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.
Over the years, I have carefully organized my life so that I would never have to watch this movie again. Now it is time. It is time to purge this… demon, this disguised animated maniac, this madman, this nightmare-inducing judicial charlatan, this murderer responsible for the death of Theodore J. Valiant and–rumor has it–the seemingly random killing of Bambi's mother. The VCR is broken. The TV has been long killed. The couch providing a hiding place from Him (to my four year old self, not even God could save me from Him) has long been donated. The original VHS tape, contrariwise, still exists alongside this clot in my preschool memories. It resides wrapped in a plastic bag in my old lunchbox shut inside the trunk of my sibling's electric car. If He somehow escaped the spring-loaded locks of the tape, then He still would have to escape out of the bag, then lunchbox, and then trunk, leaving me the necessary time to run away. But I digress.
Prior to the discovery of "Kindertrauma", I had planned to purge this particular demon by either painting a triptych or consenting to modern cognitive behavioral therapy. Only through those mediums I thought I could symbolically/artistically/therapeutically face off against the bane of my VCR: Judge Doom played by Christopher Lloyd in Robert Zemeckis' Who Framed Roger Rabbit? (1989). I am sure there are numerous entries in the archives tagged with: "Roger Rabbit", "Dip", "Steamroller", and possibly "freeway scheme." If not, then I will speak for all those still hiding behind the couch.
Salutations. My name is irrelevant and private. I am writing under "Anonymous" to protect my identity just in case He ever does enter the real world. Cartoons were already interacting with the fleshy living in that movie. Who's to say that was so far-fetched a fear? I have often wondered why He haunts me more than Cousin It from Barry Sonnenfeld's interpretation of The Addams Family, Hexxus' smog-ridden forms in Ferngully, the hundreds of worms in that episode of Goosebumps on TV, or the silver sight in the often mistaken last episode of Are You Afraid of the Dark? from the year 2000. I didn't ride a carousel for years. No. The cloaked figure of Judge Doom walks and stalks soley on an Island of Memory that He's made his own. To move on, to strip, to conquer Him I had to face my fear. In order to write this entry, I unearthed the VHS. I found a preserved VCR and television set. I rewound the tape. I listened for the click. I pressed play.
"Remember me, Eddie? When I killed your brother, I talked just like THIS!"
My theory: the everlasting fear associated with Who Framed Roger Rabbit? has to do with quantum physics. I'll be brief. This film won three academy awards for its brilliant mix of animation (the second dimension) and live-action (the third dimension). The governing powers of the universe do not condone two dimensions in one space. Only one dimension can rule. The strike of fear of this movie stems from our inner repulsion of a two dimensional world. This reasoning being: 1) We would all die because the heart cannot beat when flattened 2) The 2-D world has its own laws of physics that would leave us one fatal step behind. Regardless of Him, this film drips with utter nightmare fuel. Unintended, but potent.
Due to this theory, Judge Doom emerging from the television screen to get me wasn't that outlandish a fear. I would scream and scream for my brother not to take the tape out. If the movie was turned off prior to Judge Doom meeting his date with dip, he would–in theory–still be alive. As stated before, he just might have come out of the TV to kill. So, I would force my little self to listen to the climax scene. The clot was formed. I slept in my parents' room after every viewing.
This viewing would be different. While the clot oozed with a nostalgic vengance into all fissures of my very soul, the movie's climax–which had been obstructed by the fibers of the couch for fifteen years–came to cinematic life with a steamroller and optical effects.
I came.
I watched until the ending credits.
I wrote this entry.
I conqured (but had to sleep with a bottle of White Out).
I surmise that I won against Him in the end but trigger objects continue to be: a steamroller doing its innocent job on a highway, black cloaks, and the laugh of a hyena in the safaris of the country from whence those bastards came.
Hi guys.
This one will come at you from a different direction.
William Kulerek's Despair.
We had Time-Life Science books in our bookcase growing up, which were a layman's overview of a variety of topics; not quite an encyclopedic. They were broken down simple enough for a nine year old to at least look at, and we poured over them, since they were rife with illustrations. One such volume was called "The Mind". In the middle of the book was a section on Art used as therapy in diagnosing mental disorders.
I wanted to be an artist.
There were a few paintings by schizophrenics, and a few by Van Gogh…but the most riveting was a two-page spread by William Kulerek entitled "The Maze". This was before the internet, and I had no idea that Kulerek was an accomplished painter; rather I thought he was merely an incredibly good, incredibly ill patient. The painting was a cross-section of his skull laying in a field, with many painful, harrowing, surreal illustrated memories compartmentalized within. The caption by the photo went to say that the artist painted "The Maze" while in a mental hospital as means of therapy.
I would always stare horrified at these pages, seeing these interpreted memories of a young boy being isolated, beaten, mocked, dissected….and they get worse…horrified not so much by the images themselves, but by the fact that someone felt this way. Could a child's life have been this horrible?
Somewhere down the line, after I came out of art school some 15 years later, I stumbled upon another painting called "I Spit on Life". All it took was five seconds I'm sure until I was assured that this painting, perhaps even more bleak with it's hopeless, miserable vignettes, was created by the same artist from the mental hospital in the book I saw as a kid. It turns out William Kulerek was far more a talent than I had ever known. In fact, Van Halen used part of "The Maze" as an album cover in the 80's. News to me.
The good news is that Kulerek tamed his inner demons to a point, and went on to illustrate children's books, and painted a number of religious works before his death. But none of those pictures, which I have seen, had near the lasting impression of these bleak works which had a place in my nightmares and sleepless nights throughout childhood.
Kulerek's own explanation of The Maze with a picture: (HERE).
Here's a great zoom-inable view of "I Spit on Life": (HERE)
And just like that….I find this is coming out…
The first one being the episode of the rugrats "In the dreamtime" that episode used to make me cry when I was little and if I saw it was on I would run out of the room screaming, it gave me nightmares. It's an episode where Chuckie, one of the main characters, is having a bad dream, and at several points in the episode he comes across one of his friends or family (Tommy, Stu, Chaz) turned away from him, so he taps them on the back and they turn around and with distorted faces say "I'm not (insert name of who ever turned around here)!" Lots of Rugrats episodes spooked me, but that one I flat out hated, I'm 20 years old now and still don't like it.
Next being a couple of children's books, I forget the author, but they were called "There's a nightmare in my closet" and "There's something in my attic." I think. Anywho, these were straight up children's books about things that go bump in the night, it had pictures of the monsters, those are what scared me, I used to take them and hide them alot because looking at them scared me. I still have the books actually, though they reside in my little sister's room now, she's 9 and laughs when I tell her they used to scare me, she thinks the monsters are cute and the story is funny (Which, they really are cute stories, I was just a scaredy cat.)
The last one was a doll named "Amazing Amy" I thought this doll was evil and I was terrified of robotic things anyhow, I didn't like how this doll could talk and seemed to know when I would feed her the wrong foods or dress her in clothes she didn't want to wear. My big brother would often find her hidden in the house and would sneak her into my room at night and place her standing by my doorway facing my bed. Years later another doll named "Amazing Ally" came out, she was alright until she told me and my sister she needed new batteries. We taped her up in a box and stuck her in the top corner of the closet. Then just a couple years ago we got my youngest sister (she was 7 at the time, 9 now) the "Amazing Amanda" doll. Her robotic face has all these things under her doll skin that cause her to have facial expressions, but when we first turned her on she malfunctioned and all the robotics began to move at once causing her eyes to open and shut, her mouth to open and close, and her entire face to just move awkwardly as if she had something trapped under her skin. It made my sister cry and we had to take out it's batteries. Long story short, robotic dolls are spooky.
I hope these stories entertained, I just recently discovered your website!
When I was a lad of about 6 or 7 (1985ish), my parents would take me to a place called 'The Video Station' to pick out movies; it's long gone but I still have a frisbee the owner gave me. Being a typical child, I tended to rent the same movies over and over, usual kids stuff, old Spider-Man cartoons, Speed Racer, The Last Unicorn (trauma inducing in itself). While my parents would debate what movie they were going to rent, I would slip away and sneak upstairs; yes, this video store had TWO levels. The first level was all new releases, family movies, cartoons, etc. The second level was all sci-fi and horror movies and a room with a curtain and a pink light shining from beneath. I never went in that room, but I did learn what it was years later. Anyway, I would walk through the aisles of movies I was never allowed to rent and look at the movie jackets and just scare myself silly.
The slip case for Children of the Corn scared the hell out of me, those kids with the glowing eyes in the cornfield. Same goes for Visiting Hours, all the hospital windows lit up like a skull. But there was one movie jacket that scared me the most and for the life of me, I do not know the name of the movie, so hopefully someone can help. If I remember correctly, there was a giant naked eyeball hovering in blackness and two clawed hands that held a piece of wire with blood running down the wire's length. Google searches for video jackets with giant eyes and blood result in a movie called Terror Vision which isn't the one sadly. So, anyone out there remember this relic from the VHS era? Thanks so much!
–Coffeegorilla
UNK SEZ: Thanks Cofeegorilla for this VHS-centric post! Luckily, the inside of my brain is forever lined with tape-filled shelves! I think the eyeball cover you are looking for is 1979's THE VISTOR! You can read more about that movie right over HERE!
When I was in the heart of my youth, I was fascinated by Unsolved Mysteries. Afternoons would never be complete without hearing that iconic theme play on the TV, soon followed by Robert Stack's deep, grave voice informing us of the latest case that had come his way. The show served as a sort of gateway into the strange and bizarre that I loved so much, but the dark allure of Unsolved Mysteries was that all the stories were true. They had happened in real places and to real people. Was that even possible? Could such things as alien abductions and hauntings really happen to people?
Well, according to Robert Stack, yeah, they could.
Those segments concerning said abductions and hauntings traumatized me plenty. The idea of being snatched away from this world, suddenly and inexplicably, to be studied and examined by cold, calculating hands was very scary for a kid. And the ghost stuff? Fuggedaboutit. I did and still am immensely disturbed by the notion that people who die can have the power to come back for… whatever reason. There was one segment in particular that burned its way into my memory and still stirs a shiver out of me when I think about it.
It was "The Devil's Backbone" story, and I will always see that dreadful apparition as I did that day from behind a shaking pillow. It was that damn cloaked monk-figure, standing outside a window, looking in at the occupant, at ME, with eyes of ice. And worst of all, there was this horrible scream, one that sounded like pure torture, the torture I would surely face if the ghost monk laid his dead hands on me. It was absolutely horrifying, and I've never forgotten it.
But it wasn't the worst part.
The real bad stuff was saved for the homicide and disappearance segments. There was no story or case in particular that clung to my mind. What was so terrifying to me at the time (and still now) were the pictures they showed of the victims. Smiling, cheerful portraits of mothers, of children at baseball games, old men who had been peacefully living in their Florida homes until they (suddenly and inexplicably) disappeared. Or were murdered, their bodies found in river banks, in the desert, or in their beds. Those pictures held so much terror for me… knowing that these people had been taken out of existence was my first introduction into just what a strange and bizarre world this really was.
There was a story I read in a childrens' book about scary legends that was about a nasty woman who, as a punishment by God, was swallowed up by the earth, never to be seen again. That's why those pictures were so disturbing to me. They were of happy and loving people… swallowed up by the earth.
UNK SEZ: Thanks for this haunting traumafession Jose! Folks you can unearth more of Jose at his main hangout MEPHISTO'S CASTLE!
Hey, Kindertrauma! This is my first Traumafession and it's a little spontaneous. I just caught a glimpse of the cover to STAY OUT OF THE BASEMENT and it took me back, way back. I don't know if I even read this book, because the story I'd made up about its contents has only a few points in common with the actual storyline, or maybe seen the TV adaptation — the neighbor girl from across the street used to lock me in her basement with the lights off and the TV playing the television series, which beats getting abandoned at the park by older siblings for sheer sadism toward skittish younger children. I couldn't even reverse-Image Search the book's cover to double-check the title without covering my eyes with one hand. I was afraid of a lot of things as a kid (asphyxiation, JOEL GREY as the Emcee in CABARET, and everybody's favorite Scary Stories To Tell In The Dark) but none of them seemed as present and real as the fear reserved for the Goosebumps stories.
The cover image for STAY OUT OF THE BASEMENT is pretty distinctive, not as iconic as Slappy the Dummy but still viscerally memorable — a slimy, wizened green hand, gripping the edge of an ordinary-looking white door. In my memory until just now, it wasn't just slimy but dripping green blood. Six-year-old me didn't get that it was supposed to be some kind of human-plant hybrid, I mistook the gnarly buds and branches for some kind of horrible sores.
The actual plot of STAY OUT OF THE BASEMENT does involve dripping green blood at one point but the actual specifics are completely different than what I'd pictured. The dad in the story is some kind of botanist, experimenting on plants down there after getting laid off at work, but my own dad had a woodworking shop in our own basement and so I assumed that's what Dr. Brewer was up to. To me the dripping green blood wasn't because he was some kind of human/plant hybrid but because of some kind of horror movie plague — dad cuts his hand on a saw or a rusty nail, starts acting weird and pretty soon he's a pustule-covered monster who bleeds green and admonishes you to, "Stay out of the basement!" so you don't get snagged on a rusty nail too.
I'd been told about tetanus, the specter of infection or lockjaw was very real to six-year-old hypochondriac me. The thought that something like that could happen to my dad was much scarier than the thought that the resulting monster might try to infect me too or go on a rampage whereupon I'd be forced to discern my real father from the human/plant clone.
Hell, I'm still terrified of tetanus and lockjaw. Now I can be afraid of MRSA, too. And the really terrible thing is, I still can't go near our basement door without fearing that oozing green hand. And my dad's still hard at work in his shop down there.
— Alex
The most dramatic childhood horror moment for me occurred at age 13, back in 1992 during a Halloween party at my friend Charlotte's house in Selston (not far from Nottingham).
We'd all been out with her achingly cool older brothers (early 20's) to rent horror films (from memory, DOLLY DEAREST and POLTERGEIST 2), but having arrived back to the house at about 9pm, we switched on BBC1 to be met with a title screen for "GhostWatch", which I'm sure you're familiar with. Being 13, impressionable and a little immature for my age, the hour and a half-ish long mock-live "real" feed from the incredibly normal looking "haunted" house in London absolutely SHAT me up. What made it so scary was the squeaky clean presenters we all knew from kids TV – Craig Charles (of Red Dwarf fame) and Sarah Green being so incredibly convincing that the show was live.
The juxtaposition between the everyday and absolute horror was incredibly clever. We also had no idea it was a "play". That, and the fact that the titular ghost, which we screamed at as it was glimpsed and hinted at in incredibly quick camera pans and reflective patio doors etc, was a 6 foot, cross dressing, child-murdering pedophile name "Pipes" by the (at the time) convincing child actresses portraying the two daughters.
I have never been so utterly scared in my whole life, even surrounded by 10-12 prep school mates and my hosts older brothers, because it was portrayed as being live and utterly real. So real-seeming in fact, that it I believe it was banned by the BBC. I bought it a couple of years ago via their website on DVD (the ban apparently lifted) and even at the age of 32, it's still bloody scary. Yes, it seems hammier now, but the ghost itself, horrible cat scratching noises and the horrific croaking, gasping voice emitting from one of the daughters as she channels Pipes is still terrifying.
Even Charlotte's older brothers were shaken up, and as we all camped out in the sitting room to sleep – I was scared stiff despite being surrounded by my friends. Usually, I'd have been fine even if I had someone with me – not with GhostWatch, and in fact had to sleep in my brother's room on a mattress for at least a month following that night. And I don't mind admitting that!
— quick camera pan….HOLY SHIT DID YOU SEE THAT!!!!
Thanks so much for considering posting my experience, keep up the good work!
— Alex B.
UNK SEZ::Oh how I love GHOSTWATCH! It puts most faux-reality horror to absolute shame! Sorry about your trauma Alex but I stand here in utter jealousy that you got to experience GHOSTWATCH in the fullest way possible without completely loosing your mind! Kids, For more on this highly effective & influential program, check out its official site HERE! And if you'd like to watch GHOSTWATCH in it's entirety just jump on over and meet Pipes HERE!
Hi Kindertrauma!
It's been a while since I last sent in a traumafession (though by the looks of the comments to that last, I may have inadvertently traumatized someone's kidlet – sorry!) so I thought I'd share another one.
As in my first two, sound played a significant role in this one as well. If any other readers were watching U.S. public television in the late 1980s or early 1990s, they probably saw more than a few Canadian children's television programs. I definitely did, and I'm the happier for it. Most of these were pretty warm and fuzzy, and the source of much enjoyment for tiny me. There was one SIZE SMALL snippet that I could never entirely enjoy, however.
I know it probably sounds ridiculous that Miss Helen's announcement of, "It's cookies in the kitchen time!" left me dismayed, but it routinely did. The music has a lot to do with it; something about that synthesizer note buzzing in the background just plain gets under my skin to this day. The lyrics are quite innocuous, and taken on their own, they're really rather cute. But, being a neurotic little girl (haven't changed much either, only now I'm a bit taller) with a fear of hot and burning things among others, kindergarten-ish me subconsciously took the idea of an ovenful of baking cookies and ran with it. Figures I'd get a nightmare from something so harmless. In it, the "Ooh they're bakin'" line was followed by "Ooh they're burnin'", a smoke alarm, continued menacing music, and a whole host of other things as time went on–yes, this nightmare stuck with me and expanded as I got older! Brrrrr! … I'm only now realizing just how big my issues with fire were as a child.
Sorry, Miss Helen, if you're reading this. I know you didn't mean to traumatize anybody. One sketch does not an otherwise delightful viewing experience ruin, I assure you.
— Chanter
The "Satanic Panic" of the 1980s was in full swing in my small town when I was introduced to one of the main recruiting tools of the dark lord, Dungeons and Dragons. TSR's role playing game was a one way ticket to a steady diet of brimstone and piping hot Fresca for all eternity. A few of my older friends had mentioned that they were starting to play, and I was more than just a little interested. I had stumbled across a copy of the "Dungeon Masters Guide" at my local Waldenbooks and was captivated by the cover, a wizard or mage type person fought valiantly with a Paladin companion against a giant red devil wielding an equally giant scimitar. I remember glancing around the bookstore hoping that the devil or one of his minions wouldn't notice me as I dared to pick up the book. As if on cue a small black pamphlet fell out of the book and on the floor. It was the infamous Jack Chick tract, "Dark Dungeons."
Jack Chick tracts had already traumatized me for a few years prior to this point. The tract, "Bewitched" had exposed me to the horrors of drug use and the day to day battle that praying grandmothers had with Satan himself. The image of poor Ashley Wilson's face melting off as she looked into a mirror during a drug "Freak out" had insured that I would stay away from drugs until I was at least out of middle school!
"Dark Dungeons" is one of the mostly widely known and parodied Chick tracts. Poor Marcie and Black Leaf ! The horrors of role playing games were spelled out as people died with their characters, while other cast, "Mind Bondage" spells on their parents so they could play more. The reclusive Jack Chick spread his hysterical propaganda with a formidable output on many subjects, Halloween and Catholicism being rich and oft visited targets. It's debated whether or not Jack Chick is one person or a group of people writing under a pseudonym, but what is not debated is that his methods impacted readers.
I eventually learned by playing Dungeons and Dragons, that it wasn't a portal to hell and damnation, but rather a conduit for the imagination. How many people wrote stories about their adventures and went on to discover great fantasy literature or even developed the games that we play today. Dungeons and Dragons hysteria also produced the seriously awful movie, "Mazes and Monsters", starring a pre-fame Tom Hanks as a role playing fan that takes things a little too seriously.
Every once and a while I feel like pulling the dice out of storage and dusting off my trusty cleric character sheet, but then I realize that there is real life to attend to, and that Greyhawk has passed me by. Hopefully my son will gravitate towards role playing games and exercise his imagination with me on a campaign someday.
— Eric J.
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