Irrational childhood fears

When I was put to bed I used to think there was something - a monster or a train - chasing me and getting closer and closer. The thudding noise it made got quicker and quicker until I was so frightened I would cry out. It wasn't until many years later I realised it was my heartbeat and the more frightened I became the faster my heart went. Silly but I was only about two years old.

When I was very tiny, probably under 2 years, I was terrified if a fly was on the window pane. I wasn't scared if it was on the wall, or the window frame - it was only if it went on the actual glass. I have absolutely no idea where this terror came from, but I was almost paralysed with fear!

Complete nonsense, but being able to see lights from a neighbouring village at night gave me an overwhelming fear of impending doom. Something to do with war, I think, but I wasn't even born until several years after the 2nd WW! What was that all about?!

My twin grandchildren of 4 years old have a fear of buttons. I think the little boy is the one who is actually scared but the girl twin has copied him and is now as bad. We have had to cut the buttons off their polo shirts for school. We buy buttonless clothes, getting increasingly difficult as now the boy is older most trousers come with buttons. They cannot tolerate buttons on their mum's or my clothes and are reluctant to go to Grandad if he is wearing a shirt! Apparently it is not an uncommon phobia. We have tried playing with buttons. That is not too bad. It is when they are on clothes.

The trams on Blackpool prom.
A boy who would block my way on the way home from school. I walked home alone half a mile from the age of 5
The house catching fire. There always seemed to be fires in local factories and mills and on the railway embankment.

Icy I think we were told lots of stories about the war, weren't we? I remember being told about how my parents did Firewatch at college until Dad went into the RAF, then there was rationing, and my mother who had trained as a teacher worked in a nursery for children whose mothers were working as part of the war effort.
Many people still had air-raid shelters behind their houses and there were still air-raid shelters in the school playground in 1960!
The war seemed to be the fabric of our lives and everything measured against it.

The stain from a previous damp patch in the corner of my childhood bedroom looked like an ogre's head to me, and I found it difficult to get to sleep. Funnily enough I could see a similar shape in the design on the curtains in the bedroom when I was married. My husband couldn't see it, and it was years before we could afford to replace them.

As a child I would not go to bed unless my mother had looked under all the beds in the house to make sure there were no bogeymen hiding under them! I was also terrified of the 'stomper' that road menders used to flatten Tarmac, and pneumatic drills. If they were working in our road, I had to be walked by circuitous routes to avoid them! It used to make my mother very cross.

There was a little cobbled lane going downhill from my house into the centre of the town where I lived. There was a building at the town end which extended over the lane, making a kind of tunnel. (Flying freehold) ? I had a recurring dream that a wolf was chasing me down the lane. He never caught me, but I was very afraid of using the lane. It was years before I could walk down it without fear.

They still tested the air raid sirens when I was a tot and apparently I would become hysterical when I heard the wail. My father used to tell me it was "moaning Minnie", I am wondering whether I thought it was a being rather than a machine.

I would never close my eyes and wait for sleep, I kept them open until they involuntarily closed.
Why ? because I was scared of the squiggly lights and things you see when you close your eyes. How bizarre is that !

When I flushed the toilet I had a mad race to get downstairs before it had stopped the flush of water. Absolute panic.

Also had to jump into bed from the end with a frantic leap to avoid who ever lived under the bed.

The fears were so real. We have to remember how they felt when dealing with little ones.

I used to suffer from chilblains and my Dad would apply Snowfire ointment. Because of the name, I was convinced that it would burn me, and I can remember kicking out to avoid it.

Shysal There was a crack on my bedroom ceiling that terrified me when i was little
Just across the field from from our house there was a steam laundry that sounded a siren and let out a great gust of steam round about once an hour which always made me run screaming from the garden.

I, too, have something living under the bed. It waits for your foot or leg to hang over the edge when you're asleep or if you sit too long on the edge and grabs it.

I hate the dark and never switch the landing light off if I'm alone at night.

When I was a child I could see faces in the pattern on my curtains which terrified me and sat on the toilet waiting for the spider that lived behind the cistern in every outside toilet to leap out onto me.

Anyone scared of mannequins? My GD is so frightened of these, and they seem to populate so many museums that we often have to avoid areas that have them. She's OK with shop mannequins; I guess these don't have faces...

nina I too was scared of the squiggly lights you saw when you closed your eyes! I have never spoken to anyone else who remembers this. I vividly remember crying on more than one occasion and saying to my mum 'I can see colours'. She didn't seem to understand what was bothering me

I'm scared of mannequins. I blame watching Dr Who as a child. It was the first time they introduced the Autons. Shop mannequins came to life and smashed their way out of shop windows. I've been nervous of them ever sinces.

I'm also nervous of statues since they introduced the Weeping Angels. Maybe I should stop watching

night owl reading that has made me tingle. I never thought I'd come across anyone else with the same fear.
LullyDully DGS used to be afraid to flush the loo.

It's always nice to know you're not alone in your weird fears isn't it nina? I feel very reassured

My father was in his fifties when I was born; not unusual these days but unusual back then [especially as I was on only child]. He seemed so incredibly old I was convinced he was going to die and any small illness he had worried me. I'm sure that's why I tend to hold back my feelings a lot, thinking that if I love someone I might lose them.

'The Dark', 'Bats" and "Ghosties' Woooooooooo

When I was a liitleun I used to try and hang around with my sister she would try and tell me if I didn't go home the bats would get in my hair and eat my head or shout ' ghostie Mary is behind you quick run home'. I would run like the clappers but to this day I am terrified of the dark and absolutely hate looking at bats, vile little creatures, yuk, those teeth.

I can't even take the rubbish to the outside bin in my back garden if there is a very dark night without pulpitations.

POGS.... only vicars get palpitations
Don't all children feel afraid of the dark? I know I did, and would have felt much happier then with the beds we have now that go all the way down to the floor.

well, isn't that weird? I typed pulpitations POGS but the ipad didn't like it!