The first time I saw a scary movie, it was at my neighbor Amy's house and I was in the 3rd grade. The movie was the Nightmare on Elm Street and it was was quite the ride. I was equal parts high on the watching of a Rated R movie and the absolute horror of it all. The high, like the crash, was significant. I didn't sleep for days and finally had to come clean to my parents about why I couldn't sleep. You cannot convince me that they didn't dose me with Benadryl to get me into some Freddy Kruger free dreams...
But I still seek that rush.
Last week, because we have basically finished Netflix, I went back to Amazon Prime to try to find something great. I mean like deep down in the depths of Amazon great. There, in between a bunch of American Girl movies and a documentary about people who eat hair, was exactly what I was looking for. It was a quasi-documentary series called A Haunting of _____. There were a few from which to choose so I just hit play on the first one and waited for the high to begin.
And did it ever.
Long story short, I really don't even remember what or who was haunted. There were a few ghosts that were discovered and different paranormal activity was substantiated. What was the BEST part was the main guy, let's call him Tony. He was the real show. He bosses his crew around about getting this meter so they can measure the energy or telling them he feels like he is being choked by a ghost. He, hand to God, threatened to physically (or spiritually?) FIGHT A GHOST. It was incredible. And I was tearing through them at a break neck speed.
And then night came.
I am a grown-up, adult woman who lacks the emotional intelligence to watch scary things on TV. I know (mostly) that ghosts aren't real. But once I have seen something like this, all rational bets are off and it is game on for "What the hell was that?"
It started out ok... I got into bed all melatonined up and actually drifted off pretty quickly. Of course also because I am a grown adult woman, I have to use the restroom in the middle of the night. As my feet hit the floor, I suddenly remembered EVERY scene from those shows. Every ghost, every specter, every phantom, every "lady in white," every mist like vision, every apparition, ET FREAKING AL. And now I am literally paralyzed by fear.
As I (or my bladder) finally found the courage to get up, I felt like the bathroom was in Indiana. And I had no idea we had so many ghost attracting things in our house. Have we always owned this many mirrors? When did I get a rocking chair? No lie, I literally have an antique doll in an old trunk in my closet (its a long story that mostly stems from me hiding it from myself out of fear) that I was CONFIDENT had escaped to kill me. Sweet Lord, why did we buy a haunted house?
I came back to bed unscathed, but there was NO way I was going to be able to go back to sleep. I turned on my bedside light and thought I would read. But then I remembered in one episode, the ghost always seemed to show itself when the haunted was reading in her room. I turned on The Office, because everyone knows that comedy is the best way to ward off a ghost. Until I also recalled that one ghost in Maryland had a knack for turning on and off the TV. I woke the dog up to console me but then I remembered another episode where the dog had basically tried to warn the family about the ghosts in the house because everyone knows kids and animals can see ghosts.
Now what?
Wake-up JD.
He does this thing where he is kind of half asleep and I will go to ask him a serious question like "Do we have enough life insurance?" and he will say things like "I will look at it tomorrow... when I get to math class. " WTF. I tried explaining to him that I needed him to get up so we could put our house on the market because it is clearly haunted. No dice.
And so, I was just lying in bed. Waiting for the ghosts to come.
And they didn't. I don't think. I either eventually fell asleep or they did come, scared me to death and then revived me back to life like nothing had ever happened and no memory of the event. There is just no way to know.
The next day, I spent most of my time removing all the ghost attracting items from our home and saging, but like any addict, I needed a hit. I got to my Amazon Prime and could basically feel the centrifugal force pulling me into episode 5.
It was daylight, my family was home and I hadn't been accosted by ghosts the night before, so this safety checklist is complete. I kept watching and watching and even opted out of a family dog walk because in episode 7, they had to bring in an interpreter BECAUSE THE GHOST WAS GERMAN!!!! Can you even imagine?!?!?
And then, I was home alone.
And if I had learned anything from episode 6, it was that ghosts are terrible at knowing day from night. As all that sunk into my brain, I swear, the temperature in my house dropped 15-degrees.
I grabbed my iPad and sat on the front porch playing Jeopardy! online. Neighbors passed by and wanted to chat and that was great as long as they never suspected that I was a grown woman sitting outside because she is afraid to be alone in her own house.
JD came home, took one look at me and said 'You're afraid to be in there alone, aren't you?"
Yes, but if he would just understand that I am basically a paranormal PhD now, so I know things about things not of this world that he couldn't possibly understand. And also, we have to move because I am too scared to live in this house.
Of course, he thought that was stupid so I made him watch an episode with me. Ghosts have to know that if you have someone protecting you WHILE you watch a scary show, they can't hurt you, right? The first few minutes, he was into it. Episode 9 really brought the heat with some actual voice recordings of a ghost who said "back off" and "get out." This ghost also would open the freezer door. Which made me think of my Dad as a ghost who would just be shouting things like" Quit letting out the bought air." This was good. And when I looked to see how incredibly happy JD was that he had agreed to go on this journey with me.... He. Was. Asleep.
And then, the night came.
Here we are again, in this haunted house with who knows how many spirits just waiting to mess with me or tell me to "back off" or unfreeze all my Trader Joe's orange chicken. Waiting, in the dark for the otherworld to make its way into my bedroom and give me a full heart attack.
And then, Bee is yelling.
I only knew it was Bee after I deduced it was not the sounds of some 1800's girl ghost looking for her father who died in the Civil War. It was my kid. And she was very much alive in her room, upset and UPSTAIRS. Bee's room is upstairs and I was going go have to go from downstairs to upstairs to save my child who was probably being tortured by a ghost (also episode 6).
My feet hit the floor and I summoned all the courage of a ghost hunter to go up what felt like flights of stairs. It was like a firefighter scene from a movie- where you see them in the blaze and you can see flames all around them and they don't know what is around the other corner. It was like that, but instead of flames, it was ghosts.
I got upstairs to a child who was still screaming in some kind of fever dream. She does this every so often, but hadn't done it in a while. I got her up and immediately asked if she had seen a ghost.
She said no, but that set into motion a new set of fears and now the two ladies of the Sanderson Haunted House are both scared to death of ghosts.
All this to say, that was my rock bottom. I knew I had to detox and admit that I can't handle the stuff. It is just like my relationship with cheese fries; it fulfills me at the time, but I pay for it later. No more scary movies, shows, podcasts, books or me just walking around my house shouting "if you're a ghost, please leave."
In other news, Bee has been sleeping in my bed and JD has deleted Amazon Prime from my phone.
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