Search Results for: mickster traumafession

It is summer time, which makes me think back to summer trips from my childhood. This always included a week-long trip to Gulf Shores, Alabama without fail. However, it is a day trip to Six Flags over Georgia in the summer of 1975 that left me scarred for life. Sounds like fun right? A day trip to an amusement park, what could be terrifying about that right? Well, any child that visited Six Flags over Georgia in the 1970's already knows the terror that was waiting there.

So here was the family of six (Dad, Mom, oldest sister 17, evil older brother 14, older sister 11, and me 4) ready to enjoy a summer day at the park. For some unknown reason that I have never been able to fathom my parents decided that we would all go through the Horror Cave. Yeah, that's a great idea! Take a four-year-old through a "haunted house" nothing could possibly go wrong! Well, it is 33 years later and here is what I remember from the Horror Cave. Entering through the mouth of a monster the first scene I remember was a bubbly, foggy bog where not one but three Creature from the Black Lagoon monsters rise up (okay, now I am climbing my mom trying to escape this place and get passed to my father), next scene simply made me go mad, there was a woman's bedroom and she is lying across the bed, then I notice that the two creepy looking men in the room are holding her head that they just cut off (now I am climbing my dad attempting once again to escape), the scene that followed was like Dr. Frankenstein's laboratory with a creature strapped to a table and a mad scientist throwing the switch on some electrodes or something (so now I have figured out I can't escape so I close my eyes), so the last thing I remember looking at were two caskets one contained Dracula and the other the Bride of Dracula it looked as though they were breathing, and then you had to walk over a suspension bridge to get to the exit. To exit you had the choice to walk down some stairs or slide down a slide.

After that, I could not handle going through haunted houses. Over the years, I began to wonder if I remembered the Horror Cave accurately. I started searching the Internet in hopes that others had accurate descriptions of the terrors of the Horror Cave, better yet pictures from the cave. I wasn't disappointed because I found the FOLLOWING with PICTURES. I discovered that I wasn't crazy after all. My memories of the events from the summer of 1975 are accurate.

I could do at least a hundred TRAUMAFESSIONS related to things my older brother did to me as a child, but really, who wants to read that? I will just share how my brother's preoccupation with the rock group Kiss traumatized me. It was the ‘70s and my brother was crazy about Kiss, so of course he had all their records, etc. However, it was the purchase of the 1977 Marvel comic book that both terrified and intrigued me at the same time. As many children of the seventies recall, this comic book actually contained blood from all four members of Kiss. At the age of six, I found this concept frightening. Okay, it wasn't really the blood from Paul, Peter, and Ace that I was scared of, it was Gene's blood. I mean, at that point in my life I really thought he was a demon. Naturally, Gene Simmons was my brother's favorite member. He use to stick his tongue out like Gene to freak me out. Anyway, even though I was scared I couldn't stop myself from constantly peeking at this comic book. I would have nightmares about that stupid thing, but then I would find myself looking at it again. Recently I started thinking about the comic book again and found a website where someone had scanned all the pages. Now I can relive my childhood trauma whenever I want.

My nephew was born when I was 13 and my niece was born when I was 15, so it was my job to baby-sit them as a teenager. Well, like most teenagers in the 80's I enjoyed watching videos of my favorite artists. In my case, it meant watching many Billy Joel and Duran Duran videos. This brings us to my first case of trauma with my nephew, who was about 3 at the time; I was watching my VHS of Duran Duran's videos and "The Wild Boys" came on. He loved the music because he had listened to it constantly, but I guess he had never paid attention to the video itself. The part where SIMON LE BON falls from the windmill into the water where a weird creature attempts to kill him sent my nephew screaming from the room. He was unable to watch that video for years to come. Next, the second case of trauma with my niece, I had BILLY JOEL's greatest hits on VHS, which we enjoyed watching. In this situation I didn't find out until years later that the video bothered her, she was more subtle than her older brother. She confided in me later on that the video for "Pressure" was traumatizing. The scene where BILLY JOEL is sucked down into the carpet was particularly disturbing for her. It is funny that they both still like Billy Joel and Duran Duran. I even took them to see them both in concert. I guess that is why I am still known as their "Cool Aunt" instead of the aunt that inadvertently traumatized them with music videos.

 

I was just watching FROSTY THE SNOWMAN for the millionth time this evening and remembered how it traumatized me as a child. The part where Professor Hinkle locks Frosty in the greenhouse to melt made me cry every year. I just knew he was melted forever and I was crushed. Also, Santa took his sweet time explaining that Frosty would be okay.

Thanks Mickster for the great Traumafession! And thanks to all who have sent in traumafesssions this year, you are the magic hats that keep Kindertrauma alive! Happy holidays to you all from Uncle Lancifer and Aunt John!

Two of your previous Traumafessions have conspired to remind me of a fleeting terror of my own.

Sean of the Dead's HAPPY DAYS story was terrifying to me as well.  As Mickster points out in her comment, I DID hide behind the couch every time I thought that headless figure in the rocker was about to appear.

Also I think Kurt tapped my brain with his memories of ancient weather alerts.  The 1974 Superoutbreak that Mickster mentions took the roof off of several houses in my neighborhood.  I wasn't living there yet, but I saw pictures of the damage as a child.  Then the 1989 F4 Tornado touched down about a mile from my house.

But there was ANOTHER HAPPY DAYS episode (season 6, "Fearless Malph") that stuck in my brain like an echo ever since.

That episode involved Ralph Malph's pantophobia and a professor who hypnotized him into being (you guessed it) fearless.  Richie and Malph (and possibly Potsie) visited the Professor because Richie was working on some dumb article for his school newspaper.  While they were there, the Professor's lab rats began to act all jittery, which Prof reads as a prediction for a Tornado to hit Milwaukee at PRECISELY 6:22 that evening.  What the hell??? How has the science of meteorology regressed so much since the ‘50s?  Anyway, this is the point when Malph is hypnotized, everyone runs off to Arnold's to warn the gang of their impending doom, and then the tornado strikes and mayhem reigns supreme.  Everyone dies, the end.

But what really got me about this episode and what really made it resonate in my mind for all these years is that I watched it at home on a sunny summer day.  The kind of summer day that anyone from Alabama knows will turn black as pitch not long after lunch and then rain destruction down on you while you huddle in the bathtub or under the stairs.  And what do you know, not 30 minutes before this very episode of HAPPY DAYS aired, the weather alert sirens went off, the radio upstairs and the one on the T.V.  I'm pretty sure it was just a warning, because my father remained in his office upstairs working. However, seeing the names of surrounding counties scrolling at the bottom of the screen, and seeing the sky turn black outside my window while the kids from Milwaukee are pelted by debris on screen…well… I wasn't familiar with the term "surreal" at the time, but I knew what it felt like.

I'm not scared of tornadoes like I was as a child anymore, and I'll never think of them the same way.  They have passed beyond reality for me, into the realm of myth.  Now, a tornado watch/warning is something that piques my interest, like a good ghost story or stumbling across an old T.V. show on cable late at night.  I can't not watch.