Mom hung a mass produced art print on my bedroom wall when I was about 8. It's of a little girl holding her puppy.
Cute, right?
Thing is, this painting terrified me. And I was raised in the time where you just kind of swallowed any complaints and didn't bother mom or dad with kid foolishness.
Here is a copy of the thing I actually had hanging on my wall. This same frame. Probably came from Service Merchandise or some such.
What in the everloving hell is lurking just over her shoulder?!?! To me it always looked like a skull wearing a hat on the side of his head, like a little old timey jaunty hat a clown would wear.
It's a wonder I got any sleep. I was too afraid to tell mom I hated it. I never considered that I possessed the agency to take it off my wall and hide it at the bottom of the closet.
I think of this cursed painting still.
Did you ever have something in your childhood that unnecessarily scared the bejeezus out of you?
My parent's house has a long, dark hallway (partially lit by night lights). My bedroom was near the end with my bed positioned so when going to sleep the last thing I would see was the door at the end of the hallway. Pareidolia being a thing, child me saw the gap under the door as a mouth with the door knob as an eye.
That door became the big bad of a long series of nightmares. I only remember bits of the dreams, but it was out to get me, with unknown creatures securing me to a gurney and rolling me down the hallway (now longer and lit by torches casting creepy shadows) to the door as a sacrifice... really weird, kid nightmare stuff. But what still creeps me out, decades later was the last dream about the door.
My parents had renovated the attic to form a new bedroom and storage closet. At last I would be moving away from the door. One of the last nights I slept in the old bedroom, I dreamed the door was lounging on the stairs, and the message was clear "I can get you up there".
My brother had a Buzz Lightyear toy. With the head sealed in a closed, unremovable dome, buttons to play catch phrases from the movie, and popout wings... not only would it randomly speak with no one around, but the head (sealed in plastic) slowly rotated over months to face backwards.
We took it apart, fixed the head, and weeks later it was backwards again... we threw it out.
I think I would've driven across town and thrown it in someone else's bin.
I think I've seen this one before. You throw it in your or any bin, and it just inexplicably shows back up on your nightstand when you wake up in the morning.