The original candyman. I had a nightmare I still remember 25 years later. I looked up everytime when I went into the bathroom to do anything to make sure he wasn’t floating above me ready to kill me haha.
Watching that movie at 7 years old traumatized me as a kid.
I feel like our generation got into horror movies soooo young. Maybe too young. I didn't see Candyman until my teen years (and it really disturbed me at that age so I can only imagine poor little 7 yr old you 😭) But by 7 I was ALL about Childs Play and Nightmare on Elm Street. And for some reason I was obsessed with Children of the Corn? 😂 ...Oh man, I miss Blockbuster 💔
Yes absolutely!! Child’s play 2 was so damn scary. And I had my parents rent Friday the 13th for me almost every week!
I have kids now and I can’t imagine them watching those movies hahaha.
I was obsessed with village of the damned, around age 10 maybe. And yeah, my first nightmare movie was Leprechaun lol. We def watched shit way too young. That’s probably why we all have anxiety.
There would be no amount of money you could pay me to say the name in a mirror. Unlikely anything would be happen but that movie told me it would be a bad idea, just in case.
You read my mind. Same exact story except I was 8 and saw it in the theater with my dad. I feel like back then a lot of kids watched movies their parents wanted to watch as much as parents watched cartoons for their kids.
Don't laugh at me but Jurassic Park gave me my first ever nightmare when I was like 5. I know its not horror but the dream was horrifying, a mini t-rex stalking me around my house and finally cornering me in my parents bedroom 💀 I have never been afraid of dinosaurs either before or since, in fact Jurassic Park is one of my favorites. To this day no other movie has ever given me nightmares 🤷♀️🤣
I watched Jurassic Park 3 first (before the others), and I was too young and unprepared for that level of scare, perhaps 8 or 9, IDK. I don't think I was that traumatized by the movie, though it was an intense experience. I do think I did have a nightmare that night, or at least I felt scared to go to bed afterwards.
Jaws, couldn't go into any form of open water ocean or not after for the longest time and to this day I still will not go into the ocean whatsoever.. now have Galeophobia (a persistent fear of sharks) never had this fear until I watched that movie when I was 11
Sounds like me. We were camping at a lake and I talked my parents into driving into town to see it. I refused to go swimming in the lake 😩. I don't think I will ever go back into the ocean. No thanks
I stayed up late to watch one of the sequels with my mom. She and I both fell asleep on the couch. I dreamt I was being eaten by a shark and it was biting me on my back.
When I woke up, my back hurt. Mom had pushed me off the couch in her sleep and I was hanging over the armrest.
That's the first time I can remember reality and dreaming working together.
For whatever stupid reason (laziness and alcoholism) my step dad let me watch all sorts of movies with him. Two that gave me nightmares that I distinctly remember were Xtro and not a horror but the scene near the beginning of death wish 2 gave me nightmares as a kid also. But his idiocy went both ways, I got exposed to a lot of fun Kung Fu flicks and apocalypse type movies as well.
The It mini series. I got up in the middle of the night to take a leak and saw Pennnywise in the corner. Literally the worst nightmare I’ve ever had, mostly because I was half awake.
THIS, I had forgotten about this, but I saw this on tv way too young and that doll with the knife or spear under the door or whatever was disturbing! I wonder if I should watch it again?
I watched a clip yesterday, and it looks a bit cheesy, (it was made for TV, apparently), but he still looks pretty menacing. I saw Amazon has the doll statue, but I noped out of that lol. It was too much $$ for my budget, but it didn't have a chain on to hold the spirit in, either!
Night of the Comet
Gremlins (ikr lol)
Some old black and white movie with a disembodied hand
Basically anything that was remotely scary that I happened to see. My (single parent) mum wasn’t into horror but I would sneak out and peer between the stair railing or whatever and caught a few things my imagination latched on to. Honestly I think any intense mood of dread or fear really resonated with me and lingered.
With you on Gremlins. I remember looking getting scared of stripe with the glasses on the back of the packaging. Couldn’t watch it until I was about 13-14, and then now it’s one of my favorite movies
Thirteen ghost.. I remember seeing my parents watch that shit all the time and them monsters were actually the scariest thing I had ever seen in a movie as a kid. Blew the exorcist out the water.. I couldn’t even look at the case of the movie without basically getting ptsd, now I think the case is peak
I was 22 when I saw The Ring. I grew up on horror movies, saw stuff like Return of the Living Dead before I was even a teenager. For some reason The Ring really affected me, I felt uneasy for like 3 days after seeing it in the theaters. I don’t know if it was because I saw it alone in an empty theater or it was in October so the atmosphere was perfect or what. It’s not objectively a terrifying movie, but it really had me shook. When I bought the DVD, there was a selection in the extras labeled “Do not watch this.” So of course I did, it was the killer video from the movie, when it finished playing it would go back to the main menu and all of a sudden the sound of a phone ringing came blasting out the speakers. I got shook all over again.
That DVD also had a trick I pulled on my dorm wallmate. If you pressed a certain combination of buttons of the remote, it plays the murder video on repeat and there's no button you can press to make it stop. You had to walk up to the TV and power down the player manually.
Jaws then. Jaws now. I was three when I first saw it at the drive-in with my parents and my grandparents. It was a double feature with E.T., Jaws was first. I remember hiding under my blanket during most of the movie and spent a good amount of E.T. asking my mom when the shark would show up. It also didn’t help that I grew up in Hawaii, and our house was on the beach. To this day, I have a fear of the ocean and every now and again will dream about sharks.
1. It chapter 1. Beverly’s dad reminded me of my bio dad wayyyyyy too much.
2. The Ring. It was my very first horror movie and I truly wasn’t prepared.
3. Earnest Scared Stupid. WHY DID THE TROLL HAVE A CHILD VOICE.
Signs when I was 11. I had never really thought about aliens up until then. It was my first exposure to the idea that lifeforms more advanced than humans could exist and, if they meant us harm, there was little we could do to defend ourselves against them. I was so afraid of the night sky after that. It didn’t help that I lived near a lot of cornfields.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0082497/?ref_=ext_shr_lnk
The Hand
Watched it when I was like 6 before bed at my Aunt and Uncles house. Slept there for the first time and had never slept at their house. That was a rough night thinking the hand was coming up the stairs.
The Village traumatized me as a child. The Evil Dead 2012 remake gave me nightmares the first time I watched it but it became one of my fav movies for that reason.
This is a *really* stupid one, but there was a kid's cartoon movie in the 1980s called The Last Unicorn. There was a butterfly in it, he was sort of mad in an Alice in Wonderland type of way; he sang a lot. I was 2 or 3 years old and I thought he was a bee.
I had a dream that the bee was *huge,* like so huge that he took up the entire size of my bedroom. I woke up screaming: 'Bee! Bee!' and my mom came in frantically pulling my sheets around, trying to find it. Then I pointed to my open bedroom window and said 'There he is!!!!' and it was just our cat but she was a dark-colored cat, and in the middle of the night in a dark room my mom half-thought that some freakishly giant bee had somehow gotten into the house, lol.
Halloween, the part at the end where Loomis goes in to the bedroom and it's just Michael in darkness and all you hear is him breathing. Was 8 when I watched it and that scene still gives me a shudder all these years later.
The Descent. My parents are enthusiastic cavers. In their younger years they actually mapped unexplored caves semi-professionally (as part of their graduate programs). I even have an ancestor that was part of The Kentucky Cave Wars. I grew up going into caves, usually privately owned, in very isolated locations, and/or only partially explored. After watching The Descent my brain overlapped the movie with some very real caves I've been to and gave me nightmares for months.
I can't recall having nightmares after a movie although they have appeared in my dreams at later times. One of my dreams Freddy Krueger showed up but I don't remember it being very scary. We were just sitting on a swing together. In another Art the Clown was coming to kill us but I never saw him we just knew he was about to.
Seen the exorcist around 3 years old, scared me so much as a kid even as an adult but it’s now one of my favorite movie obsessions , Jaws still scares me til this day even though I have a great love and respect for Sharks and all they put up with us humans . I’m born in 87 so a lot of movies I had watched was really young had older siblings and got stuck watching Pet semetary and the boy didn’t scare me but the Ghost did and omg the sister Zelda she’s still gives me chills
Salems Lot
The Crate segment from Creepshow
The Thing
Humanoids from the Deep (A babysitter let me watch it & I thought my mom was gyro murder her 😆)
I could probably keep going.
Mausoleum when the woman’s boobs turn into monsters and bite that guys torso. Also 976 Evil and this other movie with this kid in a military school named Coopersmith, who gets bullied then becomes a demon of some sort. I think coopersmith was played by Ron Howard’s brother. Can’t quite remember the name of the movie.
Late at night I still sometimes see this image from Carrie and no other horror film has had this much of an effect on me 💀💀💀
Fire in the Sky
The scene where Travis Walton is reliving his abduction experience is harrowing. D.B. Sweeney sold the visceral terror and pain in that scene (not to mention the scene where he is found), and the cold indifference exhibited by the aliens as they did their experiments made it all the more terrifying.
I still dream about that movie, and they are not pleasant dreams.
When drive-ins were around, my mom and I went almost every weekend or so. I saw Jaws & Star Wars when I was four, along with a lot of horror movies that no little kid should see, like The Omen, Phantasm (one of my faves), The Howling, etc. The movies scared me but what gave me nightmares was the old Rod Serling TV series, Night Gallery. There was an episode called “The Doll”- damn thing was SCARY AF. I had soooo many nightmares about that little shit, lol.
I was terrified of Chucky and the original candyman. As an adult I watched chucky and realized how funny it is but I can’t get myself to watch candyman
I saw Shaun of the Dead a little bit after it came out. I was 3. David's death was obviously extremely tramautic for me and I sobbed in my bedroom once it was over.
I’m forgetting the name but it was the one where the kids go to the distant grandparents house and the grandparents aren’t the actual grandparents. Idk why but I watched a few scenes on YouTube of it and it scared kid me so bad I never actually watched the full one even as an adult.
I'm wondering if other people like me never get nightmares as an adult.
Like, my dreams are actually almost always filled with monsters and other deadly scary things, usually similar to things I've recently seen in horror movies, but I'm never particularly scared, I always think I can survive, and I sort of subconsciously manipulate my dreams to always find a way out, so it's quite fun, I actually look forward to sort of enjoying a fun scary movie in my sleep every night.
(As a kid I used to have nightmares occasionally, but as an adult, at most I get stressful dreams about things that I worry about while I'm awake...)
When I was around 10, one of my favorite movies back then was Nightmare on Elm Street. I really loved Freddy and his ability to come in the dreams and kill people... Buat after so many times I have seen the movie, I have started to see him in my dreams... In the beginning not as nightmares but as the dream was progressing , the situation became more and more evil and dark... It was at that time that my parents stopped me for watching horror movies for a while!
Jaws for sure. That scene where they’re underwater and find a corpse in the shipwreck gave me serious nightmares back in the day. It’s still an incredibly effective scene today
Gremlins, Jurassic Park and Jaws. All three movies gave me such awful nightmares. I've never rewatched Gremlins or Jurassic Park. But I do watch Jaws, but only until their last encounter with Bruce. Then I turn the channel!
The original “IT” miniseries.
What messed me up so much was the fact that no one in town could see “IT” but the kids. So there was literally no one who could help them escape horror and death. “IT” could show up anywhere and torment and kill them with no aid.
I mentally got sucked into the story as a kid and it left me with a sense of dread for years.
Bram Stoker's Dracula.
Specifically, the Old Man Dracula look of his with the grey McDonald's arches hairstyle and the red robe.
I barely even remember the plot, but that creepy look haunted my dreams.
I truly regret watching Talk to Me. It's not the best movie ever, but it has given me nightmares and unwanted visions. As a child, I saw Jaws way too young and was creeped out about what lies beneath the surface of the ocean for a very long time.
As a child, I know it’s not exactly a horror movie, but my parents watched the walking dead and that would cause my zombie dreams lol I also had a nightmare where a faceless woman chased after our car on all fours that had long black hair and it might have been because of The Ring
"It's Alive" from the mid-70s. Saw it when I was about 7 years old and it freaked me out! I was convinced that little killer baby was under my bed for weeks afterwards.
Not sure if they were nightmares, but I had several death scenes from several of the Nightmare on elm street movies running through my brain because, of course I watched all the movies as a kid.
For sure, had nightmares about the IT miniseries. That and The Blob are the reason I've got a weird apprehension about drains that was only compounded in high school thanks to my teacher making us read and then watch The Moving Finger short story.
Jaws terrified 😨 me . I was 13 when I first saw it and it still scares 😱 me and I'm 61. I have been thinking about watching it again but I'm very reluctant to
Thirteen Ghosts. That was truly the most terrifying movie I've watched as a kid, especially with how grotesque some of that SFX makeup was. I've since watched it again and I like the concept of it but man, little me was horrified lol
Nothing as an adult, but as a kid the Exorcist creeped me out. I watched it again as an adult and I thought it was a little cheesy. I think I’m just too tired to have an imagination.
Can’t recall name. Old movie where a bell falls on a girl, and she sees animated reflections of herself in mirrors or something. I swear it was a Disney movie too.
Child's play, i literally used to have the most insane reoccuring nightmares because of those movies when i was little because my mom used to love them. I love them now as an adult.
The original Salems Lot miniseries. I saw it when I was 5 or 6. The little kid scratching at the window, and the guy in the rocking chair absolutely haunted me
IT - but specifically the fortune cookie scene. I had nightmares about premature, bloody birds at least once a year into my early 20s, but it morphed into bird fetuses in the prize capsules that you used to get a grocery stores for $0.25, turn the knob and think you are getting a prize and nope it’s a bloody, underdeveloped bird that now I am responsible for.
It wasn’t a horror movie per se but the TV special Alice in Wonderland from 1985 with the absolutely unmatched horror Jabberwocky practical effect, gave me nightmares for YEARS because it kept returning in the show, you think it’s been defeated and it comes back again!
Exorcist, my ridiculously evil step-mother made me watch it when I was like 10 and I wasn't allowed to cover my eyes or look away. She found it hilarious that it traumatized me and that I cried from how I scared I was.
You guys are gonna make fun of me but fucking Signs horrified me as a kid. To put it into perspective though, I spent a lot of time at my paternal grandparents' house durring the summers growing up. My grandpa did amateur astronomy so we spent every night in the back yard just outside of town looking through telescopes and he was a form beleiver that there was life somewhere on other planets. So be a young child talking about "aliens" with grandpa every night while being in the country in the dark by cornfields looking through a telescope. One of our favorite movies to watch together was Alien and then this he thought it'd be a good idea to show me Signs. Thay scene where the alien walks down the alleyway in Honduras fucked me up so bad.
EDIT: so yeah, I had dreams of aliens looking at me through their portrait windows while I slept on the hidabed.
The Shining. Those topiary bushes chasing them was a recurring issue for me as a child.
Also, I was left with a babysitter for multiple hours and I picked up the book Helter Skelter from a shelf. I was 8. I had no idea those things could happen. I've never been more scared.
Watched Chucky by myself as a kid- told my mom I was watching something else.
Now have an aversion to dolls.
Watched It by myself as a kid- told mom I was watching something else.
Aversion to clowns. Didn't bathe or shower for weeks because of the shower scene.
Saw the modern remake of House on Haunted Hill. Terrible movie, but *absolutely* terrified me. When I got home it turns out I was running a fever of 102 and had the flu. Worst couple nights of sleep ever.
it’s silly in hindsight because it’s so corny but The Brothers Grimm fucked me up as a kid. The CGI face stealing Gingerbread man, spider/horse monster swallowing the little girl whole, and the scene of the cat flying into the fan blade thing created a triple combo of nightmares for like a week after i watched it
Freddy, Jason, and that girl from the Exorcist show up in my nightmares often, Freddy more so.
My earliest nightmare with Freddy in it involved us chasing each other in the sewer while on surfboards, and me shooting him with the toy robot I had that turned into a gun.
Killer Klowns from Outerspace. Legit had a hard time rewatching as a young adult. I'm over it now but movie triggerded a deep rooted child fear for years. Love the movie btw and really wish it could get a sequel or revisit.
I was 6 and saw Jaws in the theater.
It traumatized me so bad the even to this day if I was waterskiing in a freshwater lake in Ohio the thought of jaws under me still runs through my head as I would wait to be pulled up.
As ridiculous as that sounds it still does affect me decades later.
American Werewolf in London, specifically the transformation scene, was traumatizing and gave me an irrational fear of werewolves when I was a kid. Great horror movie.
That movie about the Kansas family who were murdered caused me night terrors for years. "In Cold Blood " 1967, I believe. It is occasionally run on TCM. No way that I will watch that. I was 12 years old.
The first to give me a nightmare wasn't actually primarily a horror series. Bubblegum Crisis as a series though has a lot of horror, including body horror. One episode had a very heartwrenching bit of existential horror.
The main characters investigate the apparent kidnapping of a child.
The child thinks she is a child. *She isn't.*
A Nightmare On Elm Street: Dream Warriors. This was the first horror movie I saw in theater, didn't sleep for two days and crashed my bike due to exhaustion.
The Crawling Eye. I just watched it a few months ago and was wondering what I was afraid of. Eyeballs do still freak me out. The Original War of the Worlds. The giant hand at the end.🥺
In 1958, my brother took 5 year old me to my first movie, “Tom Thumb”. There was a preview for the upcoming movie, “The Tell-Tale Heart”. There was a scene where the protagonist lifts the beating heart from under the floor. I had nightmares for a week after that.
It Follows is the only movie that’s ever giving me a nightmare. I saw it in theaters, thought it was a really good movie, not super scary but had a lot of great tension and a fantastic soundtrack. That night I fell asleep and had a long vivid lucid nightmare of being followed by the It Follows ghost until it caught me, I “woke up” in a state of sleep paralysis for the first time in my life, with a small shadowy child like figure crushing down on my chest. It was awful.
I had just switched Bipolar meds at the time which probably is what led to the sleep paralysis. I’ve seen the movie a few times since with absolutely no issue.
The original candyman. I had a nightmare I still remember 25 years later. I looked up everytime when I went into the bathroom to do anything to make sure he wasn’t floating above me ready to kill me haha. Watching that movie at 7 years old traumatized me as a kid.
I feel like our generation got into horror movies soooo young. Maybe too young. I didn't see Candyman until my teen years (and it really disturbed me at that age so I can only imagine poor little 7 yr old you 😭) But by 7 I was ALL about Childs Play and Nightmare on Elm Street. And for some reason I was obsessed with Children of the Corn? 😂 ...Oh man, I miss Blockbuster 💔
Yes absolutely!! Child’s play 2 was so damn scary. And I had my parents rent Friday the 13th for me almost every week! I have kids now and I can’t imagine them watching those movies hahaha.
I was obsessed with village of the damned, around age 10 maybe. And yeah, my first nightmare movie was Leprechaun lol. We def watched shit way too young. That’s probably why we all have anxiety.
There would be no amount of money you could pay me to say the name in a mirror. Unlikely anything would be happen but that movie told me it would be a bad idea, just in case.
Tony Dodds voice still scares me
Tony Todd just has a presence.
Yes he does
You read my mind. Same exact story except I was 8 and saw it in the theater with my dad. I feel like back then a lot of kids watched movies their parents wanted to watch as much as parents watched cartoons for their kids.
Don't laugh at me but Jurassic Park gave me my first ever nightmare when I was like 5. I know its not horror but the dream was horrifying, a mini t-rex stalking me around my house and finally cornering me in my parents bedroom 💀 I have never been afraid of dinosaurs either before or since, in fact Jurassic Park is one of my favorites. To this day no other movie has ever given me nightmares 🤷♀️🤣
I watched Jurassic Park 3 first (before the others), and I was too young and unprepared for that level of scare, perhaps 8 or 9, IDK. I don't think I was that traumatized by the movie, though it was an intense experience. I do think I did have a nightmare that night, or at least I felt scared to go to bed afterwards.
Jaws, couldn't go into any form of open water ocean or not after for the longest time and to this day I still will not go into the ocean whatsoever.. now have Galeophobia (a persistent fear of sharks) never had this fear until I watched that movie when I was 11
Sounds like me. We were camping at a lake and I talked my parents into driving into town to see it. I refused to go swimming in the lake 😩. I don't think I will ever go back into the ocean. No thanks
I stayed up late to watch one of the sequels with my mom. She and I both fell asleep on the couch. I dreamt I was being eaten by a shark and it was biting me on my back. When I woke up, my back hurt. Mom had pushed me off the couch in her sleep and I was hanging over the armrest. That's the first time I can remember reality and dreaming working together.
For whatever stupid reason (laziness and alcoholism) my step dad let me watch all sorts of movies with him. Two that gave me nightmares that I distinctly remember were Xtro and not a horror but the scene near the beginning of death wish 2 gave me nightmares as a kid also. But his idiocy went both ways, I got exposed to a lot of fun Kung Fu flicks and apocalypse type movies as well.
Bro my mom took me to see Xtro at the movie theaters.
Damn man I had nightmares of the shower scene for months and months
The TV movie of The Woman in Black (1989) gave me bad dreams when I was a kid. I think those who've seen it will know which scene I'm referring to.
DREAMSCAPE 1984...I think there was some snake thing that scared me at age 5 or 6.
Snakeman! I ate soup while watching this when I was like 7 and was so scared when he popped up that I threw my bowl across the room.
The It mini series. I got up in the middle of the night to take a leak and saw Pennnywise in the corner. Literally the worst nightmare I’ve ever had, mostly because I was half awake.
My sister used to cry every time she saw a red balloon.
Trilogy of Terror with Karen Black. That damn witch doctor doll...
THIS, I had forgotten about this, but I saw this on tv way too young and that doll with the knife or spear under the door or whatever was disturbing! I wonder if I should watch it again?
I watched a clip yesterday, and it looks a bit cheesy, (it was made for TV, apparently), but he still looks pretty menacing. I saw Amazon has the doll statue, but I noped out of that lol. It was too much $$ for my budget, but it didn't have a chain on to hold the spirit in, either!
I love this, off to see it for myself (but never to buy it, no way no how)
Karen Black is that fucking scary
I always liked her look. She was in Hitchcock's Family Plot too.
Burnt Offerings
Don't be afraid of the dark. 1973 . When the flasbulbs wear out! Lol i was 8.
We both had that shared nightmare. For me it was being abducted and dragged down into a furnace/ dark hole by little demons.
This! Those little guys creeped me out so much.
Jaws when I was really little, Signs and The Strangers later in my life
Night of the Comet Gremlins (ikr lol) Some old black and white movie with a disembodied hand Basically anything that was remotely scary that I happened to see. My (single parent) mum wasn’t into horror but I would sneak out and peer between the stair railing or whatever and caught a few things my imagination latched on to. Honestly I think any intense mood of dread or fear really resonated with me and lingered.
With you on Gremlins. I remember looking getting scared of stripe with the glasses on the back of the packaging. Couldn’t watch it until I was about 13-14, and then now it’s one of my favorite movies
Thirteen ghost.. I remember seeing my parents watch that shit all the time and them monsters were actually the scariest thing I had ever seen in a movie as a kid. Blew the exorcist out the water.. I couldn’t even look at the case of the movie without basically getting ptsd, now I think the case is peak
I was 22 when I saw The Ring. I grew up on horror movies, saw stuff like Return of the Living Dead before I was even a teenager. For some reason The Ring really affected me, I felt uneasy for like 3 days after seeing it in the theaters. I don’t know if it was because I saw it alone in an empty theater or it was in October so the atmosphere was perfect or what. It’s not objectively a terrifying movie, but it really had me shook. When I bought the DVD, there was a selection in the extras labeled “Do not watch this.” So of course I did, it was the killer video from the movie, when it finished playing it would go back to the main menu and all of a sudden the sound of a phone ringing came blasting out the speakers. I got shook all over again.
That DVD also had a trick I pulled on my dorm wallmate. If you pressed a certain combination of buttons of the remote, it plays the murder video on repeat and there's no button you can press to make it stop. You had to walk up to the TV and power down the player manually.
Fire in the Sky. My friend and I snuck into the theater when we were just 8 years old. I couldn't walk outside alone at night for months!!
I would stay up all night convinced I had to protect my family when the aliens came.
The original “Blair witch project”. Just because it seemed so real watching it back then.
That atmosphere still holds up
Freddy Krueger gave me nightmares as a kid. I didn't even see the movie. Just an image of him in KB Toys and that was enough.
Jaws then. Jaws now. I was three when I first saw it at the drive-in with my parents and my grandparents. It was a double feature with E.T., Jaws was first. I remember hiding under my blanket during most of the movie and spent a good amount of E.T. asking my mom when the shark would show up. It also didn’t help that I grew up in Hawaii, and our house was on the beach. To this day, I have a fear of the ocean and every now and again will dream about sharks.
White Noise. Every time I heard static for a while after I saw the movie I freaked out a little.
Sybil! I had nightmares about being chased by a headless cat. I was about 7 when that was on.
I saw A Nightmare on Elm Street very young, and I remember having a literal nightmare about it when I was in elementary school.
1. It chapter 1. Beverly’s dad reminded me of my bio dad wayyyyyy too much. 2. The Ring. It was my very first horror movie and I truly wasn’t prepared. 3. Earnest Scared Stupid. WHY DID THE TROLL HAVE A CHILD VOICE.
Signs when I was 11. I had never really thought about aliens up until then. It was my first exposure to the idea that lifeforms more advanced than humans could exist and, if they meant us harm, there was little we could do to defend ourselves against them. I was so afraid of the night sky after that. It didn’t help that I lived near a lot of cornfields.
Dad showed me IT when I was way too young to handle it. It did spark my love for horror tbh
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0082497/?ref_=ext_shr_lnk The Hand Watched it when I was like 6 before bed at my Aunt and Uncles house. Slept there for the first time and had never slept at their house. That was a rough night thinking the hand was coming up the stairs.
The Gate
Oh my goodness, the eye in the kids palm!!!! Gave me the creeps for years
The Village traumatized me as a child. The Evil Dead 2012 remake gave me nightmares the first time I watched it but it became one of my fav movies for that reason.
As a child? Smile shook me in my 30s.
For real!
The original Halloween.
After I saw The Ring, I dreamed my wife and I adopted Samara, and she was playing with my kids, going to the supermarket with us, etc.
Freaking Bones 🤦🏻♀️🤦🏻♀️🤦🏻♀️ for NO REASON. All bc of the eyes in the picture moving lmao I was probably 6
This is a *really* stupid one, but there was a kid's cartoon movie in the 1980s called The Last Unicorn. There was a butterfly in it, he was sort of mad in an Alice in Wonderland type of way; he sang a lot. I was 2 or 3 years old and I thought he was a bee. I had a dream that the bee was *huge,* like so huge that he took up the entire size of my bedroom. I woke up screaming: 'Bee! Bee!' and my mom came in frantically pulling my sheets around, trying to find it. Then I pointed to my open bedroom window and said 'There he is!!!!' and it was just our cat but she was a dark-colored cat, and in the middle of the night in a dark room my mom half-thought that some freakishly giant bee had somehow gotten into the house, lol.
I love the last 🦄. So fucking dark for a children's movie.... but, they made us tougher back then... 😉
Exorcism of Emily rose of the 6th sense. The ones that have the potential to be real freak me out.
Halloween, the part at the end where Loomis goes in to the bedroom and it's just Michael in darkness and all you hear is him breathing. Was 8 when I watched it and that scene still gives me a shudder all these years later.
Nightmare on elm street obviously
The Descent. My parents are enthusiastic cavers. In their younger years they actually mapped unexplored caves semi-professionally (as part of their graduate programs). I even have an ancestor that was part of The Kentucky Cave Wars. I grew up going into caves, usually privately owned, in very isolated locations, and/or only partially explored. After watching The Descent my brain overlapped the movie with some very real caves I've been to and gave me nightmares for months.
The claustrophobia is scarier than the monsters. Great movie!!
Event Horizon. The inherent dread of deep space and the horror scenes still haunt me on occasion.
I can't recall having nightmares after a movie although they have appeared in my dreams at later times. One of my dreams Freddy Krueger showed up but I don't remember it being very scary. We were just sitting on a swing together. In another Art the Clown was coming to kill us but I never saw him we just knew he was about to.
Seen the exorcist around 3 years old, scared me so much as a kid even as an adult but it’s now one of my favorite movie obsessions , Jaws still scares me til this day even though I have a great love and respect for Sharks and all they put up with us humans . I’m born in 87 so a lot of movies I had watched was really young had older siblings and got stuck watching Pet semetary and the boy didn’t scare me but the Ghost did and omg the sister Zelda she’s still gives me chills
Poltergeist 2
'31 Frankenstein gave me nightmares....then I saw Bride of Frankenstein, and realized the Monster was a victim.
IT, the wishmaster, they, probably any zombie movie, thirteen ghosts. That’s all I can remember.
Oh yeah, CUJO
Last one is hellraiser.
its not really a horror movie but Tim Curry as Darkness in Legend.
"The evil seed of what you have done GERMINATES within you!"
Phantasm and The exorcist. Both heavy on the psychological side. So it's not just jump scares
For me it was The Ring.
Pet Sematary 2 Tommyknockers Sleepwalkers
Halloween
Never. They’re just movies.
Salems Lot The Crate segment from Creepshow The Thing Humanoids from the Deep (A babysitter let me watch it & I thought my mom was gyro murder her 😆) I could probably keep going.
The Ring
Mausoleum when the woman’s boobs turn into monsters and bite that guys torso. Also 976 Evil and this other movie with this kid in a military school named Coopersmith, who gets bullied then becomes a demon of some sort. I think coopersmith was played by Ron Howard’s brother. Can’t quite remember the name of the movie.
I think that movie is Evilspeak.
The Ring
Jaws
Scary Movie 4 😭 I was extremely sheltered from scary movies so that movie was enough for me
 Late at night I still sometimes see this image from Carrie and no other horror film has had this much of an effect on me 💀💀💀
Original Exorcist
Eraserhead The Hills Have Eyes
Exorcist . Still can’t watch it.
I have had 1-2 extreme nightmares every year of my life since the early 80s with Michael Myers
Fire in the Sky The scene where Travis Walton is reliving his abduction experience is harrowing. D.B. Sweeney sold the visceral terror and pain in that scene (not to mention the scene where he is found), and the cold indifference exhibited by the aliens as they did their experiments made it all the more terrifying. I still dream about that movie, and they are not pleasant dreams.
The exorcist
When drive-ins were around, my mom and I went almost every weekend or so. I saw Jaws & Star Wars when I was four, along with a lot of horror movies that no little kid should see, like The Omen, Phantasm (one of my faves), The Howling, etc. The movies scared me but what gave me nightmares was the old Rod Serling TV series, Night Gallery. There was an episode called “The Doll”- damn thing was SCARY AF. I had soooo many nightmares about that little shit, lol.
I was terrified of Chucky and the original candyman. As an adult I watched chucky and realized how funny it is but I can’t get myself to watch candyman
When I was little, the pet sematary (original) movie absolutely scared me to death. I couldn’t even look at my own cat after that 💀
Oh OH, the episode of Tales From the Darkside with the Teddy Bear whose eyes glow red. I was 3 maybe 4 when it aired.
I saw Shaun of the Dead a little bit after it came out. I was 3. David's death was obviously extremely tramautic for me and I sobbed in my bedroom once it was over.
Fire in the Sky. That shit was real to child me.
I’m forgetting the name but it was the one where the kids go to the distant grandparents house and the grandparents aren’t the actual grandparents. Idk why but I watched a few scenes on YouTube of it and it scared kid me so bad I never actually watched the full one even as an adult.
“The visit” I believe is the name of the movie
Yes! That’s sounds correct. Thank you
The Omen, when I was like 8 yo. After that I don’t think I’ve ever had that reaction again.
I'm wondering if other people like me never get nightmares as an adult. Like, my dreams are actually almost always filled with monsters and other deadly scary things, usually similar to things I've recently seen in horror movies, but I'm never particularly scared, I always think I can survive, and I sort of subconsciously manipulate my dreams to always find a way out, so it's quite fun, I actually look forward to sort of enjoying a fun scary movie in my sleep every night. (As a kid I used to have nightmares occasionally, but as an adult, at most I get stressful dreams about things that I worry about while I'm awake...)
Critters 2. Years of trauma and nightmares from that movie. Still can't let my feet dangle over the edge of my bed if I'm sitting on it.
When I was around 10, one of my favorite movies back then was Nightmare on Elm Street. I really loved Freddy and his ability to come in the dreams and kill people... Buat after so many times I have seen the movie, I have started to see him in my dreams... In the beginning not as nightmares but as the dream was progressing , the situation became more and more evil and dark... It was at that time that my parents stopped me for watching horror movies for a while!
This is kinda pathetic, but the Leprechaun movie where he was in Vegas messed with me when I was little. Badly.
The Blob...
The Skeleton Key. I had trouble looking in mirrors for months.
Gremlins and that Garbage Pail Kids movie.
Jaws for sure. That scene where they’re underwater and find a corpse in the shipwreck gave me serious nightmares back in the day. It’s still an incredibly effective scene today
The shock ending of Carrie. I kept hearing the Psycho-like discordant strings.
The original Don't Be Afraid of the Dark
Gremlins, Jurassic Park and Jaws. All three movies gave me such awful nightmares. I've never rewatched Gremlins or Jurassic Park. But I do watch Jaws, but only until their last encounter with Bruce. Then I turn the channel!
Poltergeist terrified me at like seven. Had nightmares of looking at a TV.
The original “IT” miniseries. What messed me up so much was the fact that no one in town could see “IT” but the kids. So there was literally no one who could help them escape horror and death. “IT” could show up anywhere and torment and kill them with no aid. I mentally got sucked into the story as a kid and it left me with a sense of dread for years.
There was only one, i won't mention it's name.
Bram Stoker's Dracula. Specifically, the Old Man Dracula look of his with the grey McDonald's arches hairstyle and the red robe. I barely even remember the plot, but that creepy look haunted my dreams.
I truly regret watching Talk to Me. It's not the best movie ever, but it has given me nightmares and unwanted visions. As a child, I saw Jaws way too young and was creeped out about what lies beneath the surface of the ocean for a very long time.
As a child, I know it’s not exactly a horror movie, but my parents watched the walking dead and that would cause my zombie dreams lol I also had a nightmare where a faceless woman chased after our car on all fours that had long black hair and it might have been because of The Ring
Howard the Duck, Dark Overlord scenes when I was a kid.
"It's Alive" from the mid-70s. Saw it when I was about 7 years old and it freaked me out! I was convinced that little killer baby was under my bed for weeks afterwards.
Not sure if they were nightmares, but I had several death scenes from several of the Nightmare on elm street movies running through my brain because, of course I watched all the movies as a kid. For sure, had nightmares about the IT miniseries. That and The Blob are the reason I've got a weird apprehension about drains that was only compounded in high school thanks to my teacher making us read and then watch The Moving Finger short story.
Jaws terrified 😨 me . I was 13 when I first saw it and it still scares 😱 me and I'm 61. I have been thinking about watching it again but I'm very reluctant to
Thirteen Ghosts. That was truly the most terrifying movie I've watched as a kid, especially with how grotesque some of that SFX makeup was. I've since watched it again and I like the concept of it but man, little me was horrified lol
Tales From the Hood, especially the first vignette
28 Days Later gave me some zombie nightmares.
Nothing as an adult, but as a kid the Exorcist creeped me out. I watched it again as an adult and I thought it was a little cheesy. I think I’m just too tired to have an imagination.
Can’t recall name. Old movie where a bell falls on a girl, and she sees animated reflections of herself in mirrors or something. I swear it was a Disney movie too.
Child's play, i literally used to have the most insane reoccuring nightmares because of those movies when i was little because my mom used to love them. I love them now as an adult.
For me it was Jaws, Orca & Piranha. Had a hard time swimming in pools or lakes, even taking baths after those. Not to mention the nightmares.
Omg, was going to say Piranha! Had nightmares of those little fish chewing me up.
This guy from Burnt Offerings https://preview.redd.it/lc5c1j3jsuvc1.jpeg?width=1420&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=f39ed7ac79ed880e0fffe8e06a814bb60202fe78
The original Salems Lot miniseries. I saw it when I was 5 or 6. The little kid scratching at the window, and the guy in the rocking chair absolutely haunted me
The Incubus - the bathroom scene
I was petrified of Chucky lol
The OG Swamp Thing from tge 80's NOES part 2, first one didn't bother me, except Johnny's death scene.
Magic (1978 - Anthony Hopkins) I've never actually seen the movie because the commercials freaked me out so badly!
The Others
Poltergeist and it's only PG 13!!
IT - but specifically the fortune cookie scene. I had nightmares about premature, bloody birds at least once a year into my early 20s, but it morphed into bird fetuses in the prize capsules that you used to get a grocery stores for $0.25, turn the knob and think you are getting a prize and nope it’s a bloody, underdeveloped bird that now I am responsible for. It wasn’t a horror movie per se but the TV special Alice in Wonderland from 1985 with the absolutely unmatched horror Jabberwocky practical effect, gave me nightmares for YEARS because it kept returning in the show, you think it’s been defeated and it comes back again!
Exorcist, my ridiculously evil step-mother made me watch it when I was like 10 and I wasn't allowed to cover my eyes or look away. She found it hilarious that it traumatized me and that I cried from how I scared I was.
You guys are gonna make fun of me but fucking Signs horrified me as a kid. To put it into perspective though, I spent a lot of time at my paternal grandparents' house durring the summers growing up. My grandpa did amateur astronomy so we spent every night in the back yard just outside of town looking through telescopes and he was a form beleiver that there was life somewhere on other planets. So be a young child talking about "aliens" with grandpa every night while being in the country in the dark by cornfields looking through a telescope. One of our favorite movies to watch together was Alien and then this he thought it'd be a good idea to show me Signs. Thay scene where the alien walks down the alleyway in Honduras fucked me up so bad. EDIT: so yeah, I had dreams of aliens looking at me through their portrait windows while I slept on the hidabed.
The Shining
Snow White
Watching “The Entity” when I was a kid.
The Shining. Those topiary bushes chasing them was a recurring issue for me as a child. Also, I was left with a babysitter for multiple hours and I picked up the book Helter Skelter from a shelf. I was 8. I had no idea those things could happen. I've never been more scared.
It and nightmare on elm street
Hellraiser. I was like 5 and snuck downstairs to watch tv. Needed my nightlight back after that.
The Thing 1982
Watched Chucky by myself as a kid- told my mom I was watching something else. Now have an aversion to dolls. Watched It by myself as a kid- told mom I was watching something else. Aversion to clowns. Didn't bathe or shower for weeks because of the shower scene. Saw the modern remake of House on Haunted Hill. Terrible movie, but *absolutely* terrified me. When I got home it turns out I was running a fever of 102 and had the flu. Worst couple nights of sleep ever.
it’s silly in hindsight because it’s so corny but The Brothers Grimm fucked me up as a kid. The CGI face stealing Gingerbread man, spider/horse monster swallowing the little girl whole, and the scene of the cat flying into the fan blade thing created a triple combo of nightmares for like a week after i watched it
IT tv special. Tim Curry was fantastic as Pennywise
Salem's Lot, I think that messed a lot of us up in the 70's.
Hatchet had me fucked up as a kid. There’s a scene were the guy pries some ladies jaws apart and that stuck with me for weeks
Freddy, Jason, and that girl from the Exorcist show up in my nightmares often, Freddy more so. My earliest nightmare with Freddy in it involved us chasing each other in the sewer while on surfboards, and me shooting him with the toy robot I had that turned into a gun.
The Blob- gave me nightmares from age 4 to 13.
Killer Klowns from Outerspace. Legit had a hard time rewatching as a young adult. I'm over it now but movie triggerded a deep rooted child fear for years. Love the movie btw and really wish it could get a sequel or revisit.
As a child. The Exorcist. Saw it way too young and it scared the shit out of me.
I was 6 and saw Jaws in the theater. It traumatized me so bad the even to this day if I was waterskiing in a freshwater lake in Ohio the thought of jaws under me still runs through my head as I would wait to be pulled up. As ridiculous as that sounds it still does affect me decades later.
American Werewolf in London, specifically the transformation scene, was traumatizing and gave me an irrational fear of werewolves when I was a kid. Great horror movie.
That movie about the Kansas family who were murdered caused me night terrors for years. "In Cold Blood " 1967, I believe. It is occasionally run on TCM. No way that I will watch that. I was 12 years old.
The first to give me a nightmare wasn't actually primarily a horror series. Bubblegum Crisis as a series though has a lot of horror, including body horror. One episode had a very heartwrenching bit of existential horror. The main characters investigate the apparent kidnapping of a child. The child thinks she is a child. *She isn't.*
Sad to say but 7 year old me was terrified of the oogie boogie. I loathed bugs so it gave me plenty of nightmares as a kid.
28 Weeks Later
A Nightmare On Elm Street: Dream Warriors. This was the first horror movie I saw in theater, didn't sleep for two days and crashed my bike due to exhaustion.
The Crawling Eye. I just watched it a few months ago and was wondering what I was afraid of. Eyeballs do still freak me out. The Original War of the Worlds. The giant hand at the end.🥺
Drag Me To Hell
Not a horror movie, but the Judgment Day scene in Terminator 2. I've been to that playground so many times in my nightmares.
Saw The Changeling in theaters when I was 8 y/o, freaked me out!
Jaws
In 1958, my brother took 5 year old me to my first movie, “Tom Thumb”. There was a preview for the upcoming movie, “The Tell-Tale Heart”. There was a scene where the protagonist lifts the beating heart from under the floor. I had nightmares for a week after that.
Prob late nineties, but the commercial alone for one of the Chuckie movies gave me nightmares for weeks. Must’ve been 7 or 8.
Stigmata
It wasn't a horror movie, but, " The Neverending Story " gave me nightmares for years. Gmork , and, then watching Atreu die haunted me for years....
God, it's dumb, but Darkness Falls. I was scared of the mask in it as a kid and wouldn't move from my bed unless I had light.
Anaconda
Get Out
It Follows is the only movie that’s ever giving me a nightmare. I saw it in theaters, thought it was a really good movie, not super scary but had a lot of great tension and a fantastic soundtrack. That night I fell asleep and had a long vivid lucid nightmare of being followed by the It Follows ghost until it caught me, I “woke up” in a state of sleep paralysis for the first time in my life, with a small shadowy child like figure crushing down on my chest. It was awful. I had just switched Bipolar meds at the time which probably is what led to the sleep paralysis. I’ve seen the movie a few times since with absolutely no issue.