Category: Traumafessions

Hello,

My name is Anthony Sant'Anselmo and I wanted to thank you for the labor of love that is your website. I, too, have yet to put away 'childish' things – and it all started with 'The Dark Crystal' back in '82… But before I delve into that, I should back up about twenty years when my father started a business to make an interactive child's toy, partnering up with Ken Forsse and Teddy Ruxpin was invented. Of course, it wasn't until 1985 that it finally came to fruition and was on the shelves just before the holidays. Already having a love of puppetry with 'The Dark Crystal' and 'Gremlins' – it was seeing the killer doll movie craze come forth a couple of years after Teddy's debut, that I couldn't turn back and I began making stop-motion animated puppet horror movies. I'm 35 years old now, animate for 'South Park' (a low-tech form of stop-motion puppetry) and I run a traveling exhibit of screen-used and replica puppets from horror movies of yesteryear called, 'Evil Puppets' – with an exhibit that includes Gremlins, Ghoulies, Critters, Trilogy of Terror, Troll, Monkey Shines, Meet the Feebles, Puppet Master and lots more. I have an online shrine (HERE) dedicated to these wonderful pieces, but the facebook page is really where the interactivity is.

We have a show this weekend at Spooky Empire in Orlando – should be a great time.

Just wanted to introduce and say thanks – I've gotten a lot of enjoyment from your site.
Anthony Sant'Anselmo

As a kid in the early 70's I loved scary movies..Horror Of Party Beach on Creature Feature? I was six and loved it! So you'd think I wouldn't scare easy. Not so.. Behind our quaint neighborhood King's Market in Burlingame, California stood an ominous structure: The Ice Machine!

This isn't the little box you pull out a bag of ice cubes, this was a huge structure that could fit ten standing adults. It worked like a regular vending machine, you put quarters in a slot and out comes a big block of ice. People needed ice for their highballs back then. And refrigerators were still pretty basic back in the 70's. Anyway, why did this thing scare me so much?

It was the bumping noises inside; when you're a kid you associate bumping with life, so, "My god something is alive in there making ice!" my young mind concluded. I'd be fine as long as I steer clear of it. Then one early evening my mom stopped by King's to get some staples or what not and we parked relatively close to that scary behemoth. My eye's widened. The front of the Ice Machine's front was open!

Now you'd think this would dispel any fears I would have of this creepy structure; I would be able to see its inner-workings. It just made it worse. Thick frost was billowing out and through it I could barely see the man-thing who toiled day and night to make ice. He was scraping the ice off the floor or some kind of maintenance. I was in Mommy's Cadillac, so I felt pretty safe. Nevertheless my mind mind was made up, that Ice Machine was to be avoided at all cost!

Hello, dear traumapeople!

I don`t know, how popular the other works of Astrid Lindgren, the author of "Pippi Longstockings" are in the english speaking world, but here in Germany they are very common. So everybody likes this nice grandma and her stories about innocent times from Sveden, right? She would never traumatise anyone, right?

Well… Although her fantasy Novels are sometimes really dark, it was a pictured book, that really scared me as a child: "Rupp Rüpel – das grausigste Gespenst aus Smaland" (something like "Rupp Rude – the most horrible ghost of Smaland") as it was called in german. Looks harmless, isn`t it?

Wrapped in a story from the author's childhood, is the tale of the eponymous ghost: A rude troublemaker, who wants to scare the vicar, dresses as a ghost and dies from shock, when his coat is stuck in the churchdoor, because he thinks, it's a real ghost "or even the hand of the Lord himself, who wants to punish him for his deed". His frozen body stands on the churchyard for hundreds of years, till a tough woman makes a bet to carry him at night into a tavern. She does it and wins, but when she brings him back, he clinches his icy hands around her neck and forces her to bring him to the vicar's grave, where he apologies and gets salvation… while the woman goes insane. Happy Ending!

Very classic mix of two famous ghost stories, we've often seen in "Twilight Zone" or "Hellboy". That would'nt be the problem, even for a child. The problem were the illustrations by Ilon Wikland: Rupp's prank as a ghost, the frozen corpse at the tavern and the gruesome grip of undead hands.

Some time ago a friend told me, that she got also traumatised by it in her childhood and still got the book. So I could get an update of his gruesomeness. – Maybe out there at the internet are more victims of Smaland's most horrible ghost?

Greetz

Dirk

First of all,

I have just discovered Kindertrauma, and I have to say, as a kid who got spooked quite a bit from watching too many scary movies/t.v. shows, I love the idea behind this website! I also should admit that I found it through a very random google search. I wanted to find the name of a television show that I used to watch as a child (at first I thought it was a 90s adaptation of the Twilight Zone), and, because of my lucky search engine abilities, I was brought to Kindertrauma. I found out the show was called Amazing Stories and the episode that traumatized me was an episode called "Thanksgiving."

Anywhoodle, I figure I might as well share some of my childhood scares. One was not actually a t.v. show, but it was a stupid collection of cards. I believe they were called Garbage Pail Kids, and I found them when I was about nine years old. After my father's breakup from a woman he had been with prior to marrying my mother, I accidentally ended up with a tub of those damned screwed up collectible cards which belonged to his ex-girlfriends demented fourteen year old son (no relation). I was going through the tub expecting it to contain my seemingly innocent Pokemon cards, but instead I found THESE screwed up images of mutilated babies in a toy card form. It made me sick to my stomach after finding a few. Needless to say, the awkward harbored feelings towards the family my father had been a part of before mine was made more awkward after I found those obscene cards.

Secondly, the movie that really screwed with my head as a kid was The Twilight Zone Movie that came out in the 80s. It was this scene…

Anyways, thank you for being a wealth of information about scary crap from when we were kids. Hopefully my traumas are relatable for some other inner child needing closure!

Thanks,

S

Hi! I just discovered the website today and after checking it out for a bit, it is great. one specific creepy point from my youth involves the show Out of This World. I specifically remember one horrible episode involving some kind of person-sized puppet or doll. it was just really creepy looking, along with the way it moved. It is such a vague memory at this point. I have no idea how I could track down a clip of it or find a picture

While I was writing this I remembered two films that messed me up as a kid that I did not see already mentioned on the site that much.

First was Serpent and the Rainbow. I was probably like 7 or 8 when I first watched it at my grandmother's house. so many amazing scenes. So incredibly creepy to me.

Second was The Gate. I think I was around the same age when I saw this one on TV. I could not remember the name of it until just recently. I only remembered specific scenes; one was a red phone melting. I have no idea why that stuck with me so, but it did. Also, there was a scene in either this or Serpent involving a person being dragged down through a tunnel filled with arms, continually pulling them down. I tried to find pictures of the scene to pinpoint which film, but I could not find them. I rewatched this one recently and loved seeing it again, having those faint memories be revitalized. I also love the whole playing the metal record backward satanic stuff in it that I did not remember from before. Well that is all for now.

Thanks!

— Andrew D.

P.S. Sh*t, I just realized the tunnel of arms was Labyrinth. I could have sworn though that one of those two had a similar scene…

UNK SEZ: Look! We got another postcard from our Pal Francisco from Spain!

Hey ho let's go…

More about 70's and early 80's lp covers, this time by one of the more interesting artistic teams I know Hipgnosis, who did covers for artists like Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, Electric light orchestra and these two traumafessions. First, one of the weirdest covers in the history of pop and rock, 10 cc's "Deceptive Bends" (Image Above)

I saw that cover in a 70's catalogue for buying lps that was in the house of a relative and although I have listened to almost nothing by 10 cc that cover is still a mystery for me. I know it is a group known for its soft ballads, so what exactly is the meaning of the cover? What's the relation with the music on the vinyl? Is the girl dead? What happened to her? I think now that art by Hipgnosis is kind of abstract or surreal with absolutely nothing related to the music on the lps inside. In any case, although a bit creepy, a fascinating and very artistic cover. I don't want to be cruel but it's sure better that the music by 10 cc!!!

And what about this…Rainbow's Difficult to Cure.

Without comments for someone like me with fear of hospitals and doctors… just imagine yourself about to be operated on by this bunch of surgeons, it must be something really, really difficult to cure if the operation requires seven surgeons!!! At least on the back cover there is a pretty nurse but with the exception of the ultracool chief surgeon the people look worried… glubss…

Just opposite of 10 cc (sorry for the fans of this band) Rainbow is great… and this lp has as the first track one of the best heavy/pop songs I have heard…

I was pretty normal kid. Granted, at 6 my mother took me to the theater to see Friday The 13th in 1980, completely traumatizing me and ensuring I never spend the night in the woods again, but I digress. More than trips to the theater or watching slasher movies on Beta during a sleep-over, what really did it for me were those sinister, evil voiceovers that accompanied movie trailers or sometimes even TV spots for horror films. Those voices, and there were many of them, were filled with such resonance and horror that turning away and covering your eyes was never enough. I was haunted by those inflections, those slightly-English-sounding adjectives, the way they would draw you in and leave you utterly frightened after the first sentence. Those voices are as indelible as the trailers, and while there were many, I have to reflect on MY 'big 3':

1) DAN LaFONTAINE – This is the guy we all know and love. "In a world where" he spoke on the airways, we were truly freaked out. True, his voice and style became a bit TOO mainstream and recognizable towards the end of his life, he was pretty much "the voice" of Paramount Pictures in the late 70's-early 80's and his voice is clearly recognizable in gems like My Bloody Valentine (1981), Dressed To Kill, The Fly (1986), Scream, and he needs only to count to freak us out in the original Friday the 13th (1980) trailer:

2) ADOLPH CAESAR – Caesar was an accomplished black actor, with roles in A Soldier's Story, The Color Purple, and other films, but he really left his true mark in FREAKING ME OUT in the late 70's and early 80's. An amazing, deep, and resonant voice, he could make just about anything sound scary, and usually did. You'll most certainly recognize the damage he did to you when you hear him voice the trailers from Deep Red, Blacula, A Nightmare On Elm Street (1984), Sleepaway Camp, Last House On the Left (the "It's only a movie" trailer), Creepshow, and probably his most famous – Dawn Of the Dead (1977):

3) PERCY RODRIGUEZ – Probably the most notable of my 'big 3' voiceover artists, because his voice was deeper and more sinister, and along with the films he voiced, he really packed a lot of punch and undoubtedly scarred many of us in the process–'normal' people included. His films are epic, and he could scare your grandma talking about what he did on Labor Day. His voice will be indelibly linked with some of the terrifying moments he set up in films like Dracula (1979), Madman, The Omen, The Amityville Horror (1979), The Exorcist, and his piece-de-resistance: Jaws:

Thanks to Dan, Adolph, and Percy for giving me an entire horror movie's worth of chills in about 90 seconds. nYou truly traumatized my youth, and I wouldn't change a thing. Like I said, there are many amazing voice artists out there that voiced many, trauma inducing trailers. One honorable mention from my list has to be ROSCOE LEE BROWNE, a Shakespearean actor and cast-member of the TV Show "Soap". Often confused with Adolph Caesar, he leant a similar inflection of voice to terrifying trailers like The Prowler:

I find his voice not to be quite as deep or resonant as Caesar's, but that delivery, that pacing, that almost-English-like-inflection on certain words still freaks me OUT.

The next time you sit down to watch an old horror movie trailer, take a good listen. It might very well be one of these guys. Now, I have to go and turn on some more lights….

When I was about 5 or 6 I walked in a dark room and turned on the TV set. What came on scared the crap out of me. It was an episode of Space:1999. It showed an alien devouring astronauts then spitting out burned husks.

I found a link on youtube. Kind of long, but it does not disappoint.