The Internet can help in many ways but not in every way.

So first I was thinking of this news story I remembered from when Henry was a baby. He had this Fisher-Price Aquarium thingy that strapped onto his crib. It had fish bobbing around and various interactive doodads and it played music and he loved it. But that's not the news story! Can you imagine what a terrible story that would make? "Fisher-Price Aquarium Has Doodads, Music." No no no. No, the story I was trying to recall is how Walmart made a knockoff of the item, and alarmed families discovered that underneath the music, in a barely perceptible whisper, you could hear the words I hate you. But did this really happen? I was so tired then. I also remember exposing myself to the UPS guy, but I couldn't have done that, right?

But the story really did happen. ("A Vancouver, Wash., family discovered the toy they unsuspectingly attached to their 6-month-old son's crib utters the words "I hate you" amid the rhythmic ocean sounds designed to lull the baby asleep.") And I really did flash the UPS guy. Thank you, Internet!

Then I was trying to remember this movie that I saw probably 30 years ago. (And at this point you're thinking, Alice, don't you have anything better to do with your time? But I don't want to do those things, you silly goose; I want to look up obscure news stories and movies I half-remember. It helps me get through the day.) The movie was about a modern gal living in modern times who has these vivid dreams or flashbacks of living in Ye Olde Pilgrim Times, where she's being called Goody whatever-her-name-is and men in pilgrim hats are judging her sternly. And then she's put in a shallow grave and giant stones are placed on top of her so that she can't breathe. Then (SPOILER ALERT!) she's with her husband or friend or SOMEONE, driving in a car, and she turns away and turns back and he or she is wearing Ye Olde Pilgrime Costume! SHRIEK! And he or she drives our protagonist to some secluded wooded area and the shallow grave is waiting for her and AIIIEEE! Anyway, this movie scared the crap out of me. Where were my parents? Probably going to key parties or taking Valium. Oh, the seventies.

Anyway, searching for Stoning Pilgrim Movie or Pilgrim Nightmare or Movie I Saw in the Seventies hasn't gotten me anywhere. If you know of this movie, don't be shy. I'm beginning to think I made it all up. It wouldn't be the first time.

This weekend we were visiting my parents for Easter and as Henry crammed his maw with Chocolate Bunny, my mom and a family friend were discussing this incident when we were all on vacation together, in this cabin in Vermont. There was a propane gas leak and we had to evacuate the house in the middle of the night. I was maybe five. My mom was busy congratulating herself for being the first to notice the smell, when I realized something. Something important!
"Was this house on a hill?" I asked my mom, who said yes.
"And the driveway was steep? " Very steep, said the family friend. And it led right down onto a busy road.
And poof, years of recurrent nightmares—running out of a house in the middle of the night in footie pajamas, trying to make it down a steep icy driveway, cars below, terrified of falling—EXPLAINED! All that therapy for nothing!

Truly, sometimes one's family is better than the Internet. Then again, they couldn't help me with that damn movie, either. So it's pretty much a tie.

Comments

[Ginny]

Maybe try googling or IMDb-ing the names of some of your fave (70's word!) 70's actresses...Jamie Smith-Jackson,Julie Sommars......and I'm out. You'd think I could remember more as I was there. Anyway, this sounds like a made-for-TV movie if ever there was one. Good luck!

[kristi]

Only the internet doesn't judge. ;)

[Jaybird]

Crowhaven Farm?

Summery here: http://www.lastdriveinontheleft.com/crow-secret.html

[Jaybird]

Got so excited that I found the stupid movie that I couldn't even spell summary correctly. Pooh.

FTR, the movie scared the crap outta me as well. Then there's always "The Bad Seed" music.....

[Vikki]

There are two movies that haunt me similarly. I think I even know the title for one though I haven't searched for it but I think it is called The Dark Secret of Harvest Home. Freaked. Me. Out. The cut all the tongues out of the men in the town or something like that. Yikes. The second one I have only a vague recollection of...two kids paint their initials on a small turtle and it grows up to be some sort of giant aquatic sea turtle and for some reason the memory frightens me. Anyone remember that one?

[dana]

The plot sounds similar to the play "Veronica's Room", which is very very scary when done well.

[Liz]

I have the image of the lady on the ground with some board on her as they pile rocks on top of it. Wow - way to bring back bad movies from childhood. In the turtle movie - did it end with the turtle (grown giant) swimming off with some guy tied by his leg to the turtle?
Here's a question -- a movie about werewolves (?) where a woman is walking through a house and finds hair (fur?) in a drawer??? Nightmares forever!

[karen]

that wasn't a movie alice, it was ZA initiation at Wellesley. : )

[Elizabeth]

For me it was *Salem's Lot*... I still cannot watch that movie...

[caramama]

Haven't I learned anything? Don't I know better than to take a sip of water while reading Alice?

My computer says no, I have not learned. It also says to get a towel.

[Big Mama]

My first thought was you were describing an episode of 90210 where Kelly has dreams of living in ye olden pioneer days with Dylan.
But, alas, wrong time period.

There was a movie called "Ssssss" about some old guy turning into a King Cobra that freaked me out for years. I realize that's off topic.

[Dee]

Isn't it great how our mothers pop out with these stories at odd times? I have listened for years as my mother said "I probably told you a million times..." and then came out with something bizarre, which I had never heard before - something far more interesting than the 500th retelling of the neighbor-who-was-a-clean-freak story. Now my mom is in her 70's she tells the old stories and gets 1 or 2 facts wrong, which makes me wonder if she is either getting a little senile, or am I misremembering?! Talk about therapy material there!!
Dee

[Amanda]

Vicky, strangely enough Harvest Home is at the same URL as Crowhaven Farm above!

And the sea turtle one... oddly enough there is a webpage about that. Lots of people apparently remember it. Read about it at http://www.dangerousuniverse.com/2000/opinion/bermuda-depths/index.asp; it's called The Bermuda Depths. (At least, I think that's the same one.)

[Mutha]

I'm not crazy, I'm not crazy! I have a little white noise machine by our bed. On the ocean setting, I swear I hear a guy coughing in the background. Waves roll in, silence. Waves roll out, cough cough cough.All this time I thought I was bonkers. Ok, I am a little. But maybe there is some truth to my hidden cough theory!

[Shannon]

Do you know what movie terrified me when I was a tot? Something Wicked This Way Comes. So scary - yet delightful! I still get a little tingly when I watch it today.

[Lori]

I, too, thought this was a Kelly/Dylan 90210 reference. Says a lot about me... :)

[Gretchen]

You know, whenever my kids get some stupid cheap toy made in China I picture some impoverished Chinese factory worker. He can barely feed his family and he's looking at whatever hot pink plastic party favor he's being asked to package up this week for those ridiculous, filthy rich Americans and saying, "I hate you." So you know, the first story makes perfect sense to me.

You know what else the internet is useless for? Name that tune. All the time my hu'band and I will have a tune pop in our heads and we're dying to know what it is. WHERE DO I REMEMBER THAT FROM? But alas, Google has yet to create the music search feature where you hum into a mic and it matches it to various music. (As if I could hum on key enough for it to work anyway...)

[Erika]

Speaking of turtles, I know this isn't the same movie you guys are mentioning, but what's the movie about something that makes people live longer, and they put some on a turtle, and at the end of the movie, the turtle is crossing the road? (Holy run on sentence, Batman.)

[alice]

Crowhaven Farm! That was it! I would say the Internet won this round, except my sister emailed me first with the movie title.

[Journie]

I had some workout audio tape in the 80's. It was some little girl set with sweatbands, a jump rope and little hand weights you were supposed to fill with sand. And underneath the music and hyperactive aerobic leader you could hear a man talking all monotone. I was never the same after that - I can't be blamed for my lack of adult exercise. I googled it - Get in Shape Girl you ruined me.

[Cate]

Gretchen -- this is your lucky day.
http://www.midomi.com/
http://hsearch.nayio.com/
http://www.wildbits.com/tunatic/

[Lanna Lee Maheux-Quinn]

Re: The Bermuda Depths, I always got that one confused with The Turtle Diary. I wonder if they were on as a double feature at some time: (Turtle Diary: http://imdb.com/title/tt0090219/)

[whoorl]

This "I hate you" thing has me completely intrigued. I need to hear it for myself, and if it takes me all day to find it on the internet, SO BE IT.

[Stewbie]

Note to self: Look up movies listed above...

[Michelle]

Oh, so it ISN'T just me that can't remember movies, YAY.

I remember seeing one as a kid, kind of a fantasy movie, on a BETA cassette tape instead of VHS. (Hi, yes, I'm old, too, apparently.) Something to do with an older woman in a cottage-ish house in a forest type setting, and a couple of teenage-ish girls are staying with her. The older woman started off seeming scary and weird, but perhaps it was simply because she was protecting some secret? I don't know. And the girls complained of being bored or something, so they went off exploring in the woods. Don't remember whether they girls were related to the older woman, but anyway. One of the girls had a short blonde bob and I remember her wearing an oversized, pink button down shirt, and there was something to do with a certain rock in the woods, and she would stand on it and there would be sparkles and then she would go...somewhere.

For some reason it has always disturbed me that I cannot remember what that movie was.

[Laura]

Sounds like that movie was really an episode of the twilight zone... perhaps?

[Leah]

Michelle--That has to be "Watcher in the Woods." I also had some vague but scary memories about it from childhood and I looked all over the place to figure out what movie they were from. Then I watched it again and, um, LAME. Even if it were a little bit scary, the heavy Midwestern accents had me laughing too hard to notice.

"The Changling," however, still makes me bite my fingernails down to the nubs.

[Angela]

The movie that terrorizes me is Happy Birthday to Me (1981). Breakdown: Popular girl suffers blackouts during which she kills off her best friends. She then sits the dead kids around a table, lights the candles on her birthday cake, sings Happy Birthday to herself, and I freak the fuck out and have to sleep with the lights on for a week because I'm eleven years old and watching this thing by myself while my parents are out bowling.

[KnitPony]

Erika,

I think the movie you are thinking of is Tuck Everlasting.

[Stella Devine]

I might be really on the wrong track, but this reminds me of an episode of the Twilight Zone I saw once. It was about twenty years ago, so I can't be sure of the details, but I do remember some kind of telepathic connection between a modern day girl and a Ye Olde girl who was accused of being a witch.

[Margaret Ellis]

I'm sure nobody cares, but I am actually the original author of the Vancouver WA news story. Just Google "Margaret Ellis" and "I hate you" har.
For the record, I was the only small-town reporter even remotely interested in taking the call about that toy, because among my unimaginative colleagues, only I could see the shitstorm of crazy publicity that was to come. Fun!

[Aimee Greeblemonkey]

And the internet doesn't call you up and ask for investment advice. When you have no investment background. Or money.

[Lunasea]

Oh geez, I remember nothing about that movie except the piling-on-stones scene and that it starred Hope Lange. I'm impressed at your recall.

Don't ever watch The Lottery. Saw it in high school and was permanently scarred.

[michelle @ the smackdown]

i want to know what that movie is called so i can never watch it, ever.

i am terrified of the TV miniseries they made out of stephen king's "it", and not just because it starred harry anderson. tim curry as the serial killing clown was freaking terrifying.

[alice]

I care, Margaret. I. CARE.

[joanna]

I remember some movie we saw in sixth grade (1981) that I swear was called Greensleeves and that was it's title song and it was about vampires. I think there was a nice-looking blond guy. And a scary older woman. Redhead?? It was English, I think. I remember the closing shot is of the guy in the backseat of a car driving away and he sees something that leads us to believe "oh no, they're not really dead, it's not really over!" Then again I could be remembering this completely wrong.

[saucygrrl]

You know, that's funny except I SWEAR that my Budokon DVD has someone whispering "Help Me" under the music during the hardest part. Damnit.

[joanna]

AND, does anybody remember that episode of Green Acres called, "The Ballad of Molly Turgiss"? I caught a glimpse of it as a child and spent the next 20 years having nightmares. It wasn't until I met Dave Foley at a party and we got to talking about Green Acres (as you do) and he told me what the episode was and I found it and I exorcised my ghosts!!!

[Jennifer Myszkowski]

Lunasea, I think that "The Lottery" movie was based on a true story. Or maybe I'm making this up? I remember watching part of it and getting so upset that I could only half-watch the end.

That's actually how I watch really scary or upsetting things. I just leave the room and come back a few times and get only a sketch of what's happening - just enough for the nightmares, not enough to know what's really happened.

By the way, I used to have nightmares all the time based on the original Star Trek series and featuring one James T. Kirk.

Who can explain these things?

[Tara]

Oh my God, Elizabeth- Salem's Lot messed me up for LIFE. My dad let my brother and me watch it when I was 4 and my mother was out of town. I had vampire nightmares for 6 months, most of which starred the cast of Sesame Street with fangs (I can see VampErnie in my head right now). The Count still freaks me out.

[sveedish]

OMG Tara, that makes me want to give the 4-year old you a big hug and whisk that bad movie out of your head. Poor thing.

And Jennifer Myszkowski (wow that's hard to type) - "The Lottery" is a short story by Shirley Jackson. I had to do a slide show/report on her in high school. She had five children. That's all I remember.

I had a recurring nightmare about Wizard of Oz, where I was Dorothy and nobody fun or nice was in the dream. Only scary green witch and flying monkeys.

[Barbara]

I have been looking for YEARS for the title of a book I read sometime between 1979 and 1981. It was Young Adult - about a teenage girl who is in a car accident with her boyfriend and she survived and has PTSD because she watched his face melt off (and, you know, he died, too), and she can't tell anyone and she thinks she's pregnant. It HAUNTS me and I can't figure out what it was. I don't even know why it stayed with me, except that I was too young to be reading it and had bad dreams for years.

Alice, you should be charging all of us for this free commentherapy!

[kelley]

Hey! I live in Vancouver, Wa! I'm sure you are thoroughly impressed....

[superblondgirl]

That movie sounds AWESOME. I hope my local Blockbuster has it. Since they don't even have freaking Ghostbusters, I'm doubting it, though. Ebay? Help?

[superblondgirl]

Oh, and Barbara? I bet that's a Christopher Pike. God, I used to love that awful, awful smut. It sounds like him.

[Mrs. Who]

"The Haunting Of Hill House" scared the absolute crap out of me when I saw it with my mother when I was a kid. I don't know what she was thinking. "Whatever walks in Hill House, walks alone." God. And, as a college student, I went to see "The Exorcist" and was so terrified when she started speaking in that growly voice, I had to leave the theatre. I was literally sick with fear. I have never seen the entire movie. Never will.

[lindasands]

Yikes! Pilgrims? Almost as scary as The Amish.

[Bananamom]

Ha. I often ask the same question. I am so careful what my children watch and yet when I was a child I watched the scariest, creepiest shit that messed up my head. In fact I tell them that the reason I won't let them watch things is because their Nana let me watch them and look at me now!

[Vikki]

WOW! You are all awesome. This turtle movie thing has gnawed at me for years! I think it must have been the Bermuda Depths because I remember the necklace part now. Thank you all. That leaves more space for obscure commercial jingles from the 70's.

[amy]

Every copy of The Lost Boys in existence can burn in hell. LoL. I had nightmares for like 5 years because of that movie. My stupid sister let me watch it when I was 7 or 8. The vision of Kiefer Sutherland hanging from that railroad track is forever burned into my brain.