The theme song to Unsolved Mysteries. My mom would be watching it just when Id goto bed and that song had me pissing myself.
Invader Zim. The animation and shock humor was a little much for younger me, particularly the organ stealing episode.
Not a TV show specifically, but another thing I remember was there were these anti smoking ads with claymation figures that had creepy music and they ate dead birds and things.
One of the space documentaries from the 90's showed the Apollo 1 fire hatch footage at the beginning. That was quite a bit for a very young child.
The other two are a set of ad's/psa I have not been able to relocate:
One had a girl in a petal car on a country road with an incoming semi, the other a toddler steps off the curb into traffic, while a frantic mother realizes she lost track of them.
They had a tagline like "would you risk your life for this child" or some such. Mid 90's cable.
So I’m not particularly proud of this, but the emergency broadcasting tests used to scare the bejebus out of me when I was a little kid. Like run into another room and hide scared. I don’t even really know what they were or were for, but they just seemed scary.
Courage the Cowardly Dog. I know it's a kids' show, but I was terrified of entering the basement for months after seeing the episode with the floating white head
Also: Return the slab!
The X Files inbred family episode almost feels like too easy of an answer.
Mine’s also x-files, but the cockroach wall one. I think it’s a much later season episode, scully may have been pregnant? But I have no interest in finding it. It gave me a roach phobia. And then when I was an adult, I learned in the south they are MUCH bigger than up north here, and they can fly, and I learned this because one flew into my apartment through the porch door and just crawled around on my wall by the lamp, and was extra horrified.
I didn't see that until I was an adult and my stomach still turns upside down whenever I think of it. The mother.... Horrifying.
the way that she defended the way that her family "loved" each other rings in my ears when i hear a maga person.
The one that always bothered me was like some insect alien creature. That was invisible. But it made insect noises.
I can't remember the details except that the noise really disturbed me.
Chittery sound.
I'm hongry.
The one that gets my wife is the Tooms episodes.
"The Animals of Farthing Wood". It's a cartoon about a group of animals who try to find a new home after humans destroy their forest. Many of them die horrible deaths along the way. Still vividly remember the hedgehog family being run over on the motorway. And yes, it was a kids show!
The Chipmunks Movie, not the live action one but the animated one from the mid-80s. I had nightmares for years about a scene where their hot air balloon gets blown around by a hurricane, which I watched I guess around the same time as Hurricane Hugo.
It's also very possible that my brain invented the whole thing.
There's a specific episode of that, IMO, horrible 3D Garfield and Friends cartoon from maybe the very late 2000s or early 2010s that made me hate the show. As someone who hates spiders, I hated an episode where Garfield takes an alien's space car to an alternate universe where it's John's head on a giant spider body.
Hated it so much I couldn't even eat something like a hot pocket without worrying about the fuckers being in it.
Edit:
That episode basically killed my enjoyment of the 3D animated Garfield movies with the superheroes, Garfield going on a quest to become funny again, and having to find a way back into comic strip land ( or whatever it's called ). I'd probably be fine watching them now, but no way I'd enjoy them like I did, not by a long shot. Even as an animation lover.
The Are You Afraid of the Dark episode with the drain monster. Couldn't stand on the drain in the shower for about 8 years afterward.
I just remember the pinball episode. Actually I remember almost nothing about the episode except a giant pinball showing up at the end. I don't remember why that was so terrifying but it definitely left a mark for some reason.
Why do I remember that specific visual from that episode and basically nothing else? The...mall was in the pinball machine?
There was the episode with Gilbert Gottfried who was a radio announcer, there was an episode about a ghost monster thing in the pool that the kid turned orange with chemicals....some 30 year old neurons are firing over here folks, and they ain't firing that bright.
I remember the pinball one, but it was the one with the weird house with all the mirrors that got me.
It was this red kelpy blood clot that would come out of swimming pool drains and shower drains and kill children. I don't know anything else about it than that, but it got me good. I don't remember the pinball 😹
Watership Down... The old one, not the newer remake. Just so much fucked up imagery and awful themes in that. Legitimately gave me nightmares as a kid.
Not really a kid's movie, but I remember seeing Darkman on TV when I was pretty young and having the image of his horribly burned, disfigured face burned into my memory.
Unsolved Mysteries. Theme song will do it by itself, but the episode with the Queen Mary ship and the ghostly wet foot prints of a child walking the pool deck ruined me.
edit: here it is
That mummy episode of courage the cowardly dog. Scared the piss outta me.
I was four and I caught a rerun of the Transformers movie where Optimus Prime dies. I was not okay for a few weeks.
My granddad had also died right about the same time, so it was a double whammy.
I believe it was America's most wanted. Usually it ends with the criminal getting caught, but when they end with case gone cold and they add a phone number. It feels unsettling and sits with you.
I agree. Those true crime documentary-style shows are probably the closest thing to traumatizing. All this other fake, fictional stuff other people are posting? That crap made me laugh.
But something about knowing that some lady got murdered near the lake we used to go swimming at? Yes, that would scare me.
It was the 1970s
I was ~5 years old
Land of the Lost
Dad standing on top of mountain, looks thru binoculars, sees backs of family's heads. "It's a closed world, son"
Holly (daughter) stumbles into a trippy Pylon touches a glowing crystal and phases into an alternate, insane reality.
Jesus Christ that was some acid-trip inspired existential crisis.
I was going to say the most traumatizing thing was hearing this kid was 8 in 2016 …
It wasn't a TV show, it was a commercial. For acrylic nails.
So I was like 5, this would have been in 1991 or so, there was a commercial on daytime television among the blue star ointment and dirt devil vacuums for some brand of acrylic nails that were easy to put on and take off, and they contrasted this against the "other brand" that showed a woman peeling it off and it had this stringy yellow goo underneath. I didn't understand what fake nails were, so I thought it was just a woman casually tearing her fingernail off.
To this day I compulsively trim my nails very short, I cannot stand the thought of bending my fingernails back.
Dr Who !!!!
Saw “Them!” when I was like 6. That was pretty bad.
And then Starship Troopers when I was like 10. That one really got me.
Huh. Never thought about how they’re both bug movies.
I was probably in middle school when I had my first contact with Starship Troopers and that messed with me. My first exposure was the scene of them defending the base on that big filled planet. As someone who doesn't get along with bugs, you can see why I originally hated the film.
American Gothic.
"Someone's at the door."
i forgot this show existed.
was the sheriff supposed to be the devil?
I barely remember the details, but yeah something like that. But I was just a little kid, and that repeated mantra of "Someone's at the door" fucked me right up.
Twin Peaks. Way too young to see it, when I did.
Gollum from the animated Ralph Bakshi’s Lord of the Rings..freaked me the fuck out. My father would torment me with _my precious. while rubbing his hands.
This is embarrassing but Goosebumps. I think I watched an episode that just caught me off guard while I was in a strange place (first sleepover at a friend's house) and the super campy episode freaked me right out.
Runner up was poltergeist. My older sister thought it was very funny that it was rated PG and so I saw it when I was maybe 7 or 8. 😂
I loved horror even as a kid (I'm a millennial and seems common in my gen).
Since I never complained of nightmares my mom would let me watch pretty much any horror movie I wanted. As long as it didn't have titties.
Anywho.
I remember watching something. Idk if it was a movie or TV show. Or anthology. (I've searched all over the internet and can't find it).
In the show there are some boys or kids. And there was this bully at school. Real asshole.
And in one scene the boys are in the bathroom and the bully is being a bully and this big nasty monster creature comes out of the vent in the ceiling and kills the bully.
This is slightly embarrassing to admit, because I'm a rational woman of science and I don't believe in monster creatures. But.
I would get anxiety every time I used a public toilet with a vent above the toilet. To the point I would not use that toilet.
And if there was a ceiling vent and I was the only person in the restroom (even in the stall farthest from the vent), my heart would race and sometimes id leave until someone else came in.
I was also unhappy about the fact that a stupid show did this to me.
I tried to find the show , so that I could watch it with my adult mind and "get over it", see how fake the monster looked, but I never found it.
So I decided I was going to fix it myself. I first started forcing myself to use the stall next to the stall with the vent. And then to use the vent stall when others were around. And then use it when alone.
Only took about 2 weeks to fully get over it. I worked in a big office at the time so lots of opportunities to test myself.
But yeah. Isn't that ridiculous that some cheap horror show made me scared of public restrooms with vents for over a decade. ?
Never had bad effects from Stephen king movies or slashers. Just this one scene in something I can't even find.
Out of curiosity, was the monster humanoid and it dragged a teacher into the ceiling?
I can't remember details very well but yeah I think whoever the victim was , was pulled up into the vent. Maybe it was a teacher and not a bully.
The monster was likely a man in a suit so probably humanoid.
When I try to imagine it , I feel like it was dark brown and black. Maybe slimy or wet. But I can't say for sure.
I think I must have seen this movie when I was like 10-12 ish.
So that would have been 1995-1997. Show could have came out around then or earlier.
I assume some of my memory details aren't quite right since Ive never been able to find it.
Do you have a lead?
I have spent numerous occasions searching. Even watching full reviews of every tales of the crypt episode, thinking it had to be one of those.
The only other lead I have is this. I recall this other horror show or short anthology episode. And I thought maybe it was from the same show /anthology.
In the scene was a weird kid who collected dead flies and made little diorama like scenes with them. Glued to wires or something. Or maybe it was cockroaches.
And the kid was chubby. Dorky looking.
I can't remember anything else. But the dead insects being made into little scenes was disturbing.
Idk that's my only other possible clue.
The News.
Face of death
MacGyver.
Yeah yeah, that one episode with the fire ants (S01E05) and the other one with the fast aging scientist (S03E11) gave me nightmares as a kid.
I should try to watch them today just to see how cool was the young O’Neill with two L.
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