# Scenes that traumatized you as a child **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [October 24, 2004, 1:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scenes-that-traumatized-you-as-a-child/270843 "2004-10-24T01:58:55Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 19\ **Page:** 10
**Author:** ![Merijeek](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f05b48/32.png) [@Merijeek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Merijeek)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2004, 10:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scenes-that-traumatized-you-as-a-child/270843/181 "2004-11-05T22:21:45Z")
> [@Starving Artist](#): > > I don’t remember being fearfully traumatized by any movie as a child, but I was damn unhappy when Bambi’s mom got killed. Ol’ Yeller, too! I still can’t believe they’d put these kinds of things in movies made for children. Yeah, I know, it’s part of life…but kids can learn these lessons without the pleasure of having become emotionally involved with the animals first, and secondly, kids didn’t go to those movies to learn life’s rough lessons; they went for some fucking _entertainment_! Ahem…and to see some cute animals. > > (See? I’m still pissed!) :mad: Yeah? How about mom and stepdad taking a seven year old animal lover to see “Watership Down”? That movie…shudder. -Joe ---
**Author:** ![ouryL](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ouryl/32/6067_2.png) [@ouryL](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ouryL)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2004, 11:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scenes-that-traumatized-you-as-a-child/270843/182 "2004-11-05T23:52:04Z")
> [@Rufus Xavier](#): > > Just about all the scenes that traumatized me as a child have been buried in repressed memories. Most of the stuff mentioned here is stuff I’ve seen, but I don’t remember being particularly traumatized by any of it. I always enjoyed scary movies going all the way back to my first thrill of terror at age 2 when, in the first movie I ever saw, the Blue Meanies attacked Pepperland. > > One thing reading this thread has brought back to me, though. There was a B & W horror movie whose name escapes me. It was about a vicious and clever killer who lay ingenious traps for his victims. The one that I remember was the binoculars. They seemed to be ordinary binoculars, but when the victim put them up to their face and turned the focus wheel, two steel spikes suddenly sprang out and poked out their eyes!!! :eek: :eek: [Horrors of the Black Museum](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0052901/) BTW it was color!! and 3-D! ---
**Author:** ![Rufus\_Xavier](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/eada6e/32.png) [@Rufus\_Xavier](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rufus_Xavier)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2004, 1:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scenes-that-traumatized-you-as-a-child/270843/183 "2004-11-07T01:10:15Z")
> [@ouryL](#): > > [Horrors of the Black Museum](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0052901/) > > BTW it was color!! and 3-D! Thanks! I guess I thought it was in B & W because I saw it on our old Black and White TV! :smack: ---
**Author:** ![Bites\_When\_Provoked](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bites_when_provoked/32/18073_2.png) [@Bites\_When\_Provoked](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bites_When_Provoked)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2004, 3:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scenes-that-traumatized-you-as-a-child/270843/184 "2004-11-07T03:12:03Z")
> [@Roseworm](#): > > … I get very weepy watching things … \*LOTR: The Return of the King \* (so beautiful it hurts to watch it). Hey, \*\*Roseworm \*\* - are you talking about the bit where the dead ride out? That gives me chillls… I \*love \* that bit. 🙂 As for scary though… when I was about 12 I saw the black-and-white version of _ **Invasion of the Body Snatchers** _. This was in about 1985, so I’d seen movies with much better special effects, etc - but that movie creeped me right out. To the point where it still features in my nightmares as a 30something. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![mike1dog](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ba9def/32.png) [@mike1dog](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mike1dog)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2004, 4:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scenes-that-traumatized-you-as-a-child/270843/185 "2004-11-07T04:30:14Z")
Nobody has mentioned [Race with the Devil](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0073600/) which scared the hell out of me at the drive in when I was seven. I think my older sister convinced them to go to the movie. Later [Salem’s Lot](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0079844/) scared the hell out of me. For some reason the scene where the guy was sitting in the rocking chair scared me to death. I was afraid of rocking chairs for the longest time after seeing that. ---
**Author:** ![zenith](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/e19b73/32.png) [@zenith](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/zenith)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2004, 2:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scenes-that-traumatized-you-as-a-child/270843/186 "2004-11-07T14:11:32Z")
I saw the movie at about the time of the Cuban missile crisis. It really did seem possible that the world as we knew it could end in 1966. Also, I still to this day cannot hear “Leaning On The Everlasting Arms” without thinking of Robert Mitchum’s creepy killer-preacher in “Night of The Hunter”. ---
**Author:** ![Sir\_Dirx](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/b77776/32.png) [@Sir\_Dirx](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sir_Dirx)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2004, 7:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scenes-that-traumatized-you-as-a-child/270843/187 "2004-11-07T19:19:33Z")
> [@Zsofia](#): > > Holy crap, nobody’s said mine! I went through the whole thread expecting to see it, but no! > > When I was a kid, there was a TV miniseries of Through the Looking Glass. And there was this Jabberwocky that kept showing up. Still scarred by it. > > The funny thing is, any time Alice and Wonderland or “things you were scared of on TV” as a child" comes up with anybody within several years of my age (24), somebody always brings up that damned Jabberwocky. I keep thinking it’s actually a part of Through the Looking Glass instead of just a poem in there. Extremely disturbing. > [@Zsofia](#): > > [This](http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/6303212220/qid=1098644339/sr=8-1/ref=pd_csp_1/104-0848818-7054309?v=glance&s=video&n=507846) may be it - it never says it was a miniseries (although it does say it’s 3 hours long, which suggests miniseries), but some of the comments are along the lines of “I was so terrified of the Jabberwocky”. 1985 is about right. I may have to check it out - I do remember some bits very strongly, and suspect there must be a matching “Alice” because I remember the “Drink Me” chamber in the beginning having two doors - one was the one she eventually went out of, and the other led to the Jabberwocky. Does nobody else remember this? Yeah, another one here who was scared completely witless by the Jabberwocky. And yes, they did show the hideous creature in its entirety, but I only know this because I found my old tape of it a few months ago and managed to watch it without diving under a table. It’s cornier than a big Godzilla suit, really, but damn if that wasn’t the scariest thing in the world when I was little. I still have to suppress the now-instinctual fear whenever I see it. Another one was **The Neverending Story**. I was real little, like 5 or something, when I came downstairs and it was on TV. I’d never seen it before, but the part I saw was when the kid encountered the Nothingness thing for the first time. Big scary fangy wolfy thing. Gave me nightmares galore for a long time. There was also [House](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0091223/), which I saw at a young age. Wiggling fish on the wall, disembodied zombie hand crawling around, etc. Terrified me. Though, looking at the comments and reviews, I guess I should see this one again now that I can appreciate it for its cheesiness. ---
**Author:** ![Rilchiam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/2bfe46/32.png) [@Rilchiam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rilchiam)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2004, 7:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scenes-that-traumatized-you-as-a-child/270843/188 "2004-11-07T19:26:26Z")
I gotta pick a nit here. The **poem** is “Jabberwocky”. The **creature** is the **Jabberwock**. _And as in uffish thought he stood, The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame Came wiffling through the tulgey wood And burbled as it came._ ---
**Author:** ![OtakuLoki](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/ac8455/32.png) [@OtakuLoki](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/OtakuLoki)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2004, 8:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scenes-that-traumatized-you-as-a-child/270843/189 "2004-11-07T20:18:00Z")
I’d like to make another vote for the evil that is the Oompah Loompahs. Not fun at all. But the movie/scene that totally traumatized me was in the Wizard of Oz. Not the flying monkeys, by the time I finally managed to see Wizard all the way through I found them laughably fake. Nor was it Ms Gulch/the Witch. Nope. The Munchkins gave me screaming fits! :eek: ---
**Author:** ![Bites\_When\_Provoked](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bites_when_provoked/32/18073_2.png) [@Bites\_When\_Provoked](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bites_When_Provoked)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2004, 11:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scenes-that-traumatized-you-as-a-child/270843/190 "2004-11-07T23:30:57Z")
> [@Rilchiam](#): > > _And as in uffish thought he stood, > The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame > Came wiffling through the tulgey wood > And burbled as it came._ D’oh! I always thought it was ‘wuffling’ not ‘wiffling’… what a downer. ‘Wiffling’ is the noise made by a Jabberwock in corduroy pants. /sigh. ---
**Author:** ![Nendil](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/f17d59/32.png) [@Nendil](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nendil)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2004, 12:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scenes-that-traumatized-you-as-a-child/270843/191 "2004-11-08T00:18:30Z")
My childhood trauma was a video game - but not a scary one like Resident Evil or even Ghosts 'n Goblins. No, I was terrified of **Super Mario Bros**. When I was around 5, my parents brought home a Famicom (the Japanese version of the NES) on loan from a friend, and I was eager to watch them play. Unfortunately, my young timid mind wasn’t ready for the breakneck-paced nonstop action of Super Mario. 😛 The constant dangers throughout the level always had me on edge, but I was most nervous about the castles Mario would enter at the end of every level because they seemed so foreboding. Still, though, nothing came of them until one day, my parents made it to the end of level 1-3 - and entered a **huge castle**. …and stepped into a bone-grey world of lava and spinning fire sticks. :eek: Compared to the blue skies of the previous levels, this was like some kind of ashy hell - and at the end of the level awaited a cruel, leering mass of green pixels - **Bowser**. Holy crap! What the hell kind of a demented monster is that!? And it blew _fire_? How are you supposed to defeat something like _that_? :eek: :eek: After that experience, I’d freak every time Mario reached the end of a level, and would quietly go hide in my closet so I wouldn’t have to see what sinister evils the castles (even the small ones) might have in store. Eventually I simply escaped to my room whenever anyone started playing the game at all. It took until the friendlier, cartoonier Super Mario World on SNES for me to get over the adversion. I’m a total video game geek nowadays. But I still suck at Mario. 😛 ---
**Author:** ![Rilchiam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/2bfe46/32.png) [@Rilchiam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rilchiam)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2004, 12:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scenes-that-traumatized-you-as-a-child/270843/192 "2004-11-08T00:42:54Z")
> [@Khiadra](#): > > D’oh! I always thought it was ‘wuffling’ not ‘wiffling’… what a downer. > > ‘Wiffling’ is the noise made by a Jabberwock in corduroy pants. > > /sigh. :smack: Godwin strikes again; I meant “whiffling”. Which is the sound made when you hit a Jabberwock with a plastic bat. ---
**Author:** ![Moirai](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/96bed5/32.png) [@Moirai](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Moirai)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2004, 3:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scenes-that-traumatized-you-as-a-child/270843/193 "2004-11-08T03:30:59Z")
> [@Snickers](#): > > Mine is **E.T.** - I was little when I saw it (5 or 6) and the scene where Eliot and ET get sick and the house gets raided by agents in hazmat suits scared me to death. Holy crap, I still find that scene unnerving. And I am still pissed at my MIL for letting my then-4-year-old son watch it. She only remember “cute alien movie” without the crucial bits like IT DYING and stuff. Anyway, when the family is trying to escape the house with ET and every door or window they try is busted in by the hazmat-suited feds, my kid damn near flipped out. I found out and soothed him the best I could after the fact, but sure enough, that night he woke up from a nightmare sitting bolt upright in bed, crying and pointing at his open closet door. I assume in his nightmare he saw the hazmat guys coming into his room. Thanks a lot, Nana… ---
**Author:** ![ouryL](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ouryl/32/6067_2.png) [@ouryL](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ouryL)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2004, 5:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scenes-that-traumatized-you-as-a-child/270843/194 "2004-11-08T05:21:19Z")
I used to play with spiders as a kid; I’d let them crawl all over my hands. Then I saw “The Fly”. Remember the ending, “Help me!! Help me!!”. Ever since then, spiders were icky!! ---
**Author:** ![mamakat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e56c9b/32.png) [@mamakat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mamakat)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2004, 6:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scenes-that-traumatized-you-as-a-child/270843/195 "2004-11-08T06:02:07Z")
Another vote for the child catcher in Chitty Bang Bang. Nightmares for weeks. Also, on the Twilight Zone, when the ambulance driver turns to the patient in the back and says “wanna see something really scary?” DOn’t know why, but that scared the crap out of me! My mom told me when she was a little girl, she watched Psycho and it was so scary, she woudn’t take a shower for the next year. I was so worried about seeing it, I didn’t until I was about 19. I laughed through the whole shower scene! ---
**Author:** ![E.Thorp](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/898d66/32.png) [@E.Thorp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/E.Thorp)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2004, 6:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scenes-that-traumatized-you-as-a-child/270843/196 "2004-11-08T06:46:19Z")
I thought I was 8, but after Googling have discovered I was 9, when I saw the [Mummenschanz episode](http://www.muppetcentral.com/guides/episodes/tms/season1/24_mummenschanz.shtml) of **The Muppet Show**. Two mimes in black bodystockings and white clay faces…and they start **rearranging their faces**. [Shiver] One of the only times I’ve looked at the TV and seen the abyss. I was at my grandparents’ house, sleeping on the sofa bed in the den where the TV was, and it was bedtime and the lights were off. No doubt this contributed to the creepiness, since I didn’t usually watch TV that way. ---
**Author:** ![PaulFitzroy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/2acd7d/32.png) [@PaulFitzroy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PaulFitzroy)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2004, 8:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scenes-that-traumatized-you-as-a-child/270843/197 "2004-11-08T08:05:52Z")
Having been a kid in the mid-90s I was scared shitless of ‘Are You Afraid Of The Dark,’ which I used to watch with my friends right after school on Nickelodeon. Many episodes terrified me, but one stands out in particular. I think it was called “The Girl Of His Dreams,” about an unpopular kid with his leg in a brace who goes to this creepy magic shop and meets a magician there who gives him a potion that makes him more popular and better-looking. The only problem is, after a while the potion starts turning him into a hairy, vicious beast. In any case, the scene that scared me most was when the magician gives some of the potion to a rabbit in a cage (to test it out,) leaves his shop, then later comes back and checks on the rabbit, and it has huge sharp teeth and a hideous face. Another one that scared me was the one where kids discover an old, closed-up swimming pool at their high school, and go in there to swim and are terrorized by the ghost of a kid who drowned there. However, the one that freaked me out the most was one called “The Curse of One-Eyed Jack” where people are being haunted by the ghost of an eyepatch-wearing guy who had supposedly been imprisoned at this place…then later, towards the end of the episode, they go to the cell that had been Jack’s, look behind the toilet, and see a narrow tunnel where Jack had tried to escape through. Upon further inspection they find Jack’s skeleton in the tunnel, and it is revealed that he had gotten stuck in there and starved to death trying to get out. The thought of this profoundly terrified me and left me in a state of shock seemingly for several days after I’d watched the episode. ---
**Author:** ![Askia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/96bed5/32.png) [@Askia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Askia)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2004, 8:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scenes-that-traumatized-you-as-a-child/270843/198 "2004-11-08T08:52:53Z")
The Show: Sesame Street The Offender: The Count, Who Loves To Count Things The Offense: Summoning The Lightning Sesame Street and I are practically the same age. When the show was five years old, I was four. I eyed the Count warily when he made his first appearance. When he began maniacally counting things in that weird accent…" Vun, two, three… FOUR cupcakes. Ah ah ah ah ah!" The lightning and flashing thunder on TV was bad enough, but it coincided with a real thunderstorm we were having outside. Long story short-- the Count was counting, the lights flickered, the TV went out and all power got knocked out. I ran out the room screaming for my grandmother. For YEARS I watched Sesame Street but would always leave the room when the Count came on. All of which explains my lifelong disdain for Marvel’s superhero, Thor. Screw HIM. I know who the real thundergod is – he’s purple, made of felt and has pointy teeth. ---
**Author:** ![Cartooniverse](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cartooniverse/32/3084_2.png) [@Cartooniverse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cartooniverse)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2004, 12:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scenes-that-traumatized-you-as-a-child/270843/199 "2004-11-08T12:04:06Z")
[QUOTE=Shirley Ujest] **Wizard of Oz** scene where the cowardly lion jumps through a glass window because _he is so frightened of the thought of meeting the Great and Imperious Oz_ scared me silly for years. To be so afraid of something that you would rather jump through a glass window… [QUOTE] Interesting that this one got you. My worst childhood movie moment is also from **Wizard of Oz**. When the house has fallen on the Witch of the East, and her feet and legs curl up under the house, I completely lost it. It became a recurring nightmare on and off for a very long time as a child. There’s something about that image that is so frightening to me. To this day, I glance away if for some reason it’s on and I am watching that sequence. Then again, to be honest ( and apologies for a minor hijack here ), that movie came with a secondary trauma. They used to run Buster Brown commercials where the dog’s face on the sticker in the inside heel of the shoe would magically come to life. Why this freaked me out, I have an idea. I was attacked by a police dog as a young child, and don’t do dogs to this day. Silly as it may sound, those commercials wrecked me. They ran it once DURING **Wizard of Oz**. Man, that was a dark day around the **Cartooniverse** household… :eek: [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scenes-that-traumatized-you-as-a-child/270843.md?page=9)