Category: Name That Trauma!

Hi, I have been a fan of your wonderful site for a long time, and I have something that I hope someone can help me with. When I was younger there aired on TV an episode from some cop program, it might have been Starsky and Hutch, I'm not sure. There was a crazed woman killing people, who would dress up as a man, wearing a derby and a suit, and would walk in the darkness saying to victims "You, you, I'm going to kill you". Thats all I can remember, and if anyone remembers what TV show this was from I appreciate it.

Hi, I just discovered Kindertrauma a little while ago, and I have loved reading it. I'm a big horror fan, and reading some of the traumafessions led me to try and remember some of the things that scared the hell out of me as a child.

I remembered something I had seen a long time ago that I couldn't name that absolutely scared the shit out of me as a kid. I used to love watching Wallace and Gromit with my mom, growing up. We would rent the VHS tapes from the local blockbuster. I remember that on one of the tapes, and sadly I can't remember which, there was a preview for another stop motion animation. The style was sort of crude looking, and from what I can recall it was about a young girl and her… Well, I'm not sure if it was her aunt or her grandma or what, but there was something about her being dead, or coming back from the dead, and there was this crazy swirly portal. I think it was probably a comedy, but all I can remember is this creepy old dead lady, and that she called the little girl 'dearie'. I used to have nightmares after that, where I would go into my parents room to wake my dad up. I'd approach from the back, climb over mom, and then when I got to the side where his face was I'd find him as a zombie with one eyeball hanging out of its socket. After that I was sometimes afraid to lift the covers off his face in the morning. I would check to make sure both my parents were still alive. It was the idea of an adult relative, someone who you're supposed to trust and rely on, becoming something other that scared me so much. I have often wondered if the 'trailer' itself was just a nightmare. I've tried googling it, but I can't find it. So, did I hallucinate it entirely? Or does anyone else remember this?

Greetings! First off I'd like to say how much I enjoy your website. I've already read my way through the entire Name That Trauma and Traumafession archives and have been turned on to some great things by doing so. Reading about other peoples traumas has made me think more about any unresolved fears that I had in my younger days. One that stands out to me is a book that I remember getting at my local library when I was in elementary school (maybe six or seven). The book was about vampires which I was absolutely obsessed with at the time (I remember making an effort to sleep with my neck out of the covers to be open to any chances of getting bit). The book was in the children's section of the library, but I really don't think it belonged there. It was a black hardcover book with cover art of a vampire wearing dark clothes with a pale white face and an impossibly large fang filled grin. The vampire also had what appeared to be bat white bat wings sticking out of the side of his head and blood dripping from his mouth. The picture wasn't drawn in a cartoony way but seemed like a piece of artwork made to look truly terrifying. The book was just a collection of legends and facts about vampires. I remember towards the end there was a section on animal ghosts for some reason. One of the animal ghost legends was something about a ghostly bull who cursed a bridge so that any pregnant woman who walked over it would lose her baby. I had nightmares after reading the book, but for some reason continued to take it out of the library periodically until some time in middle school. Each time I read it I ended up having nightmares (something that happens very rarely for me). It might have been called The Book of Vampires or something along those lines. It was probably the mid to late nineties when I first took the book out of the library, but the cover looked pretty worn even then, so it was probably an older book. I'd love to find this book again, even if just to see that eerie cover art one more time. Thank you very much for taking the time to read this and helping me to find this book. If anything can help me find this lost nightmare, Kindertrauma can!

Hi, yes, I am relatively new fan of your site and I just love the Name That Trauma section. It's just fun to read all the different descriptions and imagine what it was like to see such things as a kid. Well, I have a few entries for you, though they aren't exactly traumas, but they are obscure memories about odd things.

The first one's from my mother:

1. It's a book that she read in elementary school about a boy and his experience in a forbidden area near his village. When he went into the forbidden zone, he ate and drank certain things and experienced flashbacks of how life used to be in this area. He uses terms such as "a horseless chariot" to describe a moving vessel that he witnessed. He also described a similar vessel that moved through the sky. There were also several references to other things that he had never imagined possible. Upon finishing the book, her teacher revealed that the forbidden area was actually ground zero of a nuclear war, and this story was taking place many generations afterward. All the technology (and knowledge of it) of that era was left behind. Throughout the generations, the concept that the area was deadly persisted (after all, it was radioactive), and the people were banned from ever returning. Oh, by the way, the book was written in a way that made it seem like the story was written in the past.

The next ones are from me:

2. There are these scenes from some move or show that I saw as a young one. The first one shows a woman at a beach-like area at nighttime as she is chest deep in a sand pit, screaming and struggling to get out. The next seems to be of the same woman on a boat or something with wind blowing at her. Very vague, I know, but hopefully someone can get something out of it.

3. There was this movie that my second grade teacher showed us. It was about a brother and sister who were home alone when their house gets washed away in a flood. When they wake up, they find the house full of water and a cougar in the closet. Essentially, it's about them trying to survive with a cougar in the house and two thieves that are in the area. If anybody can find it, especially a place where I can watch it, then I will be very grateful.

4. There was a trailer for a low-budget '70s horror movie that featured a young guy who murdered people with an axe. There was this one distinct scene where he murders a black housekeeper in a kitchen stating that "he needs the house." Also, I think the tagline that kept coming up was "Scream Bloody Murder" (that was not the movie's title). Kind of vague, I suppose.

Anyway, if you guys can figure them out, that would be great.

Ok, this one has been bugging me for years…

As a young child in the 70's, I seem to remember a scary movie (or was it a television show?) I saw that really freaked me out. With a lot of childhood memories, I may be completely wrong in some details, but I believe it was a story of a babysitter in a haunted house. The ultimate creep out was when the door (to the basement?) was 'breathing' and moving in and out, like it was made of rubber… swelling and contracting with the breathing noises. I just knew there was something behind that door, that if I saw it, I would never sleep again!!

I've asked all my friends and co-workers about it and they seem to think it was The Haunting (1963)… I've watched it recently and that sure doesn't seem like it. I am almost sure my trauma was in color, plus the 'babysitter' angle seems pretty strong in my mind.

Perhaps it was a show about ghosts or hauntings, i.e. "In Search Of", etc… but I don't know. I've been scouring "In Search Of" lately too, but to no avail.

Can you help??

There was a cartoon I used to see in the early sixties, black and white, probably old even then, maybe 30's or 40's. It had some kind of discordant jazz music in the background, no speaking, and there were these creatures who were essentially an eyeball on top of a vertical metal pole, with a wheel at the bottom. These damn things were, I think, chasing something or someone inside a building. I think there might have been predatory vacuum cleaners in it too.

I would love to be able to identify this and view it again as an adult. It absolutely terrified me.

Hello Kindertrauma!

I wanted to consult you on some books flashbacks, it is kind of a long shot but it doesn't hurt to ask…

When I was 7 (around the end of the eighties) I read a fantasy book (not a children's book, it was a long novel) about a family who lives or moves to a house in the forest and it turns out it is an enchanted forest with small people (fairies? gnomes?) living there and a man who looks like a logger with his cart but was kind of a forest keeper (also a supernatural being). What I remember about the plot is that the small people shot minuscule arrows to the dad of the family and he got one off his hand and took it to the lab to have it examined because the material was unknown, and the next day the lab people told him that it had disappeared in front of their eyes. The other thing I remember is that the adolescent daughter was lured to the forest by the "logger" and he made sweet love to her, LOL.

By that time I also read a horror novel about some family living near the beach and some little girl or boy was evil and he/she digged a huge hole by a cliff and lured a small girl (i think she was deaf or mute, or blind!) into it and left her there to rot, while also giving her the corpse of a dead beheaded kitten dressed as a doll and demanding her to play with it!!

And last but not least a book about and unborn baby that begins to control the mother's mind from the uterus and makes her eat raw food and fuck men because doing that stimulates the healthy growth of the little spawn… I think there was a connection with some computer in some part of the plot…

As you can see, reading those books made a lasting impression on my young undeveloped mind, but I loved the thrill! Sadly, my mum threw away all the books during a house cleaning and she doesn't recollect the names, even when they were hers.

Do you happen to know the name of any of the novels? I'd love to repurchase them and judge them as a grown woman now!

Alrighty, I'm stumped again on what I thought would be an easy find (I even think this one may have come up on Kindertrauma once before, but I'll be damned if I can find it seaching through your archives!)

It was an episode of some anthology TV series from the mid-80s(?) I want to say the show was associated with a known sci-fi writer like Arthur C. Clarke or Isaac Asimov, but can't be sure (at first I thought it might be an episode of Ray Bradbury Theater but it doesn't appear to be.)

The episode is set in a boarding school for children, set in the future and possibly on another planet. The planet is cloudy and rainy all the time and the sun only shines once every several years and then only for a few hours, and it is about to do so again in the next few days and everyone is excited about it. The teacher hands out "sun kits" to the class, containing sun screen, protective glasses, etc. in anticipation of the big event.

The day the sun finally shines, the kids gang up on one of the newer kids and lock her in a windowless classroom. The sun shines for the brief moment and all these flowers start blooming all around the school. It is over as quickly as it began and everything is cloudy again. The girl is let out of the classroom and she is crying at having missed the sun. The kids feel guilty and bring her armfulls of flowers.

Any help?

Thanks,

Brother Bill

Hello Kindertrauma.

I want to thank you again for helping me figure out my two mystery traumas last year. Now I've got another one.

Late 70s, PBS. Story takes place in a small town or village, probably American, 18th or 19th century. Main character is a boy around ten years old. He is friends with a girl the same age. At one point in the story, the girl becomes an outcast for some reason, and there is a heartbreaking scene where she's telling the boy they can't be friends anymore because she's "unclean." I had never heard that word before, so it really stuck in my mind.

Then we see her walking sadly along the riverbank, and a little later we find out that her drowned body had been found. The scene that really shook me was the boy and his father praying, and the father says something like "God, please let it have been an accident." I didn't know what he meant at first, then I figured out he meant that the girl might have drowned herself on purpose.

At the time, I knew what suicide was, but I thought it was something strictly reserved for grownups, like voting or taking drugs. The idea that a child close to my own age could decide to kill herself was a terrifying glimpse into my own mortality. And PBS claims another victory over childhood innocence.

Any help with this would be tremendously appreciated!

Hi!

I've always been an avid reader, and as a kid in the 80s I devoured YA/Children's short horror fiction anthologies by the dozen (obviously, Alvin Schwartz's SCARY STORIES TO TELL IN THE DARK were at the top of the list!) I still have a handful of them, but I'm trying to track down one in particular. There's a chance it came from a Scholastic book fair… I can't remember any of the other stories in this particular volume, but the tale forever etched in my brain was about a pair of brothers left with a sitter for the evening while their parents went out. The younger brother, the story's protagonist, notices a light come on in their backyard shed. He is terrified for some reason, and alerts everyone else. One by one the sitter, the sitter's boyfriend (I think), the older brother, and, after their return, the kid's parents all stick their heads out the window to look and are pulled off into the night. I believe the story ends with the kid sitting alone in the house, staring at the window.

I'd kill to know what this one is. I've been looking for years!