Top Ten Childhood Monsters, #1

October 31st, 2005

Filed under: General

1. The Count
The CountAs a young child, I was always scared of the Count.

Cookie Monster? Not scary. Grover? Not scary (more pathetic really.) Big Bird? Well, he was a little creepy. Elmo? Way before my time. But the Count…he was scary.

I think the main reason was a recurring nightmare I had as a child that I can still remember to this day. In the dream I was chased down a long hallway by the Count and a Grandfather clock with arms and legs. When they caught me, they wadded me up like a piece of paper and through threw me down a stairwell. (Well, it was scary to a four year-old…)

I’m not sure what the dream meant (if anything). Maybe deep down I’m scared of math and promptness? All I know is that I still don’t trust the Count to this day.

8 Responses to “ Top Ten Childhood Monsters, #1 ”

  1. David Oakes
    October 31st, 2005 at 12:06 pm

    OK, The Count is a *little* scary, if only for his Bela motif. But even at age three I recognized it as a motif, as a satire on something that was scary, and so I felt relieved. (Though I was critically scarred, and am unable to watch Bela without my Inner Child screaming “Three! Three children of the night!”)

    But how could you possibly forget Harry Monster? Sacred the three-year-old bejeezus out of me, to the point I actually gave up watching the Street for a month. I still can’t see him without a (small) involuntary shudder. The fact that he is now playing with dolls or worried about other kids laughing at his baseball playing ability changes nothing: Scariest. Muppet. Ever.

  2. Scott
    October 31st, 2005 at 1:30 pm

    Through you? Not threw you?

  3. Jonathan Miller
    October 31st, 2005 at 4:28 pm

    I always found the Vampire (Morgan Freeman!) and the Werewolf on Electric Company terrifying. Never had a problem with the Count on Sesame Street, though.

  4. Roger Green
    October 31st, 2005 at 4:56 pm

    My #1 monsters as a child were the talking trees in The Wizard of Oz. They THREW things.
    The gnarled tree outside of my bedroom looked somewhat like them, so I thought it
    was just a matter of time before it’d get me too.

  5. David Lawson
    October 31st, 2005 at 9:47 pm

    The muppet that scared me the most was a one-shot named Sammy the Snake. A snake with a pointy head that sang about the letter S. I don’t know why but that one gave me nightmares.

  6. Jon H
    October 31st, 2005 at 10:05 pm

    My top 2 scary monsters were:

    1) the guy Dan Ackroyd turns into in Twilight Zone, the Movie. (Wanna see something REALLY scary?)

    2) I had a monster magazine as a kid, which had a big picture from an old horror movie, of a guy (I think driving a car) with a huge, horrific, toothy grin. No idea what the movie was. Any ideas? I used to have the idea it was from The Tingler, but the description of The Tingler doesn’t sound like he’d fit.

  7. Oliver Townshend
    November 1st, 2005 at 3:48 am

    1

    2

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    5

    6

    7! Ahhahahahahahaaa!

    Actually I can do the laugh quite well. Not a very useful skill, but fun.

  8. Zach
    November 2nd, 2005 at 1:10 am

    The scariest Muppet ever is Doctor Teeth, of Doctor Teeth and the Electric Mayhem. He just looked like such an acid trip. I still have nightmares about that guy.

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