Category: Traumafessions

First off, your site is so completely awesome and words can't express the amount of pleasure I've had over the years scanning through all of your articles saying, "Oh wow… I remember that!" For this… I thank you.

For my first trauma confession ever, I present to you an episode of the late '80s show FREDDY'S NIGHTMARES. This was an anthology show where Freddy Krueger introduced horror tales of the terrible things that happened in the cursed town of Springwood. Sometimes, he even appeared in the tales.

I was very young (maybe 8 or 9 I think), and was over my Grandparent's house in their basement at the time. My Grandfather was flipping through the channels, when all of a sudden, he stops on this one particular program that looks like a game show. The host keeps looking at this timer and telling this totally frightened woman that she doesn't have much time left on the clock. She is being asked questions, and the camera switches to her husband who is tied up with a blade above him that keeps swinging closer and closer to him. The host (with an unsettlingly happy grin) keeps asking her questions. The woman then says out loud to herself something like, "If I win, HE DIES!" or maybe it's the other way around (I'm at work as I type this and can't check on YouTube unfortunately).

Anywho, the blade finally starts piercing his flesh and you see some blood. The gagged man starts to scream. My grandmother happens to come into the room and she says "Lee, turn that off!". My grandfather just sits there laughing. "Lee, turn that off now!" she says again. My grandfather finally turns the channel.

Of course by then, the damage had already been done.

My poor little brain was now trying to erase those images for the rest of that trip I'm sure. Later on in life, I became an absolute horror fanatic and received a bootleg set of the entire series of FREDDY'S NIGHTMARES in great quality. Imagine my surprise when I watched the episode "Judy Miller, Come On Down". It was the infamous scarring episode!!! It had, through the hands of fate arrived back to me after years of searching for it, wondering if it was but a dream! Not only that, but I could now see all of the "wonderful" ways Judy was tormented on that sick gameshow including her relatives being covered in man-eating ants!

It's up on YouTube now I believe, so you fellow kindertraumers can go see it in all of its sick glory. '80s nighttime T.V. was never so good! Hehe.

When I was a kid I spent a lot of time at my grandparents house in Midwest City OK. PSYCHO had been re-released into theaters about a year before it was to premier on local TV. I recall the previews being morbidly humorous and more terrifying than anything I had previously imagined. When it was to be shown on television there was quite a buzz in the household. My aunt, only a few years older than me, was eager to see it.

When the broadcast came I was declared too young. I was very disappointed and protested that I was indeed old enough to watch this movie. I was probably six years old. My grandpa told me I could watch until I hid my eyes. If I had to hide my eyes then I had to go to bed. The shower scene was awesome, but didn't make me hide my eyes. Arbogast didn't bother me a bit, the scene was too weird to be frightening. But the tour through the Bates house was really giving me the heebie jeebies; by this time I was halfway up the stairs, watching the movie through the bannister rails.

When I met Mrs. Bates it was too damned late. Hiding my eyes wasn't going to help at that point. The epilogue seemed overdone, but I really liked the last scene of Norman and the shot of the car being pulled from the pond. I made it through the whole movie. This was to begin a lifelong devotion to the joys of horror, although I did not sleep well for several years after. I saw the film again recently in a theater, and found it remarkably dated particularly the soundtrack (which I revere) seemed way overwrought. Oh well, I still remember the first viewing fondly.

Hey, I found your site during a search for the movie CHILD OF GLASS, which in combination with everything else on this site, seemed like a strange connection, because I loved that movie, but I was 11 for that one. I saw your request for emails about what "scarred" me for life and there were 3 things that came to mind although the first one gets the "for life" honors:

THE EXORCIST. Seriously I can barely look at clips of it even. So that's #1.

The other 2 things were I believe, one, from the introduction of FRIGHT NIGHT. It was a TV series on at 4 or 5 in the afternoon, and the introduction was from this floating head that spoke to you in the beginning of each episode and at the end I think, and then faded off into the background.

The other was some ventriloquist dummy that was the commercial for some movie in the theaters at the time (probably in the '70s) but don't remember which movie it was supposed to be. Just remember having to change the channel or leave the room every time it came on.

Ironic thing is I love scary movies. No possession movies though…hmmm. Thank you LINDA BLAIR. Like the site though. Wished I'd found you on Halloween!

— Jennifer F.

UNK SEZ: Thanks Jennifer F! I'm not sure if I have found the right clip for the TV show FRIGHT NIGHT. Could it be the one below? Does anyone out there remember the floating head Jennifer is looking for?

Hi guys,

I'd like to share my very own kindertrauma with you!

It might sound funny, but it's about E.T.: THE EXTRA TERRESTRIAL.

I've first seen that movie when I was about 4 years old, E.T. himself didn't really freak me out at first, I remember crying cause I was so afraid of the people in the white "space suits" who locked up the house when E.T. got sick.

I had nightmares about those faceless people breathing heavily and hunting me down.

When I was 5 or 6, my sister told me about alien abductions. She was older than me and very interested in that kind of stuff. She made me watch documentary films about UFOs, aliens and abductions. The only alien my little kid's brain knew was E.T., so I made a connection between alien abductions and E.T.

It gave me terrible nightmares about E.T. landing his UFO in our garden, abducting my family and abuse them for medical tests. In my mind, E.T. wasn't that nice, tiny alien anymore. He was taller than me and wanted to harm us.

The next time, I saw E.T. on TV, I was terrified. That movie turned into a horror movie. I could barely watch it and I was hiding under my blanket all the time. From now on, I was scared, whenever I saw E.T.… on TV, in a magazine, whatever.

I remember having a magazine from Toys 'R Us with a picture of E.T. in it. You know what I did? I put a sticker on that picture so that I could look at this magazine without being scared. Oh, and I remember that my sister used to have an E.T. keyring. I hid it all the time because I was scared of it.

Today, I'm 26 years old. I tried to get over it and watched the movie some time ago. But I had to look away all the time and wasn't able to watch that movie like a grown up. I still jump when I suddenly see E.T. on TV or somewhere else… My friends find that very funny…

— Claudia K.

I know you hear all the time about traumafessions that have been nagging people for years, and this is no different. I was ready to submit it as a "Name that Trauma" segment but blissfully found my answer and have been able to put 36 years of hunting behind me. Being a kid in the '70s, I was obsessed with all things Bigfoot and airplane disaster movies, so I remember being thrilled to find a repeat of a movie that was based on real-life events of a horrific plane crash with one lone survivor.

The film is called MIRACLES STILL HAPPEN (1975) and tells the tale of Juliane Koepcke who was the sole survivor of a plane crash in the Peruvian rainforest. It has the usual suspense and expected terror of your typical plane crash movie, but the real excitement starts when poor Juliane has to trudge through the jungle to find help. After 10 days of solitary drudgery she finally finds some loggers who help her and eventually get her to civilization.

Right when you think all is well and you can eat your peanut butter and jelly sandwich, the unthinkable happens: They start squeezing bugs out of her wounds. The entire theme is bad enough when you consider the horror she must have experienced, but then we're subjected to live maggots in bloody wounds, and that's all she wrote folks. All I kept thinking was "I wonder if they missed one and it's still living in her system?". I have no idea if this movie is available, and I doubt I'd want to watch it again. But at least I found it and can rest easy knowing she got all the bugs out all those years ago.

This f'd me up as a kid in the 70's. Racer x was my hero until I saw this episode. Your site is awesome.

— Jason T.

Hey, Francisco from Spain here, I have been a time without connecting with kindertrauma but now I'm doing the homework and trying to read the articles I didn't read, awesome the children show The boy with two heads-CHICO THE RAINMAKER, I can't stop singing in my mind the song¡¡¡…!!! incredible the link to "Poison" from THE ELECTRIC COMPANY too…(UNK SEZ: Thanks to Jamie JoAnne Russell for that link HERE.)

Well, I want to make a traumafession, an adult one, I can't see the poster for AIRPORT '77, the one with the sunken plane, I didn't send you a link because I really, really can't look at it, and it has been not so much time that I discovered that poster as an adult but… I like the sea and swimming but thinking about the depths and what you could find there… glubss … I have a bad time looking at photographs of the bottom of the sea or great fishes like sharks or whales too, maybe this traumafession could be the weirdest in kindertrauma but after knowing some people and their traumas with the WARNER BROS. logo or the TRI STAR Pegasus…

Feel free to correct my poor grammar and my poorest writing style if you want to publish this traumafession on the webpage!

UNK SEZ: Yay! I'm always happy to hear from Francisco from Spain! Don't worry Francisco, your English is fine because the language of trauma is universal! You may not want to watch the trailer for AIRPORT '77 below because things get muy submerged!