Writer's Block: Fearsome

[bethnoir]

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The evil Punch and Judy who would try to take me to the witch behind the fireplace if I walked past them in the dark (I slept downstairs in our cottage and had to go through a lot of rooms to get to any other people).

Comments

[wolfy-codex.livejournal.com]

The disembodied hands that grew out of walls, cupboards and the bottom of beds reaching out to grab me and pull me into whatever terrible doom. Those and sinky swamps and quicksands made sleeping one of my less favoured activties as a small cub.

vivid imagination

[bethnoir.livejournal.com]

I'm scared of the disembodied hands as well now, help!
Were the sinky bits on the floor? I used to be very dubious about getting out of bed at night because I thought the parts of the carpet in shadow were dangerous, but I was safe in bed. Except when (in reality) the house flooded and my bed floated into the next room, but I have blotted that from my memory, mostly.

Re: vivid imagination

[wolfy-codex.livejournal.com]

They were the recurring themes (for some reason, don't know what Freud or Jung would have made of them) of my childhood nightmares which I had on a pretty regular basis and made me frightened of going to sleep as a cub. The hands were mainly indoor terrors but the sinky bits were generally an outdoor affair though often there was a certain overlap in that I was being dragged down under the earth by some unseen horror. Often too in area surrounded by other people who I witnessed suffering the same fate. A vivid imagination does have its drawbacks! Bed for me was unfortunately unsafe place, though I never had the misfortune of having it turn into a boat whilst I was in it.

Re: vivid imagination

[bethnoir.livejournal.com]

The floating was okay (although a bit Alice in Wonderland) it was the cold dirty water around me that wasn't so good! You know what? I wonder what things my children will say scared them as children in a few years time. I'm probably inadvertently terrifying them by not having curtains in the bathroom, or letting them watch Dr Who (but not Blink as that scared me half to death), or something I can't possibly see as frightening at the moment! At least they can get to my room quite easily and I always go to them quickly if I hear them crying in the night, I suppose.

Would anything have stopped you worrying about the hands and the sinky bits, do you think? A night-light? A special toy lion? A walkman to play music when you were scared? I'm curious. As for me, I wish I hadn't had to sleep so far from the rest of the family (in terms of dark, spooky rooms to go pass to get the them), but I loved having my uncle staying with us, so I wouldn't change it.

Re: vivid imagination

[wolfy-codex.livejournal.com]

Well I suppose I be somewhat fortunate in that I haven't experienced such a flooding nor anything similar that I can recall. Still, I doubt I'd have been very happy surrounded by water either. Still, the Horizon documentary about dreams that was on tonight suggested childhood nightmares are a useful learning mechanism to prepare for us for the dangers of life. An infuriating documentary though, just as it seemed to start to get onto interesting territory it went off somewhere else leaving us with little of the scientific detail or something new I might have learned and just making generalised and obvious conclusions. Grrs. Ah well. Still it sounds to me, not that I'm any kind of expert of course, that you has the balance of protection and learning down pretty well for your little ones. :)

Not sure if anything would have stopped me worrying. I don't recall having anything much of that nature anyways. Even the times I shared rooms with other family didn't seem to help much anyways. I just used to try and stay awake a lot, though of course I could never keep myself awake all night and I used to see faces and hear strange noises in the dark anyways so it wasn't much of a help. Still I did grow out of that although I still get faintly unnerved by things like the ticking sounds of my watch (a sound that frequently would unnerve me when little) and I will often see shifting abstract patches of colour in the dark, mostly blues and greens, though they no longer resolve themselves into anything scary. Still my fearful and anxious nature is something that has been with me since a particularly young age methinks.

[aba-hachi.livejournal.com]

Mirrors: mostly because of the fear of seeing something in there that wasn't outside to be reflected (after-effects of reading An Enemy at Greene Knowe at an impressionable age, I think), general sense that they are disturbing and unhealthy, and dislike of own reflection. Also not keen on doors and telephones. This all remains the case...

[bethnoir.livejournal.com]

I think we all remain slightly dubious of the things that scared us as children. I haven't been terribly keen on mirrors since I became a mother, but I think that's more to do with how I look than whatever else might appear in them. Mind you, Candyman scared me when I watched that at an impressionable age too and I recall mirrors being part of that.