Asklemmy

Unsolved Mysteries made me terrified of being abducted by aliens. I had night terrors a few times from it and anytime a weird light flashed through my bedroom at night I screamed my head off.

Tales from the crypt.

Back in the mid-80s: CHUD. Cannibalistic Underground Humanoid Dwellers.

Being on the spectrum, this really messed me up, even though the special effects were cheesy even for that era. And I mean heck, I was also 15 at the time, and had never seen any kind of a horror movie before..

Just learned a short while ago that the term has been co-opted to describe conservatives in general, and white conservative men specifically. I now find myself in awe at how well-applied that term is.

Honourable mention to The Last Unicorn completely tearing me up with its ending, and throwing me into a two-month existential crisis bender that I don’t think I ever fully recovered from.

Wouldn't go as far as to say it "traumatised" me but In the Night Garden was a surreal, creepy fever dream of a show that still lives rent free in my head. The thing kid me found most weird was that I first saw it in Canada, but when we went back to China to visit family they were airing it there too in the imported shows segment right next to Spongebob and Doraemon. At that point I was really confused because I assumed for a show to be imported it would have to be really well written and acclaimed, but In the Night Garden was such a nonsensical cacophony that it left me wondering what it is about it my stupid kid brain had missed. Still don't know what was up with that show.

The show that really did traumatise me though was this ghost hunting show on Animal Planet about people's pets acting weird because they were "detecting" ghosts in their home. Freaked me the hell out because I assumed anything that aired on a documentary channel was real, and the fact that they involved animals in their "justification" of why the place is haunted added to the realism for me at the time. Took until I was an adult to realize that ghost hunting shows are all fake. This was right at the start of documentary channels deciding to sell out to pseudoscience bullshit AFAIK, so they still had a significant air of authority especially for kids.

PeeWees big adventure. Large Marge.

The Julekalender

This is a Danish advent calendar that was released in the early 90s and making fun of different Danish dialects and especially making fun of Danes who were splicing more and more English words into their Danish vocabulary at the time.

The story is basically about three gnomes or nisser, who crash their airplane in Jutland, Denmark and they are stranded there until they fix the plane. They have to get back home because their old papa is dying and needs to read from a very special book to get better. This book is wanted by a copenhagener stereotype by the name of Benny who turns into a goofy vampire when he drinks alcohol. He's stuck with a couple of jutlandic farmers who are completely oblivious about everything going on.

I was 2 years old when this show first aired on TV and I remember we were watching it together as a family when Benny turned into the goofy vampire and I started screaming. The scariest part was the fact that my family was laughing at the TV. I guess the adult version of that would be to witness a horrific car crash or a violent crime and everybody around you is just laughing. It was such a surreal and terrifying experience and I was way too little to understand the context of why this scene was so funny and why my family was laughing. All I knew was that I had seen danger and evil and that those who were supposed to protect me weren't reacting the right way and that made it so much worse.

I had to sleep with the lights on for a long time after that because I was so scared the goofy vampire would come and hiss at me and kill me in the dark.

This is the exact scene that sent me into a fit of fear all those years ago:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0D1Cnf5OFdc

And yes, I probably shouldn't be able to remember stuff like this from the age of 2, but I have several verified memories from my earliest childhood that I can't really explain. I guess the trade-off is that my short term memory is shit and I cannot remember verbal instructions without visual aid.

The Julekalender is great, but it is impossible for non-Danes to fully appreciate since it's so specifically making fun of Danish language and the differnet stereotypes attached to differnet dialects.

100 ways to die

Not a tv show, I wasn't necessarily a kid but I remember stumbling on LiveLeak...

For those who want to know what it was.

this will be a deep cut because I'm talking early 80s in Hungary, but

Futrinka utca and Varjúdombi mesék let's see how many others are sharing this trauma :)

I was too young to watch V when I watched V
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V_(1984_TV_series)

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 white floating head

The X Files inbred family episode almost feels like too easy of an answer.

As much as I love it, that first Batman: TAS Clayface episode.

Gleefully tormenting a clearly desperate man with the thing he wanted most left me mortified.

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.

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.

"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.

Happy tree friends. No idea how they got the broadcast rights and why they showed it at 8pm.

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.

Invader Zim. The animation and shock humor was a little much for youngermee, 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.

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.

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.

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. 😂

Twin Peaks. Way too young to see it, when I did.

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.

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.