Things That Scared Me Back In The Day

I wasn't a really brave child. Matter of fact, I pretty much was, in polite terms, a pussy cat until I became a wild, out of control teenager. Thinking back on it, it's so hilarious some of the things I used to be afraid of. Some of them seem so silly now, yet I remember being totally engulfed in fear from some of those things. Here's just a few of the things that used to scare me senseless back when neon clothing was in style.

"Mrs. Butterworth Syrup/Honey Bear Bottles"

Don't ask me why, I just was scared to death of those things. More so when I was really little. I thought those commercials with the moving and talking Mrs. Butterworth Syrup Bottle was deeply disturbing and very creepy. My fear of these syrup bottles stemmed from those damn commercials. In the commercials, Mrs. Butterworth  was nice and polite as she talking to the waffle and pancake eaters who sat around the table, but still she seemed just to weird for me.

As a kid I loved commercials and the mascots that came with them usually but Aunt Jemima was an exception. I just watched the commercial in complete horror when I seen that freaky thing. What really ignited my fear was when I seen one of those old Aunt Jemima syrup bottles. After that it was all over. If a Mrs. Butterworth commercial came on tv I would take off running and hide behind a couch. I even had a few nightmares about those bottles that I still remember slightly. Even in the nightmare, I walk into a kitchen to see a talking syrup bottle who seems perfectly nice but I still back up and hide behind a corner. Things got worse when I visited my uncle and aunts house and seen inside my aunt's cabinet when she opened it. It was a syrup container that was shaped like this evil pig. Every time we went to their house soon after, I refused to go anywhere near the kitchen. Sometimes curiosity got the best out of me and I would peek and there and behold was that evil pig. On one occasion I also found a honey bear honey container in my grandmother's cabinet, which I insisted she'd get rid of. To me they were all evil and had to be destroyed. Goes to show that I was such a scaredy cat back then that even the smallest, or in this case the sweetest, things would scare the crap out of me.

"The Ghost From Three Men and a Baby"

It took me a real long time to get over this one. It all started when I over heard a rumor that the movie "Three Men and a Baby" was on the news. The story was that after the movie was released out on home video people suddenly noticed a boy standing in the window during a scene with  Jack, played by Ted Danson, & his mother . In one shot they said was this ghost boy and in the next shot a gun. The rumor was that a young boy shot himself in that very apartment years before the movie was filmed there. Soon as I heard it I became curious, as did a lot of other kids my age. I watched the movie looking in every window that passed. Then I seen it in plain view standing in the window as Jack  and his mother walking slowly by holding the baby. It looked like the ghost boy was staring directly me. I couldn't believe it that there was actual proof of ghosts existing. After I stopped rewinding the tape so many times and let it play, I seen how Jack and his mother walk by the window again, this time with no ghost but with a riffle pointing downward on the side of the window. A moment later they pass by again and there is nothing in the window. At first the ghost boy did not scare me but amused me. That was in the daylight, then came night and all hell broke lose. I used to have a pretty good size window in my bedroom back then and as I lay in bed I would picture that same ghost boy appearing there just watching me.

This fear I had of the ghost boy seemed to only appear in the nighttime.(At first anyway.) During the day I would discuss the ghostly phenomenon with anyone who would listen. I told the story to everyone in my family, including my uncle. He seemed totally unmoved by the story until I showed him the scene in the movie. I remember pointing to the window and saying, "See! There he is! See! Did you see the gun?" I was almost hoping that my uncle would notice something and exposing it as a scam or that he would just laugh and tell me it was all make believe. He didn't do neither of those things. Instead he yelled, "Oh my God!" and wouldn't stop with the OMG's for about three full minutes. He was also in all that this simple little movie proved there was life after death. His reaction was kind of funny at the moment but later it made my fear grow more intense. It's so funny how fear can grow on you and rapidly at that. Before I knew it I couldn't talk about the ghost boy anymore. I made sure that I recorded over the bootleg of that movie that I received and not that recording over it wasn't enough, but I then crushed the tape breaking it on purpose. I'm surprised I didn't throw holy water on it, set it on fire, and then bury it's remains in a cemetery. I remember a few episodes at my grandmother's house when I was completely paralyzed by fear. I would occasionally sleepover her house when I was young. I had to pass the den in order to climb the stairs to get to her bedroom and the den was always dark. Not only that but there was nice big windows there with flowing curtains ....a perfect spot for ghost boy to linger. I couldn't make it past the den because I was so scared. I hid my eyes thinking for sure that kid was floating on the other side of the window and cried from terror. My grandmother would have to put her arms around me, cover my eyes, and talk to me, coaching me up the stairs. (I sure miss my good old Gram.) When I finally got a computer back in 2008, I stumbled upon an urban legend site which included the Three Men and A Baby ghost, along with the hanging munchkin from the Wizard Of Oz, which did not scare me by the way. (I always knew it was a bird.) Even as a grown up, I had to pause before I scrolled down on the page to see that damn ghost boy again. After reading another link, (http://www.snopes.com/movies/films/3menbaby.asp), I learned that the movie wasn't shot in a vacant apartment building where a nine old once shot himself at. All the indoor scenes from the movie were shot on a sound stage! The site explains the ghost boy as being a cardboard cut out of Ted Danson wearing a tuxedo, which you see in a few shots in the movie. The explanation for the downward pointing riffle is that it is a outline from the cardboard cut out that was draped by the curtains. My personal opinion now as an adult is that this was purposely done knowing that rumors of a suicidal ghost kid would make the home video release value go through the roof. The extent of greed really is what truly scares me now.

"Man Statue At Cemetery"

This one didn't scare me as bad as the top two, but it did freak me out a lot. When I was little I would always be with my grandmother since my mom worked a lot. My grandma always drove to Holy Sepulchre Cemetery in our town to put flowers and what now on dead relatives graves and I always tagged along with her. Whenever we drove in or out or walked around, we would pass by this really tall creepy man statue that is still there to this day. Before my agnostic days, I was allegedly a Catholic but I didn't know the slightest thing about the saints or bible passages, so I was never sure if the statue was a saint or not. All I knew was that a scary old man statue was hovering over me watching our every move. I hated to go to that end of the cemetery. That was a pretty early on fear I had and honestly didn't remember it until I was walking around that cemetery for exercise and happened to look up and spot that stone figure. I had to laugh at that one. It seems silly now at some of the things I was frightened of,(maybe that's how the expression "scared silly" came about), but back then they were real life Freddy Krugers to me. Little did I know back then that my future was going to hold some real fears like the one I'm fighting a losing battle against now ...the fear of getting old. Go figure.