In honor of the spooky holiday coming up this weekend, I could be trying to come up with a kick ass jack-o’-lantern, but I’m afraid the bar has been set too high for me. So instead, I humbly present a few things that scared the bejeesus out of me when I was a kid.

The Incredible Melting Man was released when I was seven-years-old, so I definitely didn’t see it at the time. In fact, I haven’t ever seen it. But I was a pretty squeamish kid, and I had a powerful imagination, so just the promotional material was enough to drain the blood from my face. The radio commercial nearly made me faint.

This issue of Superman floated around the house when I was a kid. I’m not sure where it came from, but it always seemed to be sneaking up on me, peering menacingly from a bookshelf or giving me a jolt when I opened my toy box. Since I was a comic fiend, it’s entirely possible that someone bought it for me, even though I far preferred fare that was far more benign. That clawed green hand bursting free made me unbearably nervous about ever turning the cover to see what happened inside. This cover also heightened the creepiness of a certain seminal movie poster that arrived a couple years later.

Speaking of movie posters, the above image, along with the ominous warning about the danger of a solo viewing of the film it promoted, was horrifying to me when I was just a couple years removed from the bassinet myself. I knew nothing about Larry Cohen’s mutant baby crazython beside this poster, but this was definitely enough.