Okay, so I'm a dork. We all know this. Sometimes, I just like to prove it to myself.
When I was about 12 or 13, I became very fond of Stephen King novels and other scary books. I would read them far into the wee hours and scare the daylights out of myself and not be able to sleep. When I finally fell asleep, it was impossible to get me up in the morning.
This, not surprisingly, used to really piss my mom off since she was the one who had to drag my ass out of bed.
She kept telling to me quit reading that stuff if it kept me up at night.
I won't even revisit The Amityville Horror and how bad that freaked me out for years, it's posted elsewhere on this site. Well, I'm here to tell you, I may be a grown woman and 38 years old, but I can still scare the bejesus out of myself without really trying.
Tonight, I stumbled across this really lame website that lists all the allegedly haunted places across the country. So of course, I had to read about Livingston County. Which had two entries, both of which were not even in the urban legend category. On the first one, they claimed that the Howell Courthouse lawn was haunted by blonde hair blue eyed girls in filmy dresses (you know, the kind ghosts buy at the Haunting department store). These girls were haunting the courthouse because of all the people who were executed by hanging on the courthouse lawn.
Pulease. No one was ever hung on the courthouse lawn. Ever. Sheer fantasy and an overactive imagination on someone's part.
Second "haunting" in Howell referred to Hillcrest, although they had it all bass ackwards. They claimed first it was a mental institution then a TB hospital. Wrong. First it was a TB hospital then, it wasn't a mental hospital per se but an institution for mentally disabled adults. Quite a different thing. It also claimed that the tunnels that used to connect the various buildings were still there and houses were being built over them. Wrong again. The tunnels have been gone since the mid 90s. It's been a housing development for quite a while now. Granted, it does have some spooky vibes, I will give them that.
I'm not even linking this site because it was so off base. I know the urban legends around here and neither one of those even make into the top 10.
As a result of this, though, I am now totally creeped out. I want to go downstairs and tan but I'm scared. I must make note that I used to be terrified of our basement and would not venture down unless someone else was in the house. I was totally convinced that Jame Gumb was living in our huge freezer down there. I got over that a bit when we had the house remodeled and the basement finished but I'm still scared of the basement sometimes.
One of the other times I was frightened out of mind was when I moved into the first apartment I ever lived in alone. I spent my first (miserable) year of college at Northern Michigan in a dorm room with a roommate. From there, I went to Lehigh to another dorm room with a roommate. I then became an R.A. and although I had a single room and bath, I was surrounded by other people. Moving off campus and into my first apartment was a Very Big Deal.
So what did I choose to do the first night in my new apartment, before I had any furniture? When I had a standing lamp and a sleeping bag and a pillow? I decided to read Salem's Lot, by Stephen King. You know, the book where the vampires come up to the windows and snatch their prey? Needless to say, I was scared shitless and up all night.
I'm such a dork.
