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This is the author's valiant attempt to comprehend his own abusive childhood, as well as his subsequent obsessive viewing of films of a certain “eerie” genre. In these films there is the theme of an uncared-for child (or adult) undergoing relentless maltreatment and an accompanying eerie atmosphere, involving ghosts or other fantasy creatures offering the hope and looking-after that is, and was, sorely missing, “unexpected figures of parental protection”. We might expect that, for a person with an abused background, such films might re-arouse their childhood traumas and, hence, be extremely disturbing. A fascination with viewing such films might indicate an addictive turning away from reality and from real relating. Examples of this dynamic are given. However, a tentative alternative hypothesis is also offered. For some viewers with traumatic backgrounds, eerie films can be experienced as being “held” in a way as never before. The viewer can then come to “represent”, for the first time consciously, their own childhood traumas and abuse. This in turn can begin a process that, over time, can lead to a genuine transformation of the viewer's retreat from the real world, into a world of more real relating. (It strikes me that “eerily moving images” has both the sense of viewing eerie images moving on a screen as well as being eerily moved emotionally by such images, ultimately in a growth-enhancing manner.) The author acknowledges that an addiction to this film genre can indicate a severe and disturbed withdrawal from reality. But the evidence he offers that the viewing of “eerily moving images” can serve as the start of transformative experience is quite convincing. The evidence is drawn from the author's personal experiences, including his research of film groups, psychoanalytic theory, theories of film, and detailed descriptions of this genre of films/television. There are four chapters, all replete with interesting ideas. Chapter one offers a theoretical framework fo