Mom hung a mass produced art print on my bedroom wall when I was about 8. It's of a little girl holding her puppy.
Cute, right?
Thing is, this painting terrified me. And I was raised in the time where you just kind of swallowed any complaints and didn't bother mom or dad with kid foolishness.
Here is a copy of the thing I actually had hanging on my wall. This same frame. Probably came from Service Merchandise or some such.
What in the everloving hell is lurking just over her shoulder?!?! To me it always looked like a skull wearing a hat on the side of his head, like a little old timey jaunty hat a clown would wear.
It's a wonder I got any sleep. I was too afraid to tell mom I hated it. I never considered that I possessed the agency to take it off my wall and hide it at the bottom of the closet.
I think of this cursed painting still.
Did you ever have something in your childhood that unnecessarily scared the bejeezus out of you?
I was forced to go to a charismatic church as a kid. We're talking speaking in tongues, cast out demons, and all that bullshit. As such, The Devil was present in a lot of my childhood fears.
I was convinced I could feel him breathing on my face at night in bed whenever I did something "wrong".
I hated this Santa Clause decoration that my grandmother hung in my bedroom window every year (we lived in first floor apartment facing the street). When the streetlamp outside of my window hit it at night it looked the head of the Devil in silhouette.
I hated it when my family watched Unsolved Mysteries or things like that because there was always a chance they would do a segment on demonic hauntings or shit like that.
Religious trauma is a hell of a drug.