WWTKW: BOO!!

Now that it’s officially October, it’s time to start gearing up for Halloween!  I love Halloween – decorating, watching scary movies, carving pumpkins, and greeting the little trick-or-treaters at the door on the big night!

This week for We Want To Know Wednesday, it seems only appropriate to kick off this “Spooktacular” month with some questions about fears and scares!

Linking up with Scriptor & Kenzie!

1.) What is one legit fear you have?  Death, or losing a loved one.  As a kid, this was something that I actually lost sleep over.  I could work myself into a panic just thinking about it.  I remember lying awake at night listening to my dad snore, and if the snoring stopped for any length of time, I would literally start to worry that he had stopped breathing.  I was also always worrying that I was dying from a variety of reasons – heart attacks, brain tumors… you name it, I thought I had it.

In recent years, I’ve become more accepting of death as an unfortunate reality – inevitable – but that doesn’t mean it isn’t still a fear.

2.) What is one irrational fear you have?  The Man Under My Bed. 

You know that story, right?  I was pretty young when one of my cousins told it around a camp fire one summer.  This little boy was afraid to get up and go pee in the middle of the night (THIS WAS SO ME!!!) – so his parents got him a dog.  The dog slept under his bed.  When the little boy woke up, he’d stick his hand down, and the dog would lick it to reassure him it was OK to get up.  This seemed to do the trick, and the boy was very comforted by it.

One night, he woke up and heard a dripping sound.  He put his hand down, and felt the dog lick his hand.  He got up and went to the washroom, where he discovered the dripping sound was his pet dog, gutted and hanging from the shower curtain rod – dripping blood into the bath tub. 

So if the dog was hanging there dead… WHO OR WHAT LICKED THE LITTLE BOY’S HAND?!?!

Freaks.me.right.out.  Still.

I saw a short film version of this “urban legend” as a teenager (it was a silly low-budget flick on the Movie Network called “Campfire Tales” – my google research tells me this particular story is called “People Can Lick Too” eeeeek!!!) – it was slightly different, but in the end, there was this long-haired, creepy-looking dude lying under the bed, licking a teenaged girl’s hand.  Of course, adding THIS visual has not helped me in my irrational fear of The Man Under My Bed.

What makes this fear even more irrational for me is that I have a low-profile boxspring, which means there’s only a few inches between my bed and the floor.  There isn’t room for anything under there, let alone a person.  But do you think that stops me from getting panicky every time I need to pee during the night?  Do you think that stops me from taking flying leaps in and out of the bed?  Do you think I would ever, in a million years, dangle any of my limbs over the edge? 

Hell.to.the.NO!!!

3.) Do you like to watch scary movies?  Do I LIKE to?  No.  Not really.  But sometimes I forget that.  Sometimes – especially this time of year – I get the itch to subject myself to them.  I seem to forget that I have to turn the lights off and go to bed alone afterwards.  I almost always regret it, and have to sleep with lights on for days afterwards, but I can already feel that urge coming on…

4.) Do you do haunted houses?  I do believe I experienced my first Haunted House a few years back when I went with friends to Saunders Farm.  And it was pretty scary, if I do recall correctly.  But I still enjoyed the cheap thrill of going through it!  I’d do another Haunted House again – but only if I had an entourage with me.  I’ve seen ads on Facebook that a local business, Pine Lodge, is doing a Haunted House & Walk on the Saturday before Halloween, with daytime events for kids and nighttime spookiness for adults, and I’d be interested in going to check it out.  But again… only if I can recruit some friends!!

5.) Tell us about a time you were irrationally afraid.  Well.  As mentioned above, pretty much every time I have to get up and pee during the middle of the night… Oh, and also when I wake up around “scary 3 AM time”.

I’ve also told the story before about the Scream mask on my bed.  The full story is here, but essentially what happened was my friend & then-roommate Sarah, knowing how creeped out I am by the damned Scream mask, left one lying on my bed one night before we headed out to the bar, intending for me to find it before we left.  I didn’t, and she forgot about it, and then I decided to go home earlier than the rest of them.  Of course, alone in the house, with the front door unlocked so that the roomies could get in, and finding that damned mask… Well, it resulted in me running all the way back to the bar because I was so creeped out!  Even though I was pretty sure it was a practical joke, I couldn’t rule out the possibility that it wasn’t…

Bah!  Still gives me the heebie-jeebies!!!!

Ahhh… how I LOVE October!!! ;)