Category: Name That Trauma!

There was a cartoon I used to see in the early sixties, black and white, probably old even then, maybe 30's or 40's. It had some kind of discordant jazz music in the background, no speaking, and there were these creatures who were essentially an eyeball on top of a vertical metal pole, with a wheel at the bottom. These damn things were, I think, chasing something or someone inside a building. I think there might have been predatory vacuum cleaners in it too.

I would love to be able to identify this and view it again as an adult. It absolutely terrified me.

Hello Kindertrauma!

I wanted to consult you on some books flashbacks, it is kind of a long shot but it doesn't hurt to ask…

When I was 7 (around the end of the eighties) I read a fantasy book (not a children's book, it was a long novel) about a family who lives or moves to a house in the forest and it turns out it is an enchanted forest with small people (fairies? gnomes?) living there and a man who looks like a logger with his cart but was kind of a forest keeper (also a supernatural being). What I remember about the plot is that the small people shot minuscule arrows to the dad of the family and he got one off his hand and took it to the lab to have it examined because the material was unknown, and the next day the lab people told him that it had disappeared in front of their eyes. The other thing I remember is that the adolescent daughter was lured to the forest by the "logger" and he made sweet love to her, LOL.

By that time I also read a horror novel about some family living near the beach and some little girl or boy was evil and he/she digged a huge hole by a cliff and lured a small girl (i think she was deaf or mute, or blind!) into it and left her there to rot, while also giving her the corpse of a dead beheaded kitten dressed as a doll and demanding her to play with it!!

And last but not least a book about and unborn baby that begins to control the mother's mind from the uterus and makes her eat raw food and fuck men because doing that stimulates the healthy growth of the little spawn… I think there was a connection with some computer in some part of the plot…

As you can see, reading those books made a lasting impression on my young undeveloped mind, but I loved the thrill! Sadly, my mum threw away all the books during a house cleaning and she doesn't recollect the names, even when they were hers.

Do you happen to know the name of any of the novels? I'd love to repurchase them and judge them as a grown woman now!

Alrighty, I'm stumped again on what I thought would be an easy find (I even think this one may have come up on Kindertrauma once before, but I'll be damned if I can find it seaching through your archives!)

It was an episode of some anthology TV series from the mid-80s(?) I want to say the show was associated with a known sci-fi writer like Arthur C. Clarke or Isaac Asimov, but can't be sure (at first I thought it might be an episode of Ray Bradbury Theater but it doesn't appear to be.)

The episode is set in a boarding school for children, set in the future and possibly on another planet. The planet is cloudy and rainy all the time and the sun only shines once every several years and then only for a few hours, and it is about to do so again in the next few days and everyone is excited about it. The teacher hands out "sun kits" to the class, containing sun screen, protective glasses, etc. in anticipation of the big event.

The day the sun finally shines, the kids gang up on one of the newer kids and lock her in a windowless classroom. The sun shines for the brief moment and all these flowers start blooming all around the school. It is over as quickly as it began and everything is cloudy again. The girl is let out of the classroom and she is crying at having missed the sun. The kids feel guilty and bring her armfulls of flowers.

Any help?

Thanks,

Brother Bill

Hello Kindertrauma.

I want to thank you again for helping me figure out my two mystery traumas last year. Now I've got another one.

Late 70s, PBS. Story takes place in a small town or village, probably American, 18th or 19th century. Main character is a boy around ten years old. He is friends with a girl the same age. At one point in the story, the girl becomes an outcast for some reason, and there is a heartbreaking scene where she's telling the boy they can't be friends anymore because she's "unclean." I had never heard that word before, so it really stuck in my mind.

Then we see her walking sadly along the riverbank, and a little later we find out that her drowned body had been found. The scene that really shook me was the boy and his father praying, and the father says something like "God, please let it have been an accident." I didn't know what he meant at first, then I figured out he meant that the girl might have drowned herself on purpose.

At the time, I knew what suicide was, but I thought it was something strictly reserved for grownups, like voting or taking drugs. The idea that a child close to my own age could decide to kill herself was a terrifying glimpse into my own mortality. And PBS claims another victory over childhood innocence.

Any help with this would be tremendously appreciated!

Hi!

I've always been an avid reader, and as a kid in the 80s I devoured YA/Children's short horror fiction anthologies by the dozen (obviously, Alvin Schwartz's SCARY STORIES TO TELL IN THE DARK were at the top of the list!) I still have a handful of them, but I'm trying to track down one in particular. There's a chance it came from a Scholastic book fair… I can't remember any of the other stories in this particular volume, but the tale forever etched in my brain was about a pair of brothers left with a sitter for the evening while their parents went out. The younger brother, the story's protagonist, notices a light come on in their backyard shed. He is terrified for some reason, and alerts everyone else. One by one the sitter, the sitter's boyfriend (I think), the older brother, and, after their return, the kid's parents all stick their heads out the window to look and are pulled off into the night. I believe the story ends with the kid sitting alone in the house, staring at the window.

I'd kill to know what this one is. I've been looking for years!

I had the Disney Channel when I was young (late 80s/early 90s), back when it was a subscription channel and they would air all kinds of weird stuff (Felix the Cat: The Movie springs immediately to mind). At one point they ran a special featuring a young singer/songwriter aimed at little children. Toward the end of the special, the singer-songwriter enters a room inhabited by a variety of large monsters, of differing shapes and colors, that bounce around and generally frighten our hero (who sang a song about it, natch). The monsters kinda reminded me of Mad Balls. As a child, I was terrified of this sequence, but have never been able to find out what that special was called, or anyone who remembers it. Your help would be super appreciated!

I was wondering if somebody could identify this for me. Technically I wasn't a kid when I saw it, but I was younger anyway. It's actually a short GIF that I saw online somewhere from an old movie that was one of the creepiest things I've ever seen. It's in black and white, there's a car driving down a road at night, it looks like a European car, and then the POV shifts to inside the car. The car passes some kind of creature on the side of the road quickly. This thing has four legs, kind of bent down in the middle, with weird backwards legs or something in the rear. It has some odd looking face and it turns its head as the headlights hit it. There's something incredibly creepy about it, and I would love to know what it's from.

UNK SEZ: Great description Eric! That sounds exactly like a scene from 1983's XTRO! Could that be it?

Hello!

There's a certain movie I saw back when I was a child (meaning, early '90s). Now, I keep wondering what this movie was… I've been searching through movie databases and reviews for some time now, but – so far – I haven't found anything that matches my memories.

Here's what I can remember about this movie:

1. It was in colour and seemed to be something from the at least 70s. As I mentioned, I saw it in early '90s, so it couldn't be anything more recent.

2. The plot, I think, concerned a group of mad scientists / doctors performing experiments on humans. One member of this group was a female nurse.

3. At least one of the movie's heroes was a male teenager / young adult.

4. One particular scene I remember involved a young woman being wheeled on a trolley by the aforementioned nurse. She was being prepared for some sort of experiment or mad science procedure. As she wheeled her, the nurse said to another scientist: "This one is for me," "You promised this one for me" or something to that effect.

5. In a later scene, the aforementioned male hero entered a dark room and was cornered by small group of people reduced to savagery / zombiehood by the scientists' experiments. I think that one of these people was the girl seen previously on the trolley.

6. Both the nurse and the trolley girl were Caucasians. The nurse was dark-haired, I think. I think that the girl was a blonde.

Does this ring any bells for anyone?

Best wishes,

— Piotr W.

Hiya. Long time reader.

I can not remember from where or whence this vision implanted upon my mind.

A jet is flying a long trip, perhaps overseas. Some sort of demonic or witchcraft force has taken over the flight passenger compartment. There is a hole in the floor of the passenger isle. Badness exudes from the hole. The passengers toss on a baby toy doll as a sacrifice. No good. It is the flight to hell.

I think it was a made-for-TV movie.

I can still picture badness bubbling up from that hole in the floor.

What say you?

Thanks,

— Scott R.

UNK SEZ: No problem Scott R.! That is most certainly THE HORROR AT 37,000 FEET which stars, among many others, the incomparable WILLIAM SHATNER! How can you go wrong with a made-for-TV movie involving vengeful Druid spirits on a plane!? Check out our ancient review HERE and the spectacular and SHAT-tacular clip below!