Anyone traumatised?

[AE35Unit]

Thats interesting Conn because my partner Helen isn't keen on clowns either. She's not scared of them,just doesn't like them or find them funny. I must admit if they were all like Pennywise from IT i'd be freaked out too!

 

[Stenevor]

While being taken to waxworks when I was young, the chamber of horrors played on my mind a bit. I was never bothered about monsters but found the celebration of murderers a bit disturbing. Specifically Jack the Ripper as this was the time when the Yorkshire ripper was very active and as a small child I would often here people gossiping about him. It was probably the first time I understood the concept of murder and serial killers. I did worry that someone I knew could be murdered for a while afterwards.

 

[Nesacat]

I've always loved scary movies so have never been traumatised by one. This is not to say that I've not had shivers run up my spine. I hated water dripping anywhere in my home after watching Dark Water for instance.

Ring was not so creepy because I'd read the books and the movie is really very, very different. When Sadako creeps out, I kept thinking ... hey she's not supposed to do that.

I don't like clowns but this began long before I saw them in movies or books. I think the books and movies reinforced how I felt. It just feels so wrong to have that smiling face ALL the time. Oddly enough I love masks and collect Asian ones. It's just clown faces I dislike.

I have however been frightened by books. The first one was The Omen. And I did this then and I still do this. I guess we all have a way of dealing with these things, quirky and illogical as they may seem. I took the book downstairs (I was living with my parents) and tucked it face down under the cushion on the sofa. I figured it would not be able to come get me if it could not see me. Now that I live alone with Meera Cat I tuck the book under the cushion of the chair Plush Cthulhu sits on. I figure he'll keep me safe.

 

[Barney]

Sounds like you've had dreams about the Old Hag.

What is the Old Hag? Sounds intriguing!

 

[Barney]

While being taken to waxworks when I was young, the chamber of horrors played on my mind a bit. I was never bothered about monsters but found the celebration of murderers a bit disturbing. Specifically Jack the Ripper as this was the time when the Yorkshire ripper was very active and as a small child I would often here people gossiping about him. It was probably the first time I understood the concept of murder and serial killers. I did worry that someone I knew could be murdered for a while afterwards.

That reminds me of a short story, called The Waxwork by A. M. Burrage. It articulates the unease a lot of us feel about mannequins and dummies very well.

 

[Winter Lord]

What is the Old Hag? Sounds intriguing!

Its one of those dreams where you don't know you are dreaming, you think you are awake, but you can't move, and from the corner of your eye you see what you think is an old woman who comes over to your bed.

 

[CrowberFizz]

I love Nesacat's description of hiding the Omen book face down under the cushions on the sofa! Completely irrational...but somehow, it makes perfect sense!

It's made me chuckle reading through the posts here. I get completely freaked out by little-girls-turned-evil. The Exorcist and The Ring are cases in point. I can never understand people that laugh at The Exorcist - all of my friends find it funny. To me, the depiction of Regan is the most horrific depiction I have ever come across. I won't watch The Exorcist by myself - and even turned it off once in a panic, when I realised my wife had fallen asleep!

At 33 years of age, I still have moments when I think a little girl in a white night dress - in my mind's eye, she has black straggly hair, is beginning to rot away, and has a malicious smile complimented hideously by her souless eyes - is in my house. I imagine her to be behind a closed door, and it will take all of my willpower to open that door, in case she is standing there. I have also had times when I think she is in the back seat of my car, and that I will look in my rear-view mirror, and there she will be...

Gives me the willies.

 

[Hilarious Joke]

Man I'm absolutely terrible at watching horror movies (so I stay away). The problem with me is that my mind can't help but imagine what's it like to be the victim, and so I feel that fear and then, especially when I was younger, it burrows its way into my mind so that I can't sleep or stop thinking about it. I guess it's similar to why I can't watch people being tortured in movies, I can't help but imagine what they're going through and it's too much.

One time my friend simply told me about Pennywise and also a story from Stephen King about some massive finger with like a hundred joints that comes out of some poor woman's bathroom drain. That night I kept imagining a massive green clown standing at the french doors in the room I was sleeping in, and for a while after I would keep checking the drain behind me as I brushed my teeth. And that was only from a friend telling me about them! Some friend!

 

[Wybren]

When I was 3 or 4 my parents put on the movie "creepshow" and because of the last story "they're creeping up on you" I have an intense fear of cockroaches. Other than that it is only movies that feature situations that could happen in real life like "Outbreak" that give me the heebie jeebies

 

[Fried Egg]

The movie that affected me after watching as a child and still affects me to this day would be Jaws. I can't swim in the sea without thoughts crossing my mind...

 

[j d worthington]

Well, we do seem to have drifted a fair amount from the focus of this thread -- and, for the matter of that, of this subforum! into film and television discussions, rather than books, stories, etc....

 

[Fried Egg]

Well, I suppose that one is more likely to be traumatised by horror if exposed to it young and personally, I never read any horror when I was young and so it's only films that I can report having that kind of effect on me.

 

[TheEndIsNigh]

Ah quatermass and the pit. I was traumatised becase I was taken into the kitchen while the rest of the family watched it. I could hear the screams and noises through the wall which I suspect were worse than actually seeing the program as I couldn't relate them to what was happening. My mother just said I would be frightened if I saw it. Ah well.
Don't forget The Blob was an eighteen cert. X when it came out. When it was on TV we had trouble stopping my 10-11 year olds laufing too much (7 years ago)

 

[scalem X]

okay, I've got a lot of things:

first:
-I've been creeped out as a child by two episodes of the x-files. There were two visions printed in my mind: the one of a creature on the top of the stairs and the one of some wretched family. I think they had the biggest impact because there was no happy ending, they're still out there. Oh and the theme music wasn't helping.
-I've been creeped out by a children's horror book, it was like a book of 30 pages and you read eleven pages and then you turn the page and stare into a dark two page drawing! I didn't know the book had drawings. I think I returned it to the library before finishing it, but I'm not sure.
-I've also been creeped out by a thread on this site on scary paintings. Scary paintings are the most horrible things around. Up until today I won't google 'scary paintings' and have a thorough look around. Some of these medieval ones are so disturbing that they seem to be staring right into your soul

 

[Nesacat]

Creeped out yes. But I don't think traumatised. At least not in my case. Several books and stories have creeped me out over the years.

I've hidden them away so they could not see me but have always inevitably gone back to reading them. Perhaps this is a way of acknowledging that the writer has succeeded in truly conveying the horror. It's been made real and brought into my home and for me at least those are the very best tales.

 

[Ice fyre]

Hmmm, as to putting books under cushons I have a few in my fridge (it seals hermatically dont laugh!!) I think the one film that really had a lasting impact was the Grudge (the american one I saw in the cinema) I was very careful to walk home in a well light area, much to my wife's amusment

As a child Alien scared the bejeesus out of me. I also sympathyse with JD when I was a youth I watched Dracula, one of the Hammer ones, of course I had answer the call of nature, when I got back someone had hidden and jumped out on me. When they revived me I had a few harsh words to say I can tell you!

 

[Flemcodogmusic]

When I was about 14, I was lying in bed, reading The Stand. There'd been a power cut, so I was reading by candlelight ...

I was busy reading the section where Mother Abigail sees Randal Flagg in the cornfield. He raises his hands, and says: "Your blood is in my fists, Mother." As I read that line, a drop of blood fell onto the page. I yelped, leapt out of bed, and ran out of the room!

It was only when I got to the bathroom, I realised that my nose was bleeding!

Stupid, over-active, imagination ...

 

[Wybren]

Oh the Grudge, the original version was pretty freeky, I kept having dreams about that kid and that noise. Though I can actually make that noise and use it on my other half to freak him out

 

[Ice fyre]

Thats just not funny Wybern!

Well ok just a bit.

 

[Nesacat]

In my case the fear caused by a movie lasts only as long as the movie does. It's there in front of me on the screen and then it's gone. I think the realisation that they are just regular people on sets plays a big part in removing the fear factor.

Books on the other hand, don't offer that reassurance; at least not to me. And the imagination can conjure up far worse terrors than anything a movie studio can since it knows best what would generate the greatest fear. And that I cannot get away from. The words keep chasing each other in my mind and then they create images which manage to slip out and come alive in the drapes and quilt and shadows.

Tucking the book away beneath Cthulhu really does help.