Have you ever heard of "Thomas the Tank Engine"? If you have been around little kids between the ages of two and around seven or so, I'm sure you have. My son adored Thomas so much so that he could name every single train, knew what color they were and the number they had painted on them.
I was glad when I heard that he was coming to visit me over the summer, but I had a ton of work to do so I bought him a Thomas DVD. The cover looked innocent enough. What was also interesting was that Thomas was smiling and little wooden children were waving their arms out of the windows in his coaches. The DVD was called "Thomas and the Children".
He was so excited to see the DVD that, right off the bat he pleaded with me to pop it into the DVD player. I went to work while he watched it. After a few hours, he came into my office, looking as pale as a sheet.
"D-Daddy?" He spoke. His voice seemed weak.
"Are you okay?" I asked, touching his head. I noticed that his temperature had gone up.
"Why did Thomas kill the children?" My heart sank like a stone, but I soon brushed it off.
"I'm sure Thomas didn't kill the children," I reassured him. "Now you need your rest and some medicine." I gently pushed him toward his room. "Come on now."
After putting him to bed. I got curious as to what he had seen. I popped in the DVD and began to watch the episode play. It seemed normal enough. The episode began as Thomas was told to take a group of children to the seaside by the instructions of Sir Topham Hatt (AKA, The Fat Controller). I noticed something odd though. There was no narrator in this episode. The rest of the episode then showed Thomas picking up the little wooden children and showed every single one of them climb on board. Then there was a scene with him zooming down the rails like he always did, and the kids were cheering. But "Then There was Trouble", as they say in the show.
Bertie the Bus was stuck on the railway tracks. This is when the episode got strange. Bertie stared at Thomas in fear, but the little blue engine just smiled and sped up. What was even disheartening is that he started laughing. The kids were crying now, and little tears can be seen, coming down from their wooden faces. Thomas crashed into Bertie, causing pieces of them to fly everywhere.
Usually by now the narrator would say, "And luckily, no one was hurt," but there was no recurrence for the kids. The episode then showed the carnage inside the coaches. Wooden limbs were broken off, what looked like actual blood had been splattered everywhere. Heads have been ripped off of the little bodies of the little dolls, and worst yet, the children still had tears painted upon their faces.
Everything went to static. After that I felt myself boiling over with anger. What sicko would create something that messed up for little kids!? When I paused the static, messages started to appear on the screen. Disturbing meesages like "kill", "obey", "multiply" and "die". I watched the static for over an hour, and noticed thirty different types of messages. I threw the accursed thing in the trash after breaking it in half. I would not expose my child to anymore of that trash.
Before going to bed myself, I checked him. He was happily asleep and snoring, clutching his teddy. I had a nightmare from this, one where the children came into my room, but they were lifelike and as tall as a normal person. Their twisted forms grabbed my limbs and pulled me apart, while I heard that blasted train laughing. Now I have woken up, covered in blood, knife in hand and I'm too afraid to go check my son’s room.