Category: Traumafessions

This one was an oldie even when I was growing up in the 1970s and 80s, but I found it terrifying – yet fascinating – nonetheless: The 1938 version of "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer", starring Tommy Kelly.

I found the movie entertaining, yet was terrifed of Victor Jory's "Injun Joe" character – from his throwing of the tomahawk during Tom's testimony in court, to his discovery of a lost Tom and Becky in the cave. I had nightmares of the scene Tom turning around to see Injun Joe standing there, watching them and grinning. Many a sleepless night was due to that one scene – yet I watched it every time they showed a matinee at our local theater or when it aired on TV.

I must have been somewhat masochistic when it came to fear, as I did the same thing with horror comic books.

Love the site, love "digging up" chilling memories.

Dustin in Minnesota

The HAMBURGLER, damn it! The old Hamburgler! One of my crazy relatives got a Hamburgler figure when I was like 3 or 4 years old for some reason and it had a pull string to make it talk …. that shit got put in a hole in the woods. Really what were they thinking? Ronald was bad enough but for God's sake, the Hamburgler too?

I love your site! Brings back a lot of pleasant and, well, a few not so pleasant memories of things buried in my memory. Glad to know I am not totally neurotic or nuts! I wasn't scared of too many things on T.V. as a young child since my parents monitored my viewing rather judiciously. The few horrors were, for the most part, educational other than a Charlotte Rae commercial for an oven cleaner that terrified me and sent me from the room in screams.

My mother was a nurse and often watched medical shows and one gave me nightmares for weeks. It showed a young boy about my age having open heart surgery — his beating heart exposed. It was horrific to a child who was about the same age as the youngster having surgery. The same show also featured — don't ask me how — x-ray videos of bursting blood vessels accompanied by creepy music.

My dad was a horror aficionado and I was watching "Friday Nite Frights" by the time I was 11. I am also a Stephen King fan although my viewing habits run to true crime type shows rather than horror. When I was 16 I saw one show about a gentleman in the 1800's named Phineas Gage who was unfortunate enough to have a large metal rod blasted through his head and survive. His howls of pain as the wound was cleaned were grotesque to my teenage ears and his personality change was something out of Frankenstein although this was a true story. I was so terrified that I spent the night in the tv room adjacent to my parents' bedroom with all lights on and listening to the radio with a headset. My parents weren't too happy about this and even after my attempt to stay up all night failed at 5am my mother sent me to school. I slept with the lights on in my room until I went away to college.

Spartan24

Hi! I'm Riccardo

I come back to talk about another movie that shook my childhood, of a sequence to be more precise, I am referring to the famous dream sequence in the film THE BEAR by Annaud. This scene upset me because it came quite suddenly in the film and, having no importance in the development of the plot (as was the case in the "American Werewolf in London" movie), only served to scare the unsuspecting child watching it. All this makes it worthy of being a genuine kindertrauma.

Bye

UNK SEZ: Thanks Riccardo! That bear needs to stop eating those crazy mushrooms! Soon he'll be seeing pink elephants!

I have one for you… PBS had a show in the 70's called Inside Out and I distinctly remember one episode called "Buy and Buy" which featured a whirligig… Kinda creepy for the fact it had a decapitated Barbie and a male doll head just slowly spinning around and Christmas lights and junky radio parts! One kid is creepy in just the way he talks and tries to manipulate his younger brother! Definitely Kindertrauma material!

Hi,

Your site encouraged me to search again for a film that I saw in the 90s on TV, when I was 5. I woke up in the late evening, so I went for my dad to read me another bed time story and maybe to get a cookie. He watched a film on TV and I got a glimpse of it while I walked up to him. This one scene stuck in my memory. There was some weird bad robot with white hair and a good robot with black hair and – for whatever reason – I thought the bad one was collecting breast milk.

So, today I searched differently and went through every horror film made in the late 80s and early 90s. It turned out that I saw "I Come In Peace". In the particular scene that I saw, the bad not-robot-but-alien had a female victim. I guess since the bad alien ripped open the shirts of its victims and pumped white liquid into and out of their bodies, I thought it had to be breast milk. Now that I know that the liquid is supposed to be heroin and endorphins, the film seems to be less fucked up than I thought it was. The trailer also seems to be more trashy than horrifying, but for a kid it was really scary. Maybe someone else suffers some Kindertrauma from that one.

I can barely type words on a laptop right now because of the brain explosion I just experienced by finding Kindertrauma. Seriously, what a great site! Anything and everything to do with obscure childhood memories is what TNUC is all about. Yes, TNUC (pronounced "tee-nuk") is the site that i've been running for the past few years. I've turned things I obsessed with in my childhood (or feared) into basically, attempted works of art. That includes music video edits, mixtapes and more. If i'm making no sense so far, please go take a look at the site. By the looks of things around the Kindertrauma camp, i'm sure you'll enjoy the product!

My latest childhood nightmare comes from a little Cro-magnon direct-to-vhs wonder called MISSING LINK (1988). I remember catching this movie late one night on HBO when I was around 10 and it both facinated AND sent shivers down my overalls at the same time. The setting? Africa, 1 million years ago. The star? The last neanderthal on earth. The plot? Watching this Cro-magnon stud walk around Africa day + night, with nothing to do but stare at wildlife and get high (yes, really). I recently turned this movie into a music video edit for one of my favorite artists and friend, Steve Moore. Have a look at the video to get a peek at MISSING LINK!

Just found your site after looking for the Mud Monster– that movie gave me nightmares, literally!

When I was 8 my parents thought it would be a good idea to take me and my brother to see "Alien" in the theater. (They must have thought it was just a space movie or something) Of course, we got there late and each had to sit alone in the packed theater since there were only single seats left!

Somehow I made it through the terrifying movie all by myself, but was so scared that my brother and I slept in the same bed that night! LOL

-Rob