I remember getting scared of Ghostbusters a bit (the refrigerator scene and Gozer with the gatekeeper and keymaster freaked me out). Truth be told I was scared of a lot of things as a kid, so if I took the time I could probably shell out a list.

@pezen said:

IT really messed me up too. Never did like clowns after that.

The first movie to ever give me actual nightmares as a kid was Terry Gilliam's Time Bandits, specifically those damn cow skull dudes in the robes.

The first jump scare I can remember was from Gmork in The Never Ending Story, if you've seen the movie you know exactly which scene I'm referring to. I watched that movie every chance I could get and every single time I did that damn Gmork scared the piss out of me, I loved it.

The first actual horror movie I ever watched was Nightmare On Elm Street 3 and that pretty much kept me awake for the next few nights. What was even funnier is we had frosted glass windows on either side of our front door and when the porch light was on the shadow it cast into the entryway looked just like that of a man in a trench coat and hat. The night after watching it my parents forgot to turn the porch light off and I had forgotten my water cup in the kitchen and didn't notice the shadow until I was walking back into my room and caught the shape in my peripheral vision. Needless to say 9 year old me wasn't too happy about that and neither were my parents when they stepped in the puddle of water left in the middle of the hallway the following morning.

The last horror movie I remember giving me a good scare was Poltergeist and I think that pretty much knocked all the fear out of me because I can't remember any other movie after that being scary and I watched pretty much every horror movie I could get my hands on from the time I was about 10 years old through my early 20s. Funnily enough, I can now no longer stand most horror movies.

I saw American Psycho a little too young at a friend's house and that gave me waking nightmares for years. There was probably something more innocuous that also affected me, but that one kinda erased everything else.

I do remember my little brother was pretty terrified of E.T. though. Specifically that scene in the sterilized chamber. We had it on VHS, but I probably only watched it once or twice because of that.

For the first few years of my life, I used to think I wasn't scared of anything. I never imagined monsters, or was scared of the dark, or anything like that.

Anyways, I was 5, and on my brother's 9th birthday, he and all his friends were watching Poltergeist. I watched most of it with them, mostly I was happy to be drinking pop, which was a privilege in our household. Anyways, the scene where the guy picks his face apart in the mirror scared the shit out of me. What didn't help was that all of my brother's friends were laughing at it, and it made me feel like there was something I wasn't getting. Something else on the screen other than the horrifying image I was seeing. I left the room and didn't return.

My mother tells me that as a small child, I was afraid of the Abominable Snowman in Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer. I also remember being terrified of the spider scene in Something Wicked This Way Comes.

Watching The Secret Life of Pets recently, I expect many small children will be terrified of the giant snake.

Nothing that would fit the criteria of movies that shouldn't have scared me but did as a kid. I had a TV and VCR (I am that old) in my room and was allowed to rent pretty much anything that didn't have boobs on the cover. The only movie that scarred me for life is The Exorcist.

Not a movie but I hated the intro for the TV adaptation of the Goosebumps books. For some odd reason the font of the logo freaked me out as a kid and I don't quite know why. Never read the books until into my teens when that (completely irrational) fear eventually went away.

I'm probably going to get some shit for this, but the scenes where Charlie is slowly transformed into Blanka in the Street Fighter movie freaked me out.

I forgot to mention the flying monkeys from the original Wizard of Oz.

pet cemetery :(

I don't remember being scared of it as a child but when I was a teenager I remember thinking the face-melting at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark was really messed up. It goes on for so long. I know it's pretty dated looking now but I'm still amazed that it was in what is essentially a kids film.

I don't remember anything else in particular. I don't think I was really exposed to horror films as relatvies didn't have any interest in watching them.