When I was a kid, I was too scared to watch real horror.

The closest I got was nervously peeking at the box art and descriptions at my local Blockbuster before renting Ghost Dad, a movie that’s 1000 times more horrifying than what Freddy, Chucky or Leatherface had to offer.

Now that I’m a horror-loving adult, it’s funny how much scarier the box art is vs. the real thing. Good art and an anxious imagination can do wonders - it’s why you don’t show the monster for as long as possible in a horror movie.

But that didn’t mean I wasn’t exposed to scary things as a child. With a healthy diet of TV, movies, video games and theme parks, it’s impossible not to encounter something unexpectedly freaky even when you’re not looking.

I think with the right intent, it’s healthy to get safely exposed to the creepy, kooky, mysterious and/or ooky on the earlier side. And as a new parent and somebody who just wrote on a TV show where this happens…

And another show where this happens…

I’ve been contemplating how I’ll gently introduce my own kid to scary things one day. They say roller coasters are appealing because they let us safely experience a near-death experience without the danger of, y’know, dying. The thrill of brushing up against the grave with the added bonus of a queue.

What roller coaster like experience will I hand-hold my child through so they can decide for themselves if they want to love monsters and Knott’s Scary Farm precisely as much as me? Maybe they won’t be afraid to begin with!

I’m not sure, and truth is I’ll probably just follow their lead - but it’s made me think about the scary things I was exposed to that paved the way for me to embrace and ultimately find delight in my own fears.

So without further ado, here are…

5 Things That Safely Scared the Shit Outta Little Ol’ Me

1. Theme Park Monsters

   

   As a SoCal native, I spent a lot of time at theme parks. And some of my first face-to-face encounters with monsters came from being immersed in the scary scenes of a dark ride. I shrunk back as Monstro lurched up on Pinocchio’s Daring Journey at Disneyland. I loved the twisting trees and multiple witch jump-scares straight out of the original film on Snow White’s Scary Adventures (now sanitized by Disney to be the less scary Snow White’s Enchanted Wish). And of course, I dreaded / delighted in Bruce the shark and King Kong terrorizing the Universal Tram Tour.
   

   

2. DC Animated Horrors

   

   Even 1990s superhero fare could get downright spooky. For me, the most horrifying example came from a Batman: The Animated Series two-parter, “Feat of Clay.” It’s body horror for kids, and directly inspired the new Clayface movie coming out this year. It wasn’t the shape-shifting that made Clayface freaky though, it was his origin: being force-fed putty in a truly upsetting sequence that plays out in silhouette but still features all the awful sound design of what’s indirectly happening. Even Superman got a taste of creepy with his own rogue, the porcelain-masked Toyman, eerily voiced by Bud Cort.

   

3. N64 Zelda Games

   

   The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time features one of the all-time freakiest experiences found in a mainstream Nintendo game. It involves a monster named Dead Hand that makes its home in the labyrinthian sewers accessed through the bottom of a small village well. And when you finally find Dead Hand, the creature shoots long grasping hands from the earth to restrain you so it can swallow you whole! Runners-up from N64 Zeldas are the ReDeads that shriek and force you to freeze in terror, and of course the existential dread of the moon in Majora’s Mask. Threatening to end the world in 72 hours and hanging over your every move across the entire game. Somehow the jagged polygons make these horrors all the more… horrifying.

   

4. Are You Afraid of the Dark?

   

   The Canucksploitation-4-Kids vibes made this show that isn’t actually very scary feel ethereal and uncanny if it hit you at the right age. The intro alone has a legitimately great mood, but the cheap, shot-on-video quality made episodes unintentionally eerie and empty. Most stories centered around urban legends aimed at kid-specific fears, and the ones that stuck with me are telling: beware the Phone Police coming to take you away for making prank calls! Don’t break into the mall after dark or you’ll get trapped in a pinball machine! The mood is a dichotomy of goofy and lonely - perfectly recreated by The Pink Opaque sequences in I Saw the TV Glow.

   

5. Ghostbusters

   

   I was the right age to see both Ghostbusters movies and find them funny when they wanted to be funny and scary when they wanted to be scary! Some of the scariest stuff comes from the supernatural hauntings at Dana’s New York apartment in the first movie. I think the scrappy use of practical effects and design being sourced from multiple effects houses due to time and budgetary constraints give these sequences a gritty, unpredictable quality. And when it came to Ghostbusters 2, what child my age wasn’t scared of the severe visage of Viggo the Carpathian and his River of Slime?

   

Every generation has their scary media. These were a few of my all-timers.

Now that I think of it, I didn’t even cover Goosebumps, the artwork from Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark or that scene in Terminator 2 where the liquid metal bad guy murders the parents and impersonates them on the phone.

What scared you as a kid? Is it still scary today? Or has it lost its power?

NEXT TIME: Purple & Green