Category: Traumafessions

I have no idea why this SESAME STREET segment terrified me so much as a child. I remember when I was about 5, I loved SESAME STREET. I watched it every day, at least that was until I saw this segment. It was where Oscar is reading to his worm about some superhero named Trash Gordon.

I thought it was cool at first when Oscar was reading it, but when that bald man came on screen, I started bawling! I never watched SESAME STREET again! I have no idea why he scared me so much.

Did anyone else find this as scary as hell when they were little? I would like to know, because it terrified me!

I know it's been brought up HERE, but I'd like to bring up in more detail just how traumatizing JERRY REES' adaptation of THE BRAVE LITTLE TOASTER was for me.

It came out in 1987 and I must have seen it about two years later, so I would have been around four at the time. It's a cartoon movie for kids so my parents must have thought it was a quality movie to show to my niece and me. While she's always been able to dismiss it as a mundane film, that movie gave me reason to stay up on countless occasions for two or three weeks after first watching it.

While the movie is simply about faithful companions (in the form of appliances) searching for their long-gone master, the movie has some dark undertones that JERRY REES decided to throw in to, what I would assume at the very least, appeal to an older crowd.

A few things come to mind…

First off; the air conditioner. The idea that a character within the movie would explode would frighten some, but looking back on it now it seems as though one could see this as a person who is bordering on the edge of paranoia induced insanity takes the final plunge and has a psychotic episode before effectively committing suicide.

While the Toaster's nightmare always did give me chills, I was always filled with a sense of sadness when the toaster comes in contact with the flower in a scene that seems surreal in comparison to the rest of the film. It teaches the valuable lesson that unrequited love = death.

But by far the creepiest scene of the movie (with the help of VAN DYKE PARKS' creepy soundtrack) was when the band of appliances found themselves in the junkyard. The song, titled "Worthless", stayed embedded in my head while I watched innocent cars tell their tragic tales (loaded with social commentary) as they were carried off to meet their fate. While other parts of the movie can be debated as to whether or not they are actually killed (The Air Conditioner is fixed and the flower does not die per se) these cars are crushed and mangled into cubes leaving no question that they are gone.

While this movie is a great indication as to why I love children's movies when I was a child, as opposed to ones I see nowadays, all of these elements combined made for one creepy movie for a little kid to watch.

I remember reading the SCARY STORIES series when I was a kid. The stories would fascinate me while the imagery was…imaginative is the best word that comes to mind. There was one picture above all others that disturbed me and that could be found in SCARY STORIES 3: MORE TALES TO CHILL YOUR BONES. I am not certain but I believe the story is titled "The Room." All I have based on it was that it came right after the story about the girl that had been raised by wolves.

I remember that I was reading it in third grade (I had to be eight) and I refused to let my friend have it because the stories themselves were captivating. When I turned to the next page though and the slanted eyes and crooked smile of the woman caught my attention my heart began pounding and I quickly closed it; passing the book over to my friend with a shaky voice.

It took me years to be able to face my fear and look back at the illustration and even now I have a troubling time staring at it for too long. Believe me though that it's a memory that's never faded.

UNK SEZ: Crooked smile? Are you thinking of this story from SCARY STORIES 3 entitled "The Dream"?….

This particular trauma I suppressed from my memory until I was a teenager. I decided to read Dracula during my junior year of high school because of my love for vampire lore. While reading I came to the part where Dracula gives the three vampire women, a baby to feed on. Suddenly, I had a flashback of witnessing this scene being played out in a movie. For years, I tried to figure out what version I viewed. I knew it had aired on PBS, and I suspect that is the reason why my parents thought that it would be okay for me to watch. Anyway, I started thinking about the origin of this trauma last year and finally pinpointed the source. It is COUNT DRACULA made by the BBC in 1977 and starring LOUIS JOURDAN. Through further investigation, I determined that I must have seen the first broadcast on PBS Great Performances (I believe in 1978) because subsequent broadcasts cut the scene with the three vampire women feeding on the baby. When I received the DVD from Netflix, my memory was confirmed. I have watched many versions of Dracula over the years, but this one is by far the closest adaptation on film. If you are a fan of Dracula, I highly recommend checking it out. However, I do not recommend allowing a seven-year-old child to watch. This scene so shocked and disturbed my young mind that it was blocked from my memory for ten years.

Please enjoy viewing the horrifying scene…

Hey, this is cheaper than therapy! While I'm thinking about traumas from the ‘80s, here's another horror that shaped my youthful psyche: the first-edition cover of ROBERT R. McCAMMON's THEY THIRST. Horror novels were even more common than horror movies in our household, and this book lay on the coffee table for quite some time to scar my kindergarten-era mind.

The book itself? Not especially scary. But the cover was the stuff of ‘80s airbrushed nightmares! The dead black pits of the eyes in the skull-like face… the tiny LATOYA JACKSON nose… and worst of all, the bloody red lips and needle teeth of that over-sized mouth. Every time I saw that damned book, I would discreetly flip it over so I wouldn't have to see it.

Nowadays, the illustration kind of reminds me of an anglerfish in drag, or the misbegotten lovechild of JAWS and THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW. But the 5-year-old inside me remembers the fear of stumbling across this image in the darkened living room on my way to that nighttime glass of water…

This used to scare me to death. I have no idea what is was about it. Maybe when the face flies off. All I know is that for years, every time I thought about it I got a little scared.

AUNT JOHN SEZ: To read more by Darius, please see ADVENTURES IN NERDLINESS (Major props for the babes of DR. WHO banner!)

Even today, I can barely bring myself to utter more than the names of these things that terrified me as a child, lest I begin screaming and crying for my teddy bear:

• Fembots (the types found on THE BIONIC WOMAN)
• Sleestak (LAND OF THE LOST)
• The alien muppets and their goddamn ringing phone (SESAME STREET)

There's no way I can quantify these and put them in order of terrifying-ness, because they all scared the shit out of me.

But one -another one from SESAME STREET, no less- needs explanation: it was an animated bit, where a rock-like "IF" fell to the earth, with some truly terrifying music playing in the background. I think the music is from 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY, but I'm not 100% sure of that. I've looked for this on youtube and have had no luck tracking it down to see if it still scares me the way it did. Talk about terrifying; I'm still not a huge fan of the musical piece.

And thank God I didn't know about JON PERTWEE's DOCTOR WHO and his autons back when I was but a wee girl, or they would have won hands down as most terrifying…Christ almighty.

UNK SEZ: Mickelodeon, that 2001 animated bit freaked the hell out of me too! In fact, after a traumafession from our pal AMANDA BY NIGHT on that crazy bouncing "Rover" ball from THE PRISONER, yours truly left this comment:

Rover does freak me out. It's so otherworldly and surreal. They used to have an ongoing bit on THE ELECTRIC COMPANY that gave me the same feeling. It was a take off on 2001 but having not seen that film at the time I had no idea. It was just a cartoon of a monolith that broke apart revealing different words. The one that haunted me was "ALL". It hurt my little brain to think of "ALL"

I can't find that one but here is the one for "ME" which is equally unsettling and hurts my slightly larger brain…

I don't know why a shape would give me the willies, but it's so out of place and unusual (Rover is the same way) that it just feels like there is some larger force at work that you can't get your head around. Sort of like a house pet's response to a vacuum cleaner.

As it turns out these animated monolith bits were shown on both SESAME STREET and THE ELECTRIC COMPANY! SESAME STREET aired two different shorts and THE ELECTRIC COMPANY had nine. All that means is that as a kid back in the seventies, there was virtually no escape from Monolith horror!

To read more by Mickelodeon, be sure to check out her site Strange Cousin Susan.

As much as I loved the idea of monsters when I was six years old, I wasn't prepared to meet "Angus".

LOST IN SPACE screened on Sunday afternoons in Australia in 1968, and I was hooked on the show. I don't think I caught every episode when it was first showing, but when I did, I loved it.

In "The Astral Traveler", Will Robinson is trapped in a cave and whisked back in time to a Scottish castle on Earth. Lost and panicked, he stumbles into an area of the castle that houses a dark, stinking lagoon. Something is sloshing around beneath the surface of the lagoon, but we don't know what. The apprehension I felt waiting for that "something" to emerge from the water was beyond the limit of my six-year-old brain. When a shambling, whaling, disgusting THING dragged itself up from the depths emerged and began to chase Will, I experienced my first dose of unadulterated terror. Later in the episode, a Scotsman named Hamish, who was much less scary than the monster, explained that the monster's name was "Angus."

The monster had a name?

How could a monster have a name?

On top of the fact that Angus looked hideous, his wailing, which had a scary echo added to it, resonated in my virgin eardrums for years. I'd never heard anything so horrible. Even today, few sounds are the equal of that wail.

Back then, I WAS Will Robinson while watching LOST IN SPACE, so getting chased by Angus was totally personal. There was no concept of Angus being a guy in a suit to ease my extreme anxiety. During the episode, I ran and hid behind the sofa several times. I'd half cover my eyes and peer back out at the little black and white T.V. in the corner. The monster repelled me, but he also called my name. I was an eye patch wearing, card-carrying member of the juvenile Ugly Brigade back then, so there was something about Angus that elicited my sympathy, and made me feel that we shared common ground.

When, at the end of the episode, the creature is soothed by Hamish's bagpipes, I thought that he wasn't such a bad guy after all. However, when the episode would screen again, I'd go back to loathing and fearing him. Ever since this encounter with Angus, I have always felt a little bit apprehensive when meeting someone named Angus. I look at them closely, as if to assure myself that they're not the Scottish lagoon monster in a human suit.

UNK SEZ: PhantomofPulp, thanks for that fantastic traumafession! I don't remember this Angus guy but I can see why this orange beastie rocked your world. He reminds me of that horrible sewer monster from the KOLCHAK episode "The Spanish Moss Murders" combined with the "mud monster" from THE WORLD BEYOND. No wonder you hid behind the sofa!

NOTE: All you kids out there really need to stop by PhantomofPulp's absolutely fascinating site PHANTOM OF THE PULP which itself is like a deep Scottish Lagoon chock full of the most intriguing creatures you can imagine. I discovered the very kindertrauma friendly book covers you see below, but there is even more exciting stuff for you to dig through and peruse as well. I think you can tell by his traumafession that this guy has got a way with words and a slew of interesting ideas banging around his noggin. You can jump over there HERE.

When I was little, I always loved to watch videos of THE ADVENTURES OF SPOT in the playroom, but there was a preview before the episodes that scared me so much, I almost threw out my SPOT videos. It was a preview for a JIM HENSON show called FRAGGLE ROCK, and here's what scared me: The part where these giants called the Gorgs grabbed a Fraggle, but the Fraggle got away. I found it on youtube today, and boy it was different from what I remember:

Scare level ( on a scale of 1 to 5 screams): 2.5 screams, if you are 6 or under, 0 if over.

Whenever I started watching a DISNEY video, I always ran from the room before the movie started. Why? Because of terrifying THX logo. The DEEP NOTE scared me so much, that I haven't watched a DISNEY video ever since. Here's the logo:

Scare level: 4 out of 5 screams!

Your Unkle Lancifer has never had much love for the television movie THE GHOST OF FLIGHT 401. It's not a terrible movie, but it could never live up to the exaggerated expectations in my mind. You see, I remember the paperback book lying about in our house when I was young and its cover scared the living crap out of me. The image of the dead pilot, his eyes glowing white with imagined evil power seemed to fry itself into my skull and promise a demonic tale not unlike THE EXORCIST or THE OMEN. Based on the book's cover my young mind conjured up a story of vengeful spirits that pounced on passengers and strangled stewardesses rather than an ambiguous apparition eyed in an appliance; ERNEST BORGNINE was the furthest thing from my mind.

Looking at that book cover again as an adult still brings me back to the horror taunting mind frame of my youth. With the author's name in a tombstone font, the jet black ominous background and yes, of course, those horrible blank eyes, it reminds me of just how concrete and real the supernatural seemed to me back then. I recall imagining unknown forces around every corner waiting patiently for the slightest misstep on my part. In reality the tale of FLIGHT 401 is more eerie urban legend than outright horror tale. It's popularity was probably due more to its implied promise of an afterlife in which the dead might return to issue warnings to the living as opposed to offering them glimpses of hell as in the equally ubiquitous seventies paperback THE AMITYVILLE HORROR.

Much as with the AMITYVILLE case there are many who still question the authenticity of THE GHOST OF FLIGHT 401, but it's of little concern or comfort to me either way. In both cases it's not really the details of the story itself or the question of its validity that terrified the young me. The truth is, both legends, regardless of how familiar I was with them at the time, had the power to ignite my unknown fears and let loose the dark beast of my imagination. What kept me up at night were the phantasms that they merely inspired but that I myself planted and sowed. Consequently, even now when a film or book fails to send those harder to come by shivers down my spine I am left asking is it the art of storytelling that has died or is it just a little piece of my imagination itself that is resting in pieces? THE GHOST OF FLIGHT 401 may have never existed at all, but something tells me that the entity that book cover's illustration created within my mind still waits, biding its time…