Here’s a memory I’ve had buried for many years.
When I was a little boy, my parents took me to the American Museum of Natural History to see the dinosaurs.
We also saw the sharks in the Hall of Fishes; and I’m afraid I took those exhibits a bit too literally. I mean, what would happen if the glass broke and all the sharks got loose? I was afraid to take my bath that night. Had some rather too dramatic dreams that night, too. The mako shark followed me home.
I don’t remember how long it took me to get over that.
Special Note to Kristi Ann: Welcome back, Kristi Ann! I’m so pleased to see you here again.
You poor boy! You DO have a very VIVID imagination! (Which is why you are a good fiction writer, I’ll bet!)
One of my earliest memories is when I was about two years old and a bunch of family and relatives were all over the house and when it became dark, they shot off fireworks which experienced as frightening so I hid in my bedroom – what a woos.
When I was a child, I couldn’t look at pictures of snakes, when I was a kid. It scared me just to see one.
Here’s a memory from over sixty years ago, not really buried, but still “fresh.” Forbidden Planet is one of my favorite Sci-Fi movies. It gave nightmares to this eight-year old boy, the first time I watched it.
When the ships doc plopped on a table, the plaster cast of the footprint left by the invisible creature that had killed one of the crew, and uncovered it for the captain to see; every time I thought about it, that scene terrified me for years.
And that night, I can still recall part of the nightmare it gave me. I was in our basement, suddenly, next to the north wall, a crack began to form in the floor, from which a horrible creature was slowly emerging…
In the morning, my mother asked me to get something from the basement … the creature might still be there, I’m not going down there. I told mom all about my nightmare. Well, mom was not one to coddle her two boys, so she dragged me down the stairs, pushed me over to the wall where the beast had pushed its way through the floor. Even though nothing was there, for years there were still fears every time I had to go into our basement.
“Forbidden Planet”–yeah, that’s a corker!