kindertrauma

Category: Traumafessions

Traumafessions :: Reader Turnidoff on Star Trek ep. "Operation: Annihilate!"

Posted on By aunt john

My Dad was a big STAR TREK fan so we always had it on in the house when I was a wee lad. The one episode that was forever burned into my mind was "Operation: Annihilate!" The crew set down on a planet that was inhabited by these flying pancake like parasites that would attach to your spine. They would stick to the walls and for some reason be immune to phazers.

As a kid who already was freaked out by leeches, this was a terrifying thought. Even if poorly executed, just the thought of one of those floating by and clinging to your back was traumatic.

Apparently, as we learn from Dr. McCoy, they would inject tissue into your back and some how "meld" with you so that if it was torn off, you'd be killed along with it.

Fortunately this paved the way for my first viewing of ALIEN to be almost something that was passé! Well, not really.

Traumafessions :: Reader Errico on Space 1999 ep. "Force of Life"

Posted on By aunt john

Another trauma of mine, although a minor one, was an episode of SPACE 1999. One might wonder what could be scary in a dated-looking 70's style family sci-fi series? Well, the episode "Force of Life" has an alien entity that feeds on "energy" taking the body of one of the characters. The man now "possessed" starts absorbing energy from lights and small plants just by touching them but soon grows greedier and the first human victims are found frozen, all the heat absorbed from their bodies.

Near the end the need for more energy forces the villain into the nuclear reactor in which he will literally burn becoming a slow moving black crispy monster with glowing creepy eyes. Well that was a pretty scary show for the audience (kids mostly), and for that time.

I can't call this a major trauma, it didn't leave permanent damages but it's something that stuck in my mind. As a matter of fact when I was a kid I dreamt of this black-burnt man with glowing eyes chasing me around like a zombie.

UNK SEZ: Thanks Errico, you can find more SPACE 1999 trauma HERE!

Traumafessions :: Waxartist72 of Shrieks in the Night on Halloween, Friday the 13th, et al.

Posted on By aunt john

Well for me I saw HALLOWEEN on it's network television premiere in 1981 (I was 9) and was forever changed. I was scared to go to the bathroom, much less sleep. I watched both FRIDAY THE 13TH and the sequel back to back and practically went into convulsions of fear, loving every single minute of it. I was hooked. So I would have to say HALLOWEEN and FRIDAY THE 13TH Parts 1 and 2 were defining moments for me. However, just as terrifying were SALEM'S LOT, DARK NIGHT OF THE SCARECROW, I, DESIRE, and HOME FOR THE HOLIDAYS with SALLY FIELD. They were all made-for-T.V. movies that scared the crap out of me.

AUNT JOHN SEZ: Thanks waxartist72, you rattled off the names of some of my favorite made-for-T.V. movies. To see more from waxy, be sure to check his blog SHRIEKS IN THE NIGHT!

Traumafessions :: Reader William H. on Seizure & Star Trek & a Name That Trauma With Follically Challenged Child Aliens

Posted on By aunt john

Thanks to two LEONARD NIMOY movies that came out in the late ‘70s/early ‘80s, I developed a terrible phobia of bald women. Most memorable was SEIZURE: THE STORY OF KATHY MORRIS, which told the story of a young woman who undergoes brain surgery. Mr. NIMOY plays her doctor. I vaguely remember a traumatizing scene where her baldness is revealed and how it horrified me. I mean, to my five year old mind, a woman was NOT supposed to be bald. Also, I probably associated the sick protagonist with my mother who had M.S.

There was also Lt. Ilia in the first STAR TREK movie who was totally, slickly, shiny bald. She was more terrifying to me than any creature that the crew of the Enterprise was ever to encounter.

And, as a NAME THAT TRAUMA, there was a movie that came out around 1983 that involved a group of bald children aliens that were traveling with a human couple. This movie traumatized me even more than the previous two, and it aired a lot on HBO. I was always afraid to turn the T.V. to that channel.

As a young adult in the mid-'90s, I thought I was over this phobia. There was even a bald super-model with a dragon tattoo on her head that I loved. Then one night I was watching MELROSE PLACE. Dr. Kimberly Shaw had been the victim of some kind of accident, but she seemed to be doing alright. In a cliff-hanging scene, after having made love to her boyfriend, Dr. Shaw goes into the bathroom and looks at herself in the mirror. Then she rips off her wig and has this choppy Joan of Arc haircut and a huge scar. I inhaled so sharply I probably sucked all the oxygen out of my room, thus proving trauma does not stop after childhood.

Traumafessions :: Reader Rita Jean on Dark Night of the Scarecrow

Posted on By aunt john

Do you remember DARK NIGHT OF THE SCARECROW?

This movie scared the F-ing crap out of me when I was 10.

Hi! My name is Rita Jean from Huntington Beach, Ca. DARK NIGHT OF THE SCARECROW was burned in my memory so badly that I had to get a copy of it somehow to re-watch it as an adult and put my memories of terror to rest. The VHS is very hard (nearly impossible) to get and DVD's don't exist although I found a guy on e-Bay that made them. I am now the proud owner of my very own DVD copy. I watched it….. and now I can honestly say that I've put my fear of this "film" to rest forever.

This movie was so horribly cheesy and the acting was so bad that I just had to laugh. Even worse is before I made that discovery, I forced my friend to watch it with me (because I was so scared) convincing him it was going to be utterly terrifying. Now he thinks I'm completely retarded.

Subsequently, now my fear of this movie is truly gone forever and I'm not too sure how to feel about that. It's kinda like losing my virginity all over again.

UNK SEZ:: Thanks Rita Jean, I still get a huge kick out of this movie but then again I'm still a virgin, so don't go by me! Funny you should mention D.N.O.T.S. (which was supposed to come out on DVD but seems to have met some snags), I was just showing Aunt John the cool image above which is taken from a terrific (nobody says terrific anymore) T-shirt design from the freaky folks at FRIGHT RAGS!

Traumafessions :: Reader Jergy on Halloween is Grinch Night

Posted on By aunt john

Since Halloween is fast approaching I thought I'd write in with my trauma. I was (and still am according to my wife) a bit of a scaredy cat, which is amazing considering how Halloween is my favorite time of year. My favorite part was the specials. Kids today will never understand the EVENT that was catching THE GREAT PUMPKIN or GARFIELD the night it aired. But Halloween specials were not as plentiful as the amount that would hit you as Christmas so they were more treasured and rare. And they all used to scare me. I think I even covered my face watching the FAT ALBERT HALLOWEEN SPECIAL (that old lady that lived by the cemetery was creepy!)

The trauma I wrote to tell you about came eleven years after the Grinch terrified me while ruining the Who's Christmas. Old Grinchy was so popular they threw him a new special. The original name of the program back in 1977 was HALLOWEEN IS GRINCH NIGHT. And I had no idea the absolute terror I was in for. First thing I noticed was that this Grinch wasn't anything like the Grinch I saw carving the roast beast with the Whos eleven years ago. This Grinch was much more sinister. To keep the synopsis brief, what I gather is the same time every year (around Halloween) the Grinch comes down from Mount Krumpet and scares the sh*t out of the Who's. He was sort of like Jack Skellington, but more of an asshole. His heart was no longer "3 sizes bigger," it was gone completely.

So one small Who decides to delay the Grinch as he heads towards the town. He approaches him and asks to be scared. What followed are images I'll never shake from my head. I can't believe this special actually won an award back in 1977. And even more surprising was that the teleplay was written by Seuss himself. I know he's known for bizarre sometimes frightening images, but this seems above even something he would conjure.

Luckily this show didn't air very often, but it never had to. Those images were burned in my brain the rest of my life. So fast forward 32 years later when I picked up a DVD of GREEN EGGS AND HAM for my daughter and flipped it over. As an 'extra feature' they included HALLOWEEN IS GRINCH NIGHT. Needless to say my daughter was excited to see it. So I sat next to her last week while asking over and over again while watching it, "Are you sure you want to watch this? We can turn it off if you want?" When I should have just told the truth and said, "Daddy peed his pants."

Awesome site guys, love it!

Jergy

Traumafessions :: Reader Theresa G. on The Fugitive

Posted on By aunt john

For years I suffered with the same recurring nightmare. I couldn't figure it out, didn't understand what it could have meant. Years later, as an adult, I told one of my sisters about it.

It was dusk and I was running, someone was chasing me and I was so scared. I could see it even as I explained it. The man chasing me had one arm and he was chasing me through an amusement park.

My sister laughed and told me that was from the show THE FUGITIVE.

 

Traumafessions :: Reader Smidget on Phantasm

Posted on By aunt john

I was so scared of this movie because of commercials that I never saw it….the commercials scared the heck out of me as a kid where my brother would tease me undyingly about it even though we'd never seen the movie!

Now, I watched it today.

Yawn.

To me it's SO SO STRANGE how things can be SO SCARY to you one time of your life and a joke another. Clearly the whole "Tall Man" thing was spooky…but that metal ball that chases people, that one was what got me in my youth. Of course, the final scene is a good shocker….reminiscent of FREDDY KRUEGER's moves which of course CAME AFTER…..all in all it's a '70s classic with tempera paint for blood in two colors, yellow and red.

UNK SEZ: Funny you should mention "The Tall Man", it's his 30th Birthday!

Traumafessions :: Reader Annie M. on BBC's Animated Macbeth

Posted on By aunt john

Hey so I know everyone says this, but you guys have an awesome site. Because of its awesomeness, I was compelled to share my own traumafession.

When I was a kid, my parents bought me this series of BBC animated Shakespeare movies. They probably thought that since they were animated, they were for children, right? So, so wrong. The Romeo and Juliet episode contained cartoon nudity and the Midsummer Night's one was even more sexual than that. But the one that sticks out to me the most would have to be the version of Macbeth.

This movie terrified me. I remember watching in rapt horror as the witches at the beginning changed their faces from old crones to horrible skeletons. The whole thing is pretty violent and dark but the worst scene for me was probably the scene where Macbeth kills Duncan.

That, or the scene where Lady Macbeth is doing her whole "unsex me" soliloquy. She is getting more and more frantic and then suddenly RIPS OPEN HER CHEST and some horrible beasts burst out! The animation is really beautiful and I'm sure this scene is supposed to represent all the hatred and lust for power inside her, but I was 6 and did not pick up on that just yet. Anyway, all of the episodes are pretty well done and they're fun to watch now but I still cringe when I see those scenes.

Pretty cool, yes, but as a kid I was not ready for that whole head-tearing-off thing.

Anybody else remember this show, or if there's a clip online somewhere?

Traumafessions :: The Warfreak of Olympic Artichoke on The Cosby Show ep. "Cliff's Nightmare"

Posted on By aunt john

I must confess something to you. I was scared of an episode of THE COSBY SHOW. That's right. THE COSBY SHOW.

In 1990 I was a mere six years old, and I had a very active imagination. I had a fondness in my heart for THE MUPPETS and THE MUPPET BABIES because they were shows that actively sought to tap in to the creativity of the children watching the show. I also liked to watch my share of prime time programming including, but not limited to, THE COSBY SHOW.

Where is the connection between the two, you ask? Well in 1990 an episode of THE COSBY SHOW entitled "Cliff's Nightmare" aired. In the episode Cliff returns home from a long night at the hospital and eats a sandwich that has gone bad – in spite of Claire's warnings. After he falls asleep, Cliff is the victim of a truly bizarre nightmare that absolutely freaked me out. In the dream, Cliff winds up serving under Theo in the Navy, sees his daughter form a time-traveling jazz combo with Olivia, Clair gets caught in a tornado, he's dragged around by THE MUPPETS' Sweetums and Doglion, and then his sandwich comes to life and literally disagrees with him. Gonzo, Waldorf, and a few other MUPPETS were featured as well.

I'm not sure exactly what it was that got to me. Maybe it was the fact that THE COSBY SHOW was so utterly not fantastical in any way and to see the disruption that came from my beloved MUPPETS storming a world of normalcy was too much for me to handle. It was freaky for me to see a figure of stability like Cliff Huxtable be brought to his figurative knees by a fantastic and imaginary world – and especially one that I loved dearly. Whatever it was it has stayed with me to this day. I've not seen the episode since, but I vividly remember it and start to fret a little bit when I think of it.

– The Warfreak

UNK SEZ:: Thanks warfreak and thanks for filling me in on something else I somehow missed, "Halloween Chicken McNugget Buddies" via your super cool website THE OLYMPIC ARTICHOKE!