It’s generally held that early traumatic experiences can be pivotal to the shaping of an individual. Something about my childhood might be inferred from the fact that one of my most vivid comes from ‘The Fonz and the Happy Days Gang‘, an 80’s animated spin-off from the popular ‘Happy Days’ TV series.
Most of it was whimsical Hanna-Barbera fun but one episode (probably ‘Science Friction‘) freaked me right out. I was too young to realise it was a rip-off of the classic The Time Machine but it featured a race of red-eyed, lycanthropic creatures who captured humans and brought them underground to toil.
One of the ‘gang’ was told by a fellow prisoner that after three days human prisoners would spontaneously turn into one of the ‘Krolacks’ (IIRC – the Morlocks, basically). The gang member relayed this news before turning to ask his informant how long he’d been there but he’d mutated in the interim.
This scared the living shit out of me as a kid and, somewhere in my shallow subconscious, probably still does.
sixball 