Most horrifying episode: The man in the steamer trunk
Anyone else catch this one back in the late '90s/early 2000s? It was a case where an elderly man had been discovered in a steamer trunk and abandoned in a national park somewhere on the east coast (I believe it was in Virginia, but I could be wrong). The authorities were at a loss to identify him, so, for whatever reason, UM decided to show a photo of the man's face as his body lay in the morgue.
I'll never forget when I saw this. I was in junior high; I had been sick with the flu, so I hadn't gone to school that day. My parents' house was in the middle of the woods in Oregon, and it was stormy outside, some time in November, which only made watching this show creepier. This episode came on, and I remember Robert Stack giving a brief "viewer warning" to notify the audience of the graphic image they were about to show. Before I even had a chance to look away, it came up on the screen—his face twisted in an expression of terror, battered and bloody, his jaw agape. I grabbed the blankets I had on my lap and threw them over my face, I was so terrified. I waited a good 45 seconds, listening to make sure it wasn't on the screen anymore before I removed them. That image to this DAY is still ingrained in my mind. It was so traumatizing that I get chills even thinking about it now, over ten years later.
I researched the case in recent years and found out that it had been solved. It was an elderly man who had been killed by his abusive caregiver, which was incredibly tragic—but for me, I'll never forget seeing that face, on my parents' couch that day, and being so goddamned terrified that I could hardly sleep that night.
I have some DVD-Rs with a bunch of the older episodes on them, and I came across this episode on it a few months ago. I still couldn't bring myself to watch it. I wanted to, but I literally couldn't. That's how much it effected me.
Anyone else have a similar experience with this, or am I just a big baby?