As this Ghosting of My Senses stumbles forward at a haphazard pace, like some hypoglycemic zombie, I find myself digging further and deeper into the psyche of my youth. Many things were Nightmare Fuel to a Young Groonk who knew everything and yet nothing of the world. The sad fact is TV proved to be my window into many aspects of fiction and reality. Not even cable TV. Just the basic three networks(not counting PBS) and if the wind blew easterly with a damp chill in the air, I managed to get a clear view of UHF, syndication’s home on the waves.

This is how I was exposed to the 1985 claymation children’s tale “The Adventures of Mark Twain.” Twelve year old me was chilled by one scene in particular. The sequence involved was loosely based on Twain’s “The Mysterious Stranger.” In it the comic/tragic devil(see: Satan) creates a tiny clay society of tiny clay people. The people’s incessant bickering soon irritates the devil(see also: angel) and so he wipes them out with a storm compounded by an earthquake.

Out of the entire movie this scene, these haunting images, stayed with me until this day. And now, I pass them over to you.

WATCH: The Adventures of Mark Twain

(via tv tropes: western animation nightmare fuel, amazon, Mark Twain’s Mysterious Stranger on project gutenberg)