Author: aunt john

Hey there,

Just wondering if you guys encountered the Send A Mouse To College Fund as kids.

The thrust of the fund was to get elementary school kids to beg for money from their parents and their parents' friends, which would eventually be used to pay for lab mice at, I suppose, local colleges and/or high schools.

Of course, being a kid, none of the grisly truth about what the money's actually for really makes its way to, past the idea that you get iron-ons and buttons for being a mule.

So you end up walking away with a sense of pride for having raised a bunch of money, as well as a new iron-on of a cutesy, cartoon mouse holding a diploma, wearing a graduation cap and gown neatly pressed onto your old, white Fruit of the Loom T-Shirt.

And of course, none of what you've taken part in hits you until you're in your mid-thirties.

Good times.

Just thought I'd share that with you.

Thanks,

Eric McDade

AUNT JOHN SEZ: As an elementary school student of the late '70s and early '80s, I was subjected to brainwashing machinations of the cult known as R.I.F., and its super sexy spokesman ED ASNER:

We were too busy reading books to be bothered with sending cute little animals to death camps. And by the time I got to junior high, we had moved on to peddling Columbia House records and cassette tapes:

Did anyone else out there in Kindertrauma-land "Send a Mouse to College"? If so, please sound off in the comments. And if anyone managed to use the hard sell to convince their Mom to buy The Eurythmics Touch LP, we need to talk.

Hi KinderTrauma,

The link to this site, found today at Vault of Horror — brought back one of my earliest shocks.

Not long after we moved from Toronto to NJ, I discovered Chiller Theater…Creature Features…my Saturday nights revolved around these shows.

We had an old black & white T.V. in the basement. One side was finished for us kids…our T.V., my drums, our stereo & records were all down there. An open doorway led to the laundry room & Dad's workshop, dark and creepy, and it was a challenge to walk past the doorway on the way upstairs after a movie, sometimes. At the very back of the laundry room there was a small crawlspace a few feet above the floor, warped doors exposing the darkness within…

The floor of the finished side was green linoleum with a black linoleum square in the middle, with a linoleum laughing clown face, right there on the floor. The face was assembled out of pieces of linoleum like a puzzle. I later covered the clown with the rug that my drum set sat on.

The night Chiller showed HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL, there was nothing in the room but a small chair and the lamp on the floor behind me, for my dad had just waxed and polished the floor, and we hadn't yet moved our stuff back. My shadow loomed on the wall next to the T.V.

WILLIAM CASTLE's movies always gave me the creeps and I loved them. The eerie piano music, the ghostly female voices going ah-h-h-h-h, the shadowed b&w photography that had that strange presence; I don't know how to describe it. Crystal clear but strangely lit. The opening scenes hypnotized me…the cars arriving one by one as each passenger's story was told…the Frank Lloyd Wright house, which was later used in "Angel"…VINCENT PRICE and the supersexy CAROL OHMART were so lurid…the miniature coffins holding the "party favors"…I was completely absorbed.

Then the attractive young couple, played by RICHARD LONG & CAROLYN CRAIG, hang behind the others in the basement to explore and look for secret compartments where someone playing a trick might hide. Miss CRAIG kneels to listen for hollow areas on the wall while LONG knocks from the room next door. She's alone in the room…she stands up and sees that face leering over her shoulder!!

My face must have gone white, I felt numb, my eyes must have bulged in their sockets for a second when I saw that old hag! It hovered next to her while she screamed, then floated out of the room, right past her screaming face, its hands clutching the air, scrabbly old claws. I couldn't stay down there in the basement all by myself. I ran across the room, pounded up the stairs and then up stairs once more to my parent's bedroom where they were watching CAROL BURNETT. Or was it BOB NEWHART? It was that famous CBS Saturday night lineup.

I tried to casually lean against the door and check out the show but my mom knew something was up…"What's the matter?" "Oh nothing." But she knew what I had been watching. Later I felt angry with myself because I knew I'd missed the rest of a really good movie. To this day, whenever I'm creeping around, searching for secret compartments, I can see that scary face in my mind and I nervously look over my shoulder.

UNK SEZ: Rich E., thanks much for this vivid traumafession and for mentioning one of our favorite joints, THE VAULT OF HORROR!!! Anyone out there interested in visiting THE HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL can do so HERE.

Greetings!

I'm a big fan of your website and just felt the need to tell you how much I enjoy reading about all the old and/or cheesy horror films I've missed out on in my life. There have been many I've been interested in watching but no one will watch them with me, imagine that! My only kindertrauma is that I didn't have much trauma to begin with. The only remotely scary thing for me was the opening of the TALES FROM THE CRYPT T.V. show, the music would send chills down my spine and have me hiding behind the couch until the opening was over. After that, I was fine with watching the show itself, and I have since become a DANNY ELFMAN fan who actually composed the opening music- imagine my surprise when I first discovered that my favourite rock singer created the one television theme music that used to scare the crap outta me! Apart from that, there were a select few R.L. STINE book covers (IE: Twisted) that gave me the creeps, but nothing too serious.

Thanks to my dad who was a huge fan of scary movies, I was desensitized at a young age to scary movies. At age 12-13 I even developed a strange school-girl crush on WARWICK DAVIS' THE LEPRECHAUN, convinced that I would be able to turn his evil heart and give him the friendship he obviously desperately needed (he was misunderstood after all!)

I just wanted to show some gratification for your site, which also helped me remember/rediscover a movie that I saw only once many years ago and could only remember ONE thing from. THE GATE was somewhat creepy, but the only scene I ever remembered was a kid having an eye in the middle of his palm and he had to stab it out with a piece of broken glass. Thanks to you guys, I can add the movie to my Netflix queue and relive the cheesy, kid-targeted horror that once intrigued me so long ago.

Thanks, Kindertrauma!

To save space in your in-box, I have documented my Kindertrauma through the eternal medium of YouTube video. To wit: in the early 1980s there was a series of dolls called the HuggaBunch. They had huge heads and eerie glassy eyes, and they were introduced to the world via an hour-long made-for-T.V. movie. The scene in the video below has not left my head for twenty-four years.

AUNT JOHN SEZ: To see more musings by quizzicalsphinx, check out her blog HERE.

I, like many other people, like to think that I have always had a high tolerance for horror. "Not so," says the Truth. And lo, the Truth hath spoken, but I'm being totally honest when I say there are very few things that have actually managed to frighten me to the point of H.P. LOVECRAFT-inspired insanity.

Case in point: THE PHANTOM OF THE MOTHERFUCKIN' OPERA. Naturally, the B&W version.

I must've been about four years old—arguably the quintessential age for trauma. The mums and I were down in the basement watching TV, making a mother-daughter connection that only good TV watching can produce when…she turned the channel. And Sweet Allah eating breadsticks, there was LON CHANEY with his sunken eyes, sunken face, and absolutely FUCKED-UP nose. Forget the de-masking, the monster had already been revealed, and all I could do was sit there, scrunched up between my mom and an end-table, scared stiff. My mom didn't notice anything—shoot, I didn't notice anything: I couldn't even shake from the fear. What made it even more terrifying? Sitting there, even when I remember there was no tangible reason for my having to stay there while my mom smoked her Benson & Hedges, reading the dialogue all calmly and quietly. I could've left; I could've taken my beloved Play-Doh with me and gone somewhere else. But no, I chose Hell.

I don't remember how, but afterwards I put two-and-two together and associated the movie with the musical (that's an especially scary thought, considering, y'know, ANDREW LLOYD WEBBER). Two years later, I heard the theme on the car radio while riding with my dad and I became nearly paralyzed with dread. After we got out of the car, it kind of tapered off into a sort-of dull, morose feeling. It felt like it settled into my shoulder blades and would never leave. My dad and I played Frisbee for a while, and I remember feeling so distressed because I consciously tried to get that feeling to go away and it wouldn't. The song was stuck. The image was stuck. I was stuck. Frisbee couldn't save me.

The worst part, for me anyway, was just how popular and recognizable THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA was in its many incarnations. There was an NBA half-time show that featured the infamous duet between the Phantom and Christine. I couldn't fucking believe it. All I could do was bury my little head in the sofa cushions and pretend to take a nap for what felt like HOURS before I thought it was safe. It was in THE MUPPET BABIES for Christ's sake! Gonzo opens a door and BOOM, LON "THAT FACE" CHANEY. I gazed up at the ceiling long after it was over wondering who in the hell thought that was a great idea to broadcast on daytime T.V. It was one thing to be initially exposed to it, but to have it appear in the most unlikely of places? How much trauma can a kid take?

Over the following year, my fear of anything to do with THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA tapered off dramatically. My friend actually burned the soundtrack for me a couple years ago, and I listened to it until I developed a low-tolerance for Broadway musicals. Now I see "THAT FACE" and have the inexplicable urge to get some piano wire and tie it around my face so I can look terrifying. I have been thinking about changing my vocation…maybe I should get into the movie biz? Be the next harbinger of nightmares and kindertraumas? "B.A. in Fucking Scary Shit" sounds better on a resume than "B.A. in Psychology."