16 Horrifying Movies That Traumatized People As Kids And Still Give Them Gruesome Nightmares As Adults

Recently Reddit user BethMLB asked the community, "What movie did you watch that traumatized you at a young age?"

Unfortunately, folks had many flicks up their sleeves that totally horrified them as children. Like, if I ever watched these as a kiddo, I don't know how I'd get by as an adult.

So, here are some films that scared the heck out of people as kids that they just can't move past:

Note: Some submissions include gore, firearms, and animal abuse. Please proceed with caution.

1. Children of the Corn (1984)

"I saw Children of the Corn when I was about six years old at home with my dad. I was okay with it up until they attacked the old people in the café. They reminded me of my grandparents, and I just started screaming. My dad got in a lot of trouble for that."

—u/Treize26

"This movie was incredibly freaky in so many ways. The appearance of muddy ponds would make me think of all of those corpses hidden in the muck, just waiting to be dislodged. The giant tree crashed through the windows and grabbed the boy, and that team member looked at himself in the mirror and began pulling the flesh of his face apart. I could go on..."

—u/cytherian

"My older siblings took me to see Poltergeist in the theater, and none of us had any idea how scary it would be. They were older, so fine, but I was five years younger, and I was scared to death. I had waking nightmares for days and recurring nightmares for years. I'm still irrationally scared of ghosts — my siblings still feel bad about it."

—u/Kstandsfordifficult

"My brother got his hands on The Exorcist (1973) somehow while he was babysitting me. He was 14, and I was 10. During the crab walk stair scene, I started yelling, 'TURN IT OFF, TURN IT OFF!' I still have never seen the full movie. My big bro turned it off and went upstairs to his room from the den, and I layed on the couch shivering. Our golden retriever came and jumped onto the couch to comfort me."

—u/Pitiful-Cancel-1437

"I watched this movie when I was around nine years old. The week of nightmares that followed still haunts me. I vividly remember Regan climbing into my bed in full-possession mode."

—u/tothetop76

"I'm one of those odd people who's seemingly incapable of having nightmares (or at least, I've had them so rarely that I can count my lifetime's-worth on a single hand). Not hyperbole, I just don't seem to get them. My dreams are mildly stressful or annoying at the most, and oftentimes just extremely strange (sadly, the complete opposite of my real life). The most memorable exception to this was the night after I walked in on my mom watching It. I only caught a glimpse of one scene, but it was enough to give me very vivid dreams the following night. Pennywise is scary as shit."

—u/sck8000

"I saw It at a friend's house in third grade. The next day, I went home and jumped out of the shower because I was so scared due to the Pennywise shower scene. I slipped and broke my arm so badly. That added to the trauma even more 😭."

—u/flagnogg

"When I was five years old, I was with all of my older cousins at my aunt's house. The kids were in the basement, and I didn't know where the adults were. We were watching The Ring, and my two older cousins noticed I was closing my eyes during the first scene, where they opened a closet and found the girl dead inside. They held me down and held my eyes open and kept replaying that scene. I had nightmares for years. I was terrified to sleep alone, and sleep better next to someone."

—u/Organic_Aardvark5197

"I watched The Ring when it came out (I was around 11 years old). I went with my dad because I was home sick from school. I was scared shitless. I thought I was absolutely going to die, and every night, I would wait for Samara to walk slowly in front of my bedroom door 💀. But now it’s one of my top horror movies!!!"

—u/Nocturncat2107

"I was 10 when I first saw Alien. The chest-bursting scene left a scar on me for a good while. I was scared shitless every time I had a minor discomfort in my abdomen."

—u/mourasman

"My mom was pregnant with me when it came out. She had nightmares after I turned in her stomach — it looked like I was almost standing. She said she couldn't stop feeling like I was going to burst out like the alien."

—u/laughingcarter

"My dad looooves this movie. I grew up watching horror movies, and nothing freaked me out between jump scares and gore. But, it was the supernatural stuff in Signs that got to me, stuff that was made just plausible enough that I could actually fear it happening."

—u/HaplesslyExistential

"My friend in elementary school had a teenage brother, and their parents got The Movie Channel. When we were in third grade, she came to school really upset one day. Turns out her brother had watched The Shining after school the previous day before their parents got home from work, and she saw the room 237 scene. She started crying when she told me about it. I finally saw the movie when I was in college, expecting that scene to be something that would only be scary to a little kid, but damn. It haunted me as an adult."

—u/Hopeful_Hospital_808

"I was in first or second grade when I watched this. For me, it was the scene in the bathroom with the little boy squeezed out of the tiny window and the mom couldn’t. I identified with that too much. And then came Jack Nicholson with an axe and the kid is running through the maze. What a nightmare."

—u/littlesapito

"I watched Psycho when I was five years old on one of those weekend afternoons that the channels used to fill with classic films because they didn't have anything else to offer. Oddly enough, the part that freaked me out wasn't the shower scene, but the moment when Lila Crane (Marion Crane's sister) goes down into the fruit cellar and discovers the corpse of 'Mother.' We didn't have a fruit cellar, but we did have a room off the garage that was an eight-inch step down, so I avoided that for a month because it was the closest thing to a fruit cellar in the house."

—u/Too_Too_Solid_Flesh

"My dad didn't realize it was a scary movie and let me watch it on TV one night when I was five years old. It scared me so badly, and my older brothers knew it. They would open the laundry chute from the upstairs of our house when they knew I was down there and screech, 'Me wants me golds!' and it would send me screaming up the stairs every single time."

—u/miss_mush

"I saw Jaws way too young. My grandma used to take us to her rec center to swim at the pool — I used to love to jump off the high diving board but when I hit the water I would always feel a pang of terror and would swim as fast as I could to the ladder in the deep end. I always had the lingering thought of a shark being in the deep end lurking in the back of my mind."

—u/DanDamage12

"Those brainy aliens and their erratic speech and laser guns that vaporize people into skeletons [was creepy]!! Also, how they replaced the woman's head with her chihuahua and vice versa — worst trauma for years and years as a kid."

—u/LordJamiz

13. The Never Ending Story (1984)

"When the horse died, it was the first time I cried during a movie. Our school used to do a cinema day once a month where they played movies in the school hall, and unfortunately, the same few movies rotated every six months or so. I watched the movie for the first time at one of these showings and didn't really let anyone know I was crying. The second time they showed the movie, I thought I was prepared for the scene, but nope, there were proper snotty tears and sobbing at that time. By the third time they showed the movie, I told my teacher I was sick and got myself sent home from school. I still can't watch the movie without crying my eyes out."

—u/Terrible_Lock_7989

"It's not even that scary of a movie, but my mom was watching it on TV. I thought I'd be brave and stay in the room while she watched it. I could not sleep for more than 10 minutes at a time that night. I was really too old to be as scared of it as I was, but I'd never seen a 'proper' horror movie before, since we never had them in the house. A cashier at the grocery store had actually told my mom that I looked like Dakota Fanning from that movie a few years prior. After watching that movie I wonder if she was trying to say that she thought I was creepy..."

—u/GaimanitePkat

"I had no idea what John Wick was about going into it. The dog scenes? I felt so blindsided. I’m very sensitive to animals. For about a month, I cried HARD over it. I couldn’t unsee those scenes. My brain processed it like it was real, despite trying to soothe myself that it was just a movie. My mom finally asked me what movie I watched that left me so distressed (I ended up going to therapy over it). When I told her, she asked, 'Did you even watch the rest of the movie?! He kills everyone that did that to his dog!' But I just simply couldn’t ignore the pain I felt from those initial scenes."

—u/beelee5991

16. And finally, The Sixth Sense (1999)

"I jumped about three feet away into bed for years because I didn't want a ghost to grab me from underneath the bed. I also low-key suspected my mom of having Munchausen Syndrome and was trying to poison me (she wasn't — I'm a healthy adult now with a good relationship with my mom). I wish I never watched The Sixth Sense..."

—u/paco64

"I haven't seen the movie in 20 years, and I still have vivid memories of a couple of scenes that really messed me up. The ghost grabbing ankles from under the bed, of course, is up there, but also the kid who he has a whole conversation with before he turns around and shows clear evidence that he is, in fact, a ghost. I probably shouldn't have thought this right before bed — oops."

—u/asshat123

Note: Some submissions have been edited for length and/or clarity.