Early nineties, a chef in a small town, he owns a bakery/deli. He gets a package that has a giant statue or totem inside. It possesses the cook and he kills people and serves them. At the end of the movie there is a huge party that he caters and serves the body parts.
Does this sound familiar to you? If so, please let us know what the movie is called?
I absolutely love KINDERTRAUMA! Not only is it intelligent, a feast for the eyes and a nostalgic's dream – it is also oodles of fun! Your Sunday Streaming and review archives always turn me on to new flicks that I love! I've never followed one of your recommendations and been disappointed – thank you for that!
I'm hoping there is something else I can be thanking you for – helping me track down a trauma! I've noticed that you've helped some people locate books that left impressions on them in the past and perhaps you could do the same for me? I don't really remember what the tale I'm looking for was about, except for it involving a creepy older neighbor man who lives alone and who carves a lot of pumpkins and the story's heroine becomes convinced is the serial killer terrorizing her town (although in the end, I believe, he turned out to be quite the opposite and saved her life from the actual murderer).
It has been years and the details of the book are a little hazy so some of that may be off. But it was the book's cover that really freaked me out. This would have been in the early '90s and the artist did a bang up job for sure. It featured a dark haired girl glimpsed through a window (I think a bedroom window, she may have been peering into it) with a look of shock on her face – maybe because of what she is seeing in the bedroom or maybe because on the porch surrounding her are tons of spooky, glowing pumpkins. This one was probably meant for pre-teens and middleschoolers.
I'm still not sure why it freaked me out so much, as I love all things Halloween – perhaps some of the pumpkins had sinister faces – but I know that it gave me nightmares and I was terrified after waking from them that I'd look at my bedroom window and see an evil glowing Jack o' Lantern or a diabolical hairy handed killer looking right back at me!
Thanks for taking the time to read this, and for any help you can provide! I certainly do appreciate it!
— Jordan
Hi,
I have faith that, if anyone can answer this question for me, it would be someone from your website:
There is a TV movie I recall from my childhood that I always found to be a bit eerie. It would have to be from either the '70s or '80s and was something along the lines of an "After School Special," but I'm pretty sure it was not a part of that actual series. All I remember is that it featured a school aged kid and there was a giant, pretty crudely animated, disembodied mouth that spoke to him and was basically encouraging him to believe in himself and all that stuff. The movie ends with the young protagonist catching the winning fly ball in a baseball game. Does this ring a bell for anyone?
Thanks for any info!
I'm a huge (well ok at 60 inches, a short) horrorphile freak and I've adored the genre since I was much too young to partake. One of my earliest memories was waking up in the middle of the night and pushing play on the VCR containing a horror movie older relatives had been watching earlier and hadn't allowed me to view. Back in the day they were not kind and did not rewind so it opened on a scene from the middle of the film. I've never found out the title, even after years of devouring guides to horror films and even writing my own (currently with Citadel Press, maybe one day on a bookshelf somewhere!). So I'm turning to my fellow horror fans on one of my favorite websites here.
All I remember is a man in formal wear running from seemingly nothing, from room to room in a large house. Eventually he lies backwards onto a bed, pulling open his shirt and screaming. It looks like his flesh is being burned even though there's nobody in the room with him. I'm pretty sure it had something to do with demons or the devil. And I seem to remember it looked like his stomach was sort of caving in as it burned? If anyone has any idea what movie that was please let me know!
Meanwhile thanks for all the great entertainment!
Fondly,
~Nicole
This is most likely something from the 70's. I remember a lot of it was a conversation between a man (or some kind of being existing within the television) and a boy or young adult. I think the TV-being wanted to get out of there and probably needed the boy's help. Besides the 70's decor and the creepy, slow moving plot, I don't remember anything else. Hopefully, you can help me out.
Thanks,
VS
UNK SEZ: I know the answer isn't SHOCKER but I've got that movie on my mind thanks to THIS superb review over at DINNER WITH MAX JENKE! Sorry I'm not much help. Hopefully one of our readers knows!
This is a little off topic because it wasn't exactly traumatic and I was an adult; BUT, I have been trying to figure out this book for years to no avail. It was incredibly eerie and unlike anything I have read. It's a novel from the ‘90s, Irish I believe, or possibly taking place in Ireland. A woman who works at a grocery store comes home to find her boyfriend has committed suicide. She is pretty much numb and just doesn't want to deal with it, so she takes his body to the attic and promptly forgets about it. After a while, she begins to notice a smell and remembers his body is in the attic. She then chops him up and takes his body parts to a little island in a lake, where she buries him then camps for awhile. That's about all I remember. I picked it up at a library in the late ‘90s from the new releases table.
Thanks for any help!
Hello there,
I saw a movie when I was maybe 9 or 10 years old, back in the mid to late 70s on tv, and I'd like to know the title. Unfortunately I only have one vague scene to recall, where this woman is sitting looking into this lake and there are voices talking to her from it; I think it was in front of this English mansion on this big estate. That's all I have. Any help with this would be greatly appreciated, thanks.
UNK SEZ: Greetings Eldon! I suppose this could be many movies but my bet is on one of my favorites, JACK CLAYTON's THE INNOCENTS (1961) which is based on THE TURN OF THE SCREW by HENRY JAMES! There are several highly memorable scenes that take place by a lake and your mansion on a large estate fits snuggly too! I couldn't find an exact scene on YouTube but I'm sure Miss Giddens (DEBORAH KERR) hears a ghostly voice calling out "Flora," the name of one of the children she's looking after, too! Check out the clip I did find below and let us know if it looks familiar!
Dear Kindertrauma,
I love your page! I discovered it, when I was searching for one of my deepest Kindertraumas with "The Peanut Butter Incident"!
Probably you will not able to help me, as I grew up in Germany, but this Kindertrauma is haunting me for years, so it's worth a shot and probably the book was translated to German anyway!
I am looking for a book of horror stories for children, I read in the '80s. Especially one story I cannot forget. It's about a man who somehow enters an abandoned ship which is covered by a strange grey mushroom. On deck he also notices huge piles of the plant. One day he discovers a small spot on his finger where the mushroom started to grow on him. He cuts the spot on his finger, but the next day it regrew even bigger. The guy has got nothing to eat so eventually he starts eating the mushroom. At the end of the story his whole body is covered with the mushroom and he starts to realize that the huge piles on the boat used to be humans.
All I remember of the other stories is one about a guy who is an aspiring assassin, who is tricked into switching bodies with an old man. All stories where really scary and I would like to hold that book in my hands once again. I guess it was crucial to my deep obsession with horror related stuff.
Thank you so much and keep up the good work,
Jan
UNK SEZ: Jan, I'm glad you found us! I may not be able to identify the exact anthology you're looking for but hopefully I can narrow your search! If I'm not jumping to conclusions, I'm suspecting the mushroom short story is WILLIAM HOPE HODGSON's THE VOICE IN THE NIGHT. It's the same tale that inspired the Japanese film MATANGO which is known as ATTACK OF THE MUSHROOM PEOPLE here in the states. You can read the story HERE! I hope it's the right one and that you are one step closer to your trauma-treasure!
I'm back,
After an unsuccessful attempt at uncovering my previous trauma I submit a new challenge!!! Please help, I don't know if these are imaginings from the dark recesses of my mind or just TV shows/films whose images still plague me to this day!!! Ok, both would have been televised in the eighties:
First up,
Could have been a from a series or film – I recall some kind of evil playground, no obvious horror that I can remember but more an air of menace. For some reason I think the main character which could have been a young boy was fully aware that the playground held some secret but it wasn't until dusk that this was fully realised? Could have been some kind of supernatural gang involved who frequented said 'evil playground'!!!
And secondly,
I'm edging towards what could have been a ghostly children's TV programme – all I remember is a girl and her family driving down some long and winding roads eventually passing what I remember as some kind of clock tower. I think the sighting of the clock tower triggered some kind of repressed memory in the girl like she knew she had seen it before regardless of what her parents told her? Again, another menacing secret. Did this happen to me or are these shows/films out there???
Thanks for the help with the last trauma but it still remains unearthed – It involves an architect, his female lover with red hair (a nude bath scene reminiscent of ophelia), a curse and some hallucinations of a scary individual appearing in a car windscreen or on top of car!
HELP, I'm still TRAUMATISED!!!!!
TRISTAN R.
There is a book that I read almost 20 years ago…I think I was 8 or 9, so it was 17 or 18 years ago to be more specific. Though, I don't think the time-frame matters much because I'm pretty sure the book was not a new release and had been out for some years before I read it.
It was a collection of ghost stories and superstition, I think… I am hoping that someone can help me here.
These are the stories that I remember…
One story had a woman buying a house and one of the bedrooms was haunted by the ghost of a little girl who had died because her bed was underneath a window and she caught a draft and died of pneumonia or something like that.
Another story had someone, a family, maybe, but it might have been just an individual, staying in a hotel, and they were being disturbed at night by a child and kept complaining about it to management, but the management kept saying that there were no other kids staying in the hotel. It turns out the child was a ghost who was haunting the hotel and had died in the room the family was staying in, or something to that effect…I think I remember that they might have found a skeleton in the closet or in the wall or something at the conclusion.
Another story detailed the Black Dog of Death, the superstition that some people see a big black dog as a harbinger of death to come. This one terrified me and gave me an irrational fear of dying every time I saw a black dog around, which I would see, or imagine I was seeing, quite often, hahahah.
This might have been from a different book, but I THINK it also contained the old legend of the newlywed couple who were driving to a town and getting lost because it was dark, so they had to stop for the night and they asked an elderly couple if they could sleep in their home. The elderly couple invited them in and fed them and gave them good company. In the morning, the couple left an envelope of money on the table to thank them for their hospitality and continued on their way to the town. They mentioned the old couple to someone and the person said that the old couple was long-dead and had died in a fire, I think, and the house wasn't even standing anymore so it was impossible that they had spent the night there. The couple went back to investigate and found that there was indeed just a pile of rubble where the house had been, but among the remains of the house was the envelope they had left that morning, just sitting there among the rubble.
As far as I can tell, it was a collection of 'true' ghost stories and legends and superstitions and things like that, and I would REALLY love to read it again if someone could help me identify it!
Thanks for the help!
– Liz
