THE ALL-FIRED AXIS OF WEEVIL SCARY STORY BLOGBURST OF 2002

So far today we have two good ones from Larry Anderson over at Kudzu Acres--one speaking the unspeakable about the chilly spirits found in the Leavenworth Artillery Barracks--

[...] On the night in question, Judy was lying in bed reading when she heard a noise that seemed to come from the living room of the apartment. She assumed it was Saber moving around until he came running into the room at top speed, jumped under the bed and hid. With the dog whimpering under the bed, Judy got up and investigate. [...]

The other is the terrifying TRUE STORY of a brush with unrestful souls--

[...] Most of the killings alluded to by the jury took place in a low, treed, narrow spot in the road about a half mile from my grandmother’s house. She always insisted that we never walk through there after dark since the ghosts of the victims were there and seeking vengeance for the crimes committed against them. Of course, such cautions are bait to teenage boys so one dark Autumn evening we snuck off to check it out for ourselves. In the party were my brothers, three brothers who were our best friends and me. Oh, our best friends were the great-grandsons of the hanged man. [...]

Once more, I tell each and every one of you that I put no stock in such stuff--the mind is a wonderful bit o'meat and manages to concoct all sorts of wildness that in the light of day and reason are no more than swamp gas and indigestion. I have to keep saying this, because the story I have for tomorrow, a similar true one to those above, told to me by me never-ever-frightened-by-anything father, never ceases to cause the bristles to go taut over my spine.

For today, though, my yarns shall be of the more tepid variety, although at the time they happened, when I was but a wee tiny lad, they were scary as all get-out to me.

I had a very active imagination when I was young (long since atrophied) and had a wonderfully tyrannical older sister who took great pleasure in inflicting large amounts of emotional distress upon me. Her favorite TV show was Dark Shadows, and I was the brunt of endless torture as she would talk like Barnabas Collins and jump out at me and tell me about all the monsters that lived around us. She was also fond of preying upon my gullibility, and on one evening as she was babysitting me, I apparently rubbed her the wrong way to the point that she got our great big black telephone on her lap and started dialing..."Hello, Gypsies? Yes, hello, my name is Teresa and I need you to come and take away my little brother Terry..." I started screaming and crying and hollering until she had her fill of fun and finally told me to shut up, that she had her thumb on the hook the entire time. Which was some relief, but still left me with the impression that the Gypsies were yet only a phone call away. Then there was the time that her and my dad decided to have a little fun out in the yard--this happened a few years after The Birds had hit the theaters--but they got outside the house and started squeaking their fingers down the window glass...EEeeee!! EEEeeee!!! EEEeeee!!! EEeeeeeee!... along with various shouts and yelps about birds attacking. Needless to say, this prompted another bout of crying and hollering on my part (and you wonder why I act the way I do), even after I saw what they were doing. My mom made them wash their fingerprints off the glass, though.

I also managed to scare myself pretty good, too, without any outside help. I remember watching in absolute terror as my dad pulled the car into the garage one night as I stood holding my mom's hand. It was dark and as the taillights passed through the door, the shadows of the bushes on either side seemed to attack and follow him in. Of course, it looked like really wide, furry, short monsters as I was still kinda shaky on that whole light/shadow concept, so I just knew they were going to eat him when he got out. They didn't. I figured they must have been too scared of him.

Then there was the Flying Saucer Thing. We had a set of 1959 World Book Encyclopedias, which I loved to look through and see all the pictures. One was very disturbing, though. It was a black and white picture of some sort of wide-eyed animal holding something in its mouth. I went and asked my mom to read the caption, and even though she read something to the effect of "The tropical [insert name of animal] uses its saucer-shaped eyes to find small prey in the dark," I was still struggling with words and such (shaddap--no jokes, please) and it hit my ears as "The blahblah [insert name of animal] flies in a flying saucer in the dark blahblah." After hearing such, the thing it was holding in its mouth finally became recognizable as a TINY HUMAN BEING! Just like on one of those scary flying saucer movie posters! I always hated running across that horrible picture, until years later I found it and read the caption and noted the thing in its mouth was a tiny little lizard.

Then there was the Light. Now this one I still don't quite know what to make of. I was probably no more than three or four. It was evening and we were sitting outside watching the cars go by down on the highway. My dad was sitting in an aluminum folding chair to my right and smoking a cigarette, and I was toddling around beside him when suddenly a small bright ball of white whisked past right in front of the shrubs. Now we had a white dog, but this wasn't a dog, and it sort of glowed and it moved too fast. I asked what it was and my dad got up and looked off across the front yard to the left and then back into the back yard on the right of where he was sitting to make sure the dog was still in the fence. "I don't know what that was." I asked him about it years later and he didn't remember anything about it, and my mom swears it never happened.

That one still kind of creeps me out.

But not like tomorrow's story.

posted by Terry at 10:56:00 AM