Category: Traumafessions

Hello Kindertrauma,

I was wondering if you could help me piece together today's Traumafession – because I can't really find much in the way of screen caps or video clips online. I think you'll find that youtube has the entire movie up in several parts but nothing in the way of disembodied scenes.

Today I write to you of the 1988 comedy "High Spirits" starring Steve Guttenberg, Liam Neeson, Beverly D'Angelo, Daryl Hannah, Jennifer Tilly and the great Peter O'Toole. I believe Peter O'Toole to be one of the funniest movie men to come out of the 80s. The film "My Favorite Year" is as hilarious and quotable as "Caddyshack", "National Lampoon's Vacation" or "The Blues Brothers."

The movie is a fairly familiar haunted house story. O'Toole's Mr. Plunkett is the owner of an old castle in Ireland. He's decided to convert it into a bed & breakfast under the guise of being haunted in hopes to attract gullible tourists. However, once Plunkett and his staff start faking the phenomena – that's when the spirits of his dead relatives return from the grave to terrorize him for his wickedness!

There are several scenes in this film that make me wonder if the writiers didn't intend this to be a horror film before it was twisted and turned around by the studio into becoming a screwball comedy. Some things in here are really upsetting!

For example, several characters are chased by a pack of wild, ghostly nuns running down a hallway toward them! The nuns have black faces and glowing, red eyes (like the Jawas in "Star Wars").

In another scene – the staff is putting on a play set on the seas. Soon the audience is assaulted by forceful gusts of wind, flung spume and blown spray. The play's props become increasingly lifelike – ocean water, living birds, and worst of all – the very real tentacles of a terrible sea monster reach out into the crowd CAPTURING A YOUNG BOY AND PULLING HIM FROM HIS PARENTS AND INTO THE STAGE!

This movie – which all in all is a fairly decent comedy – ran on HBO a lot in the 1990s. I was able to commiserate with other kids on my block who had been exposed to the same horrors. I can't help but wonder if this film helped contribute to my irrational fear of cephalopods….From Hell.

—Drew B.

The movie "Little Monsters" was marketed as a kid's comedy movie. It was terrifying. Creepy monsters running around, monsters under your bed. Not to mention the main monster had the back of his HEAD OFF, SHOWING HIS BRAINS.

A long time ago I had a "Name That Trauma!" of my own solved in our comments section. I can't find the thread but thanks again to the kind person who identified "We The Animals Squeak!" as the cartoon I was trying to recall. I've decided I must give this animated short a spotlight post of its own because it's always reappearing in my brain for some reason. "We the animals…" is not scary or creepy but it does capture an awful feeling that I wish there was a catchall word for. What is the opposite of Schadenfreude? "Sympathy" and "pity" are too passive to cut it. I'm talking about an aggressive anguish when witnessing the misfortune of another, a weird nausea of some sort. You know that video of the news lady falling down while stomping on grapes? I know I'm meant to find that amusing but I can't make myself do it. It only makes me wince and grit my teeth and recoil. What's wrong with me? I want to have fun at the expense of others too! It's not because I'm a nice person! I don't feel any remorse for Miss Collins collateral damage death in CARRIE and I only recycle begrudgingly.

"We The Animals squeak" is a radio show hosted by Porky Pig and what a good fit radio is for a guy who refuses to wear pants. After a fluffy bunny finishes reminiscing about killing a hunter with his own gun to unanimous applause, we are introduced to Kansas City Kitty, a mother cat with an Irish brogue and a tale of woe. Kansas tells us briefly about her childhood and her rise to notoriety as an unstoppable mouser. Of course, for every successful person there are dozens of vermin plotting to take them down and in this case, it is a clandestine Mafioso mouse clique that devises a despicable plan. They kidnap KCK's newborn and threaten to slice its throat and shoot it with a machine gun if she raises a paw to thwart their nightly fridge raids. I know mice gotta eat too and there's a possibility that the threats of infanticide were of the empty kind, but what happens next is an atrocity. Not content with their new carte blanche privileges, the mice torment, psychologically torture and openly mock KCK's pain in an orgy of depravity. To the tune of "playmate" the frenzied mob even have the audacity to use their prisoners tail as a make shift jump rope knowing that she must yield as her child's life hangs in the balance.

I guess I was not exactly a happy-go-lucky kid because I took this scene clearly intended for comedy literally and it disturbed me. I must have associated Kansas City Kitty with my own mother (or cat) because it also made me angry. Is there anything grosser than exploiting somebody's concern for those whom they care about? I hate these mice. They're gluttons and clearly racist and how dare they. By the end of the cartoon, Kansas City is presented with a mouse gift (wha?) and I think we're meant to think she made the whole thing up when she jumps on the chair and screams, but my take is that she is simply having a well earned psychotic episode triggered by the creature. Do you blame her after what appears to be hours of humiliating torture while her child's life was at stake? I know I sound ridiculous but the truth is I can't watch a home invasion flick, the kidnapping of the baby in THE HILLS HAVE EYES, or any kind of torture/prisoner schtick without flashing back to the scene described in my head. Really, this is the same dynamic that made Jack Ketchum's THE GIRL NEXT DOOR so appalling. Brutality is one thing, but using your victim's humanity as leverage is a whole other level of sadism.

In other words, I love this cartoon. It may sound like I don't like the things that strike me as horrendous but I absolutely do. Negative behavior enforces my appreciation for positive behavior and this cartoon represents one of my earliest memories of being outraged and disgusted by the deeds of others; mice though they may be. Plus like any revenge flick worth its salt "We The Animals…" provides a nice slice of comeuppance for its miniature terrorists. It's not exactly a high school in flames, but it will do.

The FREDDY'S NIGHTMARES show was recently mentioned and I finally got around to finding a show that I watched religiously for thrills in the '90s. I'm talking about FRIDAY THE 13TH: THE SERIES. No, Jason Voorhees wasn't in it, but it was a darn good show about cursed antiquities. It was low budget and a bit…um…'80s at times, but very dramatic and the special effects seemed really good for the time and money.

The show is about two cousins who inherit an antique shop whose stock was cursed by the devil. It was their job to recover all the items and store them away for good in order to keep people from harm. Usually a piece was already raising hell, causing the owner destruction, possession and sometimes death. I remember specifically one about a cursed compact mirror and a fashion model. I look forward to revisiting these stories.

The pilot episode featured a possessed doll who could talk and was stolen by a cute little girl. Mayhem ensues of course. Little girl: "You can talk"?!, Evil doll: "I can do a lot of things"…in a chill inducing whisper… I had an antique doll collection thanks to Dad that became a collection of fear. I had him move them to the glass cabinets in the living room.

This show was very scary to me as a kid, my Dad was and still is, an antique dealer. Our house was FULL of old curiosities. After watching this show I was terrified of some of the objects in the house. My dresser was from the early 1800's and became highly suspect. I had become scared of ghosts and curses attached to old things. We had some strange things happen and to this day I don't know if I was just imagining it. Light would turn off and on, TV would switch on full blast and once to my dismay the toilet flushed by itself. THE HORROR! Didn't stop me from watching the show everyday though. I think if anything it fed my lifelong passion for all things spooky.

I have been thinking about this show for awhile now (it was also recently Friday the 13th). I looked it up on Netflix and was happy to see the DVDs available to rent. Someone had suggested to me a newer show called WAREHOUSE 13 that sounded very similar to this one. I will re-watch this first.

FRIDAY THE 13TH (if memory serves) was on after school on the Sci-Fi channel in re-run or perhaps the USA channel? BEYOND REALITY came on before or after and was liked but not as much.. I watched every episode without fail, I was glued to the TV set.I'm of the opinion that both series seemed like early versions of the X-FILES. I think a few ideas were lifted from these shows. Can't wait to see this again. Might try to find BEYOND REALITY too. They are both available on DVD. Only FRIDAY THE 13TH is available on Netflix. Come to think of it, kinda reminds me of SUPERNATURAL too!

— dasklyter

When I was around twelve years old, I first read the STEPHEN KING short story collection NIGHT SHIFT. In the collection, there is a tale entitled, The Boogeyman, which had a literary device in it which has since scarred me well past the point it should.

The story deals with a man who tells some sort of mental health professional (I'm assuming psychologist), an account of how his three young children died. Officially, the young ones all died from SIDS (Sudden Infant Death Syndrome), but the father knows the truth. It was The Boogeyman that killed them all. I won't spoil the rest for you, except to discuss the part of the tale which traumatized me so utterly. For, you see, every time one of his children died, the father would find the closet door open…just a crack. Just a tiny bit. And that's the hate joke; STEPHEN KING knew that when closets are left open, it's always just an inch or so!

Since the age of twelve, I have not been able to deal with a closet in my bedroom open. Especially not open…just a crack. I associate the open closet door with death, and while I'm way past the point of dying from SIDS, I can't help but feel like it's still dangerous to keep the closet open. The fear lost a lot of its power when I left home to go to college around eighteen, but I'd be lying if I said it had gone away completely.

UNK SEZ: Thanks for the traumafession Spooky Sean and thanks for building the wonderful blog SPOOKY BLOGGERY which everyone should stop by and visit often HERE!

Hello Kindertrauma,

Just found your website recently. I've been scouring it daily reliving past horrors. I gave myself nightmares last night after reading about 10 pages of Traumafessions! It's nice to know I can still do that…

As is the case with several other of the Kindertraumatized, my trauma comes from a family film not intended to send the mind recoiling in horror for decades.

In the Disney film FLIGHT OF THE NAVIGATOR, a young boy (David) is abducted by a spaceship commanded by a giant Black And Decker Snake Lite voiced by PAUL "PEE-WEE HERMAN" RUEBENS. After zooming through space with his new pal (even introducing the robot to American rock'n'roll music), the boy is returned to his planet only to discover he's been "missing" for 6 years and presumed dead. His parents have a little more gray in their hair. His younger brother now appears older than HE is. Technology has progressed since he's been "gone" and he barely recognizes anything. He is sent to some military/science facility to be monitored and researched.

Horrifying.

This idea was completely chills me to my core. Always did.

Particularly upsetting is the scene where the space alien introduces David to his other abductees – aliens from other planets. The scene where he gets a little too close to a creature who lurches from his cage and snatches the boy's baseball cap off and eats it. A moment later, David puts his face up to a tank and a giant eyeball reveals itself and screams at him.

Words can not describe the horror I feel as an adult, reverting back to a childhood state of panic when watching this from my work computer.

Man, Disney really were the masters of the unsettling family film.

— Drew B.

First off, your site is so completely awesome and words can't express the amount of pleasure I've had over the years scanning through all of your articles saying, "Oh wow… I remember that!" For this… I thank you.

For my first trauma confession ever, I present to you an episode of the late '80s show FREDDY'S NIGHTMARES. This was an anthology show where Freddy Krueger introduced horror tales of the terrible things that happened in the cursed town of Springwood. Sometimes, he even appeared in the tales.

I was very young (maybe 8 or 9 I think), and was over my Grandparent's house in their basement at the time. My Grandfather was flipping through the channels, when all of a sudden, he stops on this one particular program that looks like a game show. The host keeps looking at this timer and telling this totally frightened woman that she doesn't have much time left on the clock. She is being asked questions, and the camera switches to her husband who is tied up with a blade above him that keeps swinging closer and closer to him. The host (with an unsettlingly happy grin) keeps asking her questions. The woman then says out loud to herself something like, "If I win, HE DIES!" or maybe it's the other way around (I'm at work as I type this and can't check on YouTube unfortunately).

Anywho, the blade finally starts piercing his flesh and you see some blood. The gagged man starts to scream. My grandmother happens to come into the room and she says "Lee, turn that off!". My grandfather just sits there laughing. "Lee, turn that off now!" she says again. My grandfather finally turns the channel.

Of course by then, the damage had already been done.

My poor little brain was now trying to erase those images for the rest of that trip I'm sure. Later on in life, I became an absolute horror fanatic and received a bootleg set of the entire series of FREDDY'S NIGHTMARES in great quality. Imagine my surprise when I watched the episode "Judy Miller, Come On Down". It was the infamous scarring episode!!! It had, through the hands of fate arrived back to me after years of searching for it, wondering if it was but a dream! Not only that, but I could now see all of the "wonderful" ways Judy was tormented on that sick gameshow including her relatives being covered in man-eating ants!

It's up on YouTube now I believe, so you fellow kindertraumers can go see it in all of its sick glory. '80s nighttime T.V. was never so good! Hehe.

When I was a kid I spent a lot of time at my grandparents house in Midwest City OK. PSYCHO had been re-released into theaters about a year before it was to premier on local TV. I recall the previews being morbidly humorous and more terrifying than anything I had previously imagined. When it was to be shown on television there was quite a buzz in the household. My aunt, only a few years older than me, was eager to see it.

When the broadcast came I was declared too young. I was very disappointed and protested that I was indeed old enough to watch this movie. I was probably six years old. My grandpa told me I could watch until I hid my eyes. If I had to hide my eyes then I had to go to bed. The shower scene was awesome, but didn't make me hide my eyes. Arbogast didn't bother me a bit, the scene was too weird to be frightening. But the tour through the Bates house was really giving me the heebie jeebies; by this time I was halfway up the stairs, watching the movie through the bannister rails.

When I met Mrs. Bates it was too damned late. Hiding my eyes wasn't going to help at that point. The epilogue seemed overdone, but I really liked the last scene of Norman and the shot of the car being pulled from the pond. I made it through the whole movie. This was to begin a lifelong devotion to the joys of horror, although I did not sleep well for several years after. I saw the film again recently in a theater, and found it remarkably dated particularly the soundtrack (which I revere) seemed way overwrought. Oh well, I still remember the first viewing fondly.

Hey, I found your site during a search for the movie CHILD OF GLASS, which in combination with everything else on this site, seemed like a strange connection, because I loved that movie, but I was 11 for that one. I saw your request for emails about what "scarred" me for life and there were 3 things that came to mind although the first one gets the "for life" honors:

THE EXORCIST. Seriously I can barely look at clips of it even. So that's #1.

The other 2 things were I believe, one, from the introduction of FRIGHT NIGHT. It was a TV series on at 4 or 5 in the afternoon, and the introduction was from this floating head that spoke to you in the beginning of each episode and at the end I think, and then faded off into the background.

The other was some ventriloquist dummy that was the commercial for some movie in the theaters at the time (probably in the '70s) but don't remember which movie it was supposed to be. Just remember having to change the channel or leave the room every time it came on.

Ironic thing is I love scary movies. No possession movies though…hmmm. Thank you LINDA BLAIR. Like the site though. Wished I'd found you on Halloween!

— Jennifer F.

UNK SEZ: Thanks Jennifer F! I'm not sure if I have found the right clip for the TV show FRIGHT NIGHT. Could it be the one below? Does anyone out there remember the floating head Jennifer is looking for?