Fear still

I never watch horror movies if I can help it. It is for a similar reason I never participate in Halloween, I find it so strange that people seem to enjoy being scared by stuff. I know where my dislike of horror movies came from. When I was a young boy in the 1950’s I attended a screening of “Creature from the Black Lagoon” at our little theatre in Maldon, Australia. I have a sense that for probably the only time my beloved Grandma was with me, presumably it was one of those movies that you could only attend if accompanied by an adult. Strange ruling to us these days but that would have been the only reason Grandma was with me. The real memory that lingers with me though from this particular movie is that early on in the movie I left my seat and sat transfixed with fear on the floor behind the seats in front of us. I don’t remember how long I stayed there but I suspect the rest of the movie. Or did Grandma take me home early, I don’t know. But that sense of the terror I must have felt has stayed with me all these years and I have avoided watching any horror shows since then but vividly remember the name of the movie.

I regularly attended the movies on a Saturday night on my own, the only night they were on. My intermission treat was sixpence-worth of hot potato chips wrapped in newspaper from the fish and chip shop next door to the theatre. Ahh the highlight of my week, how grown up I felt. Another regular habit from these nights out was to collect kindling of twigs and bark pieces fallen from the elm and gum trees lining the road home. My grandparents appreciated my collections as they were used to help light the fire each morning in the big black wood stove that was the heart of our kitchen. One night, gloriously lit by a full moon, i was walking up the small rise to our house carrying my big arm full load of kindling along the side of the road as there was no real footpath in those days. Suddenly I spotted what I thought was a large snake just in front of my feet. I probably screamed, but certainly dropped my bundle of kindling as I jumped to my left away from the snake and raced home in a panic. The next morning I told my Grandpop what had happened as to why I hadn’t brought any kindling home. He suggested we go and have a look and sure enough there was my scattered kindling, right next to a slick of oil on the road tarmac that I had obviously mistaken for a snake. We had a good laugh as we collected up the kindling and went home. It became a little household legend for years after, the night Mike saw the snake on the way home.

Please let me know your childhood fears that linger still in the comments below.

References:

• Read about the original movie by clicking here
• Original image is adapted from an Image by Stefan Keller from Pixabay