My uncle jokingly told me.that if I farted and hiccuped at the same time I'd die. I was like 7. I fell for it. Bad. He had to call me at like 11 at night to tell me it wasn't true and just a joke so that I could stop crying and actually go to sleep that night. All because I got the hiccups and started to feel gassy........

As a boy I was allowed to watch the movie „The fearless vampire killers“ (https://en.wikipedia.org/...) but I didn’t understand that this was comedy. The movie scared the soul out of me, I couldn’t sleep that night and have trouble falling asleep with my neck not covered since then.

About 20 years later I talked about that movie with a colleague and she was like „yeah, that’s funny“ and I was „no, that’s a horror movie“. She convinced me to rewatch it and I realized how funny it is and that it’s not scary at all.

But I hate vampires now. Forever.

Thomas the tank engine theme. I have no freaking idea why

You know that bit in Aliens where Bishop gets attacked and all the...white stuff...comes out?

Yeah I was allowed to watch that a bit too young and even though I know it's silly I still can't watch it comfortably to this day!

Robot voices! No clue why. Loved Portal as a kid, but had to play it muted because GLaDOS freaked me the hell out.

Really, a better question would be what didn't frighten me as a kid, but my most disruptive fear was of construction equipment (excavators, backhoes, etc). When I was in kindergarten, I refused to get out of the car to go to school for nearly a week because there was construction being finished on the school grounds.

The cover art for the Ghoulies movies freaked me out, like I would make a big deal about checking the toilet for those little goblins & needing the main light on in the bathroom so I could be sure they were not hiding in the toilet shadows. I was fine with a lot of other spooky stuff (and love horror now) but those goofy af toilet goblins were a major concern for years.

Sink Holes. I was an early reader and somehow picked up a book on sink holes and for years I thought any hole in the ground would suddenly open up and swallow me and my family whole.

My brother got a copy of the Jumanji board game and convinced me it was the real thing. I always sat as far away from the board game shelf as I could.

I always tried to avoid letting the water heater see me. I thought it would kill me with its flames if it spotted me.