Category: Traumafessions

Hiya, great to see the site still going strong. I sent in one of my memories a few years back regarding a freaky TV commercial for soft drink Tango, and a few nights ago, I was trawling through Youtube for old TV shows I remember, when I stumbled across a show that really used to freak me out as a child and thought some of you might enjoy it.

Back in 1990, a late night TV magic show called The Secret Cabaret started on UK Channel 4, however, unlike all the family friendly magic shows on at the time, this was decidedly more adult. Combining gothic/heavy metal style, horror, and surreal imagery with violent illusions, stunts and footage from old freak shows and carnival attractions, this was really edgy stuff, especially in the UK at that time (Which was still quite conservative, with many horror films being banned or heavily edited).

The star was a magician called Simon Drake, a cross between Chris Angel and Penn & Teller, whose illusions were often incredibly bloody, such as being gutted on an operating table by a nurse with a chainsaw, all the while screaming and coughing up blood. Or punching his fist through a woman's chest, ripping out her bloody heart. Fun stuff!

But all the gory illusions aside, the part that freaked me out the most was the intro. This was the bit that gave me the chills…

I love your website and it brings back some awesome memories from my childhood. I have a couple of future Kindertraumas that will possibly fuel good memories to come.

Spongebob Square Pants: Now how could the wimpy yellow kitchen sponge possibly scare anyone? Well in an episode called "Nightlight" a terrified Spongebob is told by his boss to go in the dark cooler to get some fresh Krabby Patties to grill up for the lunch crowd. Meanwhile Spongebob had spent the previous evening watching a scary show and has developed a morbid fear of the dark. As the cooler door opens a disembodied head (played by Tom Kenny who voices Spongebob) floats out accompanied by evil sounding laughter. When my then 5-year-old saw the face she screamed like someone encountering an ax murderer. Several weeks later my husband was sleeping and I was engrossed in something else when the episode came on again. This time she screamed even louder and ran around the room. We raced to see what the problem was, thinking that maybe she had fallen and was somehow hurt only to see "Nightlight" playing on the television. For months afterward she would ask if "Nightlight" was coming on whenever we watched Spongebob.

My son is pretty brave for a two and a half year old but comes unglued when confronted by giant inflatable lawn decorations. Last October he screamed and flailed around in the shopping cart when faced with a giant inflatable dancing pumpkin. Even after the thing was quickly sold he would cover his eyes and wail, "Oh no oh no!" any time we passed the holiday section where the inflatable had been displayed. He also goes bananas when he sees puppets on television or YouTube, this just proves that the Uncanny Valley continues on to the next generation.

Keep up the good work on an awesome website!

Thought I'd share another trauma with you guys, seeing as how I feel much better about spilling my guts about The Blob remake (Haha not really…I don't think that one's going away any time soon).

Anyway, this one is kind of odd, and I was reminded of it today because it's been snowing like a son of a bitch here.

Back when I was much younger and people used to go to video stores to rent VHS tapes, I would always be drawn to two things when I would visit my local rental place; the box art of the horror movies, and the posters that would be hanging up for new releases near the entrance. One day I went with my father to rent a couple movies, and the poster hanging up was for a movie by the name of Fargo. It depicted a lonely snow-covered road, a car turned upside-down over on the side, with what appeared to be a dead body in snow gear nearby leaking blood onto the snow, and appeared to be headless because of the angle. The tagline: A lot can happen in the middle of nowhere.

This poster frightened the crap out of me. What COULD have possibly happened to that poor person out in the snow all alone? For some reason, my mind went to "abominable snow man." I was sure that unfortunate driver stumbled upon a wilderness road, came across a yeti, which flipped the car over and dragged the man out, brutally decapitating him and leaving his bloody body behind. I actually would stay up at night thinking about that poster and what the movie could have been about, giving myself nightmares in the process.

I didn't actually see the movie until I was 20, about 13 years later (yeesh, I'm getting old…), and while it couldn't possibly live up to my childhood imagination-induced nightmares, I still found it really enjoyable. A good mix of humor and thriller, I thought. Still kinda wish it had been about yeti attacks, though.

Greetings, fear fans!

I had a memory trigger today that reminded me of one of my childhood fear films—1978's The Water Babies, a half live action/half animated tale of a chimney sweep who jumps into a river to avoid accusations of theft—and discovers an underwater world there.

The part that always creeped me out was this floating face of this woman who would pop up in different parts of the film, always in different roles. The face was live action, superimposed over whatever else was going on at that time. I believe she played six different roles in the film, the creepiest of which was near the beginning. As Tom, the hero, was running from people falsely accusing him of theft, her face pops up in black and white and whispers, "Run, boy—run!"

To a young mind, disembodied floating faces can always give chills.

Dustin in Minnesota

UNK SEZ: Ack! I found the offering scene! It happens about 30 seconds into the segment below. You're right, that lady is creepy as hell. She kinda acts like a whispering witch accuser and how dare she break the fourth wall and stare at me directly! Thanks Dustin! You always have interesting traumafessions!

I must have been about 4, maybe 5. I saw The Neverending Story for the first time at grandma's house, sitting in the living room with my 2 cousins. I loved the movie, but there were some parts that scarred me for life. Of course I can watch the film now and still experience it with glee every time…but that day, so long ago, is a day I will never forget.
First off I hated the part where Artax dies in the Swamp of Sadness. It was horrible. It made me very unhappy. It still does. Not to mention the fact that I had a big ole insta-crush on Atreyu ( who didn't, am I right ladies?), and didn't like to see him so upset. It was all very emotional and intense for a small girl.

Of course after seeing what happened to the knight when he tried to pass the first gate…I wasn't too excited to have Atreyu try his luck. I don't remember breathing during this scene at all.

Then there was Gmork. Need I say more?

Then at the end of the movie, the Ivory Tower is crumbling after all of Fantasia has already been destroyed. Very heavy stuff here. I was so caught up in the moment, I was certain that the Childlike Empress ( who was the most beautiful creature I had ever seen up to that point in my young life) was going to die.

I began crying inconsolably behind grandpa's big recliner until my mother found me there and assured me that the Childlike Empress was NOT dead, and look how how her and Bastian are rebuilding all of Fantasia now. I will always remember wiping my nose and tear stained face on the back of my sleeve and watching the end of the film- feeling afterwards not just a little bit silly.

Well that's my story. Tons more where that came from. I'll be posting again soon.

Sincerely,

Audrey Spindler

Hey, it's me again. I don't think I've ever seen a video game-related trauma on here before, so I figured: Why not be the first? Now, we all remember good old Rugrats, right? Turns out the show had a few licensed video games out there. I only played one of them as a kid, Rugrats: Search For Reptar. To be quite honest, I would even go so far as to say that I was absolutely addicted to the game. I loved it! I'd say it was one of the games that I played the most, topped only by the famous Spyro the Dragon games.

Like I said, I loved every moment of that game. Well, except for a few trauma-inducing levels. The absolute biggest offender for me was the level, "Let There Be Light". Looking back, this level still gives me the creeps. I even have a hard time playing it to this day. Everything about it was just… I can't even describe it.

First off, there's the overall atmosphere of the level. It's dark, the music is eerie as hell, Tommy's parents are nowhere to be seen, and there are "shadow monsters" everywhere, ghosts, more or less. And then there's the noise that they made when you got too close to them. Oh God, the noise. "Oogie-boogie-boogie!" Oh, you may laugh, but it's just the tone of the noise. It would scare the pants off any kid! I absolutely refused to play that level unless I had one of my parents in the room with me. Often at times, I would just make them play the level for me. When I found out that you could skip whole levels by collecting enough Reptar bars to get puzzle pieces, I would go out of my way to collect as many as I possibly could just so I could avoid that level.

Then there was the Ice Cream Mountain level. You know, the mini-golf level. Now, unlike "Let There Be Light", the whole level didn't scare me. It was just one part, specifically the hole in which you play as Angelica. There's a pyramid at the center. I eventually found out that you could actually go in the pyramid. It was a bad idea.

It started out with a noise. I was creeped out, but curious at the sound. I went in further to find out what it was. Turns out, if you go into the pyramid, you'll be greeted by mummified Mister Friends. They will approach you slowly but menacingly. I freaked out. Because the inside of the pyramid was designed like a maze, there were dead ends… with even more Mister Friends. I was starting to panic. You have no idea how relieved I was to get out of the place.

Come to find out, I'm not alone. Looking in the comments of Let's Plays of the game, many people were scared by the same things. Some, even scared of things that didn't scare me, like the crazy goose in Grandpa's Teeth or the giant gorilla in Toy Palace. Looking back, I have absolutely no clue why those things didn't scare me.

For this post-Halloween malaise, here's a long-winded, big bummer of a Traumafession. Feel free to reject it if it's too much of a drag (or if you're sick of hearing from me).

As all the unexpected scares I have encountered on film or in real life have managed only to strengthen my spirit, it has been difficult to contribute Traumafessions from memories that have come to make me feel alive and vital through fear—difficult because under the rubric of "trauma," I am more likely to list mundane anxieties like job interviews and beet salad. On an agonizingly slow, brackish day, I look to those more startling memories that will ease the scabbed-over nerves produced by tedium and indifference: everything from the time I was mugged at gunpoint on the street at night to the relatively harmless experience of watching the The Shining in a theater when I was ten years old.

There were a few Melancholiafessions-in-the-making, however, mostly culled from the ‘70s, when I became aware of my relationship with certain dreary attitudes and conditions depicted on film, and realized how much they could infect my well-being and endanger my love of life.

Chief among these is a daytime television broadcast of Bless the Beasts and Children. I must have been home sick from school, as I recall fading in and out of the story while lying on a couch under an itchy blanket that smelled of furnace dust. So my recollections are piecemeal. I remember the dream sequence during which parents shoot their children in a corral as they behave like herds of cattle. I remember the line of misfit kids at camp having urine poured over their heads. Worse yet, I remember that dreadfully limp title song performed by The Carpenters. And worst of all, I remember the languid piano chords that open the soundtrack music now known as "Nadia's Theme" on Young and the Restless. (Henry Mancini, what have you done?!?!) When I hear either one today, I feel my legs atrophy like the antennae of a snail you touch, and my mind begins to see everything through a dirty window of listless emotions on a hot day. It was pure catatonic misery distilled in that music. As a future musician, I tended to be highly sensitive to the associations of sounds and images. And as a future basket case, I tended to feel depressive states at that age as external assaults by a giant translucent sponge saturated with warm moisture and bacteria. It was all a harbinger of terrible, eventless days to come.

I couldn't sympathize with the misfits in that movie, even though, if nothing else, I am an outsider myself. But I couldn't stand them. Even fighting for the buffalo—a noble cause that resonates intensely with my love for animals—could not shake my irritation and intense desire to be rid of them. I hated their yellow T-shirts tucked into pants belted above their stomachs, and their shapeless heads of floppy neck-length hair, and Billy Mumy's freckles. Dirty, dusty, hot, dreary, oppressive, cruel, and lacquered by a soundtrack meant to subdue the viewer with tender piano and maudlin strings and Karen Carpenter's perfectly lifeless voice. Like shit trapped in amber.

Little did I know at that age: these outcasts were more or less my people. But Stanley Kramer presented them like unctuous creeps when he thought he was uplifting them.

And I hold Kramer, the director, personally responsible for this. I want to tell him, if he were alive today, "Yes, the problem you present here is terrible and worth combating, but somehow your aesthetic is more damaging than gun violence! Don't ask me how! I realize that sounds ridiculous and perhaps even offensive to victims of gun violence. But, God help me, it's true! The same thing happened when you made that stupid movie about a black prisoner and a white prisoner on the lam chained together, and that may be the best thing you ever did. A good cause—eradicating racism and healing race relations—but a horribly realized allegory that would make W.E.B. Dubois himself plead with you to stop working on behalf of African Americans."

I saw Todd Haynes' Barbie-doll biopic Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story many years ago, and it was only then that I realized that something good could be fashioned out of something so bland and suffocating. It was my first tentative step toward bringing the ‘70s back into my heart, however ironically. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre was soon to follow, more sincerely stoking the fires of reclamation. In some ways, those two films are the perfect double feature.

And Unkle Lancifer, if you have love for this film and find yourself outraged by my account here, I apologize, but really the best revenge against me would be to include an embedded YouTube video of "Cotton's Dream" (AKA "Nadia's Theme"). I would have a psychotic PTSD episode hearing that again. I would probably throw on a yellow T-shirt, tuck it into a pair of corduroy pants, and run to the closest animal pound with a kill facility and burn it to the ground.

(I would recommend posting the trailer, which is rather remarkable—a phony television debate between a fire arms advocate and Billy Mumy—but it contains footage of buffalo getting shot, and that part is genuinely upsetting.)

Here's to happier days,

gcg

I have a trauma that I've been unable to escape for twenty-three years of my life, and I still can't watch the movie where it originated: the 1988 remake of The Blob.

I was three years old, and at the time the only TV we had was in the living room, so if my parents wanted to watch a movie they would kick me off of cartoons and watch whatever they wanted, barring the consequences. One of our local channels would run a movie every Friday night, and one night they were showing The Blob.

Now, I was into creepy stuff back then. My dad was a fanatic for old sci-fi movies, so I had already seen stuff like Earth Vs. the Flying Saucers and IT! The Terror From Beyond Space. I foolishly thought that if I could handle those movies, I could handle this one, so I snuggled up next to my dad in his armchair, prepared to be entertained.

And then along comes Paul (I think that was his name…not going to look it up for fear of coming across pictures) getting melted into a screaming, thrashing gooey mess, and my childlike innocence is forever marred. I don't think I've experienced real terror from watching a movie before or since. I had nightmares for FIVE YEARS afterward. Five years. And I still can't watch that stupid movie without reverting back to my three year-old self; I tried when I was fourteen, thinking that I could probably handle it now, since I loved movies like An American Werewolf in London and John Carpenter's The Thing. I WAS WRONG. The whole time I was waiting for that scene to come on, my heart was racing and a rising sense of panic was growing in my chest. And when it finally reared its gruesome head, I ran crying from the room, covering my ears so I wouldn't be able to hear it, while everyone else in the room laughed at how goofy and schlocky it was.

So, now I'm forever afraid of a relatively silly gorefest from the '80s with moderately good special effects and somewhat goofy acting. Thanks, Dad.