Author: aunt john

Hi there! Dig the website!

Anyway, I have a vague recollection of either a T.V. show or a movie…all I remember is a man bursting into a hotel room to find his wife having an affair. The man shoots both his wife and her lover. In one of the next scenes, he's shown filling the dead guy's chest cavity with bricks, and has decorated the woman's coffin with icing or something of that sort. Very vague, but it freaked me out majorly as a kid and I'd love to know what the hell it's from after all these years!

Thanks and happy traumatizing,

— Dane

Hey there, I adore your website. I was wondering if maybe somebody could shed some light on something that has bothered me for years. I used to watch NICK AT NIGHT back in the '90s/early '00s when I was a little kid, and used to be a big fan of the sitcoms (which all sort of run together in my mind now). I remember I saw something on that network on one of the sitcoms (a rerun, not sure of the original air date), and then refused to turn on nick at night for maybe about a year after because it upset me so badly.

I don't remember what show it was, but I remember that a young boy got some sort of small rodent (either a hamster or mouse or something) and a bully (I have a feeling that it was his older brother, but I could be wrong) murdered it by sucking it into a vacuum cleaner. I was really shocked by it, because I didn't realize that the older boy had killed the cute little animal until the two younger boys are shown having a funeral for their pet, which I clearly remember was in a brown paper bag. I ran out of the room crying, and never finished it, but I remember that it bothered me for weeks.

Does anybody know what show this was?

— Ashley R.

UPDATE: NAME THAT TRAUMA SOLVED! Special thanks to Facebook kinderpal Heather S. for knowing this trauma comes from the Season 2 WONDER YEARS episode "Hiroshima, Mon Frere."

Hi,

Probably early-mid '70s anthology horror T.V. movie/special, not part of a series, which means it could be ABC.

Male child killer, possible family member, kills child, and then in the mansion where it took place, is tormented seemingly by the dead child.

At the end, child killer is on long winding stairs leading to ground floor, at wits end. I'm not sure who says this, but he is told that the dead child couldn't be here, but he sent us to etc, etc. Screams, black out.

Scared the shit out of me. Don't remember anything about the rest of the anthology, but I think there may have total three stories. But I was too traumatized to remember the other two parts!

Thanks Kindertrauma!

— Ken J.

UNK SEZ: My bet Ken J. is that you were rightfully terrified by the last segment of DAN CURTIS' 1977 anthology DEAD OF NIGHT entitled "Bobby." Check out the clip below and my review from long ago HERE! Wow, I just watched the scene again myself and it just never stops being scary does it? BTW, "Bobby" was remade by CURTIS in 1996 and appeared as the second segment of TRILOGY OF TERROR 2!

Hey there —

So, back in the '80s we had a show in Chicago on PBS called IMAGE UNION. A fantastic show that played independent films and videos. This was serious avant-garde stuff – some narrative, some abstract – but always interesting. Especially if you were obsessed with film making as I was during my childhood.

So, one of the shows played this really crazy film. It had a funky, 16mm, New York, whimsical tone.

It tells the story of little boy sitting at the front of a subway train (I'm guessing in NYC.) He's staring out into the moving darkness in front of him as lights whiz by. And then the film starts to cut in quick shots of Darth Vader. As the train gets faster and faster, the images of Darth Vader come more rapidly. The train stops and the little boy gets off on the platform. He starts to run because….Darth Vader is now chasing him through the crowd in the train station. As Vader closes in on him, he grabs him. The boy turns to realize… it's just his mother. Apparently, she was waiting to pick him up in the platform.

I swear, I'm not making this up. And doing a Google search for "Darth Vader + independent films" comes up with a bazillion fan films, but not this one. It has to be late '70s, early '80s.

Maybe someone in Traumaland has a lead.

Thanks!

Patrick J. D.

P.S. – A quick Metafilter search came up with another person asking for a similar video.

AUNT JOHN SEZ: Thanks for the traumafession Patrick J.D.! Sadly, I have no idea as to what the short film is you are referring to; however, I did pilfer the above images from the below ImprovEverywhere short. (Hey, it was either that or this BLONDIE video and I.E. won out.) Does anyone remember the source of Patrick's trauma? Use the force and sound off in the comments!

Hey there,

I love your site…now onto my very vague clue. An '80s horror movie which involved people (friends/couples/family… I can't recall) who go into a wooded, forestry area and are terrorized and killed by a humanoid, animal-like creature. At the end of the movie the characters set up an elaborate trap to try and capture the beast. I recall the beast using the tree tops to get around as well…I realize this doesn't offer much but it's been killing me for years to try and recall this movie I saw one Saturday afternoon in my youth. (I'm guessing it appeared on the good ole Saturday Shocker creature feature which aired from a Detroit-based station in the '80s).

Hope you can help out!

/stu

UNK SEZ: This is a tough one /stu! It could be so many movies! I hope I'm not barking up the wrong tree but three films popped into my head immediately: HUMONGOUS, MADMAN and THE FINAL TERROR. I posted the trailers below for you to take a gander at and because they're sure to be fun to watch anyway. Do any of our readers know of any other movies this might be? Throw your bets in the comments section and if nothing else, we'll end up with a nice collection of woodsy horror titles!

Hello,

I am new to your site, and was intrigued with how many of its visitors had the same reactions I did to random things from television. My biggest one had to be a commercial that ran throughout the ‘90s (not sure of the dates) that was an anti-smoking campaign for teens.

It started off with a bubbly type of music, and some girl sitting in front of a mirror. If I remember correctly, there were actual creepy bubbles flying around. Everything seems normal, then she opens her mouth and it's full of ashes and cigarette butts.

Well, as a kid, I had no idea that it was supposed to be cigarettes and I would run and hide as soon as I heard the music start playing. It still makes me shiver when I think of it!! I looked around on YouTube a little, but had no luck.

Do you think you can help me find this terror?

Thanks,

Sarah Queen

Hello,

I discovered your excellent website last night. Great idea. (Sorry for my bad English, I'm European.)

When I was young in the mid-eighties, at the end of the year, all school classes of my town were taken to the movies.

One year I remembered having watched a movie with the Ewoks, and I cried because an Ewok was dead (maybe?)

One year we watched KARATE KID (I didn't enjoy the movie, especially the punks "aggression" scene.)

One year, there was this strange and traumatizing movie, but I can't remember the name, I need your help to find what it was:

I just remember one thing : the hero was a boy, and there was a scene where he passes through the drain hole of a bathtub!

I guess the movie was American, produced in the eighties and had some kind of box-office success.

PLEASE help me find that weird movie, I need to buy it on DVD!

Thank you very much,

Pierre G.

I watched the YouTube clip, and I think that "Tony and the Tick Tock Dragon" is the movie that traumatized me!

I was very young, and I don't remember the cartoon sailors, but I'm 90% sure of that.

Can you imagine that our school teachers choose a cheap fifteen-year old Hungarian movie, while there were so many cool American films around 1985…?

Many thanks to "Nathan Arms" and "MC_Kubbe" for their help.

— Pierre G.