I was playing catch-up and came across The Eagle’s Aerial Perspective post on “What Was Your Childhood Monster?: A Blogfest.”
Golden Eagle mentioned that Gollum freaked her out. A number of commenters agreed. I have to admit Gollum – at least as portrayed in the movies – was pretty creepy. I would’ve had nightmares if I’d seen Lord of the Rings as a kid. But I have to go way back to the winged monkeys in The Wizard of Oz to find the monsters that made me inspect the closet and under the bed when I was young. When WoO was on television, I’d hide behind a chair whenever those creatures were on the screen.
What about you, dear readers? What monsters are under your bed?
Spiders. I’m right in there with Ron Weasley. I hate spiders. Creepy, hair-legged half-inch high monsters. Naturally, Shelob’s lair was one of the most sweaty-palmed passages of Lord of the Rings, for me.
Oh yes, ugh! Big spiders – can’t stand them. Shelob was very scary.
I’m there with you on the monkeys I think I was thirty-five before they stopped creeping me out on television. Now, with a big screen, they’re still really frightening!
Three words: Pennywise the Clown. I remember watching Stephen King’s IT when it first came out on TV. I was nine years old, I had an overactive imagination and a history of scaring myself senseless (when I was four, I saw Gremlins and was convinced they lived in my basement; was terrified of forklifts – my dad was in construction, so I ended up in hardware stores often; was convinced our elderly neighbors haunted their old house and that aliens were secretly abducting and brainwashing everyone I knew. *facepalm*) The movie itself didn’t really scare me – I like it, in fact. But, that night, when I got in bed and everything got quiet… I couldn’t get the clown out of my mind. I spent the next year sleeping with about twenty stuffed animals in my bed (because I thought that would help, LOL!) and taking the quickest bathroom breaks and showers ever – I should’ve timed myself, because I’m confident a world record might’ve been broken. I literally could not look down a drain without thinking that something was down there… waiting. *shivers*
Nowadays, though, I’ve had so many nightmares about being chased by monsters/natural disasters/etc. that there’s really not much that freaks me out (I’ve actually started plotting a story for nanowrimo that involves nightmares, monsters and the like – I figure if my mind is coming up with all this material, I might as well do something with it. ;))
Well of course those stuff animals helped! You’re much braver than me. I won’t watch a Stephen King movie. eeek!
Dracula! I just knew he was waiting at the top of the stairs with those red eyes and big fangs. .
I refused to watch Dracula when I was a kid. Actually, I won’t watch him now either! 🙂