I was about 14 years old.  I used to babysit the kids who lived across the creek from me. The creek was large enough that I had to canoe across it, maybe 40 feet wide and about 6 to 7 feet deep.  I babysat these kids regularly, sometimes as late at 2:00 a.m.  I'd paddle over in the daylight, and I'd paddle back in the darkness.

I then made the poor choice of riding my bike to the neighborhood theater with my friend and watching FRIDAY THE 13TH.  Yes, we were underage, but it was the neighborhood theater and we knew all the ins and outs of sneaking in to R-rated movies.

The movie horrified me. But it didn't really connect with me until that final scene where Jason comes out of the lake and pulls the lone survivor in.  That was it.  I was traumatized for life.

The next weekend I had to paddle over to watch those children.  The trip over was fine, in a sense.  It was daylight, but I still had Jason in the back of my mind.  I somehow convinced myself I would be able to paddle back without any issues.

1:30 a.m. approached and the parents came home.  It was time for me to go back to my home… in the canoe.

I walked to the canoe that was tied to the bank.  I looked to the black water.  I didn't want to go out there.  I was terrified.  My senses were at full alert.  I could see the silhouette of my house.  The window to my parents bedroom was dimly lit as my parents always fell asleep with the T.V. on.  I hoped they would randomly look out the window to watch me, as if that could help.

I slowly crawled into the canoe.  I untied the rope and grabbed my paddle.  I stuck it in the water very slowly, and gently pulled myself through the water trying not to attract any attention.  I was half way to the dock.  Ripples of water projected from the paddle due to my hands shaking.  I was almost there.

I then heard a thud and felt something hit the canoe.  I was in tears. I looked into the water and saw a round black mass floating next to me. It was somebody's head.  I was almost sure it was somebody's head.

I poked it with the paddle and it just bobbed in the water.  I jabbed the paddle into the water and began to paddle home as fast as my arms could move.  I was frantic.  I pulled the canoe close enough to the dock for me to jump from the canoe.  I ran for the back door.  I didn't even tie the canoe up as it floated back out to water.

I made it into my house.  I was still alive.  I went straight to my bedroom and sat on my bed, wiping my eyes, trying to regain control of my breathing.

The next day I used the rowboat to search for the canoe that had floated away.  I found it resting under some trees about one hundred yards away. After that I had my parents drive me to my babysitting jobs, or rode my bike until I was old enough to drive.  I never got back in that water after dark.  My nights of camping out on the dock with my fishing pole were over.  FRIDAY THE 13TH had ruined me.

Oh, and that head… it was a large piece of firewood that had slipped off of a neighbor's dock.

UNK SEZ: Stutz, thank you so much for this beautifully written TRAUMAFESSION! I gotta say it kinda gives me the creeps. It reminds me of all the times I thought I heard a noise in the house or thought somebody was following me in the street, all the times my brain wickedly decided to erase the line between real life and all the movies I've seen and the books that I've read. Just remember, decapitated heads that turn into driftwood are fine, it's driftwood that turns into decapitated heads that you have to watch out for!

UPDATE: Check out Stutz's blog THE MONDAY REPORT!

My parents were generous enough to buy records for me and my two older brothers. I don't know why we got this record, but I can imagine it was for Halloween purposes: "Disney's Chilling, Thrilling Sounds of the Haunted House."

The cover alone is enough to scare any kid. Side One is a bunch of scary stories with effects which were OK but not traumatizing. It's Side Two that terrorized me – it's a collection of really fucking scary effects made by the top Foley artists and effects people at Disney – OF COURSE it's going to be scary! There were human voice, animal sounds, wood creaks, wind, water drips, crashes – and they all seemed EVIL. ORSON WELLES would have been jealous. The fact that there's no narration or anything made it even worse. Your imagination could fill in ANYTHING and in my case, it always did. The back cover has a warning that reads "Not intended for young, impressionable children from three to eight" – that was exactly my age range, and my brothers quickly learned that playing track one on side two ("Screams and Groans") was the quickest way to send me running screaming to my room to hide under the covers with my fingers in my ears. My parents, of course, did nothing to stop this.

The trauma followed me to high school, when a friend of mine produced the same album from her collection. I couldn't hide my reaction and she insisted on playing it, just to freak me out. I went outside where I couldn't hear it and wouldn't come back in till she turned it off. Later in life I needed to use the sounds on side two track ten ("Things in Space", less scary Forbidden Planet-type noises) for a radio show but had to make everyone promise not to "accidentally" play any of the other tracks.

In Googling the album, I found a SITE where someone has uploaded the tracks. I turned the sound off on my computer before I clicked on the link in Google, just in case they'd set a track to play automatically. Will I click on any of the links, just to see if they still scare me? HELL NO.

By the way, I still have the original album in my collection, safely tucked in the back. I hope it doesn't crawl up the stairs one night to terrorize me again. It just might, y'know.

I'd be interested to know if any other readers were traumatized by those bastards at Disney.

AUNT JOHN SEZ: Thanks Lene for the great audio TRAUMAFESSION! To hear more from Lene, literally, be sure to check out the podcasts that abound on her site I Read Comics.

 

In our hometown mall there was always one corner that was a little darker, gloomier than the other and this corner housed our Woolworth's store.  At Halloween time they put on the requisite window display and it was pretty tame considering.  But one year they put out a black velvet cloth and from under was creeping a hand.  No blood, no sharp implements nothing – but my sister saw me gazing at it with rapt attention and then began to tease me that the hand was going to follow me home and hide under my bed, the hand was going to get me. And after that I had months of nightmares where the hand was following me, the hand was hiding just out of my sight.  So one of the most traumatic moments of childhood had to do with the disembodied hand.

The 1974 movie EARTHQUAKE also did me in – I couldn't ride in an elevator for a long time after watching this one.  In one scene they show people in an elevator during the quake and the cables break and it plunges them to their doom. As a special, extra-cheesy 1970's effect they put big red splotches over the scene to ram home to the viewer that yes these people died, were mashed to bits, no more.  I rewatched the movie recently and was amused at how hokey the scene really was – but to a five year old, pure fear. 

UNK SEZ: Fellow LOTTD member Absinthe is the mastermind behind GLOOMY SUNDAY a brilliant spot that takes an exhaustive look at the world of Gothic romances. There's always something new there and besides Absinthe's penetrating observations, visitors are treated to an impressive catalog of those groovy gothic paperback covers of yesteryear. Add a little darkness to your day and drop by!
 

Absurd though it may sound, the Hall & Oates song "Maneater" traumatized me so much that I actually stopped listening to the radio. I used to listen to the radio all the time, but once that song came out, and once I heard it late at night (which, given my age at the time, was probably like 8 or 9pm), it freaked me out so badly that I had to enter a self-enforced radio silence for fear that the song might come on again. I was, of course, taking the lyrics too literally; my metaphor glands had not dropped yet.

Being born in 1973, I came across a barrage of horrifying images on T.V.: The Zuni Doll from TRILOGY OF TERROR, DARK NIGHT OF THE SCARECROW, The "V" TWINS! — but nothing was more damming to my psyche than the WAYLAND FLOWERS abomination: MADAME

Pure terror to a toddler.  When her freakish gaping maw was shut, her face looked like two large people screwing each other.  I quickly would change the channel to let's say, Mr. Rogers, but wait!… There's LADY ELAINE FAIRCHILDE, the lesser freakish sister of MADAME.  Ahrgh! I can't win.

I dare you to try to hold in your screams when you look at MADAME's home site…

I dare you.

UNKLE LANCIFER SEZ: Turnidoff, you are right. MADAME is scary as hell, but she's also notoriously difficult to work with. Based on legends that exist solely within my alcohol-rattled mind, she was, in fact, the first choice to star in the film adaptation of STEPHEN KING's MISERY. Lo and behold, a young moxie-filled, opportunistic KATHY BATES did a bit of an ALL ABOUT EVE number on the aged puppet and snatched that part right out of her puppet hands by seducing a then-naive meathead named ROB REINER.