For the Fright of it All

Why do ghost stories still scare me? I know they aren’t real.

Still, I psych myself out at the most random moments. For instance, I’ll simply be washing my hands in the bathroom. Then from the corner of my eye, I could have sworn I saw the shower curtain move. I stare at it hard, as though looking hard enough will make it move again. I imagine at any moment an old, rotting hand will slowly pull back the curtain to reveal what’s behind. Of course it never moves, so I quickly dry my hands and scurry out of the bathroom before it changes its mind.

Or when I wake up in the middle of the night and notice that the bedroom door is cracked open. Everything is blurry without my glasses. So as I squint into the crack of the door, I could swear there is someone standing outside looking in. Are they smiling at me?

Or even now, as I write this in front of the turned off television, I get chills. I have this eerie feeling that every time I look up, I’ll see someone else’s reflection other than my own. Why do these terrors find a home in my head? The mind is powerful and wonderful at playing tricks on you. I don’t try to stop it.

I read once that people who enjoy being scared are sensation-seekers. When we are frightened by show, haunted house, or even a rollercoaster - our body enters our flight/fight stage. However, another part of our brain is telling us, “No, everything is totally fine"“. At this moment, it releases hormones similar to ones released when you’re happy. We can say then that we seek to be scared by these particular things because we know there is no true harm. It is an interesting way of seeking pleasure.

I was going to say it was a “messed up” way of seeking pleasure, but now that I think about this, we’ve always embraced fear in our family. My Dad enjoyed the “jump-out-and-scare-you” fear. He’d hide hours in a closet, waiting for that perfect moment to jump out and scare you. One of my most favorite memories was while reading with my Mom in the bedroom. We heard my bedroom door creak open and looked up:

“Was the door already open?”

“Yeah… I think so?”

“Omar! Are you there?!”

Silence ensued long enough for us to brush it off and continue reading. Then suddenly, someone grabbed each of our legs from the foot of the bed.

My Mother and I have very different reactions when we are scared. I freeze in a silent/paralytic scare. For what feels like forever, I can’t move or talk. That is why when I watch scary movies, I tend to talk A LOT (mostly to the people on the screen):

“No, don’t go down there by yourself you idiot.”

“Why don’t you turn the light on??”

“She clearly isn’t your Mother anymore”.

I think it makes me feel less helpless.

On the other hand, my Mother screams bloody murder. If I was into baseball as a kid, and kept a baseball bat in my room - she probably would have knocked my Dad out cold. I run, she fights. He was the one who literally crawled onto his belly and into my room just to scare us. The neighbors probably thought we were nuts.

It wasn’t just my Dad though- my Mom had her moments too. I have GREAT parents. One of memorable moments happened while my brothers, cousin and I were watching Pumpkinhead (yes, Pumpkinhead). It was a dark summer night, and although we were uncomfortably hot, we were entranced by this hideous looking creature on the screen. At some point our Mother disappeared, but we didn’t notice. She also must have had the halloween stash within reach, because she was able to grab one of the most terrifying Alien masks I’d ever seen.

Then as Pumpkinhead rose from the ashes (she had absolutely perfect timing), an Alien started pounding on the windows from behind the TV. We all screamed and held onto each other tight because we realized monsters ARE real and they are coming for us. At least until we saw that the Alien was wearing a Tweety bird t-shirt. Thinking back on this moment, I’m not even sure how my Mom reached the height of that window. Did she grab a ladder?? Talk about dedication!

So began the tradition that eventually shaped this piece into us all. Each one of us going to great lengths to get that satisfaction hearing a good scream, or anticipating being the one to do the screaming. We weren’t just hiding in closets though. We were reading all the Goosebumps and Scary Stories our Mother could buy us, we were making up our own ghost stories, watching movies we shouldn’t be watching as children, playing Ouija boards. I mean, I even learned how to drive in a cemetery.

So now when my husband is out of town and I’m all alone at home, I can’t help myself. I might even call it an addiction. I search Netflix for the newest scary movie and curse myself when I go to bed later that night with the lights on. Terrified, with a smile on my face.