Category: Traumafessions

I too was traumatized by THE WORLD BEYOND (THE MUD MONSTER movie) when it aired on television, my Dad forced me to watch it. I was scared to death after that of mud – which was a problem because we had a cabin with a long MUDDY path that went to my Uncle's cabin. I had nightmares for years. In fact, I recently had another mud monster nightmare… and I'm now 36 years old. I purchased a copy of THE MUD MONSTER movie a year ago with the intention to watch it — I'll get to it some day.

Hi guys, I love this site! OK, here is my traumafession…

When I was a kid, I went to my friend Michelle's sleepover birthday party. At the party, we watched CARRIE (also traumatic!), and this other movie called DOLLS. This movie was from 1987, and the plot went something like…. Strangers get stranded because of a storm or something, and all end up at the house of a creepy dollmaker. Once they all go to bed, the dolls come to life and kill them one by one. Terrifying, but it got worse!

That night at the sleepover I was lying awake, scared out of my mind that I was going to be chopped to bits by dolls, when I heard what sounded like little, high-pitched voices. I also died right then, but then I remembered…Michelle has cats! Phew. The next morning, when I recounted this to my friends, Michelle said, "But the cats were outside!"

As if this wasn't enough to cement my life-long terror of dolls, a week or so later I was asleep in my own bed, when I suddenly woke up because something had fallen on my pillow. I opened my eyes and…it was my SPANISH DANCING DOLL, which had fallen off the shelf above my bed. I hurled that sucker across the room, and the next day, I begged my mother to box up all the dolls in my bedroom and put them away.

I'm an adult with my own little girls now, and even THEIR dolls creep me out!

Thanks for letting me get this off my chest, Kindertrauma!

— Laura from Michigan

Hi there,

Just found your site a few day ago and LOVE it! I was inspired to look up something that disturbed me as a child. A SESAME STREET shorty called "Disco Frog." I ran screaming out of the room when this came on, and even asked the TV repair man if he could remove it from our T.V.!

Guys,

While it's true that many classic cartoon series of yesteryear are considered too violent, disturbing, politically incorrect, etc. by today's standards, none traumatized me more than the TOM & JERRY short "Heavenly Puss."

To summarize: While chasing Jerry, Tom gets killed by an upright piano, goes to Heaven, and is told by a feline St. Peter (here a reservations taker for the "Heavenly Express") that Tom can't get into Heaven because he spent all his time tormenting Jerry.

However, if Tom can get Jerry to sign a "Certificate of Forgiveness" before the Heavenly Express departs in one hour, he'll be let in. Otherwise, he'll BURN IN HELL and suffer the torments of Satan (in the form of a grimacing, cackling bulldog).

More than 30 years after first seeing this, I still get tense as Tom's time is running out and he can't convince Jerry to sign the paper. Oh God…the scene where the train's departing and Tom's frantically trying to explain to Jerry what he needs…then the pen doesn't work!…then as Tom runs up the stairs at the very last second, the stairs disappear and he plummets into Hell, directly into the bubbling cauldron of Beelze-Bulldog, who laughs maniacally at his new guest as he prods him with his pitchfork.

Oh yeah, and near the beginning of the cartoon, the St. Peter cat admits three kittens who were drowned in a bag. Sheesh.

(Shameless plug: Come see the newly redesigned FilmFather!)

Did you ever see that episode of LITTLE HOUSE ON THE PRAIRIE where the kid has a job delivering drugs for the local doctor? He then of course starts sampling them, and becomes a hopeless morphine addict (ah, the days when you could get that stuff from your local doctor). There's a graphic scene where he's withdrawing, vomiting and convulsing:

This was supposed to be a family show, but my sister, who would have been about six, broke down crying afterward. Nothing like showing children the graphic results of opiate addiction. Damn you, NANCY REAGAN!

— Brain Katcher

AUNT JOHN SEZ: I've said it before, and I will say it again, the town of Walnut Grove really was a red hotbed of nefarious activity. Albert's morphine addiction really comes as no surprise considering his first true love was sexually assaulted by a mime and impregnated before falling her to her untimely death. Poor Sylvia…

UNK SEZ: Trouble follows that Albert kid wherever he goes! Wasn't he in the vicinity when this basketball mishap occurred?…

Hello! I've written in before with a "Name That Trauma" – allow me to reiterate how much I love this site….

I now have a Traumafession about something that stirs me into panic mode to this day. It serves as the most intense childhood terror of my life (this is coming from someone who was afraid of everything from Muppets to Billy Idol.)

I was lounging in my basement at nine years old, in the dark, watching PETER PAN AND THE PIRATES on FOX. An anti-drug Public Service Announcement came on during a commercial break; I was calm at first, figuring it was another boring, "Say no to crack or you'll end up a dead gangsta" bit. Then the drug dealer in the PSA ducked into the shadows, and I got uneasy. When he finally popped into full view as a WTF half-cobra demon, I exploded into a scream-filled nervous breakdown that will literally haunt me for the rest of my life. I can sit alone at 1am with no lights on and comfortably watch THE EXORCIST, but I cannot watch this in full daylight with people present.

I'm all for vintage, but in some ways the '90s really sucked!

Love you!

—Tara

We loved cartoons, but nothing manic like today….the old Merry Melodies, TerryToons and the like were our main staple.

These cartoons would commonly borrow themes from each other, sticking different characters in roughly the same situation.

One moralistic theme was redone again and again, with early Porky Pig, and I think Andy Panda, and even with Gumby….that of the little kid glutton.

In this theme, a pig (or panda, or green slab of clay) is shown eating far more than he should during the day, obsessing over food, and gets reprimanded by adults, to no avail. He doesn't learn.

Later they have a nightmare, where they are abducted, and force-fed in horrible ways by someone, until in the end, they are a distended, obese monstrosity. They wake up and either recognize the error in their ways, or not.

Similarly, there was a rash of cartoons which dealt with kid smoking in the same light, along with the nightmare of forced over-indulgence, but the worst thing that would happen was the kiddie victim would turn green and sick. In these food cartoons though, the objectifying of the piggy as something that can be "stuffed", rather than as a little kid (I know…pig), always had me feeling ill, and would come to haunt my dreams. They were helpless and physically being modified against their wills, to the amusement of someone else. I think the fact that someone derived pleasure from "fattening" someone up to incredible levels felt so unbelievably wrong in our minds that I couldn't shake it.

I remember one paraphrased line, where the pig is strapped in a chair and fed tons and tons of food as part of an assembly line by a mad scientist. The scientist laughs and says, "Had enough?," to which the pig, stutters, y-y-yes, sir"….and instead of it ending, he cranks the machine on high, laughs, and says something along the lines, of "We're just getting STARTED! Ha Ha HA…."

Oy.

Needless to say, neither my sister nor I were ever heavy.

We were watching SLITHER the other night, and the ridiculously bloated girl in the barn, filled with the parasites to the point where she was unrecognizable really got to me, and made me turn the clock back to this.

Another similar ill feeling came as Pink Floyd's THE WALL kids marched into the meat grinder.

I was frightened by the old British Public Information films of the seventies. They told of a world where not only stepping out of the front door meant entering a world of danger, but they emphasised that staying in could lead to electrocution, sudden death by slipping and that frankly it wasn't worth getting out of bed in case you died.

Thanks,

— wellyousaythat

AUNT JOHN SEZ: To read more by wellyousaythat on British Public Information films, be sure to check out his blog posting HERE.

The video for MICHAEL JACKSON's "Leave Me Alone" was in heavy rotation on MTV when I was a kid. I wasn't old enough to be in charge of the remote yet so whenever I heard the music start for it, I knew I had at least a minute to get away from the T.V. and find something else to do. The part that freaked me out about it when I was a kid was when MICHAEL dances with the Elephant Man's skeleton. My Mom had told me that M.J. bought the Elephant Man's bones which she said was pretty morbid. At 8 years old, I also thought it was very strange.

I didn't know who the Elephant Man really was. The only frame of reference for a man that resembled an elephant I had was my Snout Spout figure from the HE-MAN/SHE-RA cartoons. To think that there was an actual 6-foot-tall man with the head of an elephant walking around at one time and now MICHAEL JACKSON had his bones at his house really disturbed me.

Years later, I saw the movie THE ELEPHANT MAN with my Mom. I remember feeling sorry for him and thinking how silly I felt believing the Elephant Man actually had the head of an elephant as portrayed in the video for "Leave Me Alone." It also turns out JACKSON never actually purchased the bones, although he did make an offer to buy them.

— Grimpressions