Category: Traumafessions

Like most children of the 80s, MTV was the center of my world. My parents couldn't stand the channel so, of course, it became even that much more important thanks to my burgeoning rebellious streak. One of the videos that hit heavy rotation in 1985 was Mike + The Mechanics' "Silent Running," and it was pretty terrifying to my 9 year old self. I remember watching it once all the way through but after that I just couldn't face the dang thing again. Even worse, the video would show up on USA Network's "Night Flight" and haunt me again and again in the wee hours.

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My nephew was born when I was 13 and my niece was born when I was 15, so it was my job to baby-sit them as a teenager. Well, like most teenagers in the 80's I enjoyed watching videos of my favorite artists. In my case, it meant watching many Billy Joel and Duran Duran videos. This brings us to my first case of trauma with my nephew, who was about 3 at the time; I was watching my VHS of Duran Duran's videos and "The Wild Boys" came on. He loved the music because he had listened to it constantly, but I guess he had never paid attention to the video itself. The part where SIMON LE BON falls from the windmill into the water where a weird creature attempts to kill him sent my nephew screaming from the room. He was unable to watch that video for years to come. Next, the second case of trauma with my niece, I had BILLY JOEL's greatest hits on VHS, which we enjoyed watching. In this situation I didn't find out until years later that the video bothered her, she was more subtle than her older brother. She confided in me later on that the video for "Pressure" was traumatizing. The scene where BILLY JOEL is sucked down into the carpet was particularly disturbing for her. It is funny that they both still like Billy Joel and Duran Duran. I even took them to see them both in concert. I guess that is why I am still known as their "Cool Aunt" instead of the aunt that inadvertently traumatized them with music videos.

 

 

The first two OMEN movies scared the hell out of me when I was a kid and they always seemed to be on T.V. Something about those demonic chants that would come before an approaching death got to me. Were they singing "Long live Damien"? The scariest part, I think, was in the second film when that guy fell into the ice. Just knowing that he could see safety through the ice but not reach it freaked me. All the people running around unable to do anything but watch him float away, and he could SEE them! What an awful way to go!! 

Yes Virginia, there is a danger to be found on frozen lakes! And as we once did with scarf safety, we're going to take the opportunity you just provided us to speak of ice safety. Usually ice safety is a subject for spring, but with this whole global warming thing going on, now is as good a time as any. We don't want any of our beloved readers to suffer the same fate as that guy in DAMIEN OMEN 2! Let's look at some other fine films that address that logical fear! 

THE DEAD ZONE: Remember when the icy lake swallowed up an entire kiddie hockey team? CHRISTOPHER WALKEN tried to warn them, but those nasty parents thought he was a kook! Well, now their children are kidsicles. Let this be a lesson, YOU SHOULD ALWAYS LISTEN TO WALKEN! WHISPER: Icy lakes are dangerous enough but, as the previously mentioned DAMIEN OMEN2 illustrated, they are particularly dangerous when a demonic devil child is in the vicinity. When will people learn? IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE: Georgie boy wished he was never born, but guess what? If he was never born he could not have saved his little brother from this horrendous sledding accident. See Georgie, your life has value because thankless dolts like your bro here were able to benefit from it! GHOST STORY: Being high up on a bridge and looking down at the ice is not even advisable because you never know when a ghost of a woman you accidentally murdered is going to show up and scare you so bad that you fall off. THE SWEET HEREAFTER: If you feel you must tempt the ice god Jack Frost, do so on foot for heaven's sake. Don't drive a school bus full of children onto a frozen lake as this fool has done! CURTAINS: Who says the ice even has to break? Here a hapless loser was just trying to skate to her groovy boombox when a hag-masked sickie with a sickle showed up and played whack-a-mole with her face. 

Google research also reveals similar ice calamities in cute doggy flicks (EIGHT BELOW), crap-fests that shoplifters have to star in for penance (MR.DEEDS), and the always educational daytime sudser PASSIONS.

So listen up kids, if you're going to learn anything in life, it certainly won't be at school. It will be at the movies, and all movies agree STAY OFF THE ICE!

 

Editor's Note: After disclosing the death of a pet and dissecting the more disturbing elements of MR. ROGERS' NEIGHBORHOOD, KINDERTRAUMA's most prolific confessor goes on record about not necessarily wanting his MTV…

Here's a video from my youth that scared the hell out of me. My trauma started with an innocent night at my grandmother's house to bake Christmas cookies. After eating handfuls of raw dough, I knew I was in for a rough night. As I laid on the couch, bellyaching and moments from praying to the porcelain god, I put the TV on to distract my young mind. In what I thought was luck at the time, my grandmother had cable and MTV, so I innocently put some music videos on. Then… Yes came on with the video for "Owner of a Lonely Heart" and taught me what anxiety was. (more…)

Medusa in CLASH OF THE TITANS slithered her way into my brain and stayed there. It was not that she was so scary to look at; it was the fact that if you looked at her you turned to stone…and she was topless! In my pathetic, adolescent teenage boy mind I was convinced that if I ever found myself in the same situation as Perseus that I would NOT be able to resist looking. Stupid I know, but sort of like a person who's afraid of heights because they secretly fear they might jump. For some reason this imagined weakness on my part kept me up at night. I'm married now and the female anatomy holds slightly less mystery. In fact, my wife forced me to send this in. She makes fun of me about it every chance she gets.

Jeff, Tell your wife to stop poking fun! That Gorgon was a veritable vixen! In fact, thanks to our local library's supply of back issues of CELEBRITY SLUETH magazine, We uncovered THIS X-RATED IMAGE from her forgotten early modeling career. Don't show it to wifey!

There is probably not a child alive in the United States that hasn't been "touched" by MR. ROGERS' NEIGHBORHOOD. Maybe you couldn't wait for the trolley to whisk you to the Neighborhood of Make Believe, got excited over Mr. Rogers tour of the local denizens, or maybe it was the "shoe toss" that gave you a thrill. For all the good memories you had from the show, let me dredge up some repressed horrors that you may have forgotten, but still haunt me and my wife years later.

The most nightmare-producing images from the show was when Lady Elaine Fairchilde was on screen. Did FRED ROGERS purposely pick a puppet design to scare children into his submission? Her phallic red nose, alcoholic-red cheeks, her creepy CHYNA-like man-pretending-to-be-a-woman voice, and an overall look that seems Fred pulled her out of the trash. If I was a child in IT, my fear would manifest itself as this puppet.

The next horror-vision on my tour of The Neighborhood is the amazing limping Chef Brockett. I know it's not a politically correct thing to say, he had a physical disability, but hell, this guy gave me the creeps as a kid. He would be cooking and then all of a sudden lunge towards Mr. Rogers, scaring the crap out of me. I had to keep telling myself, it was only a limp, he does not want to eat Fred's brains. While searching for information on DON BROCKETT, I found an eerie link to my fears. Did you know that he was the "Friendly Psychopath in Cell" in THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS AND played a zombie, not only in GEORGE ROMERO's 1985 classic DAY OF THE DEAD but in the 1990 remake of NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD by TOM SAVINI? Who knew that the chef with a perfect zombie gate had such ties to horror greats?

The last one almost made me crazy. When I was really young, I had the Mr. Rogers' "long playing" record. It included the regular songs that everyone knew, but I also remember a song where Fred warns his young listeners that they can't marry their mothers. Now, I don't quite recall fighting the Oedipal complex as a child, but if I had an inkling to want to kill my dad and run away with my mom, Mr. Rogers was there to help.

No one I knew could remember this song, leaving me to look like some crazed lunatic, babbling something about Fred Rogers and my mother. But thanks to that series of tubes called "The Internets," I was able to find this song and play it; confirming that I wasn't nuts (Thanks to a blog called Dr. Forrest's Cheese Factory). The song is available on-line, so you can be as appalled as I have been. While this song did not appear to damage me in any way when I was young, the memories of it as an adult has.

I'm sure there are other horrific memories from MR. ROGERS' NEIGHBORHOOD (remember the rumor about him being a trained sniper? Look it up on Snopes)… but these are the few that scarred me. And speedy delivery to y'all.

EARLIER: Walt discusses the unsolved, possibly GHOULIES-induced death of his childhood Cockatiel.

Almost every child at one point has been afraid to go in the basement, but I'm not sure they were all afraid of the evil, maggot-spewing zombie, Dr. Fruedstein, living down there. I remember one scene in particular where Bob, a young child, hears the screams of his babysitter Anne. Picking up a stuffed animal and a toy gun Bob goes to "rescue Anne." We proceed to watch Anne's throat slashed and her head eventually decapitated. Bob arrives just in time to watch his babysitter's head roll down the steps. Traumatizing for any kid I'd say!

 

 

My cousin was sleeping over my house, and as kids are known to do, we decided to take all the sheets and blankets I had and create a "tent" that encompassed most of the room. We made sure to include my TV in our hideaway. On HBO was GHOULIES, and we were watching intently.

All of a sudden I hear my pet Cockatiel let out a horrible squawk and then a "thud."

I popped my head out of our makeshift safe-haven to find Willie, feet-up at the bottom of the cage, now an ex-Cockatiel.

So from that day forward, every time I see the GHOULIES, I think of poor dead Willie and how I'll never know if it was the crapatcular movie that killed my bird.

 

 

As I like to think we all did, I had a great mom and pop video store in New Jersey by the name of Showbiz Video in the 80's before it was run out of town by Blockbuster (who I would incidentally work for years later). One of my favorite past times was to sneak off into the horror section, and look at all the VHS covers with promises of the most horrible things you could possibly imagine. I would dare myself to look at the back covers, which always had more gruesome images, read what the movie was about, and wonder if I could ever bring myself to watch something so terrifying. But one cover above them all I could not even bring myself to even look at, and would turn my head away whenever I approached the "C" section. That film was CREEPERS, the U.S. edited version of DARIO ARGENTO's PHENOMENA. With JENNIFER CONNELLY's half-eaten face and hand holding hundreds of bugs, it was just too much for my eight year old mind to handle. I could not even fathom what the movie would actually be, if that was the picture that was advertising it. I never mustered the courage to find out what the back cover said!Now years later I am a complete devotee to DARIO ARGENTO's work, but I still to this day have not watched any version of PHENOMENA. I'm sure it is no worse than SUSPIRIA or OPERA, but something deep within the dark recesses of my mind will just not let me watch it, let alone rent it before sheepishly returning it unviewed. That is the power of horror film advertising, something which I dare say has lost its oomph in this more glossy day and age.  

Thanks Ryan Midnight of MOVIES AT MIDNIGHT! Ryan's TRAUMAFESSION is a good reminder that TRAUMAFESSIONS don't necessarily have to be about the movies and T.V. shows you've seen. Remember kiddies, you can write in about music, books, toys, art or even an illustration on a VHS tape as Ryan has done. Anything that freaked out your little brain as a child is fair game. We want to hear from you and trust us, other people do as well!

As a child growing up in Australia during the late '70s and early '80s, I suckled on the teat that is bad US sitcoms. MORK & MINDY, GILLIGAN'S ISLAND, THREE'S COMPANY… and later… SMALL WONDER, SILVER SPOONS and JENNIFER SLEPT HERE. Normally these shows weren't scary, just frighteningly camp. However, one episode of a TV classic did haunt me when I originally saw it and for years later.

During its second season, HAPPY DAYS filmed a Halloween episode called 'Haunted'. It involved Richie scouting the old Simpson house with Joanie to determine its suitability for a Ralph-hosted party. Inside the house, Richie claims to have seen a headless body in the closet. The talk amongst the kids is old Lady Simpson was beheaded and if you go into the house, she will behead you too. After allowing Howard to convince him to go to the party, Richie is humiliated in front of everyone when he freaks out when a Ralph prank catches him off-guard. As they are all laughing, a headless woman starts floating down the stairs. I don't know why this scared me so much, but I was convinced this was how I was to meet my demise. Richie finds the courage to unmask the headless horror and the viewer is shown the culprit to be Bag of the Demons.Another equally horrifying occurrence from this episode involves TOM BOSLEY as Howard asking a young boy for a kiss after handing him some Halloween candy?!?!

Editor's Note: To check out more musings and pretty pictures from KINDERTRAUMA's first-ever commenter, visit Sean of the Dead @ Lost in MySpace.