In the 1970s, the fear was real.

If you were alive then, you know it’s true. You likely had some fear of killer bees, quicksand, and UFOs. Thanks to movies and TV, we heard about them all the time.

UFOs are featured on an episode of The Brady Bunch…Peter and Bobby think they see a UFO, only to find out it’s a hoax carried out by oldest brother, Greg. See a clip here from the episode titled Out of This World. We saw quicksand on Gilligan’s Island and lots of other shows. See a clip from a quicksand episode of Gilligan’s Island called Man With a Net  here. And killer bees? Movies about killer bees were rampant in the 1970s…The Savage Bees, The Swarm...we were scared.

When I was seven, I attended a high school bonfire with a neighborhood friend and her family. She had older siblings, so she got to go to all the cool stuff. I remember the excitement around it. I thought the bonfire was amazing…right up until panic set in. It seemed like everyone got scared, but it might have just been the little kids. Somehow, we thought a UFO was in the area. I think someone saw a helicopter and thought it was an alien spaceship. Kids started running in all directions. We ran to my friend’s mother’s car…and we talked about it at school for weeks. I don’t know how likely it was that an alien spaceship wanted to investigate kids and teenagers in Brewton, Alabama, but my 7-year-old self was convinced they wanted me. Our fears were fed by movies like Close Encounters Of The Third Kind, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, and Escape to Witch Mountain (which starred a young Kim Richards of The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills). Call me crazy, but I still think aliens from far away lands might be watching us. I’m always watching for flying saucers in the sky. If there is ever a UFO in my area…and if I’m awake…I’m going to be the one who sees it.

I spent my entire childhood worrying about quicksand. Like I said, it was featured in cartoons and television shows. I remember seeing it on Gilligan’s Island; Johnny Quest; Scooby Doo; Batman; Fantasy Island; The Six Million Dollar Man; Tarzan; The Dukes of Hazard; and more. It was everywhere on television, and we watched a lot of television as kids. That was our screen time. We saw quicksand so often on television that we thought it must be everywhere. In Alabama, back then, we still had woods where we could roam. I didn’t roam as much as my brother did, but when I did, if I found myself stepping into thick mud, I was immediately convinced it was quicksand. My friend, Mary Ann, says she used to poke the ground with a big stick in front of her to make sure it wasn’t quicksand. It seemed that any time quicksand was featured on TV, the victim sank completely, drowning in it or they sank up to his/her neck…except for one dead arm sticking out. For years, I thought that anyone who died in quicksand left one arm sticking up out of it. Yet, I’ve never seen quicksand. I’ve seen a warning sign for it near the Battleship USS Alabama, in Mobile, but I don’t know if it’s still there. So where did all the quicksand go?!?! Why don’t we hear about it anymore?

As for killer bees…well, that fear was absolutely real. They were on every kid’s mind in the south. Heck, we already had fire ants before everyone else, and those were scary enough. But killer bees?!?!? Those were like flying fire ants! I remember watching a made-for-TV movie called The Savage Bees in 1976. It was about a ship that arrived in New Orleans with a dead crew….killer bees. That television movie just made it more real for me. New Orleans was just a couple of hours way from where I lived in Spanish Fort, Alabama! What if killer bees came in on a ship from another country? It was almost enough to make a kid afraid to go outside, because if killer bees were in the area, there was no escaping them, according to the TV movie. If they wanted you, they would get you…through cracks under doors and vents to get into your house. I don’t remember all the details, but I know a lady drove an “airtight” VW Beetle into the Superdome with a swarm of bees all over it. She drove onto the field, and when the temperature reached a certain point (49 degrees?), the bees died…saving the city of New Orleans and the rest of the US from the savage bees.

Movies and TV loved trying to scare us in the 1970s. Maybe you remember Skylab falling. Remember Jaws? Weren’t we all afraid to go into the water? Heck…I’m still afraid! Or who remembers Squirm? It was released in 1976. It was a movie about worms attacking people. I was in fourth grade when it was released. I didn’t get to see it, because it was rated R, but my friend, Greg Wilson, got to see it. I remember when he came to school talking about it, and we all gathered around to hear about it. He’s fearless now, and I guess his parents knew he was fearless then.

Anytime I mention quicksand, UFOs, or killer bees to a friend or family member who was alive in the 1970s, we laugh…it becomes a funny conversation. And then, we always talk about how we never hear about those things anymore.

Maybe I should be reminding folks to be careful…watch for quicksand under your feet; watch for UFOs in the sky; and drive an airtight VW Beetle to avoid the killer bees.