People Share TV Scenes That Traumatized Them As Kids

From Redditor u/BigD1970:

A UK public information film from the 1970s showed children getting whittled down by farm accidents.

One kid fell off a tractor. Another drank poison. The one that scared me was the kid who fell into a slurry pit and went under.

The whole thing is nightmare fuel.

From Redditor u/BurtRaspberry:

Unsolved Mysteries. The intro music sends a jolt through my body. Many stories scarred me as a kid. I recall one episode where someone described getting rolled in a carpet and having their head smashed with a hammer.

From Redditor u/Thechaser45:

That old anti-smoking ad showed a woman with a hole in her throat talking about smoking, then she smoked out of that hole.

From Redditor u/sgste:

The "Stop. Think." safety adverts.

The worst ad showed a kid without a seatbelt hit the driver's seat, killing his mum instantly. I never forgot to wear a seatbelt after that, hearing the sister scream, "Mum? Mum!" while the kid stared at her, bloody nosed.

Also, a video filmed on a mobile phone showed a school kid get RAMMED by a car crossing the road. Who thought airing this on prime time after school was okay?

From Redditor u/holy_crusader101:

As a kid, I watched science TV shows instead of cartoons, like Nova,Nova,and I became traumatized. Now, I fear our insignificance in the universe and have daily existential thoughts.

From Redditor u/brainisonfire:

The TV show Little House on the Prairie. People constantly joke that the show was wrongly called a "good family show." It was a festival of horrors and left me traumatized most of the time. Key episodes included:

A girl named Sylvia, raped by someone in a creepy clown mask, got pregnant, was shamed, and died falling off a ladder trying to escape another rape.

Albert developed drug addiction with awful withdrawal scenes.

Bizarre nightmares included Albert in a crucifixion pose, Mr. Oleson beheading Mrs. Oleson, and Laura dreaming her own execution.

Religious extremists kidnapped kids or imprisoned their own children and beat them.

Rat-infested grain caused sickness across the whole town.

Ma got an infected leg wound and hallucinated so hard she thought she had cut her leg off.

Laura's horse broke its leg and needed to be shot.

A huge wagon accident happened. Kids watched, screaming in horror, as their parents tumbled down a massive hill and died.

The Blind School caught fire. Mrs. Garvey and Mary's baby got trapped inside, including a scene where Mrs. Garvey seemed to smash a window with the baby to escape. Cut to smoking bodies.

Rabid animals attacked, ranging from wild dogs to a pet raccoon, with gruesome scenes of stabbing and killing.

The content featured many hostage situations, kidnappings, drunken rages, beatings, and other abuse and cruelty.

Even supposedly uplifting episodes scared me. One showed a woman fake her death and funeral for her kids. Another showed someone going blind or regaining sight through trauma. The final episode had everyone blowing up the whole town.

From Redditor u/tjn182:

There was an episode ofAre You Afraid of the Dark? (or maybe a spinoff) showed a nerdy kid having a really bad time using the bathroom.

The teacher and classmates said, "Oh, my god, this guy again, sheesh." Then, he got to use the bathroom. He got in a stall, heard a noise from the vent. Scared, he kept going. He heard the noise again and saw something with eyes in the vents above the stall. He pulled up and ran out.

He ran back in with his pants peed on. The class and teacher laughed at him like a bad dream. He convinced the teacher to look, and she got eaten by the toilet monster. The last scene showed her shoe falling into a bloody toilet.

For fifteen years after that, I looked up before using a public toilet. If it had a vent above, I avoided it completely.

From Redditor u/WheresPeebs:

When I was five in 1997, my grandfather let me watch theX-FilesAn episode about trees that kill people made me fear the trees outside the windows. For five years, I thought the trees would kill me. I never turned my back to the window when leaving a room. That experience shaped my obsessive thoughts and irrational fears, later diagnosed as an anxiety disorder.

As an adult, I got really intoThe X-Files. That episode is widely seen as the worst, tackiest, and least scary in the series. If you watched X-Files, this shows that.X-Files, is saying a lot.

Trauma and anxiety are strange, and children's brains are weirder.

From Redditor u/Moonbean_Mantra:

About eight years old, I saw a news segment where parents said a Cabbage Patch Doll came alive and walked through their house. As a kid, I felt it went near their kid or threatened them. The final scene showed the doll coming up to the screen. It scared me.

Someone got a Cabbage Patch Doll for their birthday. Mum called the TV station and yelled at them for showing that junk. It was 6 pm, way before my bedtime. Mum offered to throw it away, but I feared it would come back for revenge. I slept in Mum’s bed, watching the doll on the wardrobe top (moonlight through the window) in case it moved.

From Redditor u/Rocket_Sunny:

A documentary on CBS showed what would happen if the Russians nuked the US, using my hometown of Omaha, NE, as the example. It showed animations of the Woodmen Tower blowing up in a nuclear blast. This aired in 1981 and was called "The Defense of the United States."The Defense of the United States.

From Redditor u/TheWarDoctor:

The episode of VThe '80s version has a dream where she gives birth to a human/visitor hybrid that looked like a gremlin. This scared me badly; I couldn't sleep until my older brother explained they made a prop baby using my E.T. doll and a red Lego brick as the tongue, showing me there was nothing to fear.

He probably did the nicest thing for me.

From Redditor u/sirquibbles:

Back when I was younger, Nickelodeon had a subchannel called "Nicktoons." It played the classics and some newer shows, which was better than Nickelodeon.

They had an event where they collected animations from around the world; it looked cool. One animation came from China. It showed two child panda bears playing, walking, and swinging. I liked it; I really love animals. At the end, the two pandas choked on lollipops and died.

From Redditor u/alter_ego77:

An anti-drug PSA showed, "When you sniff, this is what happens to your brain." A girl slept in bed while her room slowly filled with water and she drowned. I was young and did not know they meant sniffing glue or anything. I just thought they meant sniffing when you have a cold.

I was petrified for AAAAAAAAAAAAAGES that sniffing would drown me. I had bad seasonal allergies for ten months yearly; I had runny noses often.

They did not want to say, "Here are the things people sniff to get high, don't sniff those." But that commercial was too vague about what sniffing is.

From Redditor u/jbsinger:

I was an adult.

Star Trek the episode where nobody can sleep and they begin dying from lack of sleep.

The corpses lay there, covered in sheets in the sick bay.

The nurse turned around; they were all sitting up.

From Redditor u/marswithdiamonds:

The music video for Robbie Williams’s "Rock DJ." I knew what was coming. I covered my eyes with whatever I could, like one of those parachute men I got the day before.

I then ate pancakes and did not tell my parents what I saw because I feared getting in trouble. Also, the "Thriller" music video.

From Redditor u/jmt2589:

A sketch from Sesame StreetErnie and Bert explore a pyramid in Egypt, and there are two statues that look like them.

Every time Bert looks away, the one that looks like Ernie comes alive, and only he sees it. This terrified me as a kid and still does.

From Redditor u/schroedingersnewcat:

The eggs.

This is your brain (picture of egg).

This is your brain on drugs (smash it with a frying pan).

My mother took over a year to get me to eat eggs again. I screamed that I did not want to eat brains every time.