Dear Kindertrauma,

A friend is trying to find the name of a movie. It opens with a flash back to a girl who was a babysitter. A guy comes to the door claiming car trouble, and afterwards the kids disappear. Fast forward to present day and the girl is working with a therapist. She ends up dying from same killer who was hiding by camouflaging himself. The killer then goes after the therapist by painting himself to look like a brick wall, and slowly drives the doctor insane by throwing his voice. Hopefully someone could tell us the answer.

UNK SEZ: Ironically, the camouflage gave this trauma away. Your pal has got to be talking about 1993's WHEN A STRANGER CALLS BACK. I'm glad you brought this one up James B. because it's an effective thriller that has somehow gone and blended in with the woodwork! Who would ever guess that a sequel made for cable 14 years after the original could be so darn good. In fact, there are many who believe that with this continuation, writer/ director FRED WALTON outdid his 1979 classic WHEN A STRANGER CALLS (WALTON also directed the beloved 1986 slasher APRIL FOOL'S DAY). CAROL KANE and CHARLES DURNING reprise their roles from the first film and if that weren't enough, we get the added bonus of the not celebrated often enough scream queen, JILL SCHOELEN (THE STEPFATHER, CURSE II: THE BITE, CUTTING CLASS, PHANTOM OF THE OPERA, POPCORN). It looks like this one is lacking an official DVD release but I was able to stalk it down over at the YouTubes!

Hi you wonderful and weird people, you… O.K., so this is all I can remember, and typing it is making my heart race and worry about sleeping later, I'm 38 for God's sake! Trouble is I don't recall how old I was, but probably around 11, 12, back in '84-ish. And, I didn't see the entire film; it was actually a clip of a film being shown on a quiz show…

So, there's this kid ill in bed, it's a dimly lit room I think, and he's lying on his back clearly out of it covered in sweat; his mother touches his forehead then leaves the room, closing the door behind her. An item of clothing, can't remember what, falls off a hook on the door onto the floor. After a few seconds of the camera still on the clothing, it suddenly but slowly starts to move across the floor to the bed…

And that's it, forty seconds of film and a lifelong fear of clothes on the floor.

I'm hoping naming the source of my fear will help cure me of it, but I don't think it's that simple. But I can't afford a therapist, so let's give it a go.

Thanks!!

Sim

O.K., this trauma is a weird one.

I remember a sci-fi movie (from the '60s or '70s) where people would stand before a ruler or monarch and if they were found guilty, the floor would open and they would fall into a pit occupied by what looked like a huge bunch of cabbage leaves (reddish leaves, if my memory serves me right.) When they fell in they would scream and basically be eaten by the giant mass of cabbage. The idea a being eaten by a cabbage patch somehow terrified me beyond all measure. To this day I have an irrational hatred of salad. No joke.

Also, I believe their civilization might have lived underground, but I can't say for sure. It's a weird one, but I STILL have nightmares about it. Perhaps confronting that cabbage while eating some coleslaw, a little corned-beef and a giant hot-dog with sauerkraut will free me from this cruciferous cage.

—bdwilcox

UPDATE: NAME THAT TRAUMA SOLVED! Special thanks to reader Tim Tylor who lettuce know the answer with THE LOST CONTINENT!

Hello,

I hope you can find this one so I can watch it as a grown up and put the horrors to bed.

The film is black & white; I remember it was about a series of women being murdered. There was a whistle involved somehow, maybe on a necklace? Turned out the killings were being done by a gorilla from a circus (I think!) but the scene that terrified me was at the end when you think it's all over but one body is missing. The detective tapped his pipe on the mantelpiece and a corpse dropped down the chimney and scared the crap out of me.

Any idea?

Fantastic site! Keep up the good work (and medication!)

— Ian G.

UNK SEZ:: Ian, thanks for the traumafession! I have a guess to your trauma but I'm not 100% sure. I'm thinking it may be 1932's MURDERS IN THE RUE MORGUE which is based on a story by EDGAR ALAN POE and stars BELA LUGOSI. I say this because in the film there is most certainly a circus-escaped, murdering ape and a female corpse is indeed discovered in a chimney.

Unfortunately though, a recent watch of that movie HERE revealed no whistle and I'm afraid a pipe did not take part in the discovery of the body. Take a peek at the images provided at this fine place HERE and let us know if it looks familiar. Otherwise, does anybody out there know of a guiltier looking ape?

Dear Partners in Childhood Traumas,

I am trying to identify a short story I read several decades ago that scared the crap out of me. It definitely dates from before 1970 and I believe I encountered it as part of an anthology. In the story, there are two brothers who run a ghost-hunting business. One is the sensible, scientific type and the other is the reckless one, and neither actually believes in ghosts. They have debunked every case they've taken until they are hired to investigate THE house (dum dum DUM.) Spooky stuff happens and the sensible brother is convinced they have found a real haunted house. The other brother is still skeptical and decides to spend a night alone in the haunted bedroom (because that always ends well.) Sensible brother stands watch, hears a scream and runs in to find his brother diving out the window to his death. The authorities decide he committed suicide but WE know better.

In my young mind, I envisioned this whole tale happening in my own bedroom, to the extent that I obsessed about whether a jump from my second story window would actually be fatal. I decided it would if you landed on your head; I did not consider investigating any further. In retrospect, I think I was set up for the final sucker punch because the early parts of the story described various cases the brothers had debunked rather cleverly and by the time they got to the haunted house, I was ready to sign up for a glamorous career as a ghost hunter. Needless to say I changed my mind by the end.

I just know some of you knowledgeable folks out there will recognize this story (hopefully I remember the details correctly.) Thanks in advance for any info you can provide!

Love the website!

Cynthia M.

Hi there. First & foremost, TOTALLY appreciate your site and the fans that contribute to it. Gives me hope for humanity… Second of all, maybe someone out there can help me determine what the hell it was that graced my eyeballs when I was a wee one in about 1986.

So I crawl into mom's bed 'cause I can't sleep and there's a chick on T.V……she's in her nighty, in the dark, walking toward a closet….it's got those skinny horizontal slanted panels running up & down the doors that allow you to see light glowing from behind it. She sloooooowwwwwly and suspensefully makes her way to the doors and when she whisks them open, there stands a pissed off, green, GOO-ey goblin with big, bulbous, red googly EYES, and I swear, I about had a heart attack.

I can't remember if the goblin thing sucked her into the closet & slammed the doors or what, but I do know my mom changed the channel to this crappy music video in order to keep me from freaking the F out:

DeBarge gives me the creeps to this day…… Anyway, I present this evidence to help solidify the time frame; it was around 1985 or '86. GREEN GOOGLY CLOSET MONSTER WITH BIG-ASS RED EYES. Help me out, good people.

Love & stuff,

Nikki P.

UNK SEZ: Nikki, based on the big red eyes, I'd say you're talking about an episode of TALES FROM THE DARKSIDE entitled "Inside the Closet" directed by special effects master TOM SAVINI. I found a scene on YouTube that fits your description below and I also found some great still shots and a review at at the fantastic blog FROM BEYOND DEPRAVED over HERE! Make sure you let us know if "Lizzie" is the monster you were looking for!

Greetings, Kindertrauma-ers!

Maybe someone can help me figure out what has been bugging the crap out of me for so many years…

My memory of it is really fuzzy (I was only about 4 or 5 years old) but I'll tell you every detail I can remember. It was a short animation, possibly on Nickelodeon, possibly LIQUID TELEVISION? Simple black and white, of a short, caricature of Einstein-looking guy as a narrator. The background was completely white and he was naming the days of the week in sequence really quickly and telling us what a "man" did on those days. Like, "blah blah on Monday, blah blah on Tuesday, etc… and died on Sunday."

He went through all the days of the week a few times always going faster, but it always ended on "and died on Sunday" with a picture of a tombstone and flowers. It was really only a minute or 2 long, and it was probably aired somewhere between '90-'93. This was thrown in between all my happy child-friendly cartoons but I liked it, or thought I liked it. Then I went to bed that night and my mind was just completely disturbed by it. I couldn't stop replaying it over and over in my head even though it was scaring the crap out of me. It was like being tortured.

Also, you know in the show MYSTERY!, in the intro there's the tall chick in the beginning next to the tombstone and drinking a glass of wine? I have a vague memory of an animation that looked exactly like that, with a woman next to a tombstone but it was the focus of the whole story (or at least was a main part of something). I can't remember the story, but this lady gave me nightmares. I think she was holding a flower (or maybe it was a handkerchief.) The background was completely white also, and since it was about death it might have something to do with the "died on Sunday" animation, but I can't remember.

Do any of these grim images ring a bell to anyone?

Thanks for any input! Hip hip hooray for this site!!!!

Love,

Kirby