E fucking T.
A girl in class would chase me saying lines from that movie and I’d run away screaming. I hate pointing fingers. Those horrible scientists. I’m getting close to 40 and I will never watch that horrible nightmare fuel again.

Grew up in Bangkok. The maid used to put her hair over her face and chase me around yelling something that sounded like “phi lok” which was apparently some kind of malevolent Thai spirit I’ve never been able to find on wikipedia despite numerous attempts.

ET is the WORST. That scene where he’s standing there with his chest cut open(??? I was very young when I saw this and haven’t been able to watch it again to this day so my memory is fuzzy) and you can see his heart? UGHGHGHGHHHH

At least ET kept his trap shut most of the time. I could never, ever figure out why anyone would want to watch even one second of Alf.

Ha! My dad was just talking about how I used to love that show as a kid and he thought it was the stupidest show ever. I just really liked the little mouse and her little mousy apartment!

I hate that fucking movie. When he popped his ugly head out from the corn field I shrieked and cried and my mean parents laughed at me.

I had an incredibly elaborate sleeping arrangement to protect against 3 very specific monsters. I didn’t grow out of this until I was maybe 11.

My mom used to let me watch horror movies way before I was emotionally ready to do so. There was the one called “When a Stranger Calls” about a babysitter getting phone calls asking ‘have you checked the children?’ That one fucked me up for a long time. But before that, we watched some terrible made for TV movie about…

Not toooo long after receiving my HOLY COMMUNION, I was gifted my very own Cross necklace. Like a good little Catholic that did not pledge themselves to Satan, I was handsomely rewarded.

Tornadoes. I was freaking TERRIFIED of tornadoes as a kid, and lived in a place where we had them. That and demons, due to my very religious upbringing. Tornadoes are still legitimately scary, but as an adult I know real people are often scarier than any idea of demons.

Sam Crenshaw? You take that back!

When I was about 8 or 9 I saw the incredibly hokey Salute Your Shorts episode with Zeke the Plumber. It was so ridiculous. Zeke has his nose bitten off by a parrot, which makes him the perfect plumber. Until he hits a gas line, can’t smell it, and lights a match. His spirit haunted the campers of Awawana.

I was going to move over with no tale to tell... then I remembered I had something with “The devil’s cave” in my hometown of Mazatlan.

I was an avid astronomy nerd as a kid. The first book of decent length that I read was a National Geographic tome called “Our Universe”. And it was in this book I learned of the horrible, terrifying truth that there are black holes out there, trapping everything within its grasp, including light, and then crushing it…

As a person of a certain age, I grew up watching Captain Kangaroo. Loved Mr. Green Jeans, Mr. Moose, even Slim Goodbody. But that damn Town Clown...horrified me. The creepy clown make-up. The silence. And the fact something would fuck up every time and he would KEEP SMILING. As a little kid the whole “smiling on the…

Same. I’ve never seen the whole movie but I walked into my friend’s living room while her mom was watching Jaws just in time to see this:

i still have a fear of being decapitated...b/c the brain lives on for a few seconds!  what horrible thoughts!

Mannequins. I was convinced that people who stayed in stores after closing became mannequins. This evolved into thinking they came back to life at night to tidy, so I was certain that all mannequins were trapped souls. This fear made the headless or otherwise amputated mannequins particularly gruesome.

Disney's headless horseman from the way back when animation. Something about that glowing decapitated silhouette merged with how intrinsically scary a dark window is when it's nighttime, the house is lit up, and you're in the suburbs so there's fuck-all lighting outside. For years, I ran by windows with my head down,…

THANK YOU!!!! I just remembered this myself because of the AVClub series on rom-coms just did a John Hughes one. And I’m always shocked to be reminded that Matt Dillon wasn’t Jake.