An Eclectic List of Nightmare Fodder

So I will admit, as a child I might have been somewhat... oversensitive.  I was also pretty prone to nightmares, and there was no rhyme or reason for what exactly would trigger them.  Here I offer a brief roundup of a variety of nightmare source material that doesn't quite each merit its own individual post.

* The front cover of Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark.
Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark
It didn't matter that the content inside was relatively tame, this illustration stuck with me and visited my brain in the wee dark hours for years.  What's that movement outside my bedroom window?  Could it be a giant disembodied smoking clown head?  Of course it could.

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* "The Red Shoes" cartoon from Fairy Tale Classics (1983)
I had this cartoon on a Beta tape along with anime versions of "Cinderella" and "The Ugly Duckling."  As I recall, the girl's red shoes would force her to dance, and because of them she nearly danced herself to death, or at least to complete exhaustion.  When we'd go to Stride Rite, I'd shriek at the mere suggestion of buying red shoes.  They would not touch my feet.  Later, I'd wonder how Dorothy Gale could be so foolhardy; didn't she know those ruby slippers would propel her into a They Shoot Horses, Don't They?-like nightmare scenario faster than she could say "Auntie Em?"

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 * Spike Jones
Best of Spike Jones
Not Spike Jonze, the director of Being John Malkovich, but Spike Jones, the bandleader.  We had this album in our car for years, and this face would leer at me from the front seat tape deck every morning on my way to preschool.  Just look at those wild, red, beady eyes--doesn't he remind you of Judge Doom in psychopathic toon form?  Not to mention how catchy his song "Der Fuehrer's Face" was, although it didn't take me too long to learn that a preschool singing ditties (albeit satirical ones) on the playground tire swing about "der führer" attracted the wrong kind of attention.  Thanks for nothing, Mr. Jones.

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 * The "Study" in the board game Clue.
Clue Parker Brothers Detective Game 1972
Surprisingly, I had no problem playing a game predicated on the idea of homicide.  Instead, it was the game board itself that gave me the heebie-jeebies.  In the version of the game that we owned, the Living Room was represented by a doily, the Hall by an Oriental rug, and the Study--well, looking back I guess it's supposed to be some kind of wood grain, but to my eyes it looked like the Study was on fire.  My fear of fire being well-established at this point, I simply couldn't handle the thought of moving my plastic playing piece into that inferno. 

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* Any "Francis the Talking Mule" movie, but specifically Francis Goes to West Point (1952).
The Adventures of Francis the Talking Mule, Vol. 1
Now I don't really understand the appeal of a whole series of films dedicated to a talking mule, but as a kid, I was always drawn to the talking-animal genre.  The Shaggy Dog?  Loved it.  "Mr. Ed?"  Of course, of course.  And one of my all-time favorites was a little gem called The Cat From Outer Space.  So, at some point I saw Francis Goes to West Point, and there's this scene where Francis the Talking Mule sits on a football during the game and deflates it.  I'm not sure exactly why this bothered me so much, but I think I was convinced that, having been to football games and witnessed firsthand how unreceptive most fans are to any interruption in play, the spectators would soon descend upon the hapless Francis all Lord of the Flies-style.  I couldn't watch any of the movie after that, so I don't know what actually happens, but it did leave me A) not a fan of football and B) terrified of mules.  Luckily, mules are relatively easy to avoid in the suburbs.

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* This 1987 commercial for the original NES game The Legend of Zelda.
The Legend of Zelda
This guy started making regular cameo appearances in my nightmares as soon as I saw this commercial.  A man with the cadence of Max Headroom, dressed all in black, shouting nonsensical bad guy names into the darkness?  What was this supposed to sell?  So when my brother received The Legend of Zelda for Christmas that year, I was almost too scared to see what the actual game would be like.  Surprisingly, it had nothing to do with this deranged reject from mime school, and I found that I loved the game (although unfortunately I would never be able to play the sequel). 



Lesson learned:
Philip Larkin was right about Mom and Dad, but he should have included all misguided marketing toward kids in there as well.

"The Oregon Trail"

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Parents have always worried about video games.  I'm sure even Pong held the threat of perhaps putting an unwary gamer's eye out.  Some, like The Legend of Zelda, have been accused of being too dark (hence this substitution), others, like Grand Theft Auto, are condemned as overly violent.  But do you know what those games all have in common?

None of them forces you to witness the deaths of your own family members, one by one.

But that's exactly what The Oregon Trail does.  On Fridays in fifth grade, we would be allowed 45 minutes in the Apple IIe computer lab, where we had the option of playing either Number Munchers or The Oregon Trail.  I couldn't multiply fast enough to avoid getting eaten by Troggles, so I always opted for the latter game.  We were told this was realistic and educational, and were encouraged to imagine our companions as our own family members.  So I would enter the names of my siblings, cousins, and friends so they could join me on my journey.  Along the way, they would all inevitably die.  They would die of things I'd never even heard of-- cholera? dysentery?  But a broken leg, now that I'd heard of.  You can die of a broken leg?

The other lessons I learned from the game were even worse.  When hunting, you can shoot at deer, or rabbits, or bison.  The rabbits are really hard to target so they should deserve a bigger payoff, right?  Wrong.  Rabbits net just a pound or two of meat (not nearly enough to feed your starving family), while those stupid, slow-moving buffalo offer hundreds of pounds of meat and make for easy targets.  The "correct" choice, then, is just to shoot all the buffalo you like, even though you can only drag back a measly hundred pounds of meat.  But killing them is fun, and in the game, at least, they never become an endangered species.

Lesson learned:
Caulk the wagon; don't ford the river.


The Oregon Trail.  The Learning Company, 1971. 
The Oregon Trail, 5th Edition 

"NES: Spiritual Warfare"

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As a kid I loved playing the Zelda games for Nintendo, but I wasn't allowed to own The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past because it has Link journey to the "dark world," which was thought to be potentially too dark, too scary, and too unwholesome for me.  (Given that Muppet Christmas specials and Care Bears gave me nightmares, this probably wasn't a bad decision.)

So, instead, I had Spiritual Warfare, a NES game by Wisdom Tree, a Christian video game maker.  On the surface, it seems like good clean fun: you only hurl fruit at people, not bullets; you answer Bible trivia questions along the way; and the background score consists of traditional hymns.

It is a very, very, very close copy of the original NES Zelda game, so the first lesson you learn is that that commandment about stealing isn't considered applicable to intellectual property.  The second lesson you learn is that it is never OK to go into a bar or a casino.  If you do it, an angel takes pieces of your armor away and you have to go into the "slum" to retrieve it.

The third lesson you learn is that the denizens of the city are all trying to kill you, so you need to arm yourself, which in this case means using the "fruit of the spirit" as weapons.  The pear is "meekness," the pomegranate is "love," the apple is "patience," the grapes are "joy," and the banana is "faith."  The grapes explode and fling shrapnel like a dirty bomb, which is pretty joyful, I suppose.  You can also throw Samson's jawbone like a boomerang, and use vials of God's Wrath to explode things.  I will leave the spiritual implications of all this for others to discern, but I think it is safe to say the theological framework of this setup is a tad murky.

When you "convert" people by hurling fruit at them, they immediately drop to their knees in prayer, then disappear (uh oh), and leave either their souls (in the form of a dove) or a demon (!) behind.  The demons will attack you, and you have to kill--er, convert--them by hurling more fruit.  The human souls you can collect and use as currency to purchase neat things like weapons and armor from the angels' stores.

Angels also occasionally show up to ask you some Bible trivia, much of which was a bit over the head of this elementary-schooler.  I wasn't sure how best to answer questions about whether "lusting after a woman in your heart" was the same as committing adultery, or if "the demon-possessed man severely beat the sons of Sceva," or if it was true that "out of man's head comes evil thoughts, adultery, theft, slander, lying, and these sins defile a man."

At the end of the game, you go to the Demon Stronghold, which appears to be Hell.  You defeat Satan (!) and are congratulated.  You will spend the next several nights hiding a banana under your pillow to throw at the demons that are now constantly haunting your nightmares.

Lesson learned:
Food fights=salvation.


(Watch the game played on YouTube here)
Spiritual Warfare for the Nintendo NES
Pay to play the game on your computer here