I know in this day and age, we as parents are all nervous about what our children will discover on the internet that we don’t want them to. There are whole industries that develop search filters: apps that promise only child-friendly content, “curated” lists of videos, movies and websites that we can feel safe allowing our children to access…  and yet, we know that eventually they will stumble upon (or seek out) content we don’t want them to see.

I regularly hear many people pontificating about how simple things used to be, and how the past was just so much “better!” I am here to remind us: yeah, not really.

There has always been scary, weird stuff out there, and children, who may have no context for what they are seeing or hearing, have always completely freaked out.  We cannot control this. We can only try to be there to explain things as best we can.

My son, for instance, is rarely freaked out by movies or TV. Ghostbusters, Harry Potter – fun! Learning, extensively, about tornadoes and the sinking of the Titanic – interesting! No complaints or nightmares. But do you know what did freak him out? A giant puppet “terrordactyl” he saw once in a Scooby Doo movie. 

When I was a kid, my dad was late picking me up from a friend’s house. He was stuck at work, but my friend’s mom also had to go out, so she drove us down to her parents’ house, an old farmhouse connected to their dairy farm. I had never met my friend’s grandparents before. As we walked into the dark house, and through the empty kitchen, we could see a light coming from the living room. Two elderly people sat in armchairs, their backs to us, and they didn’t say hello or even turn their heads as they heard us come in. There, on the screen, they were watching a strange show that seemed to hypnotize them. And the show itself seemed to come from another century (now of course it does, but this was the 80s.) Altogether, it gave me chills and left me permanently shaken. It felt otherworldly, and I still dislike the show they were watching: The Lawrence Welk Show.

This is not to mention the legitimately horrible stuff – many friends have a movie or show they stumbled upon that upset them. Remember when the only way to find out what was on were just listings in the newspaper, or, if you were fancy, you looked in the TV Guide? If you didn’t have these or were a kid and didn’t read, you just turned on the TV and flipped around. Who knows what kind of “entertainment” you would stumble upon?

There are multiple blogs and websites that collect these kinds of memories. For example, there is a site called Kindertrauma, where people post stories about movies, shows, books, and toys that bothered them as kids. Many people report seeing adult horror movies they were definitely not old enough to watch. You know, stories like that one babysitter who let them watch Jaws and then they wouldn’t swim in the ocean all summer. Maybe an animated movie that looked safe at Blockbuster, but when you watched it, it was about the character’s family being turned to stone and how they were left alone – forever. Or maybe you were terrorized by Gene Wilder’s Willy Wonka? Really, it could be anything.

If I had to pick my number one TV show or movie that messed me up, it would be a mostly forgotten British horror movie called Paper House. I was home sick, old enough to be left by myself, but really too young and sensitive for most scary things. I remember just laying on the couch and putting on this movie, where a little girl about my age was also home sick. I had no idea what it was called or how long it had already been on, but I decided to watch. Though I barely understood it at the time, the kid had glandular fever and was very ill. She loved to draw, but in her fever she kept having bad dreams where her drawings came to life, but in an eerie, sort of wrong, way. She drew a normal house, but in her dreams, the house was warped and frightening. She drew a picture of her father who was away on business, but when she couldn’t get it the way she wanted, she scratched it out with her pencil. When she falls asleep, a man with a “scratched out” face is trying to find her. So yeah, the kid draws stuff, and it comes alive, and eventually it gets very fuzzy on what is a dream and what is reality. As a young artist, I would forever remember these scenes, part of me needing to be careful when drawing in case they ever became something else. Years later, I found out this movie was actually based on a children’s book called Marianne Dreams by Catherine Storr. 

I will always try to shield my child, and other children, from upsetting and scary things.  The problem is, you never know what they may find truly frightening. You are looking out for Voldemort, but they are scared of pterodactyls.

Nicole Guerra-Coon  is the Assistant Children’s Librarian at the Morrill Memorial Library in Norwood, MA. Look for her article in the September 23, 2021 issue of the Transcript and Bulletin.