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 received the budget-friendly version - AJ Bear. The mouth didn't move. There was no tape player to play stories. It had a box thing inside it with a mic and a speaker. The mic picked up anything you would say to the bear and parrot it back "in bearish", which sounded basically like the teacher from Peanuts. Fortunately I didnt find AJ creepy. We became pals. He was cuddlier than Teddy because he didn't have all the internal animatronics. Yet it was still a little bitter that the parents whiffed that one. That was a common theme.