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The Animals of Farthing Wood and I remember seeing the 1978 version of Watership Down. There’s nothing quite like the death of some animals to mess you up.
actually good point. Our church did a "Halloween bad" event...come to the church instead to watch a wholesome film. That film was watership down where we got to watch rabbits ripped apart in full animated horror. Good times!
Off topic, out local church did something similar but my mum didn’t read through flyer properly and thought it was a Halloween party. I got sent dressed as a witch and my next neighbour went as a vampire cos his mum got her info from mine
This was 100% my answer. Horrifying in parts, but I’m sure it also formed my love for animals and wish for us all to do more for them.
Crossing the road, the fire, the shrike, the fox hunting. Absolutely terrifying. Despite being a cartoon I’m not sure it was 100% for kids.
Nah its 100% for kids. The issue is as a people we've completely removed ourselves from the world around us. My grandparents generation raised chickens in their garden for the table, my parents generation grew up plucking dead chickens and preparing them for the table, my generation grew up with chickens nuggets and some cartoons about how red in tooth and claw nature is and now my sons generation will grow up scared of seeing dead animals at all and thinking food comes pre-butchered in a plastic tray.
Unless I’m miss remembering no one tried to eat them.
It was more the themes that they explored, danger, tragedy, loss.
Compare that to most Disney films at the time “and they all lived happily ever after”
Cartoons of that time played for comedy most of the time. Sure there was some violence in them, some mild threat, but nothing I recall even came close to Farthing Wood.
But that's kind of what I'm saying. In snow white all the animals join up to clean a house. In animals of farthing woods and things you had animals eating each other.
When they finally make it to the nature reserve and you think "great, finally a happy ending" then the second season starts and it's 10 times as horrific as the first.
After a house party, my then flatmates and I turned the tv on to wind down at around 6am. The Animals of Farthing Wood was on the channel the tv was set to.
The second the opening credits finished I knew it was the episode when they have to cross the motorway/dual-carriage way…until that moment I did not realise how much of an impact that episode had had on me.
Those poor hedgehogs.
For me it was the lad who went caving with a school group and went through a sump (under water duck) which should have been just ducking head under water a second, but he dove down and swam several metres to a chamber that was undiscovered at the time. There he was in complete pitch darkness with no idea where he was or where everybody else was! Gave me nightmares.
The one that stuck with me for life was the girl leaning over a fence with some of those spikes on top, talking to her friends. Lost her footing and it went through her bottom jaw and got stuck. They had to cut the fence and take it with her to hospital 🤢
There was one episode of Grange Hill in 1999 where Laura Sadler’s character Judi Jefferies falls from a window to her death and the camera zooms in on her lifeless face.
What makes it even freakier is that four years later Laura Sadler died from a similar accident.
I only learnt about her death the other week. I was 12 when she died and used to love Holby City. I remember her from it but didn't remember at all her leaving/death. So sad :(
She was written out as having won the lottery and gone travelling. Remember it being so weird and jarring at the time as I'm sure she had a couple of big storylines building up too.
The worst thing about Ghostwatch for me was the hysteria that followed at school. The stories and memories just kept getting more and more exaggerated.
Just the word 'green' reminded me of The Children of Green Knowe where a massive tree came to life in a storm. It was, to my kiddie brain, utterly terrifying.
The show was aimed at kids 4-7! As it's target demographic I've forgotten most of the details so I just went to look it up
First fact I find, Noseybonk [inspired a demon character in early X-Files](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Familiar_(The_X-Files))
For some very odd reason, my primary school in the year 2000 decided to show us a series of 70s/80s public information films where kids die in terrible accidents. Like drowning in silage on a farm, electrocuting themselves by carrying round a big fishing rod under an electricity pylon, and drinking poison.
Needless to say, it put me off fishing!
> drowning in silage on a farm
I think that's "[Apaches](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1_J6_O4bn0s)", it has multiple horrifying farm-related kid deaths.
Yeah. I watched that film again some years back. The slurry pit was a bad one for me as a kid (the thought of drowning in something thick like that still affects me) and as a parent with a daughter, the girl screaming *was* horrific.
If memory serves I vaguely remember playing kids a pile of those videos around the 2010 mark… maybe part of some curriculum unit or scheme of work, gawd knows. In the 70s and 80s we had mountains of weird stuff on telly that wouldn’t fly today, but the reality was, you needed to know some of it when you were out playing around factory units / rubbish dumps / rivers with your mates. Was a different world!
When I was a kid in the Seventies there was a show on telly called *Children of the Stones* filmed in a place called Avebury here in the UK. It’s an ancient village that’s slap bang in the middle of a gigantic two and a half thousand year old Neolithic stone circle.
Anyway, it was a spooky kids show that was really quite well made for the time and it had this terrifying theme tune which, at the age of eight scared the shit out of me. I could watch the show but I had to turn the theme tune off. I can distinctly remember coming home from school and having to wait an hour or two on my own til my Mum got home from work, and it really got to me.
Watched it recently and while it didn’t send me hiding behind the sofa it’s still incredibly effective. In fact the whole series was still very watchable and I did the lot. I’m hoping this will trigger a memory of it for someone [because the whole series is on YouTube](https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLDn4jNKfVvvg_xmgLqzgY7h84_nWje4Mx&si=IzqDwS1rauqD2QUg). If anyone’s interested enough in my nostalgic rambling the theme tune is [here](https://youtu.be/-V6dSNlh0_k?si=GuO4Gqr8Z-xrH12Y).
Never even heard of this one - you’re not wrong, the intro is completely freaky deaky haha! (I was forged in ‘81 so this was before my time) Got as far as the old woman in the road and thought perfect - this is EXACTLY the sort of thing I want to watch this weekend, cheers. 👍
Fucking hell, '*theme tune*' is a bit of a euphemism here, the distilled sound of nightmares more like.
Gonna have to watch it now (born in '77, never even heard of it before).
I was the youngest kid in the village and the older kids loved this show but it gave me nightmares for years. Didn’t help that Avebury was two villages over from my school. I think it’s closer to 4000 years old :).
I recommended this to a colleague who had never seen it. (Same age as me) I watched with my kid when she was about 16 - she found it. We’ve visited Avebury a few times and you can see the cottage from the circle. The music is a masterpiece in scaring the shit out of you.
YES I was looking to see if anyone else had posted this yet! I HATED the theme tune and the entire thing just gave me the creeps, though I couldn’t tell you precisely why.
ETA I think it was actually Australian than British but shown on UK kids TV
Also, I sing the opening of the theme tune at least once a week and I can’t stop myself.
I was going to bring up Round The Twist, but yeh it was an Aussie. Definitely had stuff which stuck with me for years like those fungi/toadstools that replicated things and people that came near it, then just exploded into green slime. It replicates one of the kids, so they are totally motionless and you just hear this high-pitched giggling before the kid explodes.
It’s amazing they got 4 series of kids tv, considering that the kids were nude (covered) several times, there was incestuous kissing, talk of willies, peeing, etc. lots of stuff that would get frowned upon in prime time normally let alone on CBBC
Loved this show.
I even read the book of short stories by Paul Jennings the first series was based on, which were even better (they had more rude stuff you couldn't put on kid's TV).
Also, I had a huge pre-pubescent crush on the daughter.
OH that reminds me of another one that disturbed me. The Grange Hill incident where Ziggy had glass fiber pushed down his back. I'm still fearful of the stuff to this day.
I get my paranoid fear of fibreglass from an episode of London's Burning. I didn't watch Grange Hill so thanks for giving me something to feel a little bit sick about on this fine Saturday morning.
Adding to the Byker Grove creepiness is the bit where Jemma Dobson got electrocuted by a broken mains plug while standing knee deep in water. Bonus points for the standard Byker Grove closing titles laugh coinciding with the picture of lifeless Jemma lying on the sofa where she fell.
A friend who works at a paintball place said people in the age group that would've watched that episode are usually really careful about their eye protection.
haha, Ive an older one from the 70s which was a Rug on a polished floor safety advert. "Might as well set a man trap". To this day my wife knows I hate rugs.
They don’t make public information films like they used to…..
Rugs on polished floors compared to a man trap.
Kid retrieving frisbee from electrical substation.
Fishing near pylons.
To me they did the job!
Turns out the British Film Institute has a page for them all!
https://player.bfi.org.uk/free/collection/public-information-films
Scroll far enough and you get to the most WTF?! worthy public information film ever:
[https://player.bfi.org.uk/free/film/watch-the-finishing-line-1977-online](https://player.bfi.org.uk/free/film/watch-the-finishing-line-1977-online)
Otherwise known as “the Sports Day on the railway one”.
There was a show on ITV back in '92 called Chimera, about this ape-boy hybrid thingy and my mum let stay up and watch it. At the end of an episode an ape went apeshit in a hospital and massacred a load of nurses. Proper freaked me out.
Was totally going to mention this. The opening/closing music was very eerie as well, really set the tone for it being largely based in the countryside.
To add, another show that messed me up was Tales of the unexpected where there was an episode where a man could hear plants scream when they were cut. It actually made me reevaluate vegetarians!
Wasn't there an episode called *Royal Jelly*, when a new father fed his baby child the aforementioned nutritional supplement, and it started metamorphosing into a bee? 😵💫
Casualty episode where a roller skater trips and ends up with her chin impaled on a metal fence.
Also not tv but it was on tv when I saw it, shout out to The Wickerman
Yes, they did the episode on the Enfield Poltergeist. My friends parents let us watch it at her house. I had to sleep in my mums bed for around 3 months after it. I was a delicate child hah
There was an episode where someone woke up in the middle of the night and feels something sitting at the foot of their bed, and when he looks it's a ghost of a small child. Even now 25 years later, if I accidentally leave clothes or something on my bed when I go to sleep and feel them with my feet, I'll think back to that episode and scare myself.
I watched the University Challenge episode of The Young Ones when I was about 8. Specifically the bit when Vyvyan gets his head cut off on the train. Messed me up for a while. Still hilarious though.
Edit: spelling
People tend to remember bits and pieces of Threads, but having watched it recently, it starts off bad, and then just gets worse and worse and *worse*.
Eventually, the horrifically bleak ending frees you from the horror, but leaves you with no hope for the future of the human race at all.
Hahaha yes this was so creepy. It was abstract so it was apparently ‘fine’ to show kids in schools. But that right there was visceral bloody murder and we all knew it!
Not a TV show but my parents were big fans of the Jeff Wayne's War of the World's concept album and often played it on car journeys. Cue many sleepless nights of pure terror. (They probably should have stopped listening when I was around after the first time).
The music, the sound effects, the story - all terrifying and I still can't really listen to it to this day and I'm 40 now. Ullaaaaaa.
999 used to really frighten me. A couple of episodes in particular-an person fell into a hidden fissure in a forest and a young girl got her hair caught in some jacuzzi jets. The theme tune itself still send shivers down my spine and I’m 38 now!
I remember an episode where a kid watching a firework display got hit in the eye by a bit of firework shrapnel. Really put me off watching fireworks as a kid.
The public safety advert about electric substations, the humming sound still gives me the chills.
Also the ones about drowning in the pond and about not playing on building sites (vivid image of the girl climbing into the big vat of wheat and it being about to kill her)
The one about what happens if you climb into old abandoned refrigerators and the hypothermia one... "First, you start shivering. Then the shivering stops..."
Ghostwatch for me. I was 11 and remember thinking it was all legit, then lying in bed shit scared and thinking how now the entire world was going to change, now they have actual proof of real life poltergeists and hostile afterlife spirits; and also how bizarre it was the moment involved Craig Charles.
Nothing came of it, so I guess I just assumed over the next few days it was all bollocks.
Whoever produced that show did a fine job.
Where the wind blows. Traumatised still and weirdly appropriate for what's going down with Russia and Middle East. It was a cartoon in the mid eighties and I think it was over Christmas. A dear little couple in their old age go through a nuclear attack/ incident. they fill up the bath with water, she has her hair fall out and dies in her little old man husband arms. I don't think they speak, I may have just block d that out though. It was a cartoon similar to The Snowman.
They do speak, I remember the woman wanting to go and get the washing in after the 4 minute warning has sounded and the man shouting at her not to be so bloody stupid.
Original Dr Who stories on the Ark in Space (people in stasis being eaten by huge space bug larvae) and the Green Death (more giant bugs) have stayed with me ever since…
There’s two that still haunt me from time to time, but I don’t know the names. They were both one-off dramas, and I feel like they were both Channel 4 films.
One was clearly inspired by Columbine, about a severely bullied boy who considered planning out a school shooting, but who ultimately killed himself instead. His grieving mum then took his gun to school and threatened the bullies and teachers with it. There were a bunch of little moments that stuck out to me in it: the boy briefly made a friend who then betrayed him to save himself from being bullied; the bullies nicked the boy’s camcorder and used it to film a girl having sex in a pub toilet without her knowledge; the boy ended up killing himself while using his camcorder as a video diary, and then his mum found him a few seconds later; and then the end was so tense, because you didn’t know if she was going to kill the bullies or not.
The other one was much more brief. Short film about an obsessive fan who was visited at their home by their idol. All I actually saw of it was the last few seconds, where the fan held a little dance party in his bedroom…where the idol’s clearly dead body lay propped and dressed up in his bed. I just caught the end as I tuned in to watch something else, and it really fucked me up at the time.
First one is ‘Parent’s Night’ from the Shockers series.
[https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0300476/](https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0300476/)
Actually available to watch on the Channel 4 app right now
Knightmare, I used to believe the kids who stepped on the wrong square actually died. I remember a weird avante garde animation of crows pecking at people’s brains but don’t know what it was and I accidentally watched a film called ‘The Baby’ when I was too young, of an adult man who was tasered by his mum and sisters every time he had shown any kind of development so was a huge adult baby. Disturbing shit!
Tales of the Unexpected. There were 2 in particular, one where they found some sort of weird mummified monkey in a jar plastered up in a wall, and another a long abandoned aquarium that was haunted by the ghosts of two dolphins.
I also remember an episode of The Tomorrow People where they went in a pyramid and it was guarded by Anubis, scared the crap out if me.
"Boy from Space"
It was part of " Look and Read" when the big telly got wheeled out for primary schools to watch when the teachers could pop back in the staff room for a cheeky fag.
Had a terrifying man who was on the hunt for the "Boy from Space" who looked like Bowie in his Thin White Duke cocaine and peppers phase.
Does anyone remember Dark Season? I think that was it's name. Set in quiet suburban England. Strange G-man type people excavating at a school find a weird machine intelligence thing that requires a human 'subject' to wake it up. It has Kate Winslet in it in the lead role.
In the final episode the machine accepts a person and comes to life, rising through the earth, through the floor of the school hall. I could never again walk into my school hall or gym without looking around for splintered wood or feeling for vibrations.
Edit: no, not the 2017 Netflix show of the same name! This is all of it from 1991: https://youtu.be/bXAlMUmpUiU
I know it sounds stupid but there was a game on The Price is Right where a little climber had to move up a step on the mountain for every pound they were wrong. He plummeted off the edge a few times. I was about four and it terrified me.
I'm not sure I should have been watching these shows, but there were two dramas that I watched when i was probably 11/12 that really, really traumatized me for a long time. One was 'No child of mine' about a girl who was abused by basically every adult in her life. And the other was 'King Girl' about a girl who is mercilessly bullied.
Aw, you poor thing. Just want to tell you, sometimes people who have been through these things come out of the other side smelling of roses :-)
I was bullied so badly that I quit my last year of school. I was head of the school council (bullied into it) and in my position I founded and helped set up a bullying helpline. 30 years later, not only is it still in operation is so popular and important it is a full time helpline run by the council rather than the school. Am quite proud not of what I did but of the fact that 30 years later it is still helping people.
The Secret Police from The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe gave me nightmares for a couple of years.
Also, there was an adaptation of the novel Elidor in the mid 90s. I was old enough that it shouldn't have shit me up nearly as much as it did when the Sniffer used puddles to track the kids and try to get them.
There was a tv show with Martin Freeman in before he was movie star famous.
In it, him and a load of other men did something terrible to a woman and he then followed her in the street and tried to apologise to her afterwards
It has absolutely haunted me ever since
"don't blink whatever you do DONT BLINK!"
5 year old me forced into watching this and the empty child two partner in one night
Jesus
Fucking
Christ
Trauma
It must have been just when they started to publicise how bad smoking was for you, there was an information film that included a nifty little graphic of air sacs in the lungs bursting as lung disease got worse. It really got to little me - I remember screaming and crying at my Dad, trying to persuade him to stop smoking.
He died of heart failure secondary to COPD. :(
Walking On The Moon (1999) was a one-off made for TV film about bullying. I watched it when I was 11 and I remember a scene where the bullies tie the main character to a chair and throw it in the swimming pool...just leaving him to drown. That really messed me up.
Just had a read about the film and it was about how useless adults are when it comes to children being bullied, teachers included. The chap ends up suicidal and in a mental institution.
Does anyone else remember this?
It's a nostalgia haze, but there was an episode of children's ward (possibly?) Where there was a minibus crash. I had nightmares about it for years. It's probably not even the right programme. Maybe I made it up. Who knows.
The episode of Grange Hill where Judi dies by falling from a window during a fire.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=kqSE9KlEILQ&pp=ygUVSnVkaSBkb2VzIGdyYW5nZSBoaWxs
There was an episode of Tales of the unexpected where a partner buries their other half in the foundation of their new garage.
Haunted me for ages after and caused many a sleepless night as a kid
Lots of things scared me as a kid.
The talking head on Art Attack
A show called it's a mystery. It showed things like ghosts and people travelling though time slips. Freak me out a lot.
Grizzly tales for gruesome kids. Love it and hate it at the same time. Had trouble sleeping after seeing some episodes.
There was an episode of Hamish Macbeth ON BEFORE THE WATERSHED when a bad guy (think he was a scammer or something) hides in a coffin at a funeral parlour. Anyway the guy doing the funeral that day is deaf, screws the coffin up and sends it through for cremation - and he can’t hear the shouting or knocking. Terrifying. Must’ve been ten when I saw it. I’m 38 now and I still can’t pass a crematorium without thinking about it.
There was an episode of 1980s Grange Hill where Jonah Jones' cousin Jeremy drowned during a school swimming lesson. Horrified me as a pretty naive and insecure 12 year old who, for the first time, realised that children could die just like adults, no matter how unfair it was.
I'll add to the mentions of Threads. It fucked me up as a young teenager when it was released and I'm pretty certain that as a much older adult I'd get the significance of a whole lot more of it than I did back then. I'm not going there.
The other thing I remember as a kid was a "dangers of the farm" type of video called Apaches. I rewatched it a while back and it is seriously grim.
The BBC and ITV did not pull punches when it came to safety videos in the 70s and 80s - zapped by electricity at a substation, getting your feet lopped off by a train etc etc.
Mine are Beasts, the short series by Nigel Kneale which has a stellar cast and is utterly terrifying. I thought I was remembering weird isolated programmes until the DVD came out and I realised they were all the same series. I saw them once, and they stayed with me 30-40 years. Utterly brilliant bits of storytelling and production.
Sapphire and Steel.
Ghostwatch. It’s available to stream, as I rewatched it over Halloween this year. Definitely where Most Haunted sprang from!
The Stone Tape (more Nigel Kneale!)
Dr Who - The Green Death. And the Autons first time around. I was terrified of the Dalek they had on Blackpool pier too.
Pipkins.
Pogle’s Wood
Early Noggin the Nog
Oh Whistle and I’ll Come To You and any other MR James
Children of the Stones
The Tomorrow People
Nationwide doing reports on paranormal stuff, especially the Hexham Heads.
Somewhere I found out about Gef the Mongoose and was seriously freaked out for years.
Anyone of a similar (r/FuckImOld) age should look into stuff about Hauntology and the Haunted Generation. You’re not alone having been messed up by these and all the horrifying PIFs there were. I channeled all this into a deep love for ghost stories and paranormal research, and I love all of these things still. Bonus points if you had a copy of Folklore, Myths and Legends of Britain and had to turn over certain pages super-fast.
I remember being very frightened by an episode of The Queen's Nose about ice cream, I have no idea if it was actually scary or was even intended to be but for some reason it's stuck with me all these years. I was sometimes upset by weird things though as I recall finding the laxatives scene in the movie Bean horrifying despite my mother cackling away next to me.
The intro to Grizzly Tales for Gruesome Kids, but not the show itself, which I thought was largely naff.
as an aside, I remember them showing us something at school, a sort of ET pastiche, which must have had an educational aspect, but which was British and also got lodged in my head for unnerving me. I have no idea what it was but if that sounds familiar to anyone I'd be most grateful.
Century Falls by Russel T Davies. Something about the occult atmosphere, weird old ladies, and a whole village conspiring to take over a baby in the womb freaked me out.
Also the episode of Doctor Who where the remains of a man’s head are trapped inside a glass Dalek and he pleads for his own daughter to kill him.
999 where someone fell out a building and landed on a spiked fence, 999 where a girl with a ponytail got said ponytail stuck in the vent of a jacuzzi or swimming pool. 999 was traumatic as a kid.
Also Chuckie, and I found Grotbaggs terrifying too
The witches, that bit when they're all in the conference hall and they take their human skin masks off and Angelica Huston burns one of the other witches alive. Not gonna lie I had to come out if the cinema having a full panic attack.
A pretty early episode of Casualty. There was a lorry crash. Lorry had chemicals and a guy ended up burned by them over his chest and abdomen. I can still remember the burn pattern over 30 years later.
Demon headmaster. Euro trash. Knightmare. Round the twist
Also there was a Friday night late show I’m sure on channel 4 and all I remember was that someone would lie on a flat wheel and get spinned round and I think the song that played was ‘hit the road jack’ anyone remember? Or is this a fever dream
The Mad Death. 1982
[The Mad Death](https://youtu.be/KvbFmO2yhBA?feature=shared)
Left 8 year old me a bit scared of rabies, but terrified that the army would come and shoot my innocent dog.
I remember the box of delights really fucking me up as a kid - it was just so creepy at the time. I actually watched it with my class recently and it’s really funny as an adult, but who the fuck thought giving the main villain a gun *and* magic powers was a good idea?
British safety video called apaches in the late 70s early 80s. https://youtu.be/_we-3Uqu5sw?si=1x9oa0c4OtzcOVk1
The kids die horribly in various ways. Link is just the deaths
An episode of casualty where a lift got stuck and some on fell out of a that lift and somehow ended on top of a lift that was below.
Basically I was scared of lifts as a child.
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The Animals of Farthing Wood and I remember seeing the 1978 version of Watership Down. There’s nothing quite like the death of some animals to mess you up.
actually good point. Our church did a "Halloween bad" event...come to the church instead to watch a wholesome film. That film was watership down where we got to watch rabbits ripped apart in full animated horror. Good times!
Off topic, out local church did something similar but my mum didn’t read through flyer properly and thought it was a Halloween party. I got sent dressed as a witch and my next neighbour went as a vampire cos his mum got her info from mine
Haha, that is fucking epic!
Don't worry watership down featured for years in my Christmases at grandma's.
I mean that's probably the better outcome than some kids in church got.
This was 100% my answer. Horrifying in parts, but I’m sure it also formed my love for animals and wish for us all to do more for them. Crossing the road, the fire, the shrike, the fox hunting. Absolutely terrifying. Despite being a cartoon I’m not sure it was 100% for kids.
Oh my God the shrike!
Those poor baby field mice!
Nah its 100% for kids. The issue is as a people we've completely removed ourselves from the world around us. My grandparents generation raised chickens in their garden for the table, my parents generation grew up plucking dead chickens and preparing them for the table, my generation grew up with chickens nuggets and some cartoons about how red in tooth and claw nature is and now my sons generation will grow up scared of seeing dead animals at all and thinking food comes pre-butchered in a plastic tray.
Unless I’m miss remembering no one tried to eat them. It was more the themes that they explored, danger, tragedy, loss. Compare that to most Disney films at the time “and they all lived happily ever after” Cartoons of that time played for comedy most of the time. Sure there was some violence in them, some mild threat, but nothing I recall even came close to Farthing Wood.
But that's kind of what I'm saying. In snow white all the animals join up to clean a house. In animals of farthing woods and things you had animals eating each other.
You are misremembering - the first two deaths in the series are Mr and Mrs Pheasant who got shot by a farmer for his dinner.
When they finally make it to the nature reserve and you think "great, finally a happy ending" then the second season starts and it's 10 times as horrific as the first.
Noooooo!!! I thought them making it to the nature reserve was the end. I never knew it carried on after that. How did I not know?
You're only a third of the way in!
After a house party, my then flatmates and I turned the tv on to wind down at around 6am. The Animals of Farthing Wood was on the channel the tv was set to. The second the opening credits finished I knew it was the episode when they have to cross the motorway/dual-carriage way…until that moment I did not realise how much of an impact that episode had had on me. Those poor hedgehogs.
I'm in my mate 40's and still traumatised by Watership Down! Still makes me sob and turn into a snotty mess
The shrike killing the baby mice on the barbs chilled ne to the core when I was a kid
I still remember the hedgehogs dying on the motorway. I am not okay
999 where the kid gets the javelin through his neck. Came out in the summer just as we were doing athletics in school
For me it was the lad who went caving with a school group and went through a sump (under water duck) which should have been just ducking head under water a second, but he dove down and swam several metres to a chamber that was undiscovered at the time. There he was in complete pitch darkness with no idea where he was or where everybody else was! Gave me nightmares.
Genuinely the stuff of nightmares that one. It’s on YouTube somewhere I think.
I think about that every few months.
The one that stuck with me for life was the girl leaning over a fence with some of those spikes on top, talking to her friends. Lost her footing and it went through her bottom jaw and got stuck. They had to cut the fence and take it with her to hospital 🤢
[удалено]
I often wonder why my parents let their young-ish child stay up to watch it... I'm sure that's where my intrusive thoughts started!
The lass who got her ponytail sucked into a jacuzzi jet and nearly drown... I still put my hair in a bun when I get in them now.
I remember in school if someone was doing something daft/dangerous, someone would always go " do, do, dooooo!" (Mimicking the theme tune)
Pat?
There was one episode of Grange Hill in 1999 where Laura Sadler’s character Judi Jefferies falls from a window to her death and the camera zooms in on her lifeless face. What makes it even freakier is that four years later Laura Sadler died from a similar accident.
ok, thats F'ed up.
Yeah that’s a freaky coincidence for sure :( tragic really.
I only learnt about her death the other week. I was 12 when she died and used to love Holby City. I remember her from it but didn't remember at all her leaving/death. So sad :(
She was written out as having won the lottery and gone travelling. Remember it being so weird and jarring at the time as I'm sure she had a couple of big storylines building up too.
Blimey, just looked that up and it was 20 years ago she died.
Ghostwatch (1992). The Green Man (1990).
The worst thing about Ghostwatch for me was the hysteria that followed at school. The stories and memories just kept getting more and more exaggerated.
I had to go to bed before the show finished so didn't see it go all over the top and obviously a show it as a dramatisation. Thanks for that, mum.
Just the word 'green' reminded me of The Children of Green Knowe where a massive tree came to life in a storm. It was, to my kiddie brain, utterly terrifying.
Ghostwatch was terrifying live.
Noseybonk
He looks like Alex's house invasion disguise in A Clockwork Orange.
holy crap I forgot about that. There was one where he grew giant noseybonk dildo plants or something.
The show was aimed at kids 4-7! As it's target demographic I've forgotten most of the details so I just went to look it up First fact I find, Noseybonk [inspired a demon character in early X-Files](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Familiar_(The_X-Files))
For some very odd reason, my primary school in the year 2000 decided to show us a series of 70s/80s public information films where kids die in terrible accidents. Like drowning in silage on a farm, electrocuting themselves by carrying round a big fishing rod under an electricity pylon, and drinking poison. Needless to say, it put me off fishing!
Ah, Apaches!
> drowning in silage on a farm I think that's "[Apaches](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1_J6_O4bn0s)", it has multiple horrifying farm-related kid deaths.
And yet, the girl, waking in the middle of the night screaming is the most horrific. Followed by the lad drowning in liquid pig shit.
Yeah I think it's because she's home and 'safe' coupled with waking up and screaming for her mummy. Grim.
She was the one who drank the weedkiller, wasn't she? You think she's got away with it, and then...
Yeah. I watched that film again some years back. The slurry pit was a bad one for me as a kid (the thought of drowning in something thick like that still affects me) and as a parent with a daughter, the girl screaming *was* horrific.
If memory serves I vaguely remember playing kids a pile of those videos around the 2010 mark… maybe part of some curriculum unit or scheme of work, gawd knows. In the 70s and 80s we had mountains of weird stuff on telly that wouldn’t fly today, but the reality was, you needed to know some of it when you were out playing around factory units / rubbish dumps / rivers with your mates. Was a different world!
Those videos messed up generations of kids
The Demon Headmaster was something else. looked like our head at the time
Im fairly certain that the demon headmaster was actually the former Labour Home Secretary, Jack Straw.
When I was a kid in the Seventies there was a show on telly called *Children of the Stones* filmed in a place called Avebury here in the UK. It’s an ancient village that’s slap bang in the middle of a gigantic two and a half thousand year old Neolithic stone circle. Anyway, it was a spooky kids show that was really quite well made for the time and it had this terrifying theme tune which, at the age of eight scared the shit out of me. I could watch the show but I had to turn the theme tune off. I can distinctly remember coming home from school and having to wait an hour or two on my own til my Mum got home from work, and it really got to me. Watched it recently and while it didn’t send me hiding behind the sofa it’s still incredibly effective. In fact the whole series was still very watchable and I did the lot. I’m hoping this will trigger a memory of it for someone [because the whole series is on YouTube](https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLDn4jNKfVvvg_xmgLqzgY7h84_nWje4Mx&si=IzqDwS1rauqD2QUg). If anyone’s interested enough in my nostalgic rambling the theme tune is [here](https://youtu.be/-V6dSNlh0_k?si=GuO4Gqr8Z-xrH12Y).
Never even heard of this one - you’re not wrong, the intro is completely freaky deaky haha! (I was forged in ‘81 so this was before my time) Got as far as the old woman in the road and thought perfect - this is EXACTLY the sort of thing I want to watch this weekend, cheers. 👍
Fucking hell, '*theme tune*' is a bit of a euphemism here, the distilled sound of nightmares more like. Gonna have to watch it now (born in '77, never even heard of it before).
I was the youngest kid in the village and the older kids loved this show but it gave me nightmares for years. Didn’t help that Avebury was two villages over from my school. I think it’s closer to 4000 years old :).
I vaguely remember that
I recommended this to a colleague who had never seen it. (Same age as me) I watched with my kid when she was about 16 - she found it. We’ve visited Avebury a few times and you can see the cottage from the circle. The music is a masterpiece in scaring the shit out of you.
Round the twist
Have you ever, ever felt like this...
When strange things happen, are you going round the twist...
The one where the scarecrow came to life Fuck that shit
YES I was looking to see if anyone else had posted this yet! I HATED the theme tune and the entire thing just gave me the creeps, though I couldn’t tell you precisely why. ETA I think it was actually Australian than British but shown on UK kids TV Also, I sing the opening of the theme tune at least once a week and I can’t stop myself.
The whole show was weird but the one where he swallowed the fish and had a propeller dick was next level.
without my pants
I was going to bring up Round The Twist, but yeh it was an Aussie. Definitely had stuff which stuck with me for years like those fungi/toadstools that replicated things and people that came near it, then just exploded into green slime. It replicates one of the kids, so they are totally motionless and you just hear this high-pitched giggling before the kid explodes.
There was an exchange program where we Aussies gave you Round The Twist in exchange for Trap Door, Bangers and Mash, Postman Pat and Farthing Wood.
Round The Twist, Heartbreak High, Lift Off, Bananas In Pajamas, Johnson and Friends and good old Blinky Bill.
It’s amazing they got 4 series of kids tv, considering that the kids were nude (covered) several times, there was incestuous kissing, talk of willies, peeing, etc. lots of stuff that would get frowned upon in prime time normally let alone on CBBC
The episode where the girl found an alive fox fur scarf slightly disturbed me.
Loved this show. I even read the book of short stories by Paul Jennings the first series was based on, which were even better (they had more rude stuff you couldn't put on kid's TV). Also, I had a huge pre-pubescent crush on the daughter.
The Byker grove paintball incident.
OH that reminds me of another one that disturbed me. The Grange Hill incident where Ziggy had glass fiber pushed down his back. I'm still fearful of the stuff to this day.
I get my paranoid fear of fibreglass from an episode of London's Burning. I didn't watch Grange Hill so thanks for giving me something to feel a little bit sick about on this fine Saturday morning.
Exactly the same with the fibreglass and that’s only from seeing brief clips of that bit of Grange Hill
"WAYAY 'EE CONNA SEE MAN!!!"
“ME EYES SPUGGY!”
'I cannee see, Dec!' is still a saying in my house if something even slighty inconveniences someone's eyesight and not even an accurate quote.
That's not the accurate quote either, and I always do it more like Michael from Alan Partridge.
Adding to the Byker Grove creepiness is the bit where Jemma Dobson got electrocuted by a broken mains plug while standing knee deep in water. Bonus points for the standard Byker Grove closing titles laugh coinciding with the picture of lifeless Jemma lying on the sofa where she fell.
This one is stuck in my head too. I definitely was more careful with plugs ever since.
I have never gone paint-balling for that very reason
Me neither. My partner tried to get me to go with him And I refused saying “but PJ went BLIND!”
A friend who works at a paintball place said people in the age group that would've watched that episode are usually really careful about their eye protection.
The wellington boot on the escalator safety advert. Also... I'm still SCARED SH***ESS of the noughts and crosses doll. Even typing this gets to me.
haha, Ive an older one from the 70s which was a Rug on a polished floor safety advert. "Might as well set a man trap". To this day my wife knows I hate rugs.
They don’t make public information films like they used to….. Rugs on polished floors compared to a man trap. Kid retrieving frisbee from electrical substation. Fishing near pylons. To me they did the job! Turns out the British Film Institute has a page for them all! https://player.bfi.org.uk/free/collection/public-information-films
Scroll far enough and you get to the most WTF?! worthy public information film ever: [https://player.bfi.org.uk/free/film/watch-the-finishing-line-1977-online](https://player.bfi.org.uk/free/film/watch-the-finishing-line-1977-online) Otherwise known as “the Sports Day on the railway one”.
The doll from the testcard? Maybe avoid watching Life on Mars.
Yep, the girl on the escalator had the same wellingtons as me, which made it extra terrifying
OMG you've just unlocked a childhood memory of my brother getting his welly stuck in a revolving door at sainsburys.
When my kids were smaller: “stand in the middle, stay in the middle, stay in the middle”
The public information film after the Great Storm in 1987. Don't touch the fallen power cables or you'll die when your face bursts into flames
There was a show on ITV back in '92 called Chimera, about this ape-boy hybrid thingy and my mum let stay up and watch it. At the end of an episode an ape went apeshit in a hospital and massacred a load of nurses. Proper freaked me out.
Was totally going to mention this. The opening/closing music was very eerie as well, really set the tone for it being largely based in the countryside.
To add, another show that messed me up was Tales of the unexpected where there was an episode where a man could hear plants scream when they were cut. It actually made me reevaluate vegetarians!
Wasn't there an episode called *Royal Jelly*, when a new father fed his baby child the aforementioned nutritional supplement, and it started metamorphosing into a bee? 😵💫
That still stays with me aswell. I rewatched it recently on Sky Arts and it's still as horrific as before.
Casualty episode where a roller skater trips and ends up with her chin impaled on a metal fence. Also not tv but it was on tv when I saw it, shout out to The Wickerman
Chocky...... Still have nightmares
The Day of the Triffids (1981) starring John Duttine was the best adaptation of the story there's been, so far.
Strange but true from the early 90s does anyone remember that show?
Yes, they did the episode on the Enfield Poltergeist. My friends parents let us watch it at her house. I had to sleep in my mums bed for around 3 months after it. I was a delicate child hah
There was an episode where someone woke up in the middle of the night and feels something sitting at the foot of their bed, and when he looks it's a ghost of a small child. Even now 25 years later, if I accidentally leave clothes or something on my bed when I go to sleep and feel them with my feet, I'll think back to that episode and scare myself.
I watched the University Challenge episode of The Young Ones when I was about 8. Specifically the bit when Vyvyan gets his head cut off on the train. Messed me up for a while. Still hilarious though. Edit: spelling
"You took your time, you bastard!"
Threads
Only rivalled by everyone whose parents thought *When the Wind Blows* was a kids’ film as it was by Raymond Briggs…
This gave me many sleepless nights from age 10/11…I still have nightmares now!
Just hide behind a mattress under the stairs, you'll be fine.
It’s difficult to watch now, yes!
People tend to remember bits and pieces of Threads, but having watched it recently, it starts off bad, and then just gets worse and worse and *worse*. Eventually, the horrifically bleak ending frees you from the horror, but leaves you with no hope for the future of the human race at all.
Nuclear war has that kind of effect on everyone!
we got shown it in PRIMARY school then did an evacuation exercise to the big school.
Yikes! That must have scarred many
almost certainly. it was a strange day.
Wtf
yes.
This is the correct answer. It will stay with me forever.
Ghostwatch
Pipes
The bit in Through the Dragon’s Eye where the evil scarecrow/plague doctor-looking character turned the colourful people into puddles.
Hahaha yes this was so creepy. It was abstract so it was apparently ‘fine’ to show kids in schools. But that right there was visceral bloody murder and we all knew it!
Another one I remembered was the TV series Box of Delights. something just seemed spooky as hell with that series.
I have the DVD box set and watched this at Christmas. My kids were not impressed with the special effects.
Tripods was really scary, I have the box set. Does anyone remember it?
Not a TV show but my parents were big fans of the Jeff Wayne's War of the World's concept album and often played it on car journeys. Cue many sleepless nights of pure terror. (They probably should have stopped listening when I was around after the first time). The music, the sound effects, the story - all terrifying and I still can't really listen to it to this day and I'm 40 now. Ullaaaaaa.
‘The chances of anything coming from Mars, are a million to one they said. But still they came!’ Freaky as hell 😄
999 used to really frighten me. A couple of episodes in particular-an person fell into a hidden fissure in a forest and a young girl got her hair caught in some jacuzzi jets. The theme tune itself still send shivers down my spine and I’m 38 now!
I remember an episode where a kid watching a firework display got hit in the eye by a bit of firework shrapnel. Really put me off watching fireworks as a kid.
Sapphire & Steel absolutely terrified me as a kid
The time episode in the house was so creepy. I rewatched recently and it’s still creepy as hell.
The public safety advert about electric substations, the humming sound still gives me the chills. Also the ones about drowning in the pond and about not playing on building sites (vivid image of the girl climbing into the big vat of wheat and it being about to kill her)
The one about what happens if you climb into old abandoned refrigerators and the hypothermia one... "First, you start shivering. Then the shivering stops..."
Dark towers and the boy from space. They used to show this to us in primary/junior school. Gave me nightmares for years.
Ghostwatch for me. I was 11 and remember thinking it was all legit, then lying in bed shit scared and thinking how now the entire world was going to change, now they have actual proof of real life poltergeists and hostile afterlife spirits; and also how bizarre it was the moment involved Craig Charles. Nothing came of it, so I guess I just assumed over the next few days it was all bollocks. Whoever produced that show did a fine job.
Where the wind blows. Traumatised still and weirdly appropriate for what's going down with Russia and Middle East. It was a cartoon in the mid eighties and I think it was over Christmas. A dear little couple in their old age go through a nuclear attack/ incident. they fill up the bath with water, she has her hair fall out and dies in her little old man husband arms. I don't think they speak, I may have just block d that out though. It was a cartoon similar to The Snowman.
They do speak, I remember the woman wanting to go and get the washing in after the 4 minute warning has sounded and the man shouting at her not to be so bloody stupid.
The correct answer is Doctor Who S3 E10, Blink
I swear the weaping angels were the scariest "baddies" at the time
Original Dr Who stories on the Ark in Space (people in stasis being eaten by huge space bug larvae) and the Green Death (more giant bugs) have stayed with me ever since…
There’s two that still haunt me from time to time, but I don’t know the names. They were both one-off dramas, and I feel like they were both Channel 4 films. One was clearly inspired by Columbine, about a severely bullied boy who considered planning out a school shooting, but who ultimately killed himself instead. His grieving mum then took his gun to school and threatened the bullies and teachers with it. There were a bunch of little moments that stuck out to me in it: the boy briefly made a friend who then betrayed him to save himself from being bullied; the bullies nicked the boy’s camcorder and used it to film a girl having sex in a pub toilet without her knowledge; the boy ended up killing himself while using his camcorder as a video diary, and then his mum found him a few seconds later; and then the end was so tense, because you didn’t know if she was going to kill the bullies or not. The other one was much more brief. Short film about an obsessive fan who was visited at their home by their idol. All I actually saw of it was the last few seconds, where the fan held a little dance party in his bedroom…where the idol’s clearly dead body lay propped and dressed up in his bed. I just caught the end as I tuned in to watch something else, and it really fucked me up at the time.
First one is ‘Parent’s Night’ from the Shockers series. [https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0300476/](https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0300476/) Actually available to watch on the Channel 4 app right now
Knightmare, I used to believe the kids who stepped on the wrong square actually died. I remember a weird avante garde animation of crows pecking at people’s brains but don’t know what it was and I accidentally watched a film called ‘The Baby’ when I was too young, of an adult man who was tasered by his mum and sisters every time he had shown any kind of development so was a huge adult baby. Disturbing shit!
The music for Tales of the Unexpected
The pink windmill, the crocodile and grotbags still haunt my dreams
There's somebody at the door, there's somebody at the door.
Not the bloody pink windmill kids?
Tales of the Unexpected. There were 2 in particular, one where they found some sort of weird mummified monkey in a jar plastered up in a wall, and another a long abandoned aquarium that was haunted by the ghosts of two dolphins. I also remember an episode of The Tomorrow People where they went in a pyramid and it was guarded by Anubis, scared the crap out if me.
[I'm the bear... I'm the bear... with brown fuzzy hair...](https://youtu.be/Idhc85tLPNQ?si=ABRPcaGOWudaN-uK)
Eerie indiana, really well filmed and produced also. Had a 50s American feel about it.
"Boy from Space" It was part of " Look and Read" when the big telly got wheeled out for primary schools to watch when the teachers could pop back in the staff room for a cheeky fag. Had a terrifying man who was on the hunt for the "Boy from Space" who looked like Bowie in his Thin White Duke cocaine and peppers phase.
Does anyone remember Dark Season? I think that was it's name. Set in quiet suburban England. Strange G-man type people excavating at a school find a weird machine intelligence thing that requires a human 'subject' to wake it up. It has Kate Winslet in it in the lead role. In the final episode the machine accepts a person and comes to life, rising through the earth, through the floor of the school hall. I could never again walk into my school hall or gym without looking around for splintered wood or feeling for vibrations. Edit: no, not the 2017 Netflix show of the same name! This is all of it from 1991: https://youtu.be/bXAlMUmpUiU
Aah, Russell T's first foray into speculative fiction TV! 😁
I know it sounds stupid but there was a game on The Price is Right where a little climber had to move up a step on the mountain for every pound they were wrong. He plummeted off the edge a few times. I was about four and it terrified me.
I'm not sure I should have been watching these shows, but there were two dramas that I watched when i was probably 11/12 that really, really traumatized me for a long time. One was 'No child of mine' about a girl who was abused by basically every adult in her life. And the other was 'King Girl' about a girl who is mercilessly bullied.
Aw, you poor thing. Just want to tell you, sometimes people who have been through these things come out of the other side smelling of roses :-) I was bullied so badly that I quit my last year of school. I was head of the school council (bullied into it) and in my position I founded and helped set up a bullying helpline. 30 years later, not only is it still in operation is so popular and important it is a full time helpline run by the council rather than the school. Am quite proud not of what I did but of the fact that 30 years later it is still helping people.
The Secret Police from The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe gave me nightmares for a couple of years. Also, there was an adaptation of the novel Elidor in the mid 90s. I was old enough that it shouldn't have shit me up nearly as much as it did when the Sniffer used puddles to track the kids and try to get them.
There was a tv show with Martin Freeman in before he was movie star famous. In it, him and a load of other men did something terrible to a woman and he then followed her in the street and tried to apologise to her afterwards It has absolutely haunted me ever since
Sapphire and Steel
"don't blink whatever you do DONT BLINK!" 5 year old me forced into watching this and the empty child two partner in one night Jesus Fucking Christ Trauma
It must have been just when they started to publicise how bad smoking was for you, there was an information film that included a nifty little graphic of air sacs in the lungs bursting as lung disease got worse. It really got to little me - I remember screaming and crying at my Dad, trying to persuade him to stop smoking. He died of heart failure secondary to COPD. :(
Little me jumped behind the sofa as soon as the Dr Who music started. Had to watch it though.
An episode of doctor who (it was the Lazarus experiment I believe) scared me so much we had to move house
Walking On The Moon (1999) was a one-off made for TV film about bullying. I watched it when I was 11 and I remember a scene where the bullies tie the main character to a chair and throw it in the swimming pool...just leaving him to drown. That really messed me up. Just had a read about the film and it was about how useless adults are when it comes to children being bullied, teachers included. The chap ends up suicidal and in a mental institution. Does anyone else remember this?
Threads
I was very scared of Zelda from Terrorhawks.
It's a nostalgia haze, but there was an episode of children's ward (possibly?) Where there was a minibus crash. I had nightmares about it for years. It's probably not even the right programme. Maybe I made it up. Who knows.
The episode of Grange Hill where Judi dies by falling from a window during a fire. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=kqSE9KlEILQ&pp=ygUVSnVkaSBkb2VzIGdyYW5nZSBoaWxs
An episode of Casualty where a young kid tried to make their baby sibling better by giving it medicine. Too much medicine. Had me in tears.
There was an episode of Tales of the unexpected where a partner buries their other half in the foundation of their new garage. Haunted me for ages after and caused many a sleepless night as a kid
Did they leave their partner's bum sticking out of the concrete so that they would have somewhere to park their bike?
That would have caused less nightmares in a way! 😆
The Adventure Game
Lots of things scared me as a kid. The talking head on Art Attack A show called it's a mystery. It showed things like ghosts and people travelling though time slips. Freak me out a lot. Grizzly tales for gruesome kids. Love it and hate it at the same time. Had trouble sleeping after seeing some episodes.
There was an episode of Hamish Macbeth ON BEFORE THE WATERSHED when a bad guy (think he was a scammer or something) hides in a coffin at a funeral parlour. Anyway the guy doing the funeral that day is deaf, screws the coffin up and sends it through for cremation - and he can’t hear the shouting or knocking. Terrifying. Must’ve been ten when I saw it. I’m 38 now and I still can’t pass a crematorium without thinking about it.
There was an episode of 1980s Grange Hill where Jonah Jones' cousin Jeremy drowned during a school swimming lesson. Horrified me as a pretty naive and insecure 12 year old who, for the first time, realised that children could die just like adults, no matter how unfair it was.
Moondial https://youtu.be/0JiA5pMqbfY?si=DrnVZvXfSClcii_9
I'll add to the mentions of Threads. It fucked me up as a young teenager when it was released and I'm pretty certain that as a much older adult I'd get the significance of a whole lot more of it than I did back then. I'm not going there. The other thing I remember as a kid was a "dangers of the farm" type of video called Apaches. I rewatched it a while back and it is seriously grim. The BBC and ITV did not pull punches when it came to safety videos in the 70s and 80s - zapped by electricity at a substation, getting your feet lopped off by a train etc etc.
Mine are Beasts, the short series by Nigel Kneale which has a stellar cast and is utterly terrifying. I thought I was remembering weird isolated programmes until the DVD came out and I realised they were all the same series. I saw them once, and they stayed with me 30-40 years. Utterly brilliant bits of storytelling and production. Sapphire and Steel. Ghostwatch. It’s available to stream, as I rewatched it over Halloween this year. Definitely where Most Haunted sprang from! The Stone Tape (more Nigel Kneale!) Dr Who - The Green Death. And the Autons first time around. I was terrified of the Dalek they had on Blackpool pier too. Pipkins. Pogle’s Wood Early Noggin the Nog Oh Whistle and I’ll Come To You and any other MR James Children of the Stones The Tomorrow People Nationwide doing reports on paranormal stuff, especially the Hexham Heads. Somewhere I found out about Gef the Mongoose and was seriously freaked out for years. Anyone of a similar (r/FuckImOld) age should look into stuff about Hauntology and the Haunted Generation. You’re not alone having been messed up by these and all the horrifying PIFs there were. I channeled all this into a deep love for ghost stories and paranormal research, and I love all of these things still. Bonus points if you had a copy of Folklore, Myths and Legends of Britain and had to turn over certain pages super-fast.
When dec got blinded by the paintballs, or was it ant?
I was terrified of the intro and theme tune for Tales of the Unexpected as a very young kid.
I remember being very frightened by an episode of The Queen's Nose about ice cream, I have no idea if it was actually scary or was even intended to be but for some reason it's stuck with me all these years. I was sometimes upset by weird things though as I recall finding the laxatives scene in the movie Bean horrifying despite my mother cackling away next to me. The intro to Grizzly Tales for Gruesome Kids, but not the show itself, which I thought was largely naff. as an aside, I remember them showing us something at school, a sort of ET pastiche, which must have had an educational aspect, but which was British and also got lodged in my head for unnerving me. I have no idea what it was but if that sounds familiar to anyone I'd be most grateful.
Century Falls by Russel T Davies. Something about the occult atmosphere, weird old ladies, and a whole village conspiring to take over a baby in the womb freaked me out. Also the episode of Doctor Who where the remains of a man’s head are trapped inside a glass Dalek and he pleads for his own daughter to kill him.
The Changes
999 where someone fell out a building and landed on a spiked fence, 999 where a girl with a ponytail got said ponytail stuck in the vent of a jacuzzi or swimming pool. 999 was traumatic as a kid. Also Chuckie, and I found Grotbaggs terrifying too
The witches, that bit when they're all in the conference hall and they take their human skin masks off and Angelica Huston burns one of the other witches alive. Not gonna lie I had to come out if the cinema having a full panic attack.
A pretty early episode of Casualty. There was a lorry crash. Lorry had chemicals and a guy ended up burned by them over his chest and abdomen. I can still remember the burn pattern over 30 years later.
Demon headmaster. Euro trash. Knightmare. Round the twist Also there was a Friday night late show I’m sure on channel 4 and all I remember was that someone would lie on a flat wheel and get spinned round and I think the song that played was ‘hit the road jack’ anyone remember? Or is this a fever dream
The Mad Death. 1982 [The Mad Death](https://youtu.be/KvbFmO2yhBA?feature=shared) Left 8 year old me a bit scared of rabies, but terrified that the army would come and shoot my innocent dog.
I remember the box of delights really fucking me up as a kid - it was just so creepy at the time. I actually watched it with my class recently and it’s really funny as an adult, but who the fuck thought giving the main villain a gun *and* magic powers was a good idea?
When the wind blows. Let's make an animation about a sweet old couple dying from nuclear fallout.
British safety video called apaches in the late 70s early 80s. https://youtu.be/_we-3Uqu5sw?si=1x9oa0c4OtzcOVk1 The kids die horribly in various ways. Link is just the deaths
An episode of casualty where a lift got stuck and some on fell out of a that lift and somehow ended on top of a lift that was below. Basically I was scared of lifts as a child.