something along the line that he's more afraid of what the man in the next hotel room over might be up to than monsters.

Sharks.

My Dad had a library of Stephen King books, which I read as a kid. This book scared the crap out of me. The book described in detail the terror of the little boy re: monster in closet, which fed right into the encounter with the dog. I thought the cover was literally a depiction of the closet monster, that it was a horseshoe crab monster (the top two holes look like dead black eyes).

Only much later did I realize it was the dog's muzzle, which actually still works to interpret it as the closet monster.

Also the short story "Sometimes they Come Back" in the Night Shift anthology. Read that at about 8 years of age and didn't sleep for a while.

Dad read us Cycle of the Werewolf, while camping, when it first came out... so when I was 10. I thought it was funny until it was dark, and I realized we were in the wilderness, so all I had was a tent between me and claws and teeth.

When I grew up there wasn't too much of the whole "stranger danger" paranoia. No, we were scared of Satanists and the McMartin preschool ritual abuse, which my Grandma told me about in excruciating detail. Oh, and the Night Stalker, Richard Ramirez. So yeah some real, some imagined.

The imaginary monsters scared me more than the real guys, but at the same time, the false hysteria over Satanic ritual abuse made even the purportedly real stuff sound exactly like the stuff in the stories I was reading. It didn't take long to get over the hysterics and learn to actually assess risk. As in, there are hundreds of millions of houses in SoCal, why would the Night Stalker just happen to climb in MY window and slash my throat? Made it seem stupid to be afraid when I thought of it like that.

Horror movies are awesome, but I get bored with slasher gorefests. I like the psychological stuff that makes me think.

Edit - correct spelling

I had an irrational fear aliens would take over the planet.

 hotsauceman1 wrote:
I had an irrational fear aliens would take over the planet.

They haven't already? I thought Obama was an extra-dimensional alien lizard person.

That's what the crazy drunk hobo I get 40K rumors from told me!

 hotsauceman1 wrote:
I had an irrational fear aliens would take over the planet.

That is just plain silly. Aliens don't want to rule us. They will just wait for us to kill ourselves and take our nice planet and make it livable again.

They might keep some of us as pets or slave labor so keep that in mind