Things That Frightened Me as a Child, Part 1

Here we are in the second half of October already, which means that we are in the spookiest half of the spookiest month, and that it's time to get just a wee bit thematic. This week, I'll be telling you just what freaked me out the most as a kidlet. Well, not everything - we'll skip over my unusual terror of such things as walking up stairs and flushing toilets in an empty house (note: this is not to say that I didn't flush, just that it was scary. Don't be gross). No, I'll be focusing on the comics and so forth that gave me varying degrees of heebie and/or jeebie. 

We'll start out light on scary. I've mentioned before that I owe a lot of my early comics experience to my uncle, who allowed me to raid his stash of funnybooks at the appropriate age for mind-warping. One of the comics in question was House of Mystery no. 309, and it somewhat inexplicably featured this shot of Cain as its first page:

No idea why, but something about this picture filled me with dread as a child. I don't know if it was the shrunken heads or the lizard-ape or the lizard-bird, or everything in aggregate, but I used to look at this picture and just kind of gently freak out for long stretches. Even the beatnik snake had this weird air of menace.

Nowadays, of course, I would just make a big deal about the snake and what a hard time it must have playing bongo drums. Oh for the innocence of youth.