kindertrauma

Category: Traumafessions

Traumafessions :: Reader Claudia K. on E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial

Posted on By aunt john

Hi guys,

I'd like to share my very own kindertrauma with you!

It might sound funny, but it's about E.T.: THE EXTRA TERRESTRIAL.

I've first seen that movie when I was about 4 years old, E.T. himself didn't really freak me out at first, I remember crying cause I was so afraid of the people in the white "space suits" who locked up the house when E.T. got sick.

I had nightmares about those faceless people breathing heavily and hunting me down.

When I was 5 or 6, my sister told me about alien abductions. She was older than me and very interested in that kind of stuff. She made me watch documentary films about UFOs, aliens and abductions. The only alien my little kid's brain knew was E.T., so I made a connection between alien abductions and E.T.

It gave me terrible nightmares about E.T. landing his UFO in our garden, abducting my family and abuse them for medical tests. In my mind, E.T. wasn't that nice, tiny alien anymore. He was taller than me and wanted to harm us.

The next time, I saw E.T. on TV, I was terrified. That movie turned into a horror movie. I could barely watch it and I was hiding under my blanket all the time. From now on, I was scared, whenever I saw E.T.… on TV, in a magazine, whatever.

I remember having a magazine from Toys 'R Us with a picture of E.T. in it. You know what I did? I put a sticker on that picture so that I could look at this magazine without being scared. Oh, and I remember that my sister used to have an E.T. keyring. I hid it all the time because I was scared of it.

Today, I'm 26 years old. I tried to get over it and watched the movie some time ago. But I had to look away all the time and wasn't able to watch that movie like a grown up. I still jump when I suddenly see E.T. on TV or somewhere else… My friends find that very funny…

— Claudia K.

Traumafessions :: Reader David O. on Miracles (and Maggots) Still Happen

Posted on By unkle lancifer

I know you hear all the time about traumafessions that have been nagging people for years, and this is no different. I was ready to submit it as a "Name that Trauma" segment but blissfully found my answer and have been able to put 36 years of hunting behind me. Being a kid in the '70s, I was obsessed with all things Bigfoot and airplane disaster movies, so I remember being thrilled to find a repeat of a movie that was based on real-life events of a horrific plane crash with one lone survivor.

The film is called MIRACLES STILL HAPPEN (1975) and tells the tale of Juliane Koepcke who was the sole survivor of a plane crash in the Peruvian rainforest. It has the usual suspense and expected terror of your typical plane crash movie, but the real excitement starts when poor Juliane has to trudge through the jungle to find help. After 10 days of solitary drudgery she finally finds some loggers who help her and eventually get her to civilization.

Right when you think all is well and you can eat your peanut butter and jelly sandwich, the unthinkable happens: They start squeezing bugs out of her wounds. The entire theme is bad enough when you consider the horror she must have experienced, but then we're subjected to live maggots in bloody wounds, and that's all she wrote folks. All I kept thinking was "I wonder if they missed one and it's still living in her system?". I have no idea if this movie is available, and I doubt I'd want to watch it again. But at least I found it and can rest easy knowing she got all the bugs out all those years ago.

Traumafessions :: Filmmaker Chris Moore On Suspiria

Posted on By unkle lancifer

SUSPIRIA came to me a little later in life, around 9 or 10 years old, but it left me with the same lingering fear that (my previous traumafession) did. I discovered it in an issue of ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY's 50 (or was it 100?) scariest movies of all time. It sounded interesting and had a black & white picture of STEFANIE CASINI tangled in barbed wire, which, at the time, I thought was simply a woman hiding in some very tall grass.

I rented the VHS from my local video store after school on Friday and popped it in. After the first 15 minutes, I had to turn it off. I was scared out of my mind. It was just so brutal…and yet beautiful and surreal…and confusing. It felt like every nightmare I had ever had. At that point, I became a DARIO ARGENTO fan for life. For the first time, I had seen an expression of my nightmares on film. It was phenomenal and truly scary.

As a kid, I had many nightmares similar to SUSPIRIA. I know many people say we dream in black & white, but I don't believe that at all…not after seeing SUSPIRIA. My dreams consisted of similar color schemes, velvet curtains, long corridors, evil witches, strange music, people acting odd, things not making sense…everything SUSPIRIA had to offer. Actually, I even remember having a dream that looked and felt almost exactly like the ARGENTO produced, DEMONS! It took place in an old theatre and everything, but I was only 3 or 4 years old when I had this dream. Spooky, eh?

It's probably one of the main reasons why I wanted to become a filmmaker. If audiences have embraced DARIO ARGENTO's nightmares, maybe they'll embrace mine!

UNK SEZ: Thanks CHRIS! I could not agree with you more about the power of SUSPIRIA! Folks, CHRIS' movie PERVERSION is now available to watch anytime you like on Amazon Instant Video HERE! Check it out!

Traumafessions :: Francisco From Spain on Airport '77

Posted on By unkle lancifer

Hey, Francisco from Spain here, I have been a time without connecting with kindertrauma but now I'm doing the homework and trying to read the articles I didn't read, awesome the children show The boy with two heads-CHICO THE RAINMAKER, I can't stop singing in my mind the song¡¡¡…!!! incredible the link to "Poison" from THE ELECTRIC COMPANY too…(UNK SEZ: Thanks to Jamie JoAnne Russell for that link HERE.)

Well, I want to make a traumafession, an adult one, I can't see the poster for AIRPORT '77, the one with the sunken plane, I didn't send you a link because I really, really can't look at it, and it has been not so much time that I discovered that poster as an adult but… I like the sea and swimming but thinking about the depths and what you could find there… glubss … I have a bad time looking at photographs of the bottom of the sea or great fishes like sharks or whales too, maybe this traumafession could be the weirdest in kindertrauma but after knowing some people and their traumas with the WARNER BROS. logo or the TRI STAR Pegasus…

Feel free to correct my poor grammar and my poorest writing style if you want to publish this traumafession on the webpage!

UNK SEZ: Yay! I'm always happy to hear from Francisco from Spain! Don't worry Francisco, your English is fine because the language of trauma is universal! You may not want to watch the trailer for AIRPORT '77 below because things get muy submerged!

Traumafessions :: Jose Cruz of Mephisto's Castle on Deadly Dummies

Posted on By unkle lancifer

What is it about ventriloquist dummies that seem to scare people so? Is it their dwarfish human-like bodies, their wooden ligaments grotesquely moving in a mockery of life? Is it the cruel turn of their painted lips, the gleam of their wide, staring eyes? Or is it the fact that their purpose is to sit in one's lap, granting them the perfect opportunity to wrap their cold, hard fingers around your throat… laughing all the while?

I know I'm not the only one with this affliction. I've seen a few Traumafessions here already dedicated to the topic of those firewood automatons. So, why then, do people seem to cringe and shudder at the sight of those ghastly puppets sitting in faux innocence on a shelf or under a stage light's glare? To be honest, I couldn't tell you. What I can tell you is that they've terrified me all my life. And they show no sign of stopping.

I believe my first memory of animated marionettes came to me while watching television with the family one afternoon. There was a clip from what I believed for the longest time was MAGIC, but later discovered to be the cheapie British chiller THE DEVIL DOLL. I distinctly remember seeing that little bastard Hugo in crackling black and white, his beady little eyes narrowed with murderous intent and a dagger in his crafted hand. "No, Hugo!" his master commanded. Slowly, the dummy withdrew his weapon and I withdrew into the cushions of the couch. If I hadn't been officially traumatized before then, I was now.

My elementary school library was not any help at all. During this time the GOOSEBUMPS series was all the rage, and it was these that helped foster my love for horror fiction. But though I could easily brave the horrors of MONSTER BLOOD and even face down the REVENGE OF THE LAWN GNOMES, there was one that I simply would not touch. NIGHT OF THE LIVING DUMMY. Or as I thought of it, NIGHT OF THE SLEEPLESS BOY. Slappy the Dummy sealed the deal for me, and the cover of his respective volume was enough to scare me when picking it off the shelf, let alone considering reading the damn thing.

Full-on evil was manifested in that diabolically grinning face, his blood-red lips lining pearly oak teeth that I knew would eagerly chomp at my fingers and toes if I wasn't careful reaching into dark closets or getting out of bed. As cheated as I might have felt to discover that the actual book only contained a cameo appearance by the demonic dummy at the very end (?!), that cover was enough to tell me all the horrible stories I needed.

It didn't stop there. I was continuously haunted by these monsters, and even a peaceful lunch of PB&J couldn't stop the shivery horrors of "The Dummy" episode of THE TWILIGHT ZONE from descending upon me. This was my first full viewing of a living-dummy story and I can never forget it. Even in the gleaming sunshine I was cold with terror, jumping every time that ringing, acidic cackle of the mischievous Willy erupted in Cliff Robertson's, and my own, paranoid mind.

Seeing Willy's eerie silhouette on the wall was a looming threat, a threat that I could hear lil' Willy himself whispering in my ear, "I know you see me, Jose. I want to let you know that I see you too. But you won't see me. Not at night, when I come to find you."

And still they persisted me. Even a film as unfortunately flawed as DEAD SILENCE can still get to me, still send waves of goosebumps down my arms. Walking down corridors, I can't help but wonder if that groaning creak I just heard was a stressed floorboard… or perhaps the sound of a dummy's foot stalking my shadow.

Who is it this time? Is it MICHAEL REDGRAVE's homicidal familiar from DEAD OF NIGHT (1945)? Is it the knife-wielding fiend from THE DUMMY ? Whatever foul creature it may be, they still bring on the trauma in me with the glint of their ceaseless smiles and the nod of their oiled throats. When I see them, I hear a sound, one that chills the marrow in my bones and makes me want to curl up in a sweating, terrified ball.

It's the sound of laughter in the dark.

UNK SEZ: Thanks Jose for sharing this ultimate ventriloquist dummy traumafesion! Folks, as long as you don't happen to be an animated ventriloquist dummy you are welcome to join Jose over at his main haunt MEPHISTO'S CASTLE as often as you please HERE! Tell 'em "Slappy" sent you!

Traumafessions :: Reader Chuckles on That's Incredible "Haunted Toy 'R' Us" Investigation

Posted on By aunt john

I have not thought of this Kindertraumatizing event in many years, but I recently caught a few minutes of one of those cheesy "haunting reenactment" programs that somehow jarred it loose from the depths of memory. This Trauma involved an airing of the early '80s ABC show THAT'S INCREDIBLE! For those not in the know, this was a very popular but oddball variety show that featured people performing crazy stunts and demonstrating "paranormal" feats. It also occasionally, for whatever reason, featured a ghost story.

One ghost story concerned a haunted Toy "R" Us store. Legend had it that some old-timey farmer was killed when he accidentally chopped off his leg with an axe and when a Toys "R" Us was built on the site of his farm many years later, his ghost took up residence. It was alleged that after hours, the ghost would knock toys from shelves and generally play around with them. As ghost stories go this was not exactly the stuff of nightmares.

However, THAT'S INCREDIBLE! decided to perform a sort of prototype ghost investigation, using a psychic to call forth the ghost and a couple of cameras, including one that shot in infrared, to capture the action. The freakout came when the psychic, who was very sincere and creepy, sat in one of the store aisles with several other people and allegedly talked to the ghost, describing his deep and terrible sadness. The camera operator was snapping pics throughout. At the end of the presentation, the audience was shown side-by-side photos – one standard film and the other infrared – of the aisle where the psychic conversation had taken place. Alarmingly, in at least one of these sets, the very clear figure of a man appeared in the infrared photo where the standard film showed nothing!

Here it was. Indisputable proof of the existence of ghosts! I was thunderstruck. It had to be real if they were showing it on television, right? How could this not be front page news the world over? Someone call the President! Those readers with a good memory for the obscure might recall my prior Traumafession in which I explained my dismay with the children's book "All About Ghosts" which featured a spread of "Real Life Ghost Photos!" I was cursed with the terrible combination of a scientifically inquiring mind and hopeless naivety.

My shock from the fact that ghosts had been scientifically verified to exist was compounded by my confusion about the location of the featured Toy "R" Us. It was in Sunnyvale, California but for some reason I thought that it was the Toy "R" Us store in Merrillville, Indiana, which my parents sometimes shopped at! How far could ghosts travel? I did not know but this was important information that someone needed to figure out!

The whole thing can be seen here:

Skip to the end for the ghost photos and what may be the least skeptical analysis in the history of TV by John Davidson, Fran Tarkenton and Cathy Lee Crosby: "Keep in mind kids, these photos are real and could not possibly have been faked!"

Traumafessions :: Reader David O. on The Legend of Lizzie Borden

Posted on By aunt john

Hey Unk!

Seeing as it's the season of horror and whatnot I wanted to present one of my traumafessions from childhood that stuck with me through the years. The year was 1975 and I was an impressionable 7-year-old infatuated with television and all things horror. Oh, and BEWITCHED. So imagine my surprise to see that ELIZABETH MONTGOMERY was starring in a made-for-TV movie called THE LEGEND OF LIZZIE BORDEN. Now, I had no idea who Lizzie was or the hideous crime she allegedly committed, but after watching the movie I was forever scarred by the image of my beloved Samantha Stevens taking an axe to the heads of her father and step-mother! Most of the film is a courtroom procedural drama, with tidbits of flashbacks of Lizzie and her family near the turn of the 20th century. In other words, pretty boring stuff for a second grade kid.

But then WHAM; ELIZABETH MONTGOMERY, as Lizzie, takes off her clothes (scathing!), gets the axe from under her bed, and proceeds to bury it into her step-mother's head, with blood spurting all over the place. So there I was, befreaked by the thought of someone killing their mother, much less with a sharp, shiny axe. Lizzie cleans herself up and continues to go about her business, as if there is nothing amiss with the dead body in the bedroom. Well, it quickly becomes obvious she didn't get it all out of her system because in a little while she goes for round two, one again stripping nude and dividing her father's skull in two while he laid on the couch for what he expected to be a nice afternoon nap. Again, blood and gore abound! After that it goes on for a bit with the trial and blah blah blah until she's acquitted of the murders.

And therein started my unhealthy infatuation with axe murders in the movies. Thanks to that movie I never looked at Samantha Stevens the same way ever again. Here's a clip of the good stuff, starting at the 3-minute mark:

Happy horrors!

— David O.

Traumafessions :: Carole Lanham, Author of "The Whisper Jar" on Dolls Gone Wild

Posted on By aunt john

carole lanham

AUNT JOHN SEZ: Kids, gather around and give a big Kindertrauma welcome to Carole Lanham, author of the forthcoming must-read "The Whisper Jar." More on her new book in a minute, as Carole has kindly agreed to share with us her very own traumafession!

Take it away Carole:

It was going to be the greatest night ever. My friend Tammy and I had decided to camp in a tent in her backyard. We hammered down the stakes and shoved our pillows in through the zipper, and then we made a dangerous mistake. Instead of climbing into our sleeping bags while things were all rosy, we sat down to watch an episode of NIGHT GALLERY with Tammy's mom. The Doll, it was called. It goes without saying that dark tents and dolls with scary teeth make for terrible bedfellows. Alas, we were only about ten years old at the time (ever notice how many traumafessions feature kids who are about ten years old?) and so we had yet to learn that rather important life lesson.

"Don't worry," Tammy's mom said, after ROD SERLING and a levitating oil painting of a rag doll with a skull melting out of its head had bid us a decidedly troubling goodnight. "Dolls almost never bite." With an encouraging shove, she sent us out the backdoor, turned off the light, and left us to face the forbidding black triangle of our tent alone.

We couldn't stop thinking about it, of course. Couldn't get the mascara-smeared eyes of The Doll out of our heads to save our souls! We turned on a radio, hoping for some relief, but the DJ, swear to God, was talking about a possible Big Foot sighting. Big foot! This was distracting at least, but not in a good way. There was nothing to do but click on our flashlights and take a trip around the block. Someone had to ensure that there were no creatures with big feet and/or crazy-haired dolls prowling about the neighborhood.

When we got back in the tent, we felt safer and started saying things to each other like, "This is the life, eh?" and "That Eric Brown sure is cute!" but it's hard to enjoy a cozy sleeping bag and a good crush when you're under the spell of a creepy doll. Next thing we know, strange shadows are circling our tent and there is a weird sound not unlike the sound of the clacking teeth of The Doll. We huddled together, our brains swimming with the NIGHT GALLERY theme music and vivid images of fez hats, fireplace pokers, and doll-bitten skin dancing before our eyes in the wonderful world of color. The clacking clacked closer. After much panicked deliberation over how we might transform our supply of Doritos and tampons into a proper weapon, the clacking dissolved into the stupid girlie giggles of the stupid neighbor boys.

That was one long night.

Sad to say, I had not learned my lesson about dolls yet. Many years later, writer Richard Matheson tried to teach me once and for all, by way of KAREN BLACK.

The film was called TRILOGY OF TERROR and the first two stories were mysterious and fun, but for my money they might just as well have dropped the trilogy and the of and called it straight up singular terror since the last segment is the one that makes grown men wet their pants. It's definitely the one that sticks.

I had never seen this film until recently so you'd think I'd be wiser this time around. Well, I wasn't dumb enough to plan a camp-out for that same night, that's for sure, but I did sit down to watch the movie with my kids just as a storm was moving in.

Same dif.

Come bedtime, my daughter (about ten at the time) had no better luck forgetting the doll in this movie than I did forgetting the one on NIGHT GALLERY. Throw in the fact that she's scared stiff of thunderstorms even on a Pixar night and it's probably clear why I should keep away from bad dolls at all cost. Not a wink of sleep was had by either of us, and if you've ever seen the Zuni fetish doll in this movie, you know why. Without meaning to do it, I had given my daughter her own dolly traumafession.

Don't let the cover of this movie fool you. It looks like the font is the scariest thing about it so that's probably why I ignored the thunder and turned it on. Matheson changed the name of his doll story from Prey to Amelia when he wrote the script, to go along with the fact that KAREN BLACK was playing a different woman in each of the three segments. Prey says it better. Even as an adult, I huddled up with my family, wincing and jumping as Amelia and the doll had showdowns in the bathtub and the oven and the living room. There's a missing carving knife that provides for a lot of suspense, and a horrifying bit involving a suitcase that for some reason made me squirm more than all the rest. There are no real special effects to speak of but the film holds up because the story is truly terrifying.

After all this time, you would think I'd know better than to play with dolls, but I'm afraid I still have a thing for them. I'm planning a scary doll give-away when my book comes out and this is purely due to the fact that I was damaged all those years ago by people like Algernon Blackwood, who wrote the short story that The Doll was based on, and Richard Matheson's Prey. Scary stuff!

AUNT JOHN SEZ: Thanks for sharing that Carole. I feel your trauma as my own kid sister suffers from extreme pediophobia, a condition I might have used to my advantage on numerous occasions when we were kids. But I digress… I really want to talk about Carole's new book "The Whisper Jar" (available Monday, October 31st in print or pre-order now, in electronic format via Morrigan Books).

Just in time for Halloween, "The Whisper Jar" is an anthology of seven short stories and two poems which all feature, in Kindertrauma parlance, traumatots grappling with the supernatural and the mundane. As Unkle Lancifer will be the first to attest, I have a very limited attention span and the idea of reading for pleasure is a luxury I rarely enjoy since I can't sit still long enough. I am the fidgety type who can barely make it through a movie without having to check email, smoke a cigarette, or, well, fall asleep.

Such was not the case when I embarked on "The Whisper Jar." As evidenced by her traumafession above, Carole knows how to turn a phrase, if you will, and I was sucked right into her fantastic world of slightly-off child protagonists. Some are dealing with sibling vampires; some are vying for the undivided attention of a pixie; and one has to come to the heart-breaking realization that nuns at her orphanage were less than truthful about her lineage. Honestly, Flannery O'Conner came to mind when I read the orphanage story "The Blue Word." There is a definite moment of grace, and the final path to salvation is nothing short of heart breaking.

One last thing about Carole's collection; "Maxwell Treat's Museum of Torture for Young Girls and Boys" seriously begs for a small or silver screen adaptation. There is a powerful overarching theme of parental loss and Carole places her tragically displaced protagonist with one of the quirkiest families ever, one that includes three brothers who have the gumption to erect a museum devoted to archaic torture devices and two parents who fully support them in this endeavor. I want to live there!

OK, I am done. To read more by Carole Lanham, be sure to check her out at THE HORROR HOMEMAKER , her personal site, and snag a copy of "The Whisper Jar" HERE.

carole lanham