Scariest memory from your childhood?

It would have been 1949-ish, when my best friend and I cycled into the local park. At one point there were bollards with linked chains which my friend lifted so that I could duck under with my bike. When I was on the other side, from out of the spinney, a man wearing a boiler suit and exposing himself called me to join him. I shouted for my friend to stay where she was and scrambled under the chains dragging my bike with me. We told no-one. I still have an occasional nightmare in which I call out for help.

P.S. it didn't put me off. I love swimming including under water.

I think I must have been about 7 and was standing in the sea quiet close to shore when a wave knocked me over. I remember floundering under water. Then a pair of strong arms lifted me out of the water, it was dad ?

Possibly shock rather than fear in my case

It's a memory that is crystal clear

I was about 4. We'd just returned home from a holiday to visit relatives in London.

I was sat on my parents bed. They were unpacking their suitcases. My father slammed the wardrobe door and let out an anguished cry

I looked and there, on the floor, was a blood stained thumb

I can still feel myself starting to sway as I was about to faint. I recall hearing my mother shouting at my father and he left the room, clutching the thumb. He reappeared later with a big, bloodstained bandage saying that he'd stuck it back on.

Mum by this time was shouting at him to show me what had happened and he laughingly presented me with the plastic thumb.

We'd been down Carnaby Street and he'd purchased some trick items which were quite popular . The thumb being one of them.

He also caused chaos at a restaurant at a later date. My mother had asked for the mustard. She opened it. This squealing plastic spring burst out. Mum jumped and screamed and the table tipped. Luckily it was saved by a passing waiter

Strange man, my father

Mine is also whist staying at my nanna's house and sleeping in a big bed in her spare room.
On top of the big old fashioned wardrobe was a porcelain doll which my uncle had brought back for her from one of his many trips away as a merchant seaman,it was very very realistic and looked like a real baby.
I could never go to sleep as it watched me all night it was really scary and I was too scared to ask nana to move it .

I can remember when my younger brother and I were alone in the house, during the evening. I don't know where mum and dad had gone, but it wouldn't have been far.
We both heard a noise and were scared stiff. I grabbed the poker and we crept into the hall, but of course couldn't see anything.
But, we were both too scared to go upstairs to the loo, and so had very crossed legs by the time our parents returned.

I was 2 when WW2 started so my earliest memories are of sirens and bombs and explosions. Apparently I fell down a whole flight of stairs once in my hurry to get to the bomb shelter.
When I was 12 I almost drowned and had to be pulled out and resuscitated.
When I was 14 I found out that Mum wasn't really my Mum.
That was the scariest thing.

When I was about 6/7 my dad and his brother took my brothers and me swimming in a private pool at my uncle's school.
I could not swim and Uncle P said he'd keep his hand under my tummy whilst I practised the arm and leg movements.
He took his hand away thinking I'd got the hang of it but I sank and thrashed about, with what seemed like copious amounts of water going in my mouth and up my nose.
Dad took me to hospital to get me checked out but I was ok
I can now swim to save my life but hate being in pools where people mess about pulling your legs from underwater.

A few times I suppose.

My parents had a loft conversion done in our 1960's bungalow and my brother and I each had a bedroom in the loft. At night, when water dripped onto the windowsill outside my room, it sounded JUST like someone walking up the open-plan stairs. It took me months to figure out (I was young!) that if a killer was coming to get me, it would only take about 30 seconds to get up those stairs. Not 6 months.

Getting on a bus on my own for the first time. I must have only been about 8 or 9. It was a journey I'd done regularly with my dad (going to work with him) but NEVER on my own. It was a journey right across our city, so it was a long way to go on my own. But it was fine.

Having to try to dive off a high board, as part of my swimming lessons. I'd jumped off it before, but going off head first was too much for me. I chickened out.

Like you Witzend I had to stay at Grandmas house. It was dark, cold and dreary. Lying upstairs in that big bed I had to share with her , waiting for her to come up to bed. She wasn’t horrible but not very engaging, so I was lonely and scared. In my little girls mind, I thought if I was naughty , she would send for dad and I would go home. It worked.

Close to where I lived when I was a child was a derelict house with a big overgrown garden which had the most gorgeous rambling rose bush growing up a wall. One summer (I must have been 9 years old) a group of us decided to pick some of the lovely roses. There was one particular bloom I wanted to pick but it meant scaling the wall and stretching up to reach it. I just had to have that rose!
I climbed the wall, stretched and promptly fell though the bush and ended up the other side of the wall. I managed to get to my feet and felt around in the dark, whilst shouting out "help". Feeling around I discovered I was enclosed; there were 4 walls and no way out except by climbing one of the walls and going back through the bush and over the other side. I kept shouting "help" but it had all gone very quiet. I waited and waited but it seemed nobody was coming to rescue me.
I'd been shaking with fear and then feeling very sorry for myself I cried. Then I started to get angry that no-one was coming to help me. I put that anger to use, I scaled the wall, heaved myself through the bush and over one of the walls and lowered myself down to the ground. Everyone who had been with me were nowhere to be seen.

A thunderstorm when I was about five, the lightning struck the fence and ran along the wire securing the fruit bushes to the fence. There was the most enormous explosion and the house shook, all the soot from the chimney descended into the living room and covered myself, sister and mother as well as the carpet and furniture.
My father had been working in his workshop and couldn't believe his eyes when he saw how black we were, mother cried as she had just wallpapered.

I used to have a two wheeled scooter went everywhere on it, freedom in those days.

This particular day I was going to my cousins I was around 7/8 but was allowed to wander freely as we were at that time.

This one day I set off from home and turned to go over the railway bridge carrying my scooter up the stone steps.

I got up the first step and looked up and this what I know now was a teenage boy, he had a drop handle bike, he shouted "hey you come here" I remember he had a penknife in his hand which showed the blade"!

Stupid me didn't turn back and go back home.(which was about 200 yrds away) nooo silly me went the opposite way to my cousins ! I have never scooter as fast in my darn life! I didn't look back I just fled. I was exhausted by time I got to my cousins.

When I eventualy got back home I told my mum ..but she didn't seem unduly worried, she never really bothered where I was

I do always wonder if I had gone up the steps if I would have still been here today.

Reading your stories, make mine seem very tame...
I was six and called for my friend to walk to school, it seems ridiculous letting six year olds walk to school, but that's what we did
There were some daffodils literally hanging over someone's wall and we picked them for the teacher. If I saw little girls doing this now, it would make me smile BUT, next door neighbour rushed out and really told us off and said he knew who our parents were
I literally lived in dread of him knocking on the door for a long, long time

Walking home from a boyfriends house, in 1982, quite drunk at around 2.00am. I was 17 and a car pulled up by the side of me and asked me to get in, I wouldn’t so he got out of the car and came round to try to drag me in the car, somehow and very luckily I managed to run away and into our garden, I was close to home anyway. I didn’t shout out and never told anyone at home about it as I shouldn’t have been drinking and certainly shouldn’t have been out at 2.00am.
A lesson learned and I can’t ever remember being that drunk since.

Witzend your dh made me laugh

I must of been 9ish and lived in a big old Victorian house in London there were 5 families in different flats within and we kids played on the old bomb site round the corner. We found an old metal advertising hoarding which we proceeded to use as a stand upon seesaw I stupidly tried to jump off and the edge of the metal caught me right across my eyes. All hell broke loose and someone ran for my Dad, me screaming on the floor with a bloody face. Luckily the metal had broken the skin hence the blood but missed my eyes. My Dad once he’d cleaned the blood was furious and later I got slapped legs for being on the bomb site. I still have the scar on the bridge of my nose.

Having to sleep at my granny’s house, not long after both my grandfather and great-grandfather had died there - and my granny had sworn blind that she’d seen my GF shortly after he died. She said she’d woken up early, seen him standing by the bed, and having forgotten that he was dead, thought he’d come to bring her usual cup of tea!*

Not funny at the time, though - I was petrified of going up the stairs to bed in that house, not to mention at the mere thought of ghosts, for years afterwards. And yet they were both lovely old men.

* Early in our relationship I was telling dh this story.
‘And did he say..? (he put on a deep, dark and ghostly voice) - ‘I’m sorry, dear, I’m afraid the tea’s cold this morning!’ ?

A near-drowning here, too. It seems scarily common amongst Gransnetters! We lived by the sea and mum took us to the beach most days in summer. I think I could swim a few strokes but no more. I was probably 7/8yo.

I unknowingly crossed a breakwater in the sea and found myself out of my depth. Next to me there was a small jetty for pleasure cruises and I remember going under and coming back up, unable to breathe, and seeing all these faces looking at me from the boat but not doing anything.

Next thing I recall was my mum, who was a good swimmer, running into the sea and managing to grab me and get me to the beach, and me shivering and shaking with shock as I tried to catch my breath.

Since then, although I like to swim, I hate being out of my depth, even in a swimming pool.

1945, end of the war and living not far from an American air base in this country. An enormous low-flying plane flew over while I was playing in the garden and I just froze, so scared, as it shook the ground underneath me.
I finally ran into the house and remember being really petrified.
This was probably the reason that I hadn't liked thunder for many years ahead and it used to make me physically sick too.

Needless to say, it doesn't bother me now as I've flown on the biggest planes in the sky ( 747's ) through the most terrifying storms over India and not flinched.

Mine is a near drowning too. I was about 7 and thought I could swim but we were at the seaside and had been told never to go deeper than our waists. I was swimming and realised I could no longer touch the bottom and with every wave I was being taken further and further out to sea, I can remember lifting my arm and shouting but no-one heard.
I went under and thought I was drowning but miraculously
I was being carried towards some rocks and as I bobbed near them, I managed to grab hold of a rock and clambered up s getting scraped knees. I ran back to where the family were picnicking. Nobody had missed me and I didn't dare say a thing because I had been so naughty! I still shudder when I think of it.
You saved your sister's life MOnica

I jumped in the deep end aged 4 and then realised I was at the bottom of the pool and couldn't get back up. Panic set in. My dad jumped in and pulled me up thank goodness. About the same time I ran into the road and a car stopped just in time. I was obviously a bit daft at that age.

Then aged 17 I tried swimming the Thames at Henley and realised half way across that I didn't think I could make it because of the current. I was really scared. Luckily a friend swimming with me talked me across and I got there. Except you couldn't get out on that side, so I had to swim back again! Again, the friend talked me across encouraging me all the way. I never forgot his kindness because I might not have made it without him.

I'm not sure which was the most scary, probably the Thames incident as I was older. Although apparently not much wiser!

I was riding my bike back from the shops when I forgot to stop at the kerb. The next moment a bus was bearing down on me. Fortunately it was a junction so the bus had been slowing down. All I remember was a huge bus and being shouted at by what seemed like every adult both on and off the bus. Nobody asked me if I was OK. They were too busy shouting at me.

I still can't cycle across a road. It makes DH smile when I get off and walk across (after looking right, left and right again as taught by Tufty) even when the road is empty.

Not a particularly scary incident but one that caused me worry to the point of panic. I was about 8 and as an only child was well positioned to sit quietly listening while grownups chatted. My Granny and mother were discussing the discovery of POW's who had been reported dead but who were now reappearing having been captured and survived. My father had been killed just before I was born, my mother by now re married to a lovely man, who had in fact himself been a POW in the Far East, and we were happy and settled. Listening to this conversation, I managed to get it into my head that my father might be amongst these POW's!! The thought of having to leave my much loved step father and go to a new home with a stranger was just awful, and worried me for several weeks with what if's!! phone ringing, doorbell going etc, Of course he didn't and I forgot my fear! Now I feel rather guilty for thinking so badly about this poor man who died a horrible death but in truth meant nothing to me!

Babypink I’m not saying it was the scariest incident but the same thing happened to me.I was running home to go to the loo, (can’t think why my siblings didn’t tell me to squat behind a bush) and ran in front of a car. Driver shouted at me and ,yes, warm liquid trickled down my legs!Think I was about 5