I was originally going to write about some of my weird childhood fears, because there were a lot of them. But I feel like that idea is a little overplayed, I mean, we all had weird childhood fears because kids don't know what the hell is going on. So I thought it would be way more interesting to write about some of my weird fears from now, as a 20-year-old adult.
A few ground rules; No reasonable or serious fears, because I'm not gonna trauma-dump, and nothing OCD-related, because I also don't feel like writing about my OCD. In fact, pretend I don't even have OCD, it'll be way funnier.
This was a big deal a few years back, but there is a whole faction of people on the internet (and in real life) who were/are creeped out by the end credit song from SpongeBob. I remember reading about some technical explaination for this, something about how it's slightly out of tune and more low-key sounding which makes it feel isolating, but whatever it is, people were just admitting left and right that it either made them uncomfortable or downright terrified them.
I never considered the end credit music from SpongeBob "scary" until I read about this community. I, like most people of my generation, grew up watching SpongeBob and never even thought about the end credits. But upon giving it a closer listen, I've sort of come to understand where these people are coming from. If you listen to it in the context of "A relatively small but still significant group of people grew up terrified of this song", I think it gives it a little more merit. And as you'll soon come to realize, you can make anything scary to me with enough convincing.
Another possible explaination is a childhood story. When I was in 2nd or 3rd grade, my brothers were watching a SpongeBob DVD before school one morning. I left before they did, and I guess nobody knew how to eject a DVD, so I came home from school to find the DVD still playing on the menu screen. My grandma, who usually stayed at our house while we were at school, told me she had been listening to the SpongeBob ending theme on repeat the entire time. I've always had this more broad discomfort with repitition, which is probably an autism thing, so the thought of this mortified me back then and it still sort of does. I wonder if she ever gets it stuck in her head sometimes after listening to it over and over again for like 7 hours one day in 2014.
It should also be noted that people were afraid of the Education Connection jingle on TikTok a couple years ago for the same reason. The Education Connection jingle also scares me a little if I think about it too much.
Think about it. Plants live in the ground, for the most part. They don't talk, they don't eat or drink (in a literal sense. Unless they're carnivorus, which ironically enough I don't find as creepy.) They don't have any discernable features. But they move. Plants move and grow and they're alive and some of them are fucking giant. Sunflowers are especially terrifying to me. Sunflowers are way too big and they ALWAYS FACE THE SUN, MEANING THEY MOVE.
Is this the thought process of a 6-year-old? Sure, but I can't pretend that plants aren't kind of freaky to me. And I bet you can't either.
This one might be the most reasonable, because some songs are banned for scary reasons! An example that comes to mind is "Timothy" by The Buoys. That song really got past censores despite literally (and very clearly) being about cannibalism. I mean, the lyrics are not nearly subtle enough to have flown under the radar at all. I think you can make a pretty reasonable case for that being scary.
Like come the fuck on guys.
But in reality, it can be for any reason. A song is a little to risque and gets pulled from the air? Scary. A song is a little too topical after a tragedy or major world event? Scary. I really don't know. The idea of there being something that's not allowed to be on public airways for whatever reason, as trivial as it may be, is just unsettling.
I remember listening to a podcast on this topic when I was 11 or 12 and literally having to stop listening in the middle of it because it creeped me out. And then my nose started bleeding really hard and I almost had to go to the hospital, but I think that was unrelated.
It might be because I grew up on lost episode creepypastas, where something being pulled from the air automatically meant it was scary and cursed and hyperrealistic. Can that apply to songs, too? Not in real life. But when your model for horror as a child was Dead Bart, nothing really has to make sense.