# Terrifying Childhood Memory



## HoopyFrood (May 27, 2013)

I've put this in the tv section because I _think_ it was a tv episode.

Just lately I've been thinking about weird things from childhood and one memory I've always had is the only thing I can remember honestly making me do the cliché and hide behind the sofa.

Thing is I must have been _really_ young, maybe three years old, so I don't know how accurate this is, and especially my response to it. And it's starting to feel more like a memory of a memory, so I hope I'm remembering the remembering right!

Anyway. It was puppets. I'm sure it was puppets. Like Jim Henderson ones, with big eyes, but to look like humans. I think they were chefs and I _think_ they were cooking spaghetti.

But for as long as I've remembered this, I've also had the word cannibals attached to it. Cannibal puppets. And the fact that I hated it so much has always make me think it was some kind of weird horror thing (I did watch horror films from quite a young age, but part of me also thinks this happened in the daytime? Not that that changes much).

And the other thing is, it might not have been horror at all, they might not have been cooking people, maybe I just had an adverse reaction to the puppets or something else.

But it's been driving me mad for years, so if anyone's got ANY kind of clue what this might be, maybe even a completely normal children's tv show, maybe something horrible and cannibalistic, I'll be mighty grateful!


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## hopewrites (May 27, 2013)

The sweedish chef made spaghetti once that I know of. It was on Muppets Tonight, which I loved watching as a kid and dispite its name, sometimes aired dieting the day in reruns. Of all the muppets I felt he was the most humanized because he had people hands rather than foamrubber hands.

I have learned quite recently that Jim got his start in the UK because puppetry was a more accepted art form there than here. So it could have something else entirely. I know as a kid I added things together that an older individual would not. Like Mr. Rogers and Star Track. I keept waiting for the episode where Capt Kirk went to the wonderful world of makebelieve.


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## HoopyFrood (May 27, 2013)

Yeah, I remember the Swedish chef! It could have been a muppet, but something tells me that it was just muppet-like, and definitely in human shape and I'm fairly sure there were two of them, a man and a woman.

And considering the feeling I just got when I thought about it being a man and a woman...there was definitely something about those damn puppets that really scared me!


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## Grimward (May 27, 2013)

I know you said it wasn't this, but I can't resist....


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## HoopyFrood (May 27, 2013)

Haha, well, let's see, actually. Maybe I'll suddenly find myself having terrifying flashbacks...here goes!


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## Grimward (May 27, 2013)

Oooh, wasn't my intention to provoke deep-seated disturbances....truly sorry if this was it!


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## Overread (May 27, 2013)

Might be you saw part of the episode that took place in - so another sketch before or after is also merging with the cooking part and the spaghetti. (esp since Swedish Chef doesn't have eyes - he just has eyebrows )


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## HoopyFrood (May 27, 2013)

Haha, well, as terrifying as the chef is, no, it's not that.

There was definitely two puppets (I'm suuuure they were puppets, of the hand controlling type) and I'm sure cooking was involved, and definitely red (maybe just sauce, but again my brain wants to say blood).

If I've just made this up, then...well, I would say I'm disturbed, but having gone through the Reddit thread of the creepy stuff kids say, this would be a pretty normal three year old thing!


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## Overread (May 27, 2013)

Have you checked all the regulars - some of those old films were fairly dark in places (Dark Crystal, Labyrinth etc..). 

Another thing is it could have been some really old TV serial show episode- something like an Old Dr. Who thing (some of them were scary!


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## Mouse (May 27, 2013)

Was it this? Because that _is_ terrifying.


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## HoopyFrood (May 27, 2013)

Yeah, No One mentioned Dark Crystal, which is like the go-to film when "scary puppets" are mentioned. 

I wouldn't even know where to start looking, though. Typing "cannibal puppets" into Google isn't doing much 

Haha, no, a bit too old for Lazy Town!


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## HoopyFrood (May 27, 2013)

Oh, hey, I think I just got a feeling about why it disturbed me so much.

I think...I think it was because they were just enjoying whatever they were doing (_...cooking people..._) so much. Like, laughing and being far too happy...Like it was such a juxtaposition to what they were doing that it was just horrible (not that my small brain would have quite thought about it like that).


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## ratsy (May 27, 2013)

Sounds quite terrifying.  I have a similar memory from my childhood....It was a woman in bed, a man climbed in the window with a huge axe and....lets just say the white sheets needed cleaned.

It haunted me for years!!!  I think I was around 3 or 4. The memory is really hazy and I like the way you put it...a memory of a memory..that is what it feels like.  Now I can't really envision it, just envision what it may have looked like...if that makes sense.

But puppets can be scary to kids, especially if they are cooking humans and laughing about it.


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## HoopyFrood (May 27, 2013)

ratsy said:


> Now I can't really envision it, just envision what it may have looked like...if that makes sense.



Total sense, because that's what it's like for me! But I think that if these weird bits -- puppets, cooking, sense of something horrible going on -- have lasted this long then there must be something to it!



> But puppets can be scary to kids, especially if they are cooking humans and laughing about it.



Haha! Yes, especially then


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## ratsy (May 27, 2013)

HoopyFrood said:


> Haha! Yes, especially then



Now, if the puppets were cooking other puppets, it would be like they were just doing laundry


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## HoopyFrood (May 27, 2013)

Just been going through kids puppet shows from 80s onwards and jesus, if it's going to anything, it would be bloody Terrahawks. I've just watched this clip.

TERRIFYING




But still, my memory says no. It really seems to remember more...soft looking, Henson-y puppets, but doing horrible things. And cannibals, I just can't shake that word.

I'm never going to solve this. Maybe the memory has been too altered.


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## Overread (May 28, 2013)

The 80s - when kids were not treated with bubblewrap and cotton wool! Heck I bet you by today's standards Watership down would be adult rated!


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## hopewrites (May 28, 2013)

Well if they were cooking other puppets that would be caniblizm. And I want to think that getting cooked and eaten was a common thing to be feared yet joked about. I remember watching bugs bunny sas loads of people out of eating him with his cooking directions.

Slapstick kitchen antics often encluded blood and dismemberment. Maybe rather than canable puppets you should look up slapstick kitchen sketches performed by puppets.


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## gully_foyle (May 28, 2013)

Peter Jackson, yes, the Peter Jackson, made an over the top violent and grotesque parody of the muppets called (googling it) *Meet the Feebles*, but no mention of cannibalism.


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## Overread (May 28, 2013)

Having just watched the trailer for it on Youtube - I can see Meet the Feebles being ideal child scaring material - its certainly what one would call adult in themes whilst holding no punches it seems.


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## HoopyFrood (May 28, 2013)

Jeez, that looks terrifying, too! Considering all this stuff around in the late 80s, maybe I was just traumatised by all of them and it's condensed into one big scared memory!


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## TheDustyZebra (May 28, 2013)

I know how you feel. I have several of those mishmash childhood memories that are just crazy! I still get the heebie-jeebies when I think too closely about one of them, and I think it was just an ordinary car-chase scene in a detective show -- but I remember it as a ghost making a lady drive off a cliff, and it terrified me.


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## Venusian Broon (May 28, 2013)

Your memory of two terrifying puppets/muppets on TV made me think of this tale, which is well known in Fortean internet circles: 

http://www.ufofreeparanormal.com/stories/viewstory.php?sid=653

Perhaps they were the same two puppets out to ensnare young children...



Is it true, or is it a hoary old decades old fictional ghost story? I don't know, but I like it!


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## HoopyFrood (May 28, 2013)

It might have been a mistake making this thread, with all the scary stuff that's being dredged up! 

(Who'm I kidding, I love it. Now, anyway )

But I certainly hope it wasn't a similar experience! Fairly sure they weren't looking at me, although maybe that's why I dived behind the sofa...


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## Venusian Broon (May 28, 2013)

HoopyFrood said:


> (Who'm I kidding, I love it. Now, anyway )


 
I know, some of those classic tales still can give me a shiver down the back just remembering them: the dancing cows, the black eyed kids, the portal to the desert with blue light, the transdimensional gas station, the swearing boy, the haunted water pump station... They're _reputedly_ true, which is enough for me to suspend my belief and get a kick out of them 



HoopyFrood said:


> But I certainly hope it wasn't a similar experience! Fairly sure they weren't looking at me, although maybe that's why I dived behind the sofa...


 
Perhaps you were lucky and they had just captured someone in another house and thus were erm...feeding, and therefore weren't interested in going for you


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## HoopyFrood (May 28, 2013)

Venusian Broon said:


> Perhaps you were lucky and they had just captured someone in another house and thus were erm...feeding, and therefore weren't interested in going for you



Oh god, new and even more terrifying twists to my memory!


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## Harpo (May 28, 2013)

My first ever recurring nightmare was about TV puppets - _The Woodentops_


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## Overread (May 29, 2013)

This reminds me of being scared of the Bunyip when young. Oddly now its utterly unterrifying and I wonder - was I just scared of bad animation design (on the part of the Bunyip specifically in this film - the rest of the animation/real life blend I recall being done well)


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