19 retro pictures of Lancashire's scariest childhood characters from Freddy Krueger to Michael Myers and Pennywise

We asked the people of Blackpool and Preston which movies and characters from their childhood were the scariest – the ones that gave them the nightmares.

In the realm of cinema and TV, some characters are etched in the childhood memory as terror-inducing figures. They are the stuff of nightmares, villains which haunted us as kids. You responded in your hundreds and alongside Nightmare on Elm Street’s Freddy Krueger, with his disfigured face and razor-sharp glove and Pennywise with his malevolent smile and ominous red balloons from IT, there were other forgotten characters which played on fragile minds too. Worzel Gummidge, the witch from Wizard of Oz and who can forget Watership Down? These might bring the bad dreams back…