I have a few:
- I was in my house at night and got scared, so I went to go get my parents. Their dream bedroom was huge, though, and almost pitch-black, so all I could see was a bit of carpet directly underneath and around me. The carpet swarmed with fist-sized bugs that skittered around and over my feet.
- I was on a beach with my brother, looking at him while he faced me. My brother's face was grotesquely distorted, elongated and stretched to one side. His eye socket on that side took up a good portion of his face, and it was stuffed with what must have been dozens of regular-sized eyeballs.
- I was trapped with my family in a big outdoor area surrounded by concrete walls, with the ground covered with gravel and trash. We were all sitting together on a long bench atop a trash pile, and we couldn't leave the bench because we were being menaced by an animate blue plastic tarp that wanted eat us and the bench was - somehow - the only safe place. The tarp fluttered in front of us, then reared up onto one edge and struck at us like a cobra, accompanied by a sound like duct tape being violently torn off of something. The bench protected us, so we were unharmed, but we were all very distressed and afraid.
I had a whole childhood nightmare pantheon of recurring characters, including:
And probably others I've forgotten.
Stanley the Steam Engine was essentially a typical steam engine with a single big light on the front. It could travel off track and would randomly appear in my neighborhood with bloodlust, and one would have to avoid being shone on by its front lamp to be spared. It had a loud, piercing whistle that could be heard echoing for many miles, sounding almost like a ghastly scream. I don't quite remember if it could talk, but I certainly remember that it could take one's speech away -- any time one would attempt to speak in its presence, not a single noise would come out, and a tombstone would spontaneously appear directly afront oneself.
Source: the historical rail line in my hometown, the collection of somewhat worn video cassettes about trains that my family owned, maybe also the sleepover episode of Disney's The Replacements (though I think I only saw that later). I think one of the train video cassettes actually had an identical train also called "Stanley the Steam Engine".
The Great Pooper Snake was a giant felt hand puppet that was some sort of reptile or dragon, not necessarily a snake though that's what I called it. It would abduct me from the comfort of my home while no-one was looking, and once it had taken me to a secluded place, it would "eat me up and poop me out".
Source: identical to a felt hand puppet from a Baby Einstein video cassette.
Ooga and Booga were C-3PO and R2-D2 but with the faces of my preschool teachers. They were so called because the only words they could say were "OOGA BOOGA", in unison in a weird autotune-vocoder-esque monotone voice. I don't know what they actually did aside from being slightly creepy, but they lived in the world under my bed, which could only be accessed by rolling into the crack between the bed and the wall.
Source: The falling into the crack part might've been inspired by Disney's Alice in Wonderland. Otherwise, inspirations are obvious.