I am the youngest of four kids. My oldest brother is about 8 years older than me and I admired him greatly growing up. I was fascinated by everything he was fascinated by, I listened to the music he listened to, and watched the movies he watched. All I wanted to do was be him. He was always into horror movies and horror stories so I was surrounded as a kid.
This brings me to two major traumafessions. The first is in regard to the horror classic HALLOWEEN. It was my brother's favorite horror movie and Michael Myers was a major horror icon to him. He dressed up as Michael during spirit week in high school one year and actually scared a girl so much that she ran out of the classroom. Of course this led to me seeing HALLOWEEN at the age of five. This movie is traumatizing to people in their 40's and here was five year old me seeing Michael Myers stalk babysitters. It's not that I was a babysitter, I was still a kid being babysat which was much worse. For the longest time after seeing it I couldn't even hear the music without crying. I was convinced that Michael Myers was out to get me. I truly love Halloween and respect it as a movie fan but even now, as an adult, my only nightmares have Michael Myers in them.
The second traumafession actually comes from a book my brother frequently read when he was a teenager. It was a book called "The New England Ghost Files" that he borrowed from my grandfather. I was probably around seven years old when this occurred so I was a little older, a little wiser. Didn't make this book any less traumatizing for me. It's not that the stories scared me, I never read any of them. The cover of the book is what got me. It was an illustration of a ghost above a door and the ghost had these glowing red eyes. Every time I went in his room for something I would see the book and turn it over so those red eyes weren't staring at me. Seeing the cover now brings back all those feelings I had as a kid. I hope to find the book soon so I can actually read it but maybe it'd be better if I didn't.
I realize that a lot of my traumafessions stem from my brother but we're actually still incredibly close amazingly enough.
I have many traumas associated with my older brother (10 years older) too. The difference being that I thought my brother was the devil as a child because he tormented me so much. For example, I was 7 years old when Halloween was first released and my brother was 17. I had seen the preview on TV and was scared of it, so my brother felt it necessary not only to tell me all about the movie but to chase my sister (she's 7 years older) and me around the house with a butcher knife. Shockingly, my brother, as an adult, turned out to be a great guy and I am no longer afraid of him.
I'll never forget my older brother going to see Friday the 13th in the theater and coming back and telling me about the whole entire movie in detail. When he got to the part when Jason jumps out of the lake I thought it was the scariest thing in the world. Somehow it didn't ruin the movie at all when I finally saw it years later. Anyway I always remember that the first time I witnessed that scene it was in my head & just as scary.
I'm kind of fascinated about this "New England Ghost Files" book too. As a kid I read every book in the library concerning ghosts and I'd like to track them all down again and see how they hold up.
Well, I found 13 used ones available on Amazon.
They range in price from around $15 to nearly $100.