"My best childhood friend died in 9/11, 2 weeks shy of his 12th birthday. Gave me PTSD whenever I'm on an airplane until I was around 18." - u/A_C0mm0ner

"My mother." - u/fedupkat

"When I saw a dying dog that had been run over. Its neck was broken, it was bleeding, and its breathing was laboured. I have always been scared of cars and the road since." - u/Vos-loves-Ventress15

"I spent much of my childhood living in the country. There was one time my dad had about 40 chickens, and one day he decided to slaughter all of them. He would hold them by their feet and cut their heads off, then they'd be dunked into a bucket of hot water to release most of the feathers after they'd bled out.

One of them managed to get away after he'd cut off its head. My mom freaked out and started screaming and running. The chicken seemingly started chasing her. To this day I'm not sure what scarred me more - the headless chicken running, or my mom's screaming.

I was nine years old at the time. I did not eat chicken again until I was 15." - u/GrumpyCatStevens

"There used to be a dude just walking around the city I used to live in, he always had a lot of balloons with him so we called him "Balloon Man". I remember seeing him very often at McDonald's, he used to just sit there and call every kid different names, like "dumbass" and stuff like that. I remember being terrified every time I saw him. He just had that creepy look.

When I was very young like 6 maybe and I was going home after school, I was walking in the middle of the city so there's stores just along the street. out of nowhere he just randomly jumped out of a store and screamed "BOO!" and started chasing me. I will never forget his face and how fucking scary that was, He chased me for quite some time before giving up." - u/Alvin_Whee

"My parents fighting. When it happened for the first time I was very scared and confused and I spent the rest of the night crying but as I got older i became almost numb to it. It shocked me how one minute my parents can go from threatening to kill each other and bashing each other’s dead relatives to happily talking whilst laying in bed, it astounded me." - u/bergiberg23

"I remember waiting for one of my parents to pick me up from school. I was about 7. Everyone had gone and the small parking lot at the front of the school was empty...until I saw "dad's" car arriving. The car was moving all kinds of sideways and back to fronts and within an instant, I knew he was drunk in the car. While there was nothing incredibly disturbing about it, it was depressing to see the dysfunctional sight of this car swerving up in this empty parking area. It was also symbolic of the kind of person he was. Utterly indulgent, never gave a hoot about his family, every day was his liquor love day and a little family wasn't going to keep him from the bottle." - u/moontains

"Jeepers Creepers, that fu**er made me have a huge fear of going outside of my house at the nighttime" u/DongosMaster

"I was robbed at gunpoint at 14 for the $30 I had on me. Not a good feeling to be helpless." - u/1980pzx

"My great grandfather dying of cancer. My entire family had just told me he was "sick". My mom was a nurse and always taught me from a young age to wash my hands so I didn't get sick. It got to the point where my OCD took over and I was washing my hands too often. It was normal for my hands to crack and bleed. I still have that problem to this day, but I try to opt for hand sanitizer. Anxiety is another one. I always had these violent dreams and thoughts. I was on antidepressants at age 9. When I was 6, I was in the emergency room and not breathing very much. Turns out I was having a severe asthma attack. It was the middle of the night and there was only one doctor, so I had to wait. I saw a person, deceased, being rolled out of an ambulance. Covered with a sheet. I got my treatment eventually, and went home." - u/Top_Jellyfish3149

"Having my home address leaked online by one of my exes because they were mad at me, at age 12 or 13 I believe. I was always afraid someone would come to my house and try to hurt me." - u/ImEverywhereOnReddit

"Pet Cemetery movie. Anytime I see a horse grave or any pet grave it still creeps me out." u/Ok-Lime-6248

"One time I was with my dad and we were driving to his friend's house and he saw a fox. He pulled over and had me climb in the back of the truck and hand him his gun He shot it bc it was close to our farm and we had chickens he was fighting and didn't want to be killed So he gets the fox and runs back to me with it by the tail And has me hand him a hammer. He beat it to death in front of me and when we got to his friend's house they skinned it. It was pregnant. He handed me a pup." - u/cottonkinkle

"When I was 12 my sister told me the way to get skinny was to do this proceeded to rail a line of coke in front of me I told my mom about it and nothing was ever said" - u/cottonkinkle

"We had a bunch of rabbits and they were tearing up my mom's garden so my dad shot them all and made me crawl under a dog kennel to grab the bodies." - u/cottonkinkle

"A thunderstorm on my third grade field day.

Two inches of rain fell in 45 minutes and overwhelmed the sewer system. I was unfortunately on the toilet when every single drain in the school began to back up. By the time they dismissed us, it was ankle deep through the entire school.

For several months, I had an aversion to using the toilet when it was raining, and became very distrusting of drains in general. A slow draining toilet would make me shiver, chatter my teeth, and my heart race. . It's been 24 years since the fourth grade, but I'll never forget the day I went home "sick" because of that fear. A classmate came back from the restroom and asked the teacher to call a custodian, she thought the toilet was going to overflow. It was raining heavily that day and my anxiety was already up. I claimed a headache and went home. I was scared to be in the same building as a malfunctioning toilet." - u/Washjockey

"Not exactly child, I was 14 when I arrived in the US for the first time.

I lived in Atlanta with my parents’ college classmate for a while and it’s in a nice quiet neighborhood.

One day after school nobody was home so I watched some TV and falls asleep on the couch. I was awakened by a few loud bangs, I thought they might be gunshots so I called the police.

My neighbor got into a gunfight with a home invader, he shot the invader died, and he was shot too. I saw the ME put him on the gurney and he told me he will be alright.

He didn’t, he passed away a day later.

He’s a really nice guy and drove me to school a few times bc I overslept and miss the bus. This really messed me up" u/StudentHiFi

"So I was curious when I was about 12. I discovered a gore site because someone told me to google something with a gory result, due to my morbid curiosity at the age, I did it. I watched the video, some guy was being beaten to death with a shovel and being stabbed, and all kinds of other shit. He was gargling his blood. I'll never forget those awful slurping sounds. I kept watching these gore videos out of morbid curiosity, and I still watch some of them today, It's a problem." u/ShitPostPro69

"Stumbling across Liveleak" u/AbyssalRedemption

"The book Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark. Specifically the story about the severed head singing in the forest and falling down the chimney. I was scared by it for easily a year." u/Aware-Performer4630

"That popular YouTube video from 2017-2019 that showed what would happen to earth after a long long time. After that hyper-realistic video, I have had a fear of death, natural disasters, etc, ever since. Most traumatized I've been ever." - u/fg-MAAR

"My mother tried kidnapping my sister and I when I was in grade 2 (so I was 7, I think). Yeah being on a plane in a city you don't know and the police come aboard and take her away. Kinda sticks with you." - u/Lord_Bloodwyvern

"My parent's divorce and how my dad lost touch with me, making me feel abandoned and worthless at a very young age and compensating with an insufferable ego and an emotional detach from basically everything." - u/theyfoundmeomg

"I got in a car crash when I was 13 and my mom drives like a madwoman. Every time I'm in the car, I bite half my nails off in Anxiety and PTSD." - u/Smacadoodles

"It's a little obscure, but in the movie Inner Space, there's a scene where a character is dying and all these people dressed in animal costumes (and a clown) are looking down at him as his vision fades...

I still can't go to Disney World without fear." - u/FivebyFive