Came The Last Night Of Sadness, And It Was Clear She Couldn't Go On, Then The Door Was Open And The Wind Appeared, The Candles Blew Then Disappeared

--"Don't Fear the Reaper", Blue Oyster Cult

In the summer between my ninth and tenth grade I moved into the guest house of my parents' place. It wasn't brought on by any one thing. I believe the impetus for the move was having spent a good deal of time entertaining friends in the house during my freshman year and that it would be kind of cool to have a place all to myself. I mean--the place had a separate entrance from the rest of the house. It had a separate gate from the rest of the house, through which I could enter and exit when my parents were asleep so that they would never know when I was leaving. And, once I had cajoled them the proper amount of time, it had its own mini-fridge and microwave. You could say there were weeks there where I never had to leave to talk to or interact with anyone else in my family.

Granted, that would be horrible for most people, but while I was growing up that didn't seem like a bad deal.

I think the only drawback to the arrangement was the fact I'm a terribly scaredy cat when it comes to ghosts. It was fine when I knew there was somebody down the hall or, at the very least, at the other end of the house to come rescue me should a ghost appear for whatever reason. It's another story when it would have been a matter of exiting out the front door of the guest house, crossing the yard in the dead of night, and then waking my parents or my brother up. I'm telling you--in those first few months I couldn't tell you how many times I scared myself silly with every bump or shadow that I heard or saw outside either of the large windows.

I tried to combat it in a couple of different ways. I took to praying a lot, even though I'm the most non-religious person in the world. I guess I picked up that bad habit from all the movies and television shows I've watched over the years. One might imagine that with an obsessiveness person like mine and the most irrational fear since Lucy's fear of thunder how many times I took to relying on repeating a prayer to combat whatever invisible demons may have invaded that little guest house. I don't think anyone else knew this besides four people, but there were some nights where I would literally say a hundred "Our Fathers" in a row, tucked beneath my covers. Honestly, I don't know if it was more to ward away evil spirits or if it was to drown out any errant noises they might have produced had they worked their way inside.

I took to calling people a lot late at night, especially people on the other side of the country. When three would roll around, I would call people at six in the morning Eastern time (after getting prior permission, of course) just so I could have someone to talk to when it was the dead of night. The hours between midnight and three were always the hardest because I knew if I couldn't fall asleep by then, then it would be another two hours before I could fall asleep with somebody on the other end of the line. It was also difficult because I couldn't tell most people that I was calling them to distract myself from working myself into a state of paranoia. I blamed it on insomnia. I blamed it on restlessness. I blamed it on being stressed out. But only a few people knew the real reason I was just too afeared to get comfortable.

Lastly, I took to watching television at all hours of the night. After eleven I'd probably watch another four hours of television. Again, this was just an effort to get to the magic hour of three o'clock when Jina or Tara or Breanne might be possibly up. That's how I got hooked on shows like The New Twilight Zone (which, yeah, did wonders for my efforts to ever sleep again that night), Northern Exposure, and Cheers. If anything, it's the getting into the habit of watching television after everyone else had fallen asleep that pretty much screwed up my sleeping patterns all through high school and college. Even when I wasn't scared, I'd gotten so used to watching my shows that I really didn't feel like sleeping once midnight rolled around.

No, it wasn't like this happened every night.

No, even when I did get scared there were some nights I didn't resort to any of the above methods. I fought through it.

And, no, nothing of any note did ever happen in that guest house paranormal-wise. Even when I did encounter what I now think of as a ghost, that was out in the backyard with Alice beside me and in the middle of the afternoon. That time I wasn't even frightened; I was more curious at what exactly I was looking at.

Yet that didn't stop me from thinking of the guest house as, what Breanne still calls, "the ghost house," for as long as I lived there, which was about ten years. Until I moved out with DeAnn, I had to deal with the possibility that whatever terrors I had worked up in my mind might strike again. Even while it dissipated with every passing year till the point when I was in college of having a bad attack maybe once every month or two months, it never quite went away. There were many nights when I was well into my twenties that I still had to call people because something had freaked me out in the backyard.

I mean--I asked for it. I'm the biggest sissy when it comes to believing in ghosts. Yet whenever somebody is spinning a good ghost story, I hang on every word. Or when there's a good horror movie on tv, I'll watch every minute of it. I've even bought books full of ghost stories because, even while it's one of the two things that scare me to death (aliens being the other), it's also one of the genres of storytelling that I seem to gravitate to. It's like my co-worker says all I do when I read up on the subject is open mind further into believing that they're really out there to get me. But it's just like I joke back, "just because you're paranoid about ghosts doesn't mean they're not out to get you." I'd rather read up on someone or something out to get me than be caught unawares.

Honestly, I think it was just that guest house that spooked the bejeezus out of me. It's proximity to the backyard, with all the trees and raccoons and skunks and rats rustling around in the vegetation, and its overall architecture with its high ceilings, that always seemed to produce cobwebs like rabbits multiplying and its creaking wood, produced the effect of making it seem like I was going to sleep in the Haunted Mansion. Indeed, I never thought of the two places DeAnn and I lived in as being rife with ghosts (her parents' house was another story, however). And when I moved out with Amber, even though I did see that floating head, I was never scared for my life like I was in that fricking guest house. And even here in Long Beach, even though I spend the same amount of time as I did while I was at my parents, I'm much more frightened of someone breaking in than anything paranormal manifesting themselves--which is to say not at all.

All of this has had the desired effect of aggravating my insomnia. I got into so many bad habits sleep-wise that I think it's too late for me to turn them around at this stage in the game.

But I think what it's done for me the most is to realize that I'm at my most heightened when I'm scared shitless because I'd have to say that almost 80% of my best writing was done when I was staying up late because I was scared. Almost all the assignments I did in high school and college were written as a distraction from what I didn't want to face within the confines of my walls. Almost all the creative leaps I took in trying stuff out were probably influenced by the lack of sleep I was experiencing at the time. The biggest proof of all of this theory is the fact I started this blog partly because I was writing my novel at the time and I couldn't fall asleep.

Rather than try to force the issue and lay awake, letting thoughts of ghosts and ghoulies into my conscious thoughts, I decided to write a blog because it wasn't yet time for me to be sleepy.

And that, folks, is how my irrational fear of ghosts lead me to be writing everything you've read from me here up until now.

Scary, isn't it? LOL

Yours Swimmingly,
mojo shivers