I suffered mightily at the hands of PUNKY BREWSTER when I was still biting ankles. You see, my sister was a DEAD RINGER for SOLEIL MOON FRYE, and I am not exaggerating when I say that we couldn't leave the house from '87-88 without being mobbed by unruly children looking to get close to their idol, "Punky."  I can even recall my Mom arguing with other mothers at the grocery store: "If she's Punky, what the hell are we doing in this dump?"

AUNT JOHN SEZ: Kitty, I feel your pain. My second cousin bore an uncanny resemblance to CAPTAIN LOU ALBANO, sans the facial hair, and it made shopping at the local K-Mart a nightmare. Cousin Pam was what my mother called a "handsome girl," but I digress. Everyone needs to check out Kitty's blog KILLER KITTENS FROM BEYOND THE GRAVE. Be warned though, this kitten definitely has claws!

As a child, I didn't have too many experiences with horror or violence on T.V. and movies.  I watched a lot of fluffy stuff.  But you never can tell just what can traumatize a little kid, and thus begins the story of how I could not stand the thought of watching AIRPLANE! well through adulthood.  Since it wasn't a movie that would raise the suspicions of my parents, I found myself watching it in my Dad's living room with the family on T.V. in 1984. The eminent plane crash idea wasn't bothering me too much and everything was going just peachy until that ridiculous inflatable autopilot showed up.

The horror that seeped into me at that moment was insidious and tricked me into thinking everything was fine, until I went to sleep. You see, I was only five and I had just started being ferried between Texas and Florida as a "child traveling alone" the year before; and obviously, I hadn't gotten over the whole plane ride thing. The fact that I had nightmares about the inflating autopilot gag is kind of embarrassing and yet I couldn't shake my acquired revulsion to the thought of ever giving the movie another chance.

I did finally see AIRPLANE! all the way through for the second time in college.  I am proud to say that I experienced no fear when watching the autopilot inflate, but I have to confess I still hold a bit of a grudge against them.

AUNT JOHN SEZ: Thanks LeEtta for the great TRAUMAFESSION! Surely, y'all must check out LeEtta's super crafty site The LeEMSmachine. Just don't call her Shirley.

UNKLE LANCIFER SEZ: AIRPLANE!'s inflatable Otto Pilot as an icon of fright? I can see it…

When I was very young my dad called us all to the TV to watch an old rerun of THE ERNIE KOVACS SHOW, which featured the Nairobi Trio – three men with ape masks and long-haired wigs, dressed in winter coats and derbies. They sat very stiffly and did a strange little musical routine. Dad laughed. They terrified me to my very core.

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.

When I was about 7, there was a great prime-time childrens' show by the name of THE JIM HENSON HOUR. It had a memorable motley '80s cast of new Muppets (many of you may remember Digit) and some old favorites . There was one segment that had a detrimental affect on my perception of death. It was a segment titled THE STORYTELLER, staring JOHN HURT as a wizened, well, storyteller. In the particularly traumatic story, "The Soldier and Death," JOHN HURT regales us with the story of a kindly soldier returning home after a long war. He happens upon many strange circumstances and comes into possession of magical affects: a deck of cards that he cannot lose with, a magical sack that will hold anything that he commands into it, and a crystal chalice with which he can see whether death is going to claim the life of a person lying sick in their bed. The soldier returns home with the tools that he had scored upon the way, and becomes a king. One of the reasons was that he could tell people whether or not they would die, by using said magical crystal chalice. There was the effect that the Henson studio had whipped up that gave the viewer the same perception the soldier had through the chalice to show the most chilling creation of death. This episode had its share of frightening JIM HENSON creations, the waxy snarling demons standing out. But none were as frightening as the infantile, globe-eyed, hoarse-voiced death in his tiny, shiny robe. The bony grimace and scythe of the traditional death, even INGMAR BERGMAN's SEVENTH SEAL incarnation seems comical and approachable to the HENSON creation. When they first showed him through the chalice, my younger brother ran from the room, without speaking. I couldn't take my eyes away, locked into his giant, creepy blue eyes. I got the entire collection of THE STORYTELLER on DVD this past Christmas, and that awful little Muppet still chilled my heart 18 years after the fact. There have to be others out there who were just as shaken by the blue-eyed child Death from the HENSON studios…