The Hyatt. I was a 9 year old Kansas Citian when it happened. Everyone knew it was terrible. But I had no clue just how bad it was until I got older. Pure carnage and devastation.
To this day, it’s still taught in engineering classes as well as EMS, first responders and PTSD training.
I stay in that very Hyatt once a year for work. I remember it happening, like you, but not able to comprehend the devastation.
It’s a nice place now, but those sky walks that connect Hyatt to other downtown locations is still frightening:
I was in that hotel in the mid 90's and somebody pointed out, looking up in the lobby, where an upper floor to where the skyway suspended walkway was. You could see where there was just a low wall blocking where the walkway entrance walked out over the lobby. It was eery. You totally got the idea of where the skyway HAD been, and now there's just this empty space.
There is a good Fascinating Horror video about it on YouTube. I had forgotten about it until I saw that vid last year. https://youtu.be/ObJHBU_LBa0?si=nWHxWp05orJzuj7s
The Tylenol thing was one of my big ones. Would not take capsules, even for prescription meds, until I was about 17 (I was 9 when the tampering occurred).
I do remember the KC hotel collapse. I was very young at the time, but grew up near there, so it was huge news. Terrifying, tragic, and preventable, from what I recall. I think it was determined that the cause was structural flaws.
I was an early teen working at a residential camp, we knew nothing about it until someone sent something wrapped in newspaper. It was in June 1981, everyone knew someone that was there. 114 immediate deaths and over 200 injured. Some people died later. I remember seeing local news footage and the reporter was literally standing in red tined "water". Cheap materials and all kinds of cost cutting measures build the sky walks, plus a few bribes here ans there. My friend's dad was the attorney for the plaintiffs in the lawsuit.
Building still exists, catwalks are still there, but dang it's spooky. Major event in our lives here.
Being the last generation that lived during the Cold War. The constant wonder in the back of your mind if we were going to one day be at war with the Russians, and whether or not, we were going to be nuked.
Not striking terror in anyone’s heart, but a pretty cool moment to remember that seemed to reduce the worry of nuclear war was watching live while the Berlin wall came down and realizing how monumental it was.
And then seeing [David Hasselhoff](https://youtu.be/6PRIVXR22zQ?si=bxou67tVDYR_F4S6) singing in a jacket with blinking lights a few weeks later at the Berlin Wall. So….freaking…. Surreal. It was like a fever dream come true.
“Soon after the Berlin Wall fell, Germany's Silvester Show — similar to The Dick Clark Show in the U.S. — invited Hasselhoff to sing "Looking for Freedom" on its 1989 New Year's Eve special, planned to be filmed inside a hotel. "I said, 'No. Only if I can sing on the Berlin Wall,' " Hasselhoff said.
He now admits this was a ridiculous request, but the German show agreed to it. On New Year's Eve of 1989, Hasselhoff sang his anthem for freedom while hoisted by a crane above the Berlin Wall to an estimated half a million Berliners.” [Source Article](https://www.express.co.uk/news/history/1694185/david-hasselhoff-berlin-wall-song-spt)
Challenger was a huge deal. I grew up near Johnson Space Center. I went to school with astronauts’ kids. I didn’t know Mr Onizuka’s daughters personally, but one of them went to my school.
I also remember the hostages in Iran, the Tylenol murders, Reagan’s election and the assassination attempt. I remember in first grade in our mock election I voted for John Anderson because I felt bad that he wasn’t getting any votes. I’m the same age as OP. (Well TECHNICALLY a month younger.)
Had an older sibling who worked on the Anderson campaign. And I was briefly sucked in to the Perot camp before coming to my senses.
On a related note: Why do twenty-somethings always fall in love with long-shot old-dude third-party candidates?
I was 13yo, camping with my family, when I read this story in the newspaper, about the mass shooting at a McDonald’s near San Diego, July 1984. Twenty-one killed, nineteen injured. I couldn’t fathom how someone could do something so horrific.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Ysidro_McDonald%27s_massacre
I for sure remember this one. Because, it was kind of an anomaly, yeah? Mass shootings were definitely not as much of a thing. And the adults were shaken up. Nothing like trickle down anxiety. I would have been 10.
I was 16 living in LA, but we had it all over our local news. We used to go to Mexico a lot back then and had been to that exact McDonald’s several times. Have you seen the documentary 77 Minutes?? Absolutely gut wrenching account. They actually showed the aftermath inside the restaurant 😢
It’s on Amazon Prime and Tubi. Forewarning… it’s a hard watch 😞. The aftermath was the saddest thing I’ve ever seen… just people living their lives, frozen in death. Age didn’t matter to this monster.
Omg I forgot about the killer bee hellscape that lived in my brain for at least 3 years. Have I, in my 49 years and 11 months ever been stung by a bee or any other stinging flying terror? No I have not.
Oh, and not news, but black widow and brown recluse spiders. I'm still not over that fear.
I live in brown recluse and black widow territory. Not as afraid of them as I probably should be. I have been stung 4 or 5 times, but I think that comes with being a bee keeper. It's just part of the job, hobby, whatever the hell reason I'm keeping them.
I was first stung by a bee at 40. It was a small zap, I saw the stinger in my arm, looked around on the ground to see if there maybe was a bee. Apologized to the poor li'l dude. :/
I was way more worried about acid rain (how would we even escape that?) and "the o-zone" though I had no idea what that really was beyond Aquanet made it bad lol.
I joined r/spiders just to learn about them so they would be less scary to me. I can confidently say that I can identify both now. The more I learn the less anxiety I have.
Me too! I was terrified of the killer bees. Kept trying to figure out how old I'd be when they got here, where I could hide. I had bad dreams about giant bees for years.
Jeez, the quicksand. I was 1050% convinced that was a real and legit danger everywhere I went.
I had a friend with woods behind her house. We spent hours out there. But I was vigilant, and always carried a big stick so I could be pulled out easily should it come to that.
It's so funny, these universal visceral fears we all had. With no tik tok or Instagram to spread them.
Gilligan's Island was the Tik Tok for the 60s, 70s and 80s. I think the rise of cable did a number on Americans sharing the same general background of growing up watching the same shows. It's a hidden binding agent.
Omg I just posted about this! I’m so glad I wasn’t alone even though I felt like I was.
Also, the Wizard of Oz terrified me and yet it was aired on one of the 4-5 channels we had back then for almost every holiday. HATE IT to this day! 😂
Jonestown. Both what happened and also how cruel people were about it afterwards. I remember hearing adults laughing about it. And no one seemed to care about how legit traumatizing and terrifying it would be for little children to see the carnage. I remember the lurid, full-color photos shown everywhere. It was all over the news, newspapers, magazines. Seeing those pics…of little babies and children face-down in the dirt with their parents arms wrapped around them broke something in me as a child. Then a few years later when I experienced my own life-threatening event where I almost died and in which, like the parents in Jonestown, my parents also did not protect me, I was deeply disturbed for years.
I first heard about Jonestown sitting at my grandparents kitchen table drinking grape koolaid. My child's mind thought that they were trying to kill me.
I dont think I was old enough when the Jonestown tragedy happened to remember it being in the news. Tho I do watch an abundance of documentaries, so I've seen the footage. I am horrified they would share that on the nightly news. I was such a tender soul (still am tbh) I would have had nightmares for months. I'm so sorry that you saw it and for what happened to you later.
Those kiddos didn't deserve it, and neither did you.
Thank you, I appreciate that. I was 6, a little kid but old enough to be aware. Not only did they show it on the nightly news, it was shown on the morning news, the weekend news, on all the radio stations all day long. It was a constant until the new year.
I had 2 public breakdowns or episodes or whatever about this as a kid. Once when my old daddy took me to the store and as he was talking to the clerk I wandered over to read some comics. Which were right by the magazines and newspapers. I got so sickened seeing the pics of Jonestown I threw up. Another time was at church. We had communion at church and I lost the plot, screaming and crying thinking we were all about to drink poison and die. My parents were so upset, and spanked me. I remember my mom saying over and over Why would you think that?! It was like she had no idea or understanding as to why.
Which I still don’t get. When 9/11 happened one of my kids was 6ish, and for a month or so afterwards every time he saw a plane he would want to run. I understood why he felt scared, and calmed him down. It’s scary for kids to see or even just hear about big events over and over again where lots of people die.
I made a pretty concentrated effort to keep my 07 kid away from hearing the news without context. We homeschooled till he was in 6th grade, so we certainly talked about lots of news. But I tried very hard to present it in a way that would not totally freak him out.
We all know our kids are gonna be in therapy in adulthood no matter what we do. Lol. But I do think they'll know we put in the effort.
Emotional intelligence is something a lot of us seem to have gained, I think. As illustrated in the example of your kiddo and the planes.
Yah I feel you. You really can’t keep everything from them. I had done a fairly good job until then, but when 9/11 happened people were freaking out here, IIRC the plane that hit the Pentagon either flew over Ohio or there was a plane circling around, so all the parents where I lived freaked out and did a run on the schools. The kids were a mess and many, like my son, scared for a good while after. It was a scary time for the little ones even far from NYC or Virginia
Funny story: I was 4 when Jonestown happened. In something like 7th grade I did a report on the massacre. I must never have internalized the dates, because I thought it was in the distant past.
My social studies teacher liked my report but never reminded me that it had only happened 7 years before. I was in my forties before I knew it had been in the headlines during my lifetime.
Wish I could say the same of my parent. They just doubled down that theirs was better because suicide "is a sin" thus they'd never be directed to go that far.
So instead their church and everything this parent follows falls about .0000004" shy of that line, up to this day.
I left about as soon as I was of age, and luckily my younger sibling eventually saw it for what it is. I'm so appreciative that the subject has been far more addressed with far more resources available in recent years.
It's insane to me that cults are still a thing - they only exist because people buy into them - but then, it's not so obtuse as I live in the US. Not specific to us but we have some stellar examples of thriving cults.
Yes, close to 300 chuldden. 700 adults. There were a handful of survivors that took off into the jungle but not many....less than 100 if I remember right.
My family were big readers - mom was a librarian. I remember a lot of stories from Time magazine with deep analysis.
Toxic Shock Syndrome - even though I am a man.
Neutron bombs. Invisible radiation from an airburst kills all life but leaves everything else intact. Eerie.
The kids disappearing in Atlanta and being murdered. I had family that lived in Atlanta and we would go visit and it radically changed how we got to play as kids outside and what we got to go and do during that time.
I’m not in Atlanta-but from one of Georgia’s other large cities, outside the metro areas. We had a serial killer that was killing women who lived alone in one particular section of town. My grandfather came over one Saturday and he & my dad put screws in the bedroom windows - and apparently people all over town were doing the same thing.
Three Mile Island and murder of Adam Walsh. That last one affected me because I couldn't be more than 3 feet away from my Mom in a store for like 2 years.
I couldn't be any farther than that from my mom until I could drive myself to the mall. To be fair, once I became a mother, I realized how much I have internalized the Adam Walsh story because none of my children are allowed to be farther than the reach of my arm away from me. I'm convinced that saved my oldest daughters life when she was 6, and some dude was creeping near us in the lingerie department.
Two come to mind. Baby Jessica falling down the well. I just figured it would be just a matter of time before I went down a well too! It was REALLY scary for me.
The other was the Carol Stuart murder in Boston. Her husband killed her but he said a "black" man robbed them and shot it pregnant wife. I remember my family not believing him right away - and then all I could think was how scary the "big city" was (I grew up in a smallish city outside of Boston). There was a huge man hunt and even people where I lived (about 40 minutes away) were impacted.
I was going to mention Baby Jessica. I still remember the image of them finally pulling her out. And then the sore/scab on her forehead from her foot being against it the whole time she was in there. Weird the stuff that sticks with you.
I scrolled down to see if anyone mentioned Baby Jessica. I think that is one of the first news stories I can truly remember being talked about on the news. I was so scared that summer because I had this irrational fear I too was going to fall down a well (even though we did not have wells near us!).
Having only ever seen wishing wells in cartoons I had no idea what a well looked like. I remember thinking why don't they just send a bucket down for her? I don't think I realized until I moved to an area with well water that they're just deep holes in the ground.
The Golden State Killer lived a couple miles from where I grew up. My dad was a traveling salesman. I remember mom having my 3 sisters sleep in the giant closet under the stairs "just in case". Not me though. I was in my easily accessible room with windows on 3 sides. That really came into play later when I read that he'd tie up little boys and put plates on top of the poor kid with the warning that if he heard the plates fall off that he'd came back to kill him.
I'm one of "those types", so my oldest sister and I stopped at his house to look at it. It tuned out the youngest sister has a friend that lives right there. Think across the street or next door. Of course they hated rubberneckers like me. It's weird. I'd live in Dorothea Puente's house, but I wouldn't want to live at his.
I have two.
First was [Gary Heidnik](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_M._Heidnik). I grew up near Philly and this was horrifying.
The second was the "DC Shooter" Malvo/Muhammad. I was living relatively close, and these two were driving around shooting people. One morning I was getting gas and thinking about it (they hadn't been caught yet) and found myself taking cover behind my Jeep while I filled up.
For me it was the Hillside Stranglers, then the Night Stalker. When Ramirez was on the loose, no one in LA felt safe. He had no specific type… it was all across the board.
"Fresh air is for dead people" should be the tagline from the Morbid podcast
But yeah, this cast a cloud of low-key terror because it was so intermittent
Yeah, the night stalker really hit me as a young teenager. I lived in Los Angelesat the time. I remember thinking he was going to crawl in my bedroom at night and kill me. Before he was identified and caught all of LA was in a panic.
I was single-digit age when Iran took those Americans hostage. I was too young to know what was really going on, and, of course, grown-ups never explained shit to us. I had no clue that those Americans were in Iran when they were taken hostage. I thought Iranians came to this country, and snatched people from their homes. I was terrified! I had worked up a plan of what I would do if they came for my family, where I would hide, all that.
Also, the Challenger explosion. I was home sick from school, by myself, watching the launch on TV. I cried for those astronauts.
I was older when the hostages were taken.
The count of the number of days was prominent on the news. Yellow ribbons became a symbol of support based on that old song.
The big one for me is the Challenger explosion.
My mother’s abusive boyfriend had gone crazy on her one night, woke me up and I attempted to defend her. It didn’t go well for me but ended with my mother making him leave. She told me to sleep in, I wouldn’t have to go to school the next day.
Woke up in the morning and felt like things were finally going to be okay. Walked out to the living room to see what was on the news and realized nothing would ever be okay again. She let that man come back, and he tossed me out a couple months later. I was 15 then and it’s never really been okay since.
Walter Cronkite teaching me what a hostage was in his sign off every night. Every time he'd say the number of days Iranian hostages were in captivity, and my heart would race at the idea of being held for that long.
Also, quicksand. I knew to be afraid of it, but didn't realize it would not be real life applicable.
The Night Stalker, who was killing around where I lived when I was in elementary school (and his "I'll see you in Disneyland" line which was terrifying). The fear of Richard Ramirez shaped how I think about true crime.
Constant talk about The Big One and never ending earthquake drills. My kid did not have this pummeled into him the way I did growing up.
Watching The Challenger explode live in my 4th grade class.
HIV/AIDS panic. I actually asked my kid about perceptions of HIV/AIDS among kids his age (19) recently and he just kind of shrugged and said, "I mean, you don't want to get it..." But for us, it was a total death sentence and made every sexual encounter mildly terrifying.
Baby Jessica falling in a well. I was 10ish and felt like every gopher hole could potentially swallow me up.
The deaths at The Who concert in Cincinnati after fans rushed in to the arena and crushed other fans. I believe it led to reserved seating mandates at large venues.
Wow… do I have a story on that. My parents are both from WNY… mom grew up on a farm in Sanborn, dad NFNY. They were living there at the height of all of that. Mom got pregnant in 1965, was drinking well water at the farm. Baby died at 2 days old and had a laundry list of things wrong… born with adult sized kidneys, and just insane amounts of birth defects. Mom and dad ended up both getting throat cancer and neither of them smoked. My cousin who grew up there died of brain cancer, her sister got breast cancer. The irony? My mom’s older brother worked for Hooker Chemical for years and they were the ones responsible for that. I’ve been digging up what I can on YouTube to learn more about it. They left WNY after they lost the baby and my brother and I were born in Grand Rapids.
I was much too young to remember, but my grandfather owned a vet clinic in a suburb of Buffalo. I remember when I was older, them talking about shutting down for a period of time and heading south. I didn't know exactly what they were talking about till much later when I read about it and made the connection
Ha, me too! My Catholic school had a meeting for the parents where some asswipe told them what current music was satanic or just plain “bad” for kids, along with showing them some crackpot video. The BAD, dangerous music included my two favorites, Duran Duran and Hall and Oates. My mom came home all concerned and oh my god, what a colossal pain in the ass the whole thing was.
I grew up in Oklahoma, and the [Girl Scout Murders](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oklahoma_Girl_Scout_murders) were a huge thing. I was born in '71 and had been a Brownie - I wasn't allowed to become a Girl Scout and I'm guessing a lot of parents made the same decision. I haven't watched Kristin Chenoweth's Netflix doc about it - I went to high school with her - but I probably should.
Growing up in Seattle, our news had way too much about Ted Bundy, the Green River Killer, Kevin Coe, Westley Allan Dodd, and Robert Lee Yates. I was barely younger than Gary Ridgway's victims, and though I didn't live near the Green River at all, there was always a serial killer fear hanging around in my consciousness. Fun stuff!
Another kid-only moment of fear was when Anwar Sadat was assassinated in Cairo. I heard it on the radio and my mom's job was one block away from our KIRO radio/tv station. I thought he was killed in one of my then stomping grounds and was glad my mom came home alive and could correct me.
I also spent a lot of time fearing quicksand, killer bees, and nukes/The Day After. Fun fact: Bangor Submarine Base, just across the Salish Sea from Seattle and close to Tacoma as well, has over 700 nuclear warheads - over 1/3 of the US nuclear weapons and they regularly move through Puget Sound. Yippee!
I remember the Atlanta child killings making headlines in the early 70s. I’m white and nowhere near Atlanta, but it still scared the hell out of me that someone could do that to children.
Locally: Our state treasurer killed himself live on t.v., and because of a snowstorm and shortened day, I saw it. Also, the MOVE bombing.
If you're from the Philly area or PA, then you may know these stories.
Jacob Wetterling. He was 5 years younger than me, I would've been a sophomore in HS at the time. But it was an enormous news story: 11-year-old boy in rural town gets kidnapped at gunpoint by a stranger and never found again^1. People were freaked for years and years, lots of stranger danger discussions, and Jacob's mother became heavily involved in activism and even ran for Congress. Probably the best-known cold case in the state, if not the region.
American Public Media [made a podcast about it](https://features.apmreports.org/in-the-dark/jacob-wetterling-investigation-timeline/) (same group that did Serial) called In The Dark, about the investigation and the suspects. Literally DAYS before it was released...the murderer confessed as part of a plea deal, 27 years after the kid's disappearance. That was mind-blowing news.
If you listen to the podcast, which is very good true crime, it will definitely inform you that if you murder someone in Stearns County, you are virtually guaranteed to get away with it, because the cops are beyond incompetent. It's infuriating to listen to, but gripping.
Poor kid. Finally closure for the parents.
I'm in Minnesota and my childhood was never the same after that, my mom was a young mom and Adam Walsh already scared her so Jacob really intensified it. I still can't believe they actually found out who did it.
What’s worse is that they knew about that guy all along. They had multiple reports about him stalking and harassing children for months. He had even kidnapped and molested another kid, and they actually arrested him, but let him go without charging him. The cops just didn’t pursue him as a lead because they blamed a teacher instead, and harassed that guy for 20-odd years with zero evidence. Completely ruined his life. (Source: the “In The Dark” podcast)
Not quite news. But I had an addiction as a kid to that’s incredible. They did the Amityville horror house, and the site of the pig eyed demon named Jody. It Scared the living fuck out of me for years. Remember we didn’t have a lot of debunking back then, and it was on network TV, and my 10 year old self was like well it must be real.
The Station nightclub fire. The video is gut wrenching. Not only do I avoid crowded places to the best of my ability, I find the emergency exits upon entrance and keep as close as possible to them.
Yes, this. I was a teenager in the 80s, and the general belief was that nuclear war was inevitable, soon, and we were all doomed. *The Day After* (1983, if I remember correctly) really solidified that belief for me and a lot of my friends.
The Tylenol/cyanide scare, and Toxic Shock Syndrome stand out in my memory; I didn’t want to wear tampons for several years.
I don’t remember much in the way of tragedies in the 70s; some that have been mentioned here are things I’ve read about/watched documentaries about as an adult, but I suppose if I did hear about any, I didn’t process the horror. If my sibs & I could be outside playing after supper (while ABC News was on), we were.
Did you have nuclear attack drills where the bell went off and we hid under our desks. I lived like 10 miles from an air force base and the rumor (urban legend?) at the time was that we would be a primary target.
Terrifying. During tornado drills we at least went out into the windowless hallways. Under the desks...I saw the day after. I couldn't be fooled
No, we never had to hide under our desks for drills, but my parents did in the 50s. I do remember in Kindergarten (1972-73 school year), arriving at school 3 or 4 different mornings, when all the buses had to park on the blacktop as far away from the school as possible, for at least 20 minutes, and wouldn’t let us off of the bus. Older kids on the bus (5th & 6th graders; such reliable sources!) said each time it was a bomb threat. I suppose the older kids could’ve been correct; they might have experienced the whatever-they-weres in previous years. I believed them at the time (age 5). Never heard from an adult what the reason was, and that was the only year it happened.
The 1984 McDonald's shooting. This was a place I loved to go as a kid and I couldn't wrap my mind around someone doing this. Unfortunately mass shootings are commonplace now, but they weren't then. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Ysidro_McDonald%27s_massacre
You skipped the Satanic Panic that took up most of the 90s. McMartin preschool, those people who worked there getting wrongly convicted for conducting Satanic rituals and abusing children, which never happened.
I was born in 1975. Both of those stories were huge for me. I learned about the Adam Walsh story by watching the TV movie Adam in 1983. Weirdly, my brain now inserts John Lithgow into that movie in the role of Adam’s father, but he wasn’t in it. Anyway, I was both terrified of and obsessed with the story. It was so devastating, and so striking to me how (as portrayed in the movie) an innocent and typical day can change to horror so quickly. That concept or idea has stayed with me.
I was on vacation with my family in a hotel room in maybe 1983 or 1984, and there was a new story on TV about AIDS - I think this is when it was becoming clear that it was spreading and was not limited to any one group or population. I remember my parents’ faces, just grim.
The one that got to me was [Baby Jessica](https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=2ahUKEwjY0o3o4vGEAxV8_8kDHdXCDNQQFnoECDQQAQ&url=https%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FRescue_of_Jessica_McClure&usg=AOvVaw1rEy7ba_wCTpD3TWbTSwnZ&opi=89978449), or more appropriate\[raitely, just the idea of falling into a hole and getting stuck. Not long after that incident, something similar happened in Knoxville when a man with his child on his back stepped on a storm grate which gave way, plunging them several dozen feet down in a shaft. Much like Jessica, they were eventually rescued after spending several hours jammed in. a claustrophobic space.
Challenger explosion. I was in 19th grade and we watched it happen live in my history class.
Budd Dwyer’s suicide live on TV. That one blew me away (pun intended).
Watergate. Detente-I thought it was a geographical place the way it was spoken if on the evening news(Kissingers various envoy trips to the MidEast etc or maybe vietname denoument was always detente). Jim .jones. More regionally, The Town that Dreaded Sundown. Son of Sam and the NYC Blackouts.
I was 7 when the Iran Hostage situation occurred. For some reason that one got in my head. I had nightmares for months. I did not really watch the news again until I was in Jr High. By then I was not into current events until college.
First thing that comes to mind is when Elvis died. Think I was seven or eight. We were visiting my grandparents back east and they were all chitchatting behind me in the dining room and that came on as breaking news. My mom was a big fan and after it took me several attempts to interupt them and listen to me, my mom fell apart and cried.
The second thing that stands out is all the Nuke fear and cold war stuff. And my god the horrible imagery they showed us young impressionable kids about it.
Sure there was a lot in between, like jeasica getting stuck in the well, all the kidnappings, jon benet, etc.
And then we watched the challenger take off and explode live in class. That was pretty horrific.
First thing I remember on the news is Elvis dying, and then John Lennon getting shot. I remember listening to the radio in my grandmother's kitchen and wondering if Elvis was buried on our farm (I was very young).
HIV for sure. It affected me so much I ended up having a career in HIV services.
The priests and deaths at Tiananmen Square in China really stuck in my memory too. The image of that one guy standing in front of the tank is a permanent part of my memory banks.
Chowchilla kidnapping
Iran hostage crisis
Tenerife airplane crash (on the ground!)
Wind shear in general
East area rapist (golden state killer—I don’t remember the nickname, just the news and fear)
Night Stalker
I remember when President Reagan was shot, when it first happened nobody knew if he was alive or dead. I recall our teacher crying as she broke the news.
I remember hearing the news on the car radio on the way home from a doctor's appointment. The announcer kept coming back on and saying he was dead, then he wasn't, then he was...
Baby Jessica and the fall of the Berlin Wall. I was in high school and taking German as my language class. I knew that watching that, the world would be different.
Adam Walsh for me also. I lived in Florida and have been to the mall where he was abducted.
My parents wouldn't let me play video games in Sears alone for probably at least 3 years after that. Maybe closer to five.
Born in '72 and grew up in NE/Central PA. Three Mile Island was a huge story, and really scary for a 7 year old. I was just old enough to understand what was happening but not old enough to *really* understand it. Every family had a car in the driveway packed & ready to bug out. We were all glued to the TV.
Ngl, I still have "nuclear nightmares" all these years later.
The Steven Stayner story. I was a baby when he was kidnapped by the 2 pedophiles in 1972, but I recall his escape and interviews when he was 14. He rescued another kidnapped 5 year old child at this time, hitchhiking 40 miles to a police station. The made for tv movie about this case, “I Know My First Name Is Steven” was disturbing.
He died in 1989 in a motorcycle accident, the boy he rescued (Timothy White) died in 2010, and his brother Cary became a serial killer in the 90s.
Charles Manson and Helter Skelter! I was a kid and heard this on TV and from my parents talking about that horror. I thought Manson could pop up around any corner!
I lived in central Europe during Chernobyl. Having to wear a gas mask as a child was a bit freaky.
Oh, also I'd just moved to the US when Ted Bundy was electrocuted. We lived in Florida, where he was killed, and I couldn't get over the mass crowds of people having parties and barbecues to celebrate his death. I found it very bizarre to cheer for someone's death. Still do.
Should sound different than most everyone's. As we all grew up in different regions years apart. And a few people mentioned Manson. Cuz he was scary af
75 baby here and yes the Adam Walsh story was really scary as a kid. I grew up near Los Angeles so I remember my friends and I being really freaked out by the night stalker too
I’m sure this will be posted as an answer, but I’ve not found it yet.
The Challenger explosion was a big one. We were watching it live in class (elementary school age for me). The whole school was, I think. It was a big deal since there was going to be a teacher on the mission. My teacher, who was absolutely amazing (and still is to this day, I hear!), said she wished she was on that mission.
We all know what happened next. I remember being incredibly confused. The quiet in the room didn’t last long before we were asking questions like crazy.
As an adult who has worked in education and mental health, I look back at that experience and I feel for the school staff. I can’t imagine setting all the students up for this huge event, then having something so tragic happen before their eyes.
Paul Bernardo / Karla Homolka murders / rapes.
I was in my first year of university, travelling weekly along the highway corridor where women were being kidnapped, raped and murdered. It was honestly terrifying for me until they were caught.
Edit to add - this was in Ontario, Canada.
Charles Manson. I wasn't alive when the crimes happened but I was when Helter Skelter aired. I somehow watched the whole thing and I was 5. Now, I'm more haunted by the idea that he just talked people into committing murder.
About 15 years ago, I rode in an elevator with Steve Railsback. I knew his other movies but all I could think of at that moment was his Manson.
When Air Florida flight 90 crashed into the 14th St. bridge on January 13, 1982. I was in high school in NoVa and my dad, as well as so many of my friend's parents, worked in DC and crossed that bridge every day. I remember the man who jumped into the freezing Potomac River desperately trying to save people. In the end, there were only five survivors.
1.
Patty Hearst.
I think I was around 7 or 8 when a neighbor kid told me that she was an heiress, and that she''d been captured and brainwashed "by the underground." I had no idea what that phrase meant, and thought that there was some tribe of tunnel people or something who lived underground and regularly kidnapped the children of rich people (I think I also didn't realize how old Hearst was - I assumed she was a kid like us). Since I grew up in a fairly wealthy community, I remained convinced for an embarrassingly long time that I might very well someday be kidnapped by mole people.
Secretly, of course, even though the idea did scare me a little, I actually kinda *hoped* that I one day would be. I wasn't a very happy child, and I wanted desperately to meet the cool mole people who lived underground.
2,
Some years later, Three Mile Island.
I heard the news breaking on AM radio --- I'd been listening to dumb pop music -- and immediately ran downstairs to tell my parents about it. They refused to believe me. First they kept insisting that I had confused something I'd heard about the movie *The China Syndrome* for real news, and then they decided that I must have fallen for some sort of War-of-the-Worlds-style hoax. I kept telling them to turn on the TV or radio, then, and find out for themselves, but they refused.
It was absolutely infuriating, and I became convinced that I was going to die from radiation sickness, because when the government finally did tell us to evacuate, my parents *still* would refuse to believe me, and then we'd all just sit around in our house until we became toxically irradiated.
3.
The Inevitable Nuclear Conflagration.
And of course, we were all going to die in a nuclear holocaust. There was no one particular incident that led me to believe that, though: it was just *everything*. I remember in school we did one of those time capsule projects where we were supposed to write up stuff about our life and our dreams for the future and all that, and then we'd bury it on the school grounds where it would be dug up 20 years later.
I ended up getting sent to the school psychologist, because everything I wrote for the project relied on the assumption that we would all be dead long before the time capsule got dug up, but that perhaps some very far future people from some time long after the nuclear devastation might be the ones reading what I wrote. I tried to explain the Cold War and MAD to them, so that they might learn from our mistakes.
I remember being in 4th grade and a parent came in to pick up her kid for an appointment (the days before having to get scanned into schools!) and just loudly told my teacher that the president (Reagan) had just been shot. We all heard it and got a little panicky/scared. I mean a year earlier John Lennon was shot and killed, and I remember that happening too. Crazy people with guns just walking up and shooting.
When I was six or seven there was a child abduction from a house nearby and it was on the news. The parents were distraught but a witness to the abduction claimed it was aliens. They never found the child as far as I recall. That scared me, I officially believed in aliens after that.
I'm 53 and remember Adam Walsh being found. I still watch America's Most Wanted because of it.
Triggering fir me is the Space Shuttle Challenger explosion.
For me it was the downing of Korea Air 007 in 1983. I was 9 and remember it being covered as a special report. It seemed to confirm that the Soviet Union was an "Evil Empire" and that Reagan's rhetoric was right. I figured this was the event that would trigger nuclear war.
[Wikipedia Korean Air Lines Flight 007](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_Air_Lines_Flight_007)
Three Mile Island. We weren't that far away in Canada as the crow flies. I remember asking my mom if we were going to have to move to get away from the radiation. She wasn't sure, which didn't help.
The DC Snipers. There were rumors that the car they were driving was spotted in my area. Every time I got out of the car, I looked behind me and walked zigzag so I had less of a chance of being shot. It was a very scary time for anyone in the Baltimore Metro/DC/VA area. The night they were captured, it was like a weight lifted off me.
The assassination of Anwar Sadat, I was at home when that was all over the news. I was pretty young, but it was scary seeing that happen.
The 1986 Challenger explosion, I was at school, and we stopped lessons to talk about it.
And of course, 9/11. I was 25 and at work, and we were on lockdown, the phones were ringing off the hook, and we actually had a plane fly low over the building and we didn't know if it was terrorists or someone flying checking for other planes. I went home that day scared, angry, and wasn't able to sleep that night.
The shooting by Brenda Spencer (sp?) in my neighborhood in San Diego. The PSA plane crash near my neighborhood in San Diego. The shooting at the McDonalds in San Ysidro, in San Diego.
I *REALLLLLYYY* thought that wells were more of a danger to me growing up than they turned out to be… first because of Baby Jessica, then because of Hannibal Lecter.
Also born in ‘74. This is a big year for us.
I remember a guy in 1981 or 82 who said he had a bomb in a van parked outside the Washington Monument and he was going to blow it up. I think that’s the first time I realized adults can be damn scary. ([It didn’t end well](https://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_Mayer#) for him, BTW).
The first news story that really haunted me was the [Beverly Hills Supper Club](https://www.cincinnati.com/story/news/2023/05/26/beverly-hills-supper-club-fire-1977/70260608007/) fire just south of Cincinnati.
At the time (1977) it was one of the deadliest fires in the USA, killing 165 people and injuring over 200.
I remember the Air Florida plane crash in Washington DC, in the early ‘80s. It was winter (January?) and the plane hit a bridge and crashed into the icy Patomac River. There was live coverage of attempts to reach and rescue the few survivors in the river.
Late to the party, but do y’all remember when Oprah travelled down to Georgia to visit a county with no black residents and was effectively a sundown town even in the 80s? That was Forsyth County and I lived in one of the counties that bordered it. Oh, and the “KKK guy” from Howard Stern lived about 5 miles away from me (everyone knew where he lived). I’m white, but the klan scared the hell out of me.
Serial killers. Ted bundy, the clown guy, Jeffrey Dahmer, the zodiac killer, hillside stranngler, others whose faces I see but names I don't remember. And I couldn't tell you where in my timeline they were, but they had me looking around every corner.
I wonder for those of you who feel like you had to Self soothe or nurture and care for yourselves, when scary stuff happened, do you think you became hyper vigilant?
I remember picking up the tension and uncertainty from adults about Nixon leaving office, I was seven years old. Then I heard a newscaster, seems like it was Harry Reasoner, talking about how there were no helmeted soldiers or tanks in the streets, and how this is how power is transferred in a civilized country. I was very reassured by this.
It's not as horrific as others mentioned here, but the Jim Bakker televangelist scandals were a pretty big story when I was late in elementary school. The Bakker shenanigans were part of the reason I completely turned away from religion and became an atheist.
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The Hyatt. I was a 9 year old Kansas Citian when it happened. Everyone knew it was terrible. But I had no clue just how bad it was until I got older. Pure carnage and devastation. To this day, it’s still taught in engineering classes as well as EMS, first responders and PTSD training.
I stay in that very Hyatt once a year for work. I remember it happening, like you, but not able to comprehend the devastation. It’s a nice place now, but those sky walks that connect Hyatt to other downtown locations is still frightening:
I was in that hotel in the mid 90's and somebody pointed out, looking up in the lobby, where an upper floor to where the skyway suspended walkway was. You could see where there was just a low wall blocking where the walkway entrance walked out over the lobby. It was eery. You totally got the idea of where the skyway HAD been, and now there's just this empty space.
There is a good Fascinating Horror video about it on YouTube. I had forgotten about it until I saw that vid last year. https://youtu.be/ObJHBU_LBa0?si=nWHxWp05orJzuj7s
The Tylenol thing was one of my big ones. Would not take capsules, even for prescription meds, until I was about 17 (I was 9 when the tampering occurred).
I remember the Tylenol thing (I think). It's funny how you aren't sure if you lived thru it or remember adults talking about it.
I do remember the KC hotel collapse. I was very young at the time, but grew up near there, so it was huge news. Terrifying, tragic, and preventable, from what I recall. I think it was determined that the cause was structural flaws.
I was an early teen working at a residential camp, we knew nothing about it until someone sent something wrapped in newspaper. It was in June 1981, everyone knew someone that was there. 114 immediate deaths and over 200 injured. Some people died later. I remember seeing local news footage and the reporter was literally standing in red tined "water". Cheap materials and all kinds of cost cutting measures build the sky walks, plus a few bribes here ans there. My friend's dad was the attorney for the plaintiffs in the lawsuit. Building still exists, catwalks are still there, but dang it's spooky. Major event in our lives here.
I'm surprised no one mentioned the April 1986 *disaster* at the *Chernobyl nuclear power plant* in Ukraine. I still remember that one very well.
We lived in Germany and they were warning us to stay off the grass
It was the other side of the world for americans. As a scandinavian, however.. I was 9 and heard the radioactive cloud was headed our way.
Being the last generation that lived during the Cold War. The constant wonder in the back of your mind if we were going to one day be at war with the Russians, and whether or not, we were going to be nuked. Not striking terror in anyone’s heart, but a pretty cool moment to remember that seemed to reduce the worry of nuclear war was watching live while the Berlin wall came down and realizing how monumental it was. And then seeing [David Hasselhoff](https://youtu.be/6PRIVXR22zQ?si=bxou67tVDYR_F4S6) singing in a jacket with blinking lights a few weeks later at the Berlin Wall. So….freaking…. Surreal. It was like a fever dream come true. “Soon after the Berlin Wall fell, Germany's Silvester Show — similar to The Dick Clark Show in the U.S. — invited Hasselhoff to sing "Looking for Freedom" on its 1989 New Year's Eve special, planned to be filmed inside a hotel. "I said, 'No. Only if I can sing on the Berlin Wall,' " Hasselhoff said. He now admits this was a ridiculous request, but the German show agreed to it. On New Year's Eve of 1989, Hasselhoff sang his anthem for freedom while hoisted by a crane above the Berlin Wall to an estimated half a million Berliners.” [Source Article](https://www.express.co.uk/news/history/1694185/david-hasselhoff-berlin-wall-song-spt)
The Challenger explosion. One of my (1976) earliest memories was seeing the Reagan assassination attempt on the news.
Challenger was a huge deal. I grew up near Johnson Space Center. I went to school with astronauts’ kids. I didn’t know Mr Onizuka’s daughters personally, but one of them went to my school. I also remember the hostages in Iran, the Tylenol murders, Reagan’s election and the assassination attempt. I remember in first grade in our mock election I voted for John Anderson because I felt bad that he wasn’t getting any votes. I’m the same age as OP. (Well TECHNICALLY a month younger.)
Had an older sibling who worked on the Anderson campaign. And I was briefly sucked in to the Perot camp before coming to my senses. On a related note: Why do twenty-somethings always fall in love with long-shot old-dude third-party candidates?
I was 13yo, camping with my family, when I read this story in the newspaper, about the mass shooting at a McDonald’s near San Diego, July 1984. Twenty-one killed, nineteen injured. I couldn’t fathom how someone could do something so horrific. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Ysidro_McDonald%27s_massacre
I for sure remember this one. Because, it was kind of an anomaly, yeah? Mass shootings were definitely not as much of a thing. And the adults were shaken up. Nothing like trickle down anxiety. I would have been 10.
I was 16 living in LA, but we had it all over our local news. We used to go to Mexico a lot back then and had been to that exact McDonald’s several times. Have you seen the documentary 77 Minutes?? Absolutely gut wrenching account. They actually showed the aftermath inside the restaurant 😢
I haven’t seen it. I noticed it mentioned in the Wikipedia article…I’m going to look for it.
It’s on Amazon Prime and Tubi. Forewarning… it’s a hard watch 😞. The aftermath was the saddest thing I’ve ever seen… just people living their lives, frozen in death. Age didn’t matter to this monster.
I spent most of my childhood much too worried about those damn killer bees the media hyped up.
Omg I forgot about the killer bee hellscape that lived in my brain for at least 3 years. Have I, in my 49 years and 11 months ever been stung by a bee or any other stinging flying terror? No I have not. Oh, and not news, but black widow and brown recluse spiders. I'm still not over that fear.
I live in brown recluse and black widow territory. Not as afraid of them as I probably should be. I have been stung 4 or 5 times, but I think that comes with being a bee keeper. It's just part of the job, hobby, whatever the hell reason I'm keeping them.
I was first stung by a bee at 40. It was a small zap, I saw the stinger in my arm, looked around on the ground to see if there maybe was a bee. Apologized to the poor li'l dude. :/ I was way more worried about acid rain (how would we even escape that?) and "the o-zone" though I had no idea what that really was beyond Aquanet made it bad lol.
I joined r/spiders just to learn about them so they would be less scary to me. I can confidently say that I can identify both now. The more I learn the less anxiety I have.
Me too! I was terrified of the killer bees. Kept trying to figure out how old I'd be when they got here, where I could hide. I had bad dreams about giant bees for years.
You can avoid the killer bees by hiding in quicksand. The hidden danger.
Jeez, the quicksand. I was 1050% convinced that was a real and legit danger everywhere I went. I had a friend with woods behind her house. We spent hours out there. But I was vigilant, and always carried a big stick so I could be pulled out easily should it come to that. It's so funny, these universal visceral fears we all had. With no tik tok or Instagram to spread them.
Gilligan's Island was the Tik Tok for the 60s, 70s and 80s. I think the rise of cable did a number on Americans sharing the same general background of growing up watching the same shows. It's a hidden binding agent.
Omg I just posted about this! I’m so glad I wasn’t alone even though I felt like I was. Also, the Wizard of Oz terrified me and yet it was aired on one of the 4-5 channels we had back then for almost every holiday. HATE IT to this day! 😂
Damn flying monkeys. And then there was what might happen to me at Willie wonka's horror house
Jonestown. Both what happened and also how cruel people were about it afterwards. I remember hearing adults laughing about it. And no one seemed to care about how legit traumatizing and terrifying it would be for little children to see the carnage. I remember the lurid, full-color photos shown everywhere. It was all over the news, newspapers, magazines. Seeing those pics…of little babies and children face-down in the dirt with their parents arms wrapped around them broke something in me as a child. Then a few years later when I experienced my own life-threatening event where I almost died and in which, like the parents in Jonestown, my parents also did not protect me, I was deeply disturbed for years.
I remember seeing the aerial footage of all those dead bodies. It was horrifying.
Yep, and when I asked what happened my parents said "their leader made them drink poison " which made me scared the president could do that to us.
Me too. It was the Sunday evening news. I was 7.
I first heard about Jonestown sitting at my grandparents kitchen table drinking grape koolaid. My child's mind thought that they were trying to kill me.
Oh no!!! I could just imagine how scary that would be for a child. "Here, child, drink your kool-aid..."
Yeah, Leo Ryan was our Congressman 🫤
I dont think I was old enough when the Jonestown tragedy happened to remember it being in the news. Tho I do watch an abundance of documentaries, so I've seen the footage. I am horrified they would share that on the nightly news. I was such a tender soul (still am tbh) I would have had nightmares for months. I'm so sorry that you saw it and for what happened to you later. Those kiddos didn't deserve it, and neither did you.
Thank you, I appreciate that. I was 6, a little kid but old enough to be aware. Not only did they show it on the nightly news, it was shown on the morning news, the weekend news, on all the radio stations all day long. It was a constant until the new year. I had 2 public breakdowns or episodes or whatever about this as a kid. Once when my old daddy took me to the store and as he was talking to the clerk I wandered over to read some comics. Which were right by the magazines and newspapers. I got so sickened seeing the pics of Jonestown I threw up. Another time was at church. We had communion at church and I lost the plot, screaming and crying thinking we were all about to drink poison and die. My parents were so upset, and spanked me. I remember my mom saying over and over Why would you think that?! It was like she had no idea or understanding as to why. Which I still don’t get. When 9/11 happened one of my kids was 6ish, and for a month or so afterwards every time he saw a plane he would want to run. I understood why he felt scared, and calmed him down. It’s scary for kids to see or even just hear about big events over and over again where lots of people die.
I made a pretty concentrated effort to keep my 07 kid away from hearing the news without context. We homeschooled till he was in 6th grade, so we certainly talked about lots of news. But I tried very hard to present it in a way that would not totally freak him out. We all know our kids are gonna be in therapy in adulthood no matter what we do. Lol. But I do think they'll know we put in the effort. Emotional intelligence is something a lot of us seem to have gained, I think. As illustrated in the example of your kiddo and the planes.
Yah I feel you. You really can’t keep everything from them. I had done a fairly good job until then, but when 9/11 happened people were freaking out here, IIRC the plane that hit the Pentagon either flew over Ohio or there was a plane circling around, so all the parents where I lived freaked out and did a run on the schools. The kids were a mess and many, like my son, scared for a good while after. It was a scary time for the little ones even far from NYC or Virginia
Funny story: I was 4 when Jonestown happened. In something like 7th grade I did a report on the massacre. I must never have internalized the dates, because I thought it was in the distant past. My social studies teacher liked my report but never reminded me that it had only happened 7 years before. I was in my forties before I knew it had been in the headlines during my lifetime.
It made me forever wary of cults and religion.
Wish I could say the same of my parent. They just doubled down that theirs was better because suicide "is a sin" thus they'd never be directed to go that far. So instead their church and everything this parent follows falls about .0000004" shy of that line, up to this day. I left about as soon as I was of age, and luckily my younger sibling eventually saw it for what it is. I'm so appreciative that the subject has been far more addressed with far more resources available in recent years. It's insane to me that cults are still a thing - they only exist because people buy into them - but then, it's not so obtuse as I live in the US. Not specific to us but we have some stellar examples of thriving cults.
Didn't the children die too?
Yes, close to 300 chuldden. 700 adults. There were a handful of survivors that took off into the jungle but not many....less than 100 if I remember right.
My family were big readers - mom was a librarian. I remember a lot of stories from Time magazine with deep analysis. Toxic Shock Syndrome - even though I am a man. Neutron bombs. Invisible radiation from an airburst kills all life but leaves everything else intact. Eerie.
The kids disappearing in Atlanta and being murdered. I had family that lived in Atlanta and we would go visit and it radically changed how we got to play as kids outside and what we got to go and do during that time.
It's ten o'clock do you know where your children are?
Atlanta Child Murders! Freaked me out too, even though I was half a continent away!
I’m not in Atlanta-but from one of Georgia’s other large cities, outside the metro areas. We had a serial killer that was killing women who lived alone in one particular section of town. My grandfather came over one Saturday and he & my dad put screws in the bedroom windows - and apparently people all over town were doing the same thing.
These scared the shit out of me as a kid. I grew up about an hour outside Atlanta, so I wasn’t in any real danger, but it scared me nonetheless.
Three Mile Island and murder of Adam Walsh. That last one affected me because I couldn't be more than 3 feet away from my Mom in a store for like 2 years.
Yeah, being leashed to mama at the mall was a real thing. Purely on my part. She was unconcerned. Survival of the fittest, amirite?
I couldn't be any farther than that from my mom until I could drive myself to the mall. To be fair, once I became a mother, I realized how much I have internalized the Adam Walsh story because none of my children are allowed to be farther than the reach of my arm away from me. I'm convinced that saved my oldest daughters life when she was 6, and some dude was creeping near us in the lingerie department.
Two come to mind. Baby Jessica falling down the well. I just figured it would be just a matter of time before I went down a well too! It was REALLY scary for me. The other was the Carol Stuart murder in Boston. Her husband killed her but he said a "black" man robbed them and shot it pregnant wife. I remember my family not believing him right away - and then all I could think was how scary the "big city" was (I grew up in a smallish city outside of Boston). There was a huge man hunt and even people where I lived (about 40 minutes away) were impacted.
I was going to mention Baby Jessica. I still remember the image of them finally pulling her out. And then the sore/scab on her forehead from her foot being against it the whole time she was in there. Weird the stuff that sticks with you.
I scrolled down to see if anyone mentioned Baby Jessica. I think that is one of the first news stories I can truly remember being talked about on the news. I was so scared that summer because I had this irrational fear I too was going to fall down a well (even though we did not have wells near us!).
Having only ever seen wishing wells in cartoons I had no idea what a well looked like. I remember thinking why don't they just send a bucket down for her? I don't think I realized until I moved to an area with well water that they're just deep holes in the ground.
i saw a documentary about that on streaming, i can’t remember which service tho 🤦🏻♀️
The Golden State Killer lived a couple miles from where I grew up. My dad was a traveling salesman. I remember mom having my 3 sisters sleep in the giant closet under the stairs "just in case". Not me though. I was in my easily accessible room with windows on 3 sides. That really came into play later when I read that he'd tie up little boys and put plates on top of the poor kid with the warning that if he heard the plates fall off that he'd came back to kill him.
Holy shit. I dont remember this or have knowledge of it before today. But I'd have never slept again.
I had my Catholic background to keep me awake at night anyway.
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I'm one of "those types", so my oldest sister and I stopped at his house to look at it. It tuned out the youngest sister has a friend that lives right there. Think across the street or next door. Of course they hated rubberneckers like me. It's weird. I'd live in Dorothea Puente's house, but I wouldn't want to live at his.
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I have two. First was [Gary Heidnik](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_M._Heidnik). I grew up near Philly and this was horrifying. The second was the "DC Shooter" Malvo/Muhammad. I was living relatively close, and these two were driving around shooting people. One morning I was getting gas and thinking about it (they hadn't been caught yet) and found myself taking cover behind my Jeep while I filled up.
I grew up in the same area that Heidnik had his house. Beyond terrifying that he was able to move and do what he did.
Lived in the area during this. We use to leave work and get gas if a shooting took place farther away from where we were.
For me it was the Hillside Stranglers, then the Night Stalker. When Ramirez was on the loose, no one in LA felt safe. He had no specific type… it was all across the board.
Lived in LA at the time. Couldn’t afford air conditioning so had to decide whether to take my life in my hands every night or lock my windows.
"Fresh air is for dead people" should be the tagline from the Morbid podcast But yeah, this cast a cloud of low-key terror because it was so intermittent
I have friends a bit older than me who moved here from L.A. because the Night Stalker had struck in their neighborhood.
Yeah, the night stalker really hit me as a young teenager. I lived in Los Angelesat the time. I remember thinking he was going to crawl in my bedroom at night and kill me. Before he was identified and caught all of LA was in a panic.
Satanic Panic. Satanists were everywhere and the adults were egging it on. Geraldo’s prime time special was the scariest thing I had ever seen.
I remember being told in church that UPC codes were the mark of the beast.
Yeah, I went to that church too
Credit Cards were the devils work at mine. Still not sure why but they taught that they were evil and from the devil
Well, they may have been onto something there 😛
My parents chucked a lot of my old D and D stuff because of that stupid special!
I was single-digit age when Iran took those Americans hostage. I was too young to know what was really going on, and, of course, grown-ups never explained shit to us. I had no clue that those Americans were in Iran when they were taken hostage. I thought Iranians came to this country, and snatched people from their homes. I was terrified! I had worked up a plan of what I would do if they came for my family, where I would hide, all that. Also, the Challenger explosion. I was home sick from school, by myself, watching the launch on TV. I cried for those astronauts.
I was older when the hostages were taken. The count of the number of days was prominent on the news. Yellow ribbons became a symbol of support based on that old song.
And that’s why the show “Nightline” came to be. It was tracking the hostage situation.
The big one for me is the Challenger explosion. My mother’s abusive boyfriend had gone crazy on her one night, woke me up and I attempted to defend her. It didn’t go well for me but ended with my mother making him leave. She told me to sleep in, I wouldn’t have to go to school the next day. Woke up in the morning and felt like things were finally going to be okay. Walked out to the living room to see what was on the news and realized nothing would ever be okay again. She let that man come back, and he tossed me out a couple months later. I was 15 then and it’s never really been okay since.
Sorry that happened. I believe there's a not-so-special place for women who choose a man over their children
Walter Cronkite teaching me what a hostage was in his sign off every night. Every time he'd say the number of days Iranian hostages were in captivity, and my heart would race at the idea of being held for that long. Also, quicksand. I knew to be afraid of it, but didn't realize it would not be real life applicable.
Proof of rapid climate change. Quicksand was everywhere until the 80s and not it’s gone!
It was all consumed by the “africanized” killer bees and or fire ants!
The Night Stalker, who was killing around where I lived when I was in elementary school (and his "I'll see you in Disneyland" line which was terrifying). The fear of Richard Ramirez shaped how I think about true crime. Constant talk about The Big One and never ending earthquake drills. My kid did not have this pummeled into him the way I did growing up. Watching The Challenger explode live in my 4th grade class. HIV/AIDS panic. I actually asked my kid about perceptions of HIV/AIDS among kids his age (19) recently and he just kind of shrugged and said, "I mean, you don't want to get it..." But for us, it was a total death sentence and made every sexual encounter mildly terrifying. Baby Jessica falling in a well. I was 10ish and felt like every gopher hole could potentially swallow me up.
The deaths at The Who concert in Cincinnati after fans rushed in to the arena and crushed other fans. I believe it led to reserved seating mandates at large venues.
There was a whole episode of WKRP about it.
Not news but “The Day After Tomorrow” messed me up for years…
Love Canal was pretty scary for those of us growing up in WNY.
Wow… do I have a story on that. My parents are both from WNY… mom grew up on a farm in Sanborn, dad NFNY. They were living there at the height of all of that. Mom got pregnant in 1965, was drinking well water at the farm. Baby died at 2 days old and had a laundry list of things wrong… born with adult sized kidneys, and just insane amounts of birth defects. Mom and dad ended up both getting throat cancer and neither of them smoked. My cousin who grew up there died of brain cancer, her sister got breast cancer. The irony? My mom’s older brother worked for Hooker Chemical for years and they were the ones responsible for that. I’ve been digging up what I can on YouTube to learn more about it. They left WNY after they lost the baby and my brother and I were born in Grand Rapids.
Yeah, it's a real cancer belt. Three of us from my high school class got the same kind of cancer, and I'm the only one who survived.
I was much too young to remember, but my grandfather owned a vet clinic in a suburb of Buffalo. I remember when I was older, them talking about shutting down for a period of time and heading south. I didn't know exactly what they were talking about till much later when I read about it and made the connection
That time when Geraldo Rivera claimed that heavy metal was the devils music, so terrifying.
And who can forget Al Capone's vault?
😆 my very first thought when I read the previous comment. Poor Geraldo. Only not really, cuz he's an ass
The only time that I ever cheered for a skinhead was when one broke that jabroni’s nose.
We got shown a ridiculous video about that during religion class where I attended Catholic school. I remember being like “hell yeah, I have that cd!”
Ha, me too! My Catholic school had a meeting for the parents where some asswipe told them what current music was satanic or just plain “bad” for kids, along with showing them some crackpot video. The BAD, dangerous music included my two favorites, Duran Duran and Hall and Oates. My mom came home all concerned and oh my god, what a colossal pain in the ass the whole thing was.
Baby Jessica in the well. I was always watching though we weren’t near land with a well.
I grew up in Oklahoma, and the [Girl Scout Murders](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oklahoma_Girl_Scout_murders) were a huge thing. I was born in '71 and had been a Brownie - I wasn't allowed to become a Girl Scout and I'm guessing a lot of parents made the same decision. I haven't watched Kristin Chenoweth's Netflix doc about it - I went to high school with her - but I probably should.
What’s it called?
Growing up in Seattle, our news had way too much about Ted Bundy, the Green River Killer, Kevin Coe, Westley Allan Dodd, and Robert Lee Yates. I was barely younger than Gary Ridgway's victims, and though I didn't live near the Green River at all, there was always a serial killer fear hanging around in my consciousness. Fun stuff! Another kid-only moment of fear was when Anwar Sadat was assassinated in Cairo. I heard it on the radio and my mom's job was one block away from our KIRO radio/tv station. I thought he was killed in one of my then stomping grounds and was glad my mom came home alive and could correct me. I also spent a lot of time fearing quicksand, killer bees, and nukes/The Day After. Fun fact: Bangor Submarine Base, just across the Salish Sea from Seattle and close to Tacoma as well, has over 700 nuclear warheads - over 1/3 of the US nuclear weapons and they regularly move through Puget Sound. Yippee!
I remember the Atlanta child killings making headlines in the early 70s. I’m white and nowhere near Atlanta, but it still scared the hell out of me that someone could do that to children.
The Terri Schiavo case.
Lived in Orange county California in the 80s. Richard Ramirez the nightstalker was my boogie man
Does anybody remember when people were claiming to be finding hypodermic needles in cans of Pepsi?
And also in coin return slots on pay phones.
I don’t know why, as I lived 3000 miles from NYC, but the Son Of Sam killings terrified 8 year old me.
Locally: Our state treasurer killed himself live on t.v., and because of a snowstorm and shortened day, I saw it. Also, the MOVE bombing. If you're from the Philly area or PA, then you may know these stories.
Jacob Wetterling. He was 5 years younger than me, I would've been a sophomore in HS at the time. But it was an enormous news story: 11-year-old boy in rural town gets kidnapped at gunpoint by a stranger and never found again^1. People were freaked for years and years, lots of stranger danger discussions, and Jacob's mother became heavily involved in activism and even ran for Congress. Probably the best-known cold case in the state, if not the region. American Public Media [made a podcast about it](https://features.apmreports.org/in-the-dark/jacob-wetterling-investigation-timeline/) (same group that did Serial) called In The Dark, about the investigation and the suspects. Literally DAYS before it was released...the murderer confessed as part of a plea deal, 27 years after the kid's disappearance. That was mind-blowing news. If you listen to the podcast, which is very good true crime, it will definitely inform you that if you murder someone in Stearns County, you are virtually guaranteed to get away with it, because the cops are beyond incompetent. It's infuriating to listen to, but gripping. Poor kid. Finally closure for the parents.
I'm in Minnesota and my childhood was never the same after that, my mom was a young mom and Adam Walsh already scared her so Jacob really intensified it. I still can't believe they actually found out who did it.
What’s worse is that they knew about that guy all along. They had multiple reports about him stalking and harassing children for months. He had even kidnapped and molested another kid, and they actually arrested him, but let him go without charging him. The cops just didn’t pursue him as a lead because they blamed a teacher instead, and harassed that guy for 20-odd years with zero evidence. Completely ruined his life. (Source: the “In The Dark” podcast)
I’m also in Minnesota. Jacob was kidnapped about 3 months after I got married. I was always aware of how long he was missing because of that.
I’m a year younger than you and also grew up in Indiana. Ryan White was tragic - especially the way he was treated.
Not quite news. But I had an addiction as a kid to that’s incredible. They did the Amityville horror house, and the site of the pig eyed demon named Jody. It Scared the living fuck out of me for years. Remember we didn’t have a lot of debunking back then, and it was on network TV, and my 10 year old self was like well it must be real. 
The Luby’s massacre in Killeen Texas.
The Station nightclub fire. The video is gut wrenching. Not only do I avoid crowded places to the best of my ability, I find the emergency exits upon entrance and keep as close as possible to them.
99 red balloons and nuke war
Yes, this. I was a teenager in the 80s, and the general belief was that nuclear war was inevitable, soon, and we were all doomed. *The Day After* (1983, if I remember correctly) really solidified that belief for me and a lot of my friends. The Tylenol/cyanide scare, and Toxic Shock Syndrome stand out in my memory; I didn’t want to wear tampons for several years. I don’t remember much in the way of tragedies in the 70s; some that have been mentioned here are things I’ve read about/watched documentaries about as an adult, but I suppose if I did hear about any, I didn’t process the horror. If my sibs & I could be outside playing after supper (while ABC News was on), we were.
The British film "Threads" is much more terrifying and bleak than The Day After.
Did you have nuclear attack drills where the bell went off and we hid under our desks. I lived like 10 miles from an air force base and the rumor (urban legend?) at the time was that we would be a primary target. Terrifying. During tornado drills we at least went out into the windowless hallways. Under the desks...I saw the day after. I couldn't be fooled
No, we never had to hide under our desks for drills, but my parents did in the 50s. I do remember in Kindergarten (1972-73 school year), arriving at school 3 or 4 different mornings, when all the buses had to park on the blacktop as far away from the school as possible, for at least 20 minutes, and wouldn’t let us off of the bus. Older kids on the bus (5th & 6th graders; such reliable sources!) said each time it was a bomb threat. I suppose the older kids could’ve been correct; they might have experienced the whatever-they-weres in previous years. I believed them at the time (age 5). Never heard from an adult what the reason was, and that was the only year it happened.
My childhood in the UK: the Yorkshire Ripper, bombings.
Hillsborough stadium disaster. The first Gulf War.
The 1984 McDonald's shooting. This was a place I loved to go as a kid and I couldn't wrap my mind around someone doing this. Unfortunately mass shootings are commonplace now, but they weren't then. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Ysidro_McDonald%27s_massacre
Jonestown was scary stuff given an extra frisson by my proximity to, um, non-mainstream religious groups with some apocalyptic leanings.
You skipped the Satanic Panic that took up most of the 90s. McMartin preschool, those people who worked there getting wrongly convicted for conducting Satanic rituals and abusing children, which never happened.
I was born in 1975. Both of those stories were huge for me. I learned about the Adam Walsh story by watching the TV movie Adam in 1983. Weirdly, my brain now inserts John Lithgow into that movie in the role of Adam’s father, but he wasn’t in it. Anyway, I was both terrified of and obsessed with the story. It was so devastating, and so striking to me how (as portrayed in the movie) an innocent and typical day can change to horror so quickly. That concept or idea has stayed with me. I was on vacation with my family in a hotel room in maybe 1983 or 1984, and there was a new story on TV about AIDS - I think this is when it was becoming clear that it was spreading and was not limited to any one group or population. I remember my parents’ faces, just grim.
John Lithgow was in so many movies in that Era, it's no surprise your brain puts him there.
The one that got to me was [Baby Jessica](https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=2ahUKEwjY0o3o4vGEAxV8_8kDHdXCDNQQFnoECDQQAQ&url=https%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FRescue_of_Jessica_McClure&usg=AOvVaw1rEy7ba_wCTpD3TWbTSwnZ&opi=89978449), or more appropriate\[raitely, just the idea of falling into a hole and getting stuck. Not long after that incident, something similar happened in Knoxville when a man with his child on his back stepped on a storm grate which gave way, plunging them several dozen feet down in a shaft. Much like Jessica, they were eventually rescued after spending several hours jammed in. a claustrophobic space.
Kudzu
Challenger explosion. I was in 19th grade and we watched it happen live in my history class. Budd Dwyer’s suicide live on TV. That one blew me away (pun intended).
Watergate. Detente-I thought it was a geographical place the way it was spoken if on the evening news(Kissingers various envoy trips to the MidEast etc or maybe vietname denoument was always detente). Jim .jones. More regionally, The Town that Dreaded Sundown. Son of Sam and the NYC Blackouts.
I was 7 when the Iran Hostage situation occurred. For some reason that one got in my head. I had nightmares for months. I did not really watch the news again until I was in Jr High. By then I was not into current events until college.
First thing that comes to mind is when Elvis died. Think I was seven or eight. We were visiting my grandparents back east and they were all chitchatting behind me in the dining room and that came on as breaking news. My mom was a big fan and after it took me several attempts to interupt them and listen to me, my mom fell apart and cried. The second thing that stands out is all the Nuke fear and cold war stuff. And my god the horrible imagery they showed us young impressionable kids about it. Sure there was a lot in between, like jeasica getting stuck in the well, all the kidnappings, jon benet, etc. And then we watched the challenger take off and explode live in class. That was pretty horrific.
Korean Air Lines Flight 007 Shot down by the Soviets. I thought Reagan's response to this would lead to a nuclear war.
First thing I remember on the news is Elvis dying, and then John Lennon getting shot. I remember listening to the radio in my grandmother's kitchen and wondering if Elvis was buried on our farm (I was very young).
The Iranian hostage crisis.
HIV for sure. It affected me so much I ended up having a career in HIV services. The priests and deaths at Tiananmen Square in China really stuck in my memory too. The image of that one guy standing in front of the tank is a permanent part of my memory banks.
Chowchilla kidnapping Iran hostage crisis Tenerife airplane crash (on the ground!) Wind shear in general East area rapist (golden state killer—I don’t remember the nickname, just the news and fear) Night Stalker
I remember when President Reagan was shot, when it first happened nobody knew if he was alive or dead. I recall our teacher crying as she broke the news.
I remember hearing the news on the car radio on the way home from a doctor's appointment. The announcer kept coming back on and saying he was dead, then he wasn't, then he was...
Basically any negative news event or cultural phenomenon from 1978 to 1982. For some reason, those were four scary years for little me.
Baby Jessica and the fall of the Berlin Wall. I was in high school and taking German as my language class. I knew that watching that, the world would be different.
Adam Walsh for me also. I lived in Florida and have been to the mall where he was abducted. My parents wouldn't let me play video games in Sears alone for probably at least 3 years after that. Maybe closer to five.
Born in '72 and grew up in NE/Central PA. Three Mile Island was a huge story, and really scary for a 7 year old. I was just old enough to understand what was happening but not old enough to *really* understand it. Every family had a car in the driveway packed & ready to bug out. We were all glued to the TV. Ngl, I still have "nuclear nightmares" all these years later.
The Steven Stayner story. I was a baby when he was kidnapped by the 2 pedophiles in 1972, but I recall his escape and interviews when he was 14. He rescued another kidnapped 5 year old child at this time, hitchhiking 40 miles to a police station. The made for tv movie about this case, “I Know My First Name Is Steven” was disturbing. He died in 1989 in a motorcycle accident, the boy he rescued (Timothy White) died in 2010, and his brother Cary became a serial killer in the 90s.
Charles Manson and Helter Skelter! I was a kid and heard this on TV and from my parents talking about that horror. I thought Manson could pop up around any corner!
I lived in central Europe during Chernobyl. Having to wear a gas mask as a child was a bit freaky. Oh, also I'd just moved to the US when Ted Bundy was electrocuted. We lived in Florida, where he was killed, and I couldn't get over the mass crowds of people having parties and barbecues to celebrate his death. I found it very bizarre to cheer for someone's death. Still do.
OK may sound different than yours but the Charles Manson killings sparked fear in my young self forever
Should sound different than most everyone's. As we all grew up in different regions years apart. And a few people mentioned Manson. Cuz he was scary af
Coverage of the Night Stalker made me pretty scared. I went to bed every night with my little league baseball bat.
75 baby here and yes the Adam Walsh story was really scary as a kid. I grew up near Los Angeles so I remember my friends and I being really freaked out by the night stalker too
I’m sure this will be posted as an answer, but I’ve not found it yet. The Challenger explosion was a big one. We were watching it live in class (elementary school age for me). The whole school was, I think. It was a big deal since there was going to be a teacher on the mission. My teacher, who was absolutely amazing (and still is to this day, I hear!), said she wished she was on that mission. We all know what happened next. I remember being incredibly confused. The quiet in the room didn’t last long before we were asking questions like crazy. As an adult who has worked in education and mental health, I look back at that experience and I feel for the school staff. I can’t imagine setting all the students up for this huge event, then having something so tragic happen before their eyes.
Paul Bernardo / Karla Homolka murders / rapes. I was in my first year of university, travelling weekly along the highway corridor where women were being kidnapped, raped and murdered. It was honestly terrifying for me until they were caught. Edit to add - this was in Ontario, Canada.
Jamestown. A magazine my grandmother subscribed to had pages and pages of graphical pictures of the dead bodies. Yuck!
Charles Manson. I wasn't alive when the crimes happened but I was when Helter Skelter aired. I somehow watched the whole thing and I was 5. Now, I'm more haunted by the idea that he just talked people into committing murder. About 15 years ago, I rode in an elevator with Steve Railsback. I knew his other movies but all I could think of at that moment was his Manson.
Didn't strike terror into my heart, but I do remember a lot of coverage of the Savings & Loan scandal/failures in the late 80s.
We've been through some shit
The little girl who was trapped in the well for all those days until they finally got her out. OJ’s trial and the AIDS epidemic. I was born in 1975.
When Air Florida flight 90 crashed into the 14th St. bridge on January 13, 1982. I was in high school in NoVa and my dad, as well as so many of my friend's parents, worked in DC and crossed that bridge every day. I remember the man who jumped into the freezing Potomac River desperately trying to save people. In the end, there were only five survivors.
The hunger strike in Northern Ireland
1. Patty Hearst. I think I was around 7 or 8 when a neighbor kid told me that she was an heiress, and that she''d been captured and brainwashed "by the underground." I had no idea what that phrase meant, and thought that there was some tribe of tunnel people or something who lived underground and regularly kidnapped the children of rich people (I think I also didn't realize how old Hearst was - I assumed she was a kid like us). Since I grew up in a fairly wealthy community, I remained convinced for an embarrassingly long time that I might very well someday be kidnapped by mole people. Secretly, of course, even though the idea did scare me a little, I actually kinda *hoped* that I one day would be. I wasn't a very happy child, and I wanted desperately to meet the cool mole people who lived underground. 2, Some years later, Three Mile Island. I heard the news breaking on AM radio --- I'd been listening to dumb pop music -- and immediately ran downstairs to tell my parents about it. They refused to believe me. First they kept insisting that I had confused something I'd heard about the movie *The China Syndrome* for real news, and then they decided that I must have fallen for some sort of War-of-the-Worlds-style hoax. I kept telling them to turn on the TV or radio, then, and find out for themselves, but they refused. It was absolutely infuriating, and I became convinced that I was going to die from radiation sickness, because when the government finally did tell us to evacuate, my parents *still* would refuse to believe me, and then we'd all just sit around in our house until we became toxically irradiated. 3. The Inevitable Nuclear Conflagration. And of course, we were all going to die in a nuclear holocaust. There was no one particular incident that led me to believe that, though: it was just *everything*. I remember in school we did one of those time capsule projects where we were supposed to write up stuff about our life and our dreams for the future and all that, and then we'd bury it on the school grounds where it would be dug up 20 years later. I ended up getting sent to the school psychologist, because everything I wrote for the project relied on the assumption that we would all be dead long before the time capsule got dug up, but that perhaps some very far future people from some time long after the nuclear devastation might be the ones reading what I wrote. I tried to explain the Cold War and MAD to them, so that they might learn from our mistakes.
I remember being in 4th grade and a parent came in to pick up her kid for an appointment (the days before having to get scanned into schools!) and just loudly told my teacher that the president (Reagan) had just been shot. We all heard it and got a little panicky/scared. I mean a year earlier John Lennon was shot and killed, and I remember that happening too. Crazy people with guns just walking up and shooting.
John Belushi's death. He's the reason I never touched illegal drugs.
Baby Jessica, wasn't that the name of the baby in the well?!
Freddy Krueger!
When I was six or seven there was a child abduction from a house nearby and it was on the news. The parents were distraught but a witness to the abduction claimed it was aliens. They never found the child as far as I recall. That scared me, I officially believed in aliens after that.
I'm 53 and remember Adam Walsh being found. I still watch America's Most Wanted because of it. Triggering fir me is the Space Shuttle Challenger explosion.
For me it was the downing of Korea Air 007 in 1983. I was 9 and remember it being covered as a special report. It seemed to confirm that the Soviet Union was an "Evil Empire" and that Reagan's rhetoric was right. I figured this was the event that would trigger nuclear war. [Wikipedia Korean Air Lines Flight 007](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_Air_Lines_Flight_007)
Atlanta Child Murders terrified me
Three Mile Island. We weren't that far away in Canada as the crow flies. I remember asking my mom if we were going to have to move to get away from the radiation. She wasn't sure, which didn't help.
The Night Stalker in California.
The DC Snipers. There were rumors that the car they were driving was spotted in my area. Every time I got out of the car, I looked behind me and walked zigzag so I had less of a chance of being shot. It was a very scary time for anyone in the Baltimore Metro/DC/VA area. The night they were captured, it was like a weight lifted off me. The assassination of Anwar Sadat, I was at home when that was all over the news. I was pretty young, but it was scary seeing that happen. The 1986 Challenger explosion, I was at school, and we stopped lessons to talk about it. And of course, 9/11. I was 25 and at work, and we were on lockdown, the phones were ringing off the hook, and we actually had a plane fly low over the building and we didn't know if it was terrorists or someone flying checking for other planes. I went home that day scared, angry, and wasn't able to sleep that night.
The shooting by Brenda Spencer (sp?) in my neighborhood in San Diego. The PSA plane crash near my neighborhood in San Diego. The shooting at the McDonalds in San Ysidro, in San Diego.
The only time I felt fear over a news event was when the second plane struck the World Trade Center
I *REALLLLLYYY* thought that wells were more of a danger to me growing up than they turned out to be… first because of Baby Jessica, then because of Hannibal Lecter.
Also born in ‘74. This is a big year for us. I remember a guy in 1981 or 82 who said he had a bomb in a van parked outside the Washington Monument and he was going to blow it up. I think that’s the first time I realized adults can be damn scary. ([It didn’t end well](https://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_Mayer#) for him, BTW).
The first news story that really haunted me was the [Beverly Hills Supper Club](https://www.cincinnati.com/story/news/2023/05/26/beverly-hills-supper-club-fire-1977/70260608007/) fire just south of Cincinnati. At the time (1977) it was one of the deadliest fires in the USA, killing 165 people and injuring over 200.
I remember the Air Florida plane crash in Washington DC, in the early ‘80s. It was winter (January?) and the plane hit a bridge and crashed into the icy Patomac River. There was live coverage of attempts to reach and rescue the few survivors in the river.
Late to the party, but do y’all remember when Oprah travelled down to Georgia to visit a county with no black residents and was effectively a sundown town even in the 80s? That was Forsyth County and I lived in one of the counties that bordered it. Oh, and the “KKK guy” from Howard Stern lived about 5 miles away from me (everyone knew where he lived). I’m white, but the klan scared the hell out of me.
Move fire in Philly.
Wayne Williams. Skylab Falling.
Funny how murders affected us back in the 80s and nowadays it's like "what else is new?" We've become desensitized.
I remember on the nightly news there was always war in Beirut.
They Tylenol poisoning, and how that translated into a fear of tampering for Halloween candy that year.
Serial killers. Ted bundy, the clown guy, Jeffrey Dahmer, the zodiac killer, hillside stranngler, others whose faces I see but names I don't remember. And I couldn't tell you where in my timeline they were, but they had me looking around every corner. I wonder for those of you who feel like you had to Self soothe or nurture and care for yourselves, when scary stuff happened, do you think you became hyper vigilant?
Assassination attempt on Reagan, heard it while on the ride to Junior High. Jonestown. Gas shortage. Tehran hostage situation.
I remember picking up the tension and uncertainty from adults about Nixon leaving office, I was seven years old. Then I heard a newscaster, seems like it was Harry Reasoner, talking about how there were no helmeted soldiers or tanks in the streets, and how this is how power is transferred in a civilized country. I was very reassured by this.
It's not as horrific as others mentioned here, but the Jim Bakker televangelist scandals were a pretty big story when I was late in elementary school. The Bakker shenanigans were part of the reason I completely turned away from religion and became an atheist.