Your memory is a little weak. It was a Kirby vacuum cleaner not a Hoover. Back in the days when I was only 3, we had our bedroom on the second floor. During the heat of the summer I would wake up after everyone in the house had gone to bed. I was thirsty and the water from the sink in the upstairs bath was always warm and tasted terrible, no matter how long you let the water run. Downstairs in the refridgerator there stood a cold pitcher of fresh water. I would navigate the stairs in the almost pitch dark until I got about six feet from the lower landing, and there it stood! Some odd creature in the dim light that I could not for the life of me make out what the hell it was. Yep, the Kirby vacuum cleaner! Scared the hell out of me as a child, took everything I had for courage to finally walk around it to get to the cash of cold water, then damn! I had to walk past it again on the way back upstairs, think I slept a lot of nights on the sofa in the living room instead of making the return trip upstairs.
You may laugh at this, but it gave me re-ocurring nightmares for two years becuase of it. A strange dream that was exactly the same everynight, where I had just walked past the Kirby and it started up with a furosious roar, then the lights in the dinning room would turn on and the whole family was standing around the dinning room table screaming at me to hurry up before Freddy Kuger smacked me on the head. The dream would progress to where the vacuum cleaner was chasing all of us around the table, about that time large holes opened up in the floor and you could see down into a black abyss that was the basement. You had to jump over these holes while the vacuum cleaner was chasing you. Had you fallin into the dark basement it was full of water and alligators that would eat you up! As the nightmare progressed it got worse, there were the crawler bears (black acordian looking worms that were about 6 inches in diameter and ten feet long) that would stick there heads out from under my parents bed (my parents bedroom adjoined the dinning room). These crawler bears would also try and eat you as you ran around the table, jumping over the holes in the floor while trying to escape Mr Kruger.
This nightly terror continued until I started grade school. Later on I realised the crawler bears in my dreams were actually exhaust hoses for cars that my dad had hung up in the garage (accordian shaped rubberised hoses that were about 8 feet long that attached to the tail pipe of a car to run the exhuast fumes outside).
Yep those were the days that anything could scare the hell out of you, even stupid ghost stories that we all told for fun.
As far as being afraid of the vacuum cleaner when I was young, well we have two large dogs in the house now and they are both terrified each time the wife brings it out to due the carpets.
After having this nightmare everynight for two years as a child, I can discribe in vivid detail everything that happened right down to the clothing everyone was wearing as the dream was exactly the same each and every night. How bizarre!
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