Year: 2013

I'm back,
After an unsuccessful attempt at uncovering my previous trauma I submit a new challenge!!! Please help, I don't know if these are imaginings from the dark recesses of my mind or just TV shows/films whose images still plague me to this day!!! Ok, both would have been televised in the eighties:

First up,
Could have been a from a series or film – I recall some kind of evil playground, no obvious horror that I can remember but more an air of menace. For some reason I think the main character which could have been a young boy was fully aware that the playground held some secret but it wasn't until dusk that this was fully realised? Could have been some kind of supernatural gang involved who frequented said 'evil playground'!!!

And secondly,
I'm edging towards what could have been a ghostly children's TV programme – all I remember is a girl and her family driving down some long and winding roads eventually passing what I remember as some kind of clock tower. I think the sighting of the clock tower triggered some kind of repressed memory in the girl like she knew she had seen it before regardless of what her parents told her? Again, another menacing secret. Did this happen to me or are these shows/films out there???

Thanks for the help with the last trauma but it still remains unearthed – It involves an architect, his female lover with red hair (a nude bath scene reminiscent of ophelia), a curse and some hallucinations of a scary individual appearing in a car windscreen or on top of car!

HELP, I'm still TRAUMATISED!!!!!

TRISTAN R.

There is a book that I read almost 20 years ago…I think I was 8 or 9, so it was 17 or 18 years ago to be more specific. Though, I don't think the time-frame matters much because I'm pretty sure the book was not a new release and had been out for some years before I read it.

It was a collection of ghost stories and superstition, I think… I am hoping that someone can help me here.

These are the stories that I remember…

One story had a woman buying a house and one of the bedrooms was haunted by the ghost of a little girl who had died because her bed was underneath a window and she caught a draft and died of pneumonia or something like that.

Another story had someone, a family, maybe, but it might have been just an individual, staying in a hotel, and they were being disturbed at night by a child and kept complaining about it to management, but the management kept saying that there were no other kids staying in the hotel. It turns out the child was a ghost who was haunting the hotel and had died in the room the family was staying in, or something to that effect…I think I remember that they might have found a skeleton in the closet or in the wall or something at the conclusion.

Another story detailed the Black Dog of Death, the superstition that some people see a big black dog as a harbinger of death to come. This one terrified me and gave me an irrational fear of dying every time I saw a black dog around, which I would see, or imagine I was seeing, quite often, hahahah.

This might have been from a different book, but I THINK it also contained the old legend of the newlywed couple who were driving to a town and getting lost because it was dark, so they had to stop for the night and they asked an elderly couple if they could sleep in their home. The elderly couple invited them in and fed them and gave them good company. In the morning, the couple left an envelope of money on the table to thank them for their hospitality and continued on their way to the town. They mentioned the old couple to someone and the person said that the old couple was long-dead and had died in a fire, I think, and the house wasn't even standing anymore so it was impossible that they had spent the night there. The couple went back to investigate and found that there was indeed just a pile of rubble where the house had been, but among the remains of the house was the envelope they had left that morning, just sitting there among the rubble.

As far as I can tell, it was a collection of 'true' ghost stories and legends and superstitions and things like that, and I would REALLY love to read it again if someone could help me identify it!

Thanks for the help!

– Liz

There was a Hewlett Packard printer commercial that I saw at Christmastime when I was three or four if I recall, where an old man tries to cheer a baby up by shoving dolls and pictures in his face. I don't remember it fully, but I really, really hated it.

Another strange thing happened to me around Christmastime when I was three of four. I remember walking downstairs in the middle of the night and seeing an advertisement on the TV, which my dad was watching. In the ad, It showed a snow globe full of figures of happy children standing next to a snowman holding an umbrella. As I recall, the kids then flipped over into the snow, letting out a loud "Oof!", and the snowman's umbrella popped open. It then panned to show a creepy old man staring into the snow globe and smiling.

Perhaps I may never see these ads again, but they still reside in my brain. If anyone has pictures or videos, please put them up.

Since I have discovered this site last week, I've become completely addicted! Thanks for bringing up so many memories of my childhood and alerting me to movies I should have already seen.

But moving on, I have three traumas to submit. I'm afraid I don't have a lot on any of them, but you and your readers have mad skillz, and answering any of these would be wonderful. Presenting them in the order in which they occurred:

1) Mid-to-late 80s: a trailer for a vampire movie that aired repeatedly on TV. The only thing I remember is what traumatized me: a female vampire jumps through a window (perhaps in slo-mo), completely unscathed by the flying shards of glass around her. I think she was wearing a nightdown-ish dress in a pastel color, and might have been non-Caucasian. I have watched a bunch of trailers from that era and have yet to come across it.

2) Late-80s: I checked out a book from the elementary school library. It was an anthology of folklore horror stories from around the world. It was illustrated, but definitely wasn't any of the Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark books. The story that traumatized me took place somewhere in Asia (sorry, don't remember which country specifically). There was a female ghost with long fingernails or claws and she was chasing a male. He stood in front of a tree and she charged at him. He lunged at the last second to get away. Her claws were embedded in the tree and he took off. Another story took place in Italy or France and involved a guy murdering someone (maybe his wife?) and making her into sausages, which he sold. This didn't bother me at all; apparently cannibalism doesn't traumatize me, but ghosts do. Those two stories were definitely in the anthology, but another jostles my memory that may or may not have been included. It had voodoo zombies that were controlled by salt or sugar (or maybe both?). One had been given whichever substance makes them work and, in a golem-like twist, works mindlessly on stuff around the farm.

The book wasn't new when I read it and might have been as old as the 60s.

3) Early 90s: Another book I read, this one checked out from the public library. I think it might have been intended for teenagers, or even adults, because I never saw it in the children's section again (or maybe enough parents complained). This one featured a girl, perhaps in her early teens, who started dabbling in black magic. She needed baby fat for a spell and wanted to sacrifice her little brother. I think she might have had a sister as well. I think her father was somehow not in the picture, and that might have been the driving force behind getting into magic. I checked out the book in paperback, and I think the cover was purple and had a pentacle or some other sort of magical symbol on it. Whatever it was, my mother saw the cover and told me I wasn't allowed to read stuff like that. I had to return it to the library that day.

Many thanks to anyone who can help with any of these!