My bedroom wallpaper (1980–85) was metallic silver Raggedy Ann & Andy—gave/gives me nightmares! What Gen X kids’ stuff creeped/creeps you out?

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elphaba00@reddit

And Stephen King's "The Monkey," which was made into a movie a couple of years ago

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OreoSpeedwaggon@reddit

And "Close Encounters of the Third Kind."

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Confirmationbias10@reddit

Oh shit , you're right! Was it both or am I having a mid 50's moment?

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OreoSpeedwaggon@reddit

I honestly don't remember the cymbal monkey from "Poltergeist," and I've seen that movie dozens of times. Maybe you're thinking of the creepy clown doll?

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Neat_Ad_3268@reddit

It's the Mandela Effect. The cymbal monkey was in enclosed Encounters of the Third Kind.

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My parents let me have Raggedy Ann as wallpaper for my bedroom. When I was in 8th grade, they decided to sell the house, but they had never changed that paper. The realtor came to them and was like, "I've got some notes ... " First to go had to be the wallpaper. I've never seen two people select and hang wallpaper so quickly.

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lectroid@reddit

You think that’s creepy?

Check out The Raggedy Ann and And Movie

Directed by Richard Williams, the same guy that would go on to direct Who Framed Roger Rabbit and The Thief and the Cobbler

It is one of those “nightmare fuel for kids” things that you will never unsee.

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Negative-Appeal9892@reddit

I thought Robert Zemeckis directed "Who Framed Roger Rabbit/"

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lectroid@reddit

Williams was the Animation Director.

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Starkville@reddit

My mother took us to see this in the theater. It was more scary than “Jaws” (which we also saw in the theater).

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Komaisnotsalty@reddit

Pinocchio.

I saw it once when I was very little and have never seen it again.

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lovemesomezombie@reddit

Mine was Holly Hobby in shades of brown and orange. After I got a little older, my Mom covered the entire wall in SHINGLES.

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EverythingScrolling@reddit

Clowns! My mom decorated my room with a clown motif when I was a baby/young child.

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BrogerBramjet@reddit

The hospital I was regularly treated in did them on the ceiling of the exam rooms. I haven't found anyone who was a patient then who has no fear of clowns. Then "It" came out. I pointed out to everyone, "See? I've been saying this for years! "

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w3woody@reddit

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handsomeape95@reddit

Somewhat related. My gramma used to tell me Darth Vader eats to try to get me to eat it. Honestly she had no idea who or what he was. But of course it put me off broccoli until adulthood.

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daydreamersunion@reddit

The GI Joe movie with Cobra Commander getting shriveled/morphed into a snake. WTF?

This and seeing The Fly too young contributed big time to my dislike of body horror.

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handsomeape95@reddit

He was once a man...

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nerd_of_gods@reddit

ET

Eliott's house/garage/closet looked similar to mine. Didnt help that my chore each night was to take out the garbage and my mom would always say: dont let ET grab you.

Close second is the ghost episode of Greatest American Hero (Beast In Black) - I didnt get much sleep in 1982!

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CommunityBig9626@reddit (OP)

That shed scene in his back yard was so scary!

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ExtraAd7611@reddit

There's something creepy about knockoffs of puppets and cartoons that look not quite right. I had Ernie and Bert puppets I bought from someone selling them on the street in Ecuador and they were borderline evil. As if Chucky had sewn them.

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Neat_Ad_3268@reddit

Man. My mom's Sunday school friend made me a homemade cabbage patch kid with a tiny tag.in the navel that said "will you be my mommy?" AND it came in a weird ass wicker basket. Hell no!

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CommunityBig9626@reddit (OP)

Yeah - my sister had an off brand cabbage kid and it was kind of weird.

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ExtraAd7611@reddit

Yikes

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Red_Beard_Of_Fury@reddit

I really wanted an E.T. shirt with his picture on it when the movie came out but it totally freaked me out hanging in the closet until after I had seen the movie.

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Apart-Cream-4940@reddit

Actually Raggedy Ann creeps me out. My mom watched another world and they had a plot line where a woman dressed up like her and terrorized another woman. I haven't liked her since.

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SilverAgeSurfer@reddit

My sister's life size Chrissy doll, with the blinky 👀 eyes

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dstarpro@reddit

My grandmother gifted me a life-sized toddler who walked. She creeped me out then, too. I kept shoving her into the back of my closet.

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Bhodiliscious@reddit

Same fucking Room! Curtains, bedspread and so much yellow. I couldn’t have anyone over till I tucked that chapter away.

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IWantTheLastSlice@reddit

https://y.yarn.co/583e8911-94c2-4cbc-a4ab-2d2cbcf9104b_text.gif

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Lostboyintheforest@reddit

I had the light wood paneling. Nothing really creeped me out though.

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Sense_Difficult@reddit

We had this wood paneling that had a repeated pattern of a dark wood spot that looked just like a giant cockroach that freaked me out. I can't look at wood with blotches on it without thinking about it.

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strangedazey@reddit

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la_winky@reddit

My mom make a stuffed clown for my younger sister. It’s creeped me out such that I lost sleep. When I told my mother many years later, she didn’t get it.

It had squiggly eyebrows that I was convinced were spiders.

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slacks196@reddit

They creeped me out as a kid. I have vague memories of a movie with them that was creepy.

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El_Briano@reddit

Howdy Doody marionette. He was positioned on a chair in my room, staring at my bed.

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Starkville@reddit

My friend’s mom had a marionette dressed as a ringmaster hanging on the living room wall leading into the kitchen. Scared the FUCK out of us. She also had a big floor vase filled with dried sunflowers and a big flokati rug. The Their house was old and rickety and slightly menacing. Hey, it was the 70s.

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sunbleach_happypants@reddit

Well, other than being exposed to The Exorcist as a small child, there was some popular music on the radio that used to give me the creeps. Fleetwood Mac, broadly. Some others.

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InnerpoiseBridget@reddit

Ah yes, Eurythmics "Sweet Dreams" scared the crap out of me! I would dread hearing that song sitting in the backseat of my mom's car while we'd be running errands

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medusamagpie@reddit

Man I saw The Exorcist on TV, and Salem’s Lot and The Amityville Horror and they all gave me nightmares for years.

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nice1priscilla@reddit

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medusamagpie@reddit

Those black eyes omg…

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go_west_til_you_cant@reddit

E.T. Someone bought me a pair of slippers with his head on them when I was about five which scared the crap out of me. Not cute; they were gross AF. They lived in the bottom of my closet for years and made me afraid to go in there.

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go_west_til_you_cant@reddit

E.T. Someone bought me a pair of slippers with his head on them when I was about five which scared the crap out of me. Not cute; they were gross AF. They lived in the bottom of my closet for years and made me afraid to go in there.

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PinkyLeopard2922@reddit

Watership Down movie 1978...wtf was THAT?

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BadHairDay-1@reddit

Sock monkeys, those ugly, brown stuffed monkeys with rubber faces, planet of the apes, curious George..

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troisarbres@reddit

I had an Animal puppet, like Animal from The Muppet Show. He was super cool but.... I used to hang him on my bottom bed post and he used to cast the scariest shadows on the wall at night! Thinking about it I have no idea what the light source was but it used to freak me out!

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Quirky_Ball_3519@reddit

Does anyone remember that Huggabunch movie? I thought it was the stuff of nightmares.

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Comedywriter1@reddit

The kids’ things that creeped me out tended to be films like The Black Hole, The Dark Crystal, etc. or tv shows like the Little House on the Prairie episode where the teenage girl gets raped by the harlequin. 😱

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PahzTakesPhotos@reddit

Another good thing about being raised in military housing. The walls were always painted white and putting up wallpaper would have been expensive/tedious to remove.

The one thing that I remember being weird/creepy were those plastic wall hangings. They were cartoon characters, like Snoopy or Tweety Bird, and they looked like they were arranged plastic pellets that were then mildly melted down. One side was flat and smooth and the other was weird and bumpy. My memory of them is that they were just very slightly distorted, so it was more Snoopy-ish than Snoopy Proper.