Dear Unk!

I can’t tell you how long I’ve loved your site, but it’s been quite a while now, and I can’t stay quiet any longer! May I submit for your approval my own (two!) Traumafessions?

First one is sure to confound and confuse, as it’s about as obscure as I think one can get. It was a childrens’ record album released about 30 years ago that concerned the noises a house makes. I believe its purpose was to reassure young people that the creeks and groans one might hear at night were not, in fact, perpetuated by spirits of those long dead. Of course, all that did for me was present the potentiality that they might easily be mistaken for such.

Now, in my late thirties, I *want* to hear this evidence of a proper haunting, though three decades ago, of course, I was quite terrified of the idea. Anyway, all I have for anyone to go on is the fact that I think the record was one of those “plastidiscs” or whatever. (You know, the floppy, colorful kind.) It had a colorful, illustrated jacket, depicting I think a young boy and his dog with a cutaway of the support beams of an average 70’s home.

But alas, my memory of this is very, very foggy, indeed. Hence, any help at all would be immensely appreciated, without a doubt.

And there is just one more thing that will likely be far easier to unearth. That is, an old “Alfred Hitchcock Presents” episode that began with a man admitting his role as a murderer. All I remember is this character looking straight on into the camera, discussing his dastardly deed in somewhat shady detail, and ending with the line “That’s right, I’m a murderer.”

Please, please someone tell me what episode this could be, for I’m nearly more desperate to find this out than the “noises a house makes” record.

I just discovered your site when I was researching a sci-fi/horror flick I remembered being traumatized by when I was a kid (turned out to be Strange Invaders—you know which scene I’m talking about), so I was hoping you might be able to help me figure out another obscure trauma.

I’m afraid the details are sketchy since I was probably 4 or 5 when I saw it. It was on cable, probably HBO, in the early-’80s. I remember late one night happening upon the end of either a movie or a short film in which a mother with short curly brown hair I believe had killed her family and, at the point I tuned, was in a life and death struggle with her teenage son on the stairs, trying to stab him with a kitchen knife, which he wrests away from her and proceeds to stab her with in self defense. Of course she pops up for one last scare, screaming bloody hell, forcing him to finish her off.

It was chock full o’blood and screams and quite disturbing. Naturally, I must know the name so I can track down a copy to watch in full.

Thanks in advance,

James Y.

Today is the perfect day to watch DON’T GO IN THE HOUSE! Don’t be too scared to read a full review HERE!

Hi there, dear folks at Kindertrauma

My name is Antonio Augusto, I’m from Brazil and a regular reader of your amazing blog. So many awesome posts and traumas I totally identify with. One of my biggest kindertraumas is probably the reverend Henry Kane from Poltergeist II. I saw it when I was very little and couldn’t sleep for MONTHS thinking about him. And more recently in my life, a really big trauma is BOB from Twin Peaks.

UNK SEZ: Thanks for the traumafession Antonio and for letting us know about Cinema Parasita! I don’t speak Portuguese but I like what see! Nice work!

Today’s “find 10 differences” puzzle is brought to you by CINEMA DU MEEP! We love CINEMA DU MEEP! If you are not following CINEMA DU MEEP on Facebook, you need to rectify that situation HERE!

It’s a killer bee movie (not b movie!) – I’ve recently seen The Deadly Swarm and Killer Bees to no avail. My trauma is the death of a little black girl who is innocently playing a kazoo or horn -and the Queen was inside it which then attracted the swarm. The girl is stung to death. Anybody know??

I had to have been like 2 or 3 b/c my sisters hadn’t been born yet so it must have been around 1980 or so- my parents took me (WHY??) to the drive-in with them, and all I remember of the movie were clowns, horrible, terrible, clowns, I think one (at least) had a knife, and a scene in a kitchen with the doors getting all blocked up with rocks, lots and lots of rocks- I think the entire kitchen ended up being filled with the rocks, but my parents kept trying to make me lay down in the back seat so I couldn’t watch, also it’s been over 30 years, so I’m a wee bit fuzzy on it all. If you can identify this craziness for me, I’d be full of gratitude.

I was born in 1965, and actually did not see Star Trek for the first time until I was ten years old and it was in reruns. One would never think of Star Trek as a scary show, and this episode has been panned by most critics. But it scared the crap out of me. The garbled speech made by the victims of the Zetars is probably a source of amusement for most, but to me it was the stuff of nightmares. My brother knew this and would try to imitate it to get a rise out of me. As well, like Dr. McCoy, I found the scene where they teleported into darkness on Memory Alpha unnerving.

I’ve always found the idea of having one’s mind taken over frightening. I was raised Catholic, so the concept of demon possession was very real to me. However, although I can’t watch The Exorcist alone in darkness, I could still watch it alone with the lights on. I can’t watch “The Lights of Zetar” alone at all, and I’m now almost fifty years old!

I think what makes “The Lights of Zetar” so intensely terrifying, even as opposed to the concept of demon possession, is that they destroy the ability of the victim’s brain to function at all. Once the demon vacates the host, the brain is still intact. Not so with the Lights of Zetar. They blow out every circuit. Their attack is comparable with a deadly stroke or seizure, something that none of us wants to think about. You can’t hide behind a strong door or shield and you can’t run away in your ship. If they want you, they’ll get you.

It’s a funny thing: I saw Alien with my father (rest in peace) when I was fourteen years old, and even though sometimes if I enter a dark room I swear I can see those things in the shadows, nothing has scared me quite as much as one unpopular episode of a 1960′s TV show which generally was anything but scary.

Hello!

I was hoping somebody could name this one. As a child, an irresponsible adult I knew sometimes let me watch horror films. The ones I remember best are The Thing, Prom Night 2 (I think), and a third film that I simply cannot track down. The only scene I recall from this movie involved the main antagonist, a sexy lady monster, in a hot tub making out with a curly-haired guy. A monster hunter is after her, apparently, and she knows it. So at the, ahem, moment of truth, she morphs into a hideous monster with lots of mouths all over her body (that’s what my five-year-old self interpreted them as, anyway…) and kills the guy. The monster hunter shows up and finds the guy’s corpse in a hot tub full of blood. This would have been mid- or late-80s. It definitely wasn’t Species, although there are more than a few similarities.

Thanks for the help!

-Jeff T.

Happy Mother’s Day! Let’s watch BLOOD RAGE! I know this movie takes place on Thanksgiving but that doesn’t mean it’s not a swell Mother’s Day movie too! I’d say BLOOD RAGE (aka NIGHTMARE AT SHADOW WOODS) is a better Mother’s Day movie than MOTHER”S DAY but then again, what isn’t? LOUISE LASSER plays Maddie, a caring mother of two twins. One of the twins is a crazy psycho and one of them is not. One Thanksgiving the nutty twin escapes from the funny farm and blood-soaked, identity mix-up hijinks ensue. BLOOD RAGE has got to be one of the funniest slasher movies I have ever seen. It just kills me. The music is out of control, there’s a ridiculous attempt at exposition using a psychiatrist’s voice-over narration, the violence is slapstick hilarious and the incredible LASSER is constantly forced to fill in the gaps in the script with lunatic ad-libbing! Frankly, it’s non-stop awesome. The strange thing is I don’t think MARK SOPER who plays twins Todd & Terry is half bad! He kinda reminds me of ALEX McARTHUR in RAMPAGE (1987)! If you really love your mother, you will force her to watch this with you and if you really love yourself, you’ll invite your evil twin along too!