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Dublin: 7 °C Thursday 28 March, 2024
the floor is lava

7 childhood fears you might never get over

IS THAT QUICKSAND?

THIS HEADLINE FROM today’s Irish Times struck fear into our hearts and minds:

vol Irish Times Irish Times

VOLCANOS IN MULLINGAR? All of our childhood fears realised. And so, here are some of the top horrors that tormented us when we were small, starting of course with…

Volcanos

Who remembers where they were the day someone referred to The Sugar Loaf as ‘a volcano’?

Great Sugar Loaf Can Pac Swire Can Pac Swire

“BUT WE LIVE IN IRELAND” you shrieked inwardly. “MAMMY SAID THERE WERE NO VOLCANOS”.

Cue two years of nightmares and a pathological fear of Wicklow.

And, by extension, lava

l

Your logic: Lava destroys everything in its path – including you – as it flows inexorably towards your home from the Sugar Loaf, no matter where you are in the country.

Solid logic, to be fair.

A seemingly harmless game of The Floor Is Lava was always tinged with genuine horror, as you plotted how you would escape should the imaginary ever become a reality. Those cushions would burn. BURN.

lava

Quicksand

Quicksand was everywhere as a child. Every. Where. A hidden threat waiting to suck you under at every turn with its scratchy yet fluid fingers of doom.

wuick

Disney films

Touted as movies filled with childhood wonder, many Disney films cause adults to shudder in horror to this day.

Exhibit A: Snow White in the dark forest

snow

Exhibit B: The horrifying acid elephants in Dumbo

dumbo

Exhibit C: The child catcher Chitty Chitty Bang Bang

smell

Farm safety videos

If falling into the slurry pit or flying your kite into a power line wasn’t going to get you, then the sheep-worrying dog was.

sheep

micksul67 / YouTube

Santa

The presents he brought were fantastic. But having to sit on a strange magic man’s knee in a large cotton wool-covered cardboard box at the back of a Quinnsworth while his beard slipped suspiciously down his chin? Horrifying.

santa awkward family photos awkward family photos

Balaclavas

Let’s be honest, nobody wearing a balaclava is up to any good. Unless they’re climbing Everest for charity. Childhood fears surrounding balaclavas involved bad people coming to bludgeon your parents and stealing you away to work in a glue factory. Or some kind of terror factory. Maybe not glue. Maybe a child killing factory.

Balaclava Andy Wilkes Andy Wilkes

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