The funny thing about fear is that it isn’t that funny when you’re experiencing it. Perhaps that’s why a little comedy is so useful in scary movies as a counterpoint for rising tension. While collecting the nightmares found on this site, I’ve encountered a common reaction that people laugh while trying to tell me a dream that obviously was quite disturbing to them. Overlooking whatever Freud had to say about laughter, fear and the unconscious, what these people often say they’re laughing at is the inability to make the story sound as scary as it was to them in the dream. In some cases, even THEY aren’t convinced that one should be afraid of the dreams as they’re retelling them.
It’s just not easy to make others really understand the same things that scared you. Maybe that’s why we get some delight — IF we get some delight — from well-told scary stories.
I have also collected a small number of discarded fears, things that people said they were afraid of once but that they are no longer fear. These stories were always surrounded by laughter, that embarrassed laughter that means on one level “I can’t believe I used to be afraid of something so LAME as this.” On another level perhaps this reaction means “I was so naive then to find THAT scary. NOW I’m older and more mature and now I know what’s REALLY scary.” It’s a fun list that I’ll certainly add to over time. In nearly all cases, they’re images from movies that they probably shouldn’t have been watching at that age, but then again, who am I to say?
(Female, 40’s) Birds especially large groups of them, after seeing Hitchcock’s “The Birds” as an elementary school child. Walking home from school was sometimes a problem, especially in the late fall as birds massed in the trees getting ready to migrate south.
(Male, 40’s) The Wicked Witch of the West from “The Wizard of Oz.” Especially the scene where she appears suddenly on top of a roof and hurls a fireball at the Scarecrow.
(Male, 30’s) The Ghostly Librarian from “Ghostbusters.” He says what was so scary to him was that she appeared to be friendly at first but then turned terrifying.
(Male, 30’s) The Robot named Maximillian from Disney’s “The Black Hole” (Look it up on IMDB! It was a relatively early attempt to use digital imagery, I think) The whole design of the robot is a little scary plus he was depicted as being nearly invincible.
(Female, 30’s) A ghost that mysteriously appears in the back seat of a car as someone is driving at night. “I’m sure it came from a movie–probably LOTS of them– but I just can think of which one.”
Needless to say, send in your childhood fears! To grimgnome (a) dailynightmare.com
2 replies on ““I can’t explain how scared I was:” Fears both indescribable and outgrown.”
Even though I had a very large “doll collection” as a child, I was afraid of dolls. Not all dolls, of course, but the ones with staring eyes, the kind of eyes that followed you. My collection occupied a large shelf in my room and, when I would turn out my light to go to sleep, sometimes I’d turn it right back on again, to see if I could catch any of them moving or blinking. If I were feeling uneasy or frightened, I would get out of bed and turn around a few of the dolls with the scariest eyes so I couldn’t see them. Or so they couldn’t see me.
There’s a family story about how when I was about 3 or 4 or so walking through Kmart around Hallowe’en time with my Gramma. I was just terrified by the cheesy costumes that they used to display in long strings in the “seasonal” area of the store. According to family legend, the wispy strands of hair were most disturbing to me and I would say over and over “Comb back. Comb back…” Today, I’ve got a small collection of those cheesy masks. They’re cool.