...:::Name That Trauma!:::...

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.

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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.

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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??

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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.

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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.

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I have a very vague memory of a movie I saw as a kid. I must have watched it in the ’90s but it could have been a movie from the ’70s to ’90s. I don’t remember which part happened when but I’ll try my best. I didn’t watch the whole movie either, just a few scenes. It was about this woman and her son in a winter setting and it was like no matter where they went, something totally bizarre and scary was happening. They went to a middle school or high school and all the kids looked either possessed or demonic or like ghosts. They wanted to hurt the woman and her son but they ran. Then she is driving and to her right she sees a guy standing in the snow and he suddenly falls through. I think she investigates this and finds a facility underground and there are a bunch of people fighting this machine/alien; not really sure what. Like I said, very bizarre but I would love to find out what it is called and watch it as an adult.

– Luke

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I remember my sister renting a movie when I was about 9 years old (1992) and it was about a young woman (20-ish) who has nightmares about her dead father being under her bed. At one point she is telling her boyfriend about it, and I think she says “I told him to go to hell, and he did.” They look under the bed and a snarling head appears, with glowing red eyes. Do you have any idea what that might have been?

Thanks!

Warren C.

UNK SEZ: If I’m right about this one it’s a very strange, weird, uncanny occurrence. As you might be able to tell, I watch a lot of movies and I have been doing so for decades. I even worked in a video store for 20 years, all the while picking up & watching every stray VHS horror title I could get my grubby hands on. I tell you that because I thought it slightly odd that I had never come across GRAVE SECRETS aka SILENT SECRETS (1989) until the other night when I noticed it was expiring from Netflix Streaming. GRAVE SECRETS closes with a couple in bed and the then the woman looks under the bed to see her glowing eyed father growling back at her!!! I don’t remember her making the “hell” comment but that certainly fits within the story! If GRAVE is the correct movie, how bonkers is it that I watched it the night before you sent in your Name That Trauma??? Kinder-synchronicity!!! On the hand, I might be totally wrong.

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The only thing I remember about this movie is a scene where a woman is driving down a road in a hearse when all of a sudden, a zombie shows up on a motorcycle! During the chase, the zombie’s skin starts to fly off until he practically becomes a skeleton (wearing a dress shirt and tie). After a little while, the woman finally runs the zombie off of the road. Please help me!

Tony H.

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This was probably 15+ years ago, but I was at my grandmothers house and there was a movie playing. During the opening there is this young woman and she somehow ends up in a church or some old building of the like. She walks up the a lectern and there is a book on it, she walks up, opens the book, and there is a beating heart inside. She then looks down at her own chest and there is a big bloody hole. I don’t remember anything else except being traumatized by fear and running out of the room. Any help is greatly appreciated. I want to say it was an old version of Phantom of the Opera or something like that, but really I have no idea.

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Hi! I have very, very vague memories of this one movie me and my brothers got from the library once. It didn’t necessarily scare me, but I really want to know what it was called, because the plot was pretty interesting.

It centered around a few friends trick-or-treating on Halloween night. I think they were all dressed up as standard, classic monsters,for example one was a witch (the only one I remember), and this creepy mythical old guy comes and takes them through time(?) to show them the history of the monsters they’re dressed up as. I know that he takes them to see the Salem witch trials. I also remember weird details like the girl dressed as a witch tapes a broom to her bike as part of her costume in the beginning of the movie. Part of me is wondering if I just imagined it?

PLEASE HELP

UNK SEZ: Thanks Gus! That must be an adaptation of RAY BRADBURY‘s THE HALLOWEEN TREE! The presence of the witch makes me think it has to be the 1993 animated version! Check out the video below, I spy that broom on a bike you mentioned, and check out an earlier traumafession HERE!

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