Hey there, Kindertrauma! I found your site by pure chance, having heard someone mention it in the comments on Youtube. I'm really glad that I did, and I'm still browsing through the pages. I saw that you let readers submit their stories of things that scared them as a child, and I just had to share my own. I know that these movies come a bit late in time compared to others on the site. I'm a 90s kid, you see. That doesn't make them any less traumatizing, though.
My first trauma was from Twister. As a kid, I was fascinated by tornadoes, and I still am to this day. Knowing this, my parents decided to pop in Twister, and we decided to watch it as a family at dinner. I was so excited! Well, that excitement didn't last too long… As you all probably know, the movie opens with a flashback of Jo Harding, one where her and her parents have to take shelter from an oncoming tornado. Well, the door to the storm shelter starts to come off, and the father tries to keep it from doing so, getting sucked up into the tornado in the process. Cut next to Jo screaming for her daddy. I began to cry and cry, distraught by the idea of losing my own father in such a way. My parents cut off the movie, and I subsequently ran to my dad, sobbing and holding him tight. Eventually, I decided to go through with watching the movie, but we fast-forwarded past that part. Being the kind of kid that I was, having no real friends whatsoever, my family doubled as my friends, and I wouldn't trade them for the world. You can see why a scene like this would affect me to such an extent, which brings me to my next trauma, Dante's Peak.
The trauma comes in at the scene where the family must escape from the grandmother's house, which was now being destroyed by lava. There was a lake nearby, and they were going to try and get away by boat, but the lava starts to leak into the lake. The lake became acidic, dead fish everywhere, the acid now eating at the bottom at the boat. The motor died, and the boat stalled, so the grandmother got out of the boat and into the lake so that she could push it to shore. Her legs were burnt to a crisp, and she later died. After that scene, I had to call my grandma. When I did, I was absolutely blubbering, asking if she was dead. She assured me many times throughout that call that she was alright, and that she loved me. I was satisfied, but I was still crying after the call was over.
Thanks Lorraine! I love 90s flavored traumafessions- trauma knows no bounds! Here's hoping your grandma stays forever safe from volcanoes!
I was scared too Lorraine… of Helen Hunt's giant forehead.
Jo's father's death in Twister got to me a little too, but what traumatized me in Dante's Peak was the beginning scene. Pierce Brosnan (can't remember the character's name) and his wife are escaping a volcano when suddenly a hard piece of ash falls through their pickup truck's ceiling and hits the wife in the head….killing her. Her bloody head wound coupled with Pierce's screaming was enough to make me never watch the movie again. I made it through one viewing of the whole movie and that was it.