I Ain’t Scared Of No Ghosts
You know what I miss sometimes? Getting scared.
I’m not talking about the “Boy, I sure am scared that I’ll never amount to anything and I’ll end up living with my parents until I die of heart failure while watching reruns of The Simpsons“-kind of scared.
That’s a constant fear that still plagues the back of my mind like a sinus headache.
I’m not even talking about the “Gee whiz, I hope that scary dude in aisle three doesn’t pull out a gun and try to rob the store. I have a sinking suspicion if that happens, I won’t wind up being the heroic figure I’ve always imagined myself to be — instead I’ll probably die in a pool of my pee and blood”-kind of scared.
That old friend comes and visits at least once every few weeks.
The fear that I miss the most is the fear of the supernatural.
When I was a kid, I was a big fan of horror movies.
To a point, I still am. The difference is, of course, that I have realized that vampires and werewolves do not exist. I don’t have to worry about being eaten by a zombie.
But what if I did?
Have to fear zombies, that is.
When I was a kid, the fear of the unknown was constantly nipping at my heels. Sleeping in my bunk bed, I could picture all sorts of slimy, slithering and scary evilness lurking beneath me — and I’m talking about my sister who slept in the bottom bunk.
Thinking about the monsters that were surely waiting to devour me, I could scare myself into frenzy.
Too petrified to venture from underneath my covers for fear of being devoured by Satan, whom I was convinced was loitering underneath my bed, I would wet my bed, reasoning that wet sheets were the lesser of two evils whenever Satan was involved.
My wild and inventive imagination has given me much pleasure during my life.
I don’t need a movie or a book to be entertained. I can just close my eyes and experience vast adventures of an epic nature. My imagination, though, was also my worst enemy when I was a kid. The impossible seemed more then possible and my fears seemed to be waiting behind every corner, ready to beat and rape me to death.
Despite all this, I enjoyed being scared. The excitement and adrenaline that pumped through my veins during my moments of fright were like powerful drugs. I felt alive. Horrified, but alive.
There was also the element of surprise. Without science or logic laid out before me, there was always the chance that I could come across a dragon. If I could meet a monster, there was always the possibility that I could live out one of the epic adventures that I played out in my mind.
Not to get all D&D on you, but I miss the possibility of magic.
My flirtation with fear ended one late October night. My family had taken a trip to Astroworld for the park’s Halloween-themed celebration. Amid all the usual rides and gift stores were a smattering of some of the most freighting haunted houses this side of Richard Matheson’s Hell House.
Alongside my parents, I visited a few of them. And of course, I melted into a putty of blubbering, trembling panty-waist in each house.
I cried and whined and moaned with every face-paint wearing actor to jump out of a dark corner. My father, no doubt embarrassed by my actions, took me to the side and laid it down for me.
“There’s nothing to be scared of. Those ‘monsters’ are just college kids in masks. There is no such thing as monsters, not really. Those kids won’t hurt you and they won’t eat you. The worse they will do is make you pee your pants.”
With his words, I looked at the world in a new light. Fear can be conquered. It’s going to take effort, but I can overcome my irrational behavior. I walked into the next haunted house with a new resolve. Instead of running and screaming like a little girl when a clown approached me with a chainsaw, I laughed at him. It wasn’t a very convincing laugh. It sounded like a very frightened laugh, but it was a laugh nonetheless. I cracked jokes. I pointed and I feigned boredom. I went overboard.
Soon, I was insulting the Halloween ghouls’ performances and commenting on their poor choice of costumes. I was a little brat.
After that night, my fear of the supernatural slowly evaporated. Nightmares of vampires and witches were replaced with restless nights of real-life anxiety like school, popularity and the future. The boogyman was not Spring Heeled Jack; it was the quiet kid in class who might bring a gun to school. The vampire was not the supernatural creature of the night out to suck my blood. It was my sometimes-overbearing parents set on sucking out my freedom. The werewolf was not a frenzied primal beast of nature, it was the pent up sexual angst unlocked at puberty.
Every now and then, I manage to trick myself and for a second fall back into the role of the pee-stained little boy perched onto his bunk bed crying out for his mother. Whether it’s driving down a darkened road in the middle of the night and seeing a flash of something out of the corner of my eye or coming across a video of an alleged exorcism on YouTube, I can sometimes still recapture my fright. And it feels good.
At the same time, I sure would be scared if a zombie ate my brains.
I might even piss my pants.
