I don’t see dead people, but they’re still out to get me
As sad as this is, I’ve always been an easy scare. In fact, it’s probably my curse in life. It doesn’t take much for me to spend the night watching Disney movies with my lights on if I think it’s at all possible for some sort of possessed girl to come out from under my bed.
This summer I spent a whole night watching “Friends” DVDs and the “Chipmunk Adventure” because I was afraid of the noises in my room and throughout my house. In case something was to happen, I honestly was holding my cell phone, pre-dialed to 911, in my left hand. I was so nervous that I never fell asleep until sunrise, part of the reason being I needed to be alert for whatever attacked. The other half of me was terrified of having nightmares. I realized later that wind was just blowing the door to my deck and bedroom windows.
So, I’m lame.
I can easily freak myself out. Unusual sounds and shadows have their way of playing with my mind and too many times I give in to their taunts. I do it to myself though, knowing full well that scary stories and horror films will heighten my senses. The night I pre-dialed 911, I had allowed my roommate to convince me that creepy stuff was going on in our house.
For most of my life I’ve had a fear of ghosts, which I’ll admit is pretty much ridiculous. But I’ve seen enough TV and heard enough stories to know dead people are something to be afraid of. Fully aware of my anxiety over encountering one of them I often ask myself why I even attempt watching scary movies or walking through haunted houses. Once started, they both have to be finished, even if I have close my eyes the whole time and deal with the consequences of sleepless nights afterward.
I blame a lot of my fear on Robert Stack, the man that used to host “Unsolved Mysteries.” That guy alone was pretty much as horrifying as anything I imagine coming back from the dead. Always wearing dark suits and grim expressions, I had to wonder if he even had teeth, the way he never smiled. It was he who introduced me to my first haunted house when I was 6-years-old.
During his show he told stories of toilets flushing when no living person pressed the handle and footsteps being heard, but no one seen, in several houses. Not very many things could scare me more as a first-grader than some spirit from the underworld entering my house to use the bathroom. The show also depicted a man being woken up in the middle of the night with a frazzled, evil woman ghost holding him down and saying devilish things to him while laughing. That image still haunts me.
From that moment on I knew only one thing could help me when I was scared at night. It was sleeping in my brother’s empty top bunk-bed a couple times a month, a habit that lasted until I was in eighth grade. Yes, you heard me right. Eighth grade.
But it wasn’t just Mr. Spooky, “Unsolved Mysteries” man that kept that fear running through my wimpy veins. It’s as if I was never supposed to stop being stupidly afraid. In second grade my friend Lindsey Brightenburg, who told anything except bright stories, informed me about Bloody Mary. She even went so far as to tell me that the Devil’s wife came in her house through her bedroom window and gave her a curse – she turned Lindsey’s fingernail black. It took me years before I found out that nails do that when you slam them in drawers. But by then it was too late. Lying Lindsey had ruined me for good. Even now I still turn around my full length mirror in my room around at night. Just in case.
When my brother’s friends used a Ouija board when I was 10, I only had one more reason to frequently borrow the bunk bed. I would watch them as they sat in the neighbor’s front yard for days and messed around with the game until they finally burned it because they finally got scared.
The funny thing about being scared is I’m almost drawn to it. No, I’m not some psycho ghost-crazed girl, but it seems that even though I know better, I do things that I can almost predict will make nighttime miserable for at least a few days. Only now I don’t have a bunk bed to make me feel safe.
I’ve been dragged to graveyards at midnight where friends dared me to visit haunted tombstones where ghostly visitations apparently happen. I never did see spirits at the graves. All I got out of these experiences were sweaty palms before I ran away screaming. However, I guess if there were invisible ghosts in my presence, they probably got what they wanted from me anyway.
Every October I wait for the corn mazes to open and always have to go through one haunted house, even though I know the moment I walk in is the same moment I want to get out as fast as I can. The chainsaw men and teenagers covered in deadly make-up follow me, getting the screams they love. They’re not even real ghosts and I still have a conniption fit every time. I’m a sucker and they know it.
I know I may never get over my fear of ghosts and I also know that friends and family may also always be entertained by it. For now I’m OK. Well, at least until tonight. Nightlight anyone?
Manette Newbold is a senior majoring in print journalism. Comments and ghost stories can be sent to manette.n@aggiemail.usu.edu.