This Seems More Common Than One Would Think

"Seaweed. I HATED seaweed. I loved swimming in pools, but hated swimming in the ocean because of it. If I went swimming with my friend, I'd have her wade in the water and then I'd grab her waist and paddle my feet so I wouldn't have to touch the bottom because there MIGHT be seaweed. Like a seaweed monster was going to eat me alive or something. Lol."

michonne_impossible

A Tether

"Space."

"When I was young I had this nightmare where I jump up and these giant scissors cut my "gravity". I would go up and I could see my house and my street getting smaller and I'd still keep on going up until I was in space. Past asteroids and planets. And then I would wake up. I was never able to come back home."

Caryophyllaceae

Not Totally Sure Why 

"The weaving of the hair on the inside of a baby doll's head."

"My sisters would take the heads off and throw them under my bed and I wouldn't get in bed til someone removed them."

Wrong_Answer_Willie

Real Life Foreshadowing

"I was terrified that someone could read my mind and know what I was thinking."

"Fast forward 35 years, I keep all my thoughts in a computer and someone could actually read my mind this way. I think I was foreshadowing."

Sabrinacolada

What A Grape

"I was absolutely terrified of E.T. when I was younger."

"The diminutive alien is supposed to be one of those universally beloved characters, despite the fact that he looks like the result of an elephant's indigestion. When I was a kid, though, something about him frightened me so much that I'd refuse to even touch a lunchbox (or its matching thermos) with his face on it. There were even a few times when I insisted on my mother finding out if my friends would be watching the film before I agreed to visit their houses."

"As far as I was concerned, E.T. was "The Scary Raisin."

"I can remember visiting the state fair when I was about five years old, and being thrilled at the prospect of going through the funhouse. (This is relevant, I promise.) Other kids – kids my age – would scream and burst into tears after being startled by the flashing lights, the loud noises, or the life-size images of bats attacking pictures of scantily clad women. They, I thought to myself, were babies! Throughout the entire experience, I smugly suppressed my own surprise and laughed at each hazard – believing myself to sound like a hardened action hero or something – then pressed onward, leaving my frightened peers to run back in the direction that they'd come."

"Then, as I came to the funhouse's end, I was greeted by an incredibly realistic model of The Scary Raisin."

"For a moment, I froze in my tracks. Keep it together, I told myself. You've come this far... so just keep walking. The exit is right there. I took a single step, then another."

"I must have set off a motion detector or something, because a raspy voice suddenly blurted "ELL-EE-OTT!""

"With all the bravado of an especially panicked chicken, I let loose an ear-piercing shriek and sprinted back toward the entrance. At one point, I got hopelessly lost in the Hall of Mirrors, and my intense wailing actually attracted the attention of an employee. She took my hand and led me out through a hidden door in the wall, then somehow managed to decipher my sob-wracked description of where my parents could be found."

"Looking back, I have to wonder what she thought about that event... and if she ever questioned why a random kid had seemingly lost his mind after seeing some dried fruit."

"TL;DR: The Scary Raisin jumped me in the dark."

RamsesThePigeon

Up Ya Nose

"I was convinced that monsters could easily get into my house by crawling in through the garden hose and maneuvering their way through the plumbing until they found an open drain."

"I was terrified of looking down the sink drain and seeing an eye ball when I needed to wash my hands so I would blast the hot water for 5-10 seconds to burn the monster eye and cause it to retreat further back into the pipes."

PigeonGoddess

Generally Not A Thing Before Ten

"I was afraid of losing a foot to gangrene, which is a pretty weird thing for a 5-year-old to be afraid of, I think."

"My grandpa was a diabetic and, if you didn't know, diabetics need to take extra care of bruises/scrapes on their feet, cause they're prone to developing gangrene. And if it spreads, then the solution is amputation. Naturally, my parents never thought to mention that only my grandpa was in danger of something like that, and I spent quite a lot of time scared to death every time I scraped my knee."

"But then after like the billionth scrape without any gangrenous symptoms, I decided I must be immune or something, and stopped caring."

I_hate_traveling

Of Course Of Course

"At Christmas time one of the gifts my brother and I got was a puppet. It was a cute little horse where stick your hand in and you use your thumb and pinky for its arms."

"We have a video of this: my mom casually put it on and danced the horse around and my brother (probably 3 or 4 years old) SCREAMED. He ran across the room and was super scared of this little horse puppet. He was fine having it near him if it wasn't being used, but the minute my mom brought it to life his little child self was terrified."

"Safe to say it wasn't too popular of a toy after that."

EarlyHemisphere

Loud, Unwelcome Moos

"The milk man."

"In the UK they used electric carts (milk float) and I used to think the sound of the motor was a cow. When the central heating came on the pipes and radiators would knock and creak and my conclusion was a cow was in the house and was coming up the stairs to hurt me in some way."

FuzzyBagpuss

Gone With The Wind(ow)

"Windows at night time."

"I haven't the slightest clue why but they freak me out. Like as long as the blinds are closed, it's no big deal, but once they are open, it's sprint across the house time."

"Back when I was younger, the family room had huge windows in then and not a blind nor cover in sight. Nothing could get me in that area at night."

"It's like peering into a deep dark void man. I still have that issue but it's not nearly as bad as the irrational fear of child and teen me."

"God I hate windows."

Reddie_Red

​That creepy tunnel in Willy Wonka. Enough said.

Do you have similar experiences? Let us know in the comments.