by Barb, loving fall in Maine
It’s October and time for spooky.
Wickeds, tell us about a time when the hair positively stood up on the back of your neck. What were you doing? Who was there? Does it still creep up on you now and then?
Edith/Maddie: A friend staying overnight in our guest room said she woke up in the middle of the night and saw a woman in a white nightdress standing silently at the end of the bed. Even though this didn’t happen to me (and never has since), I got chills then and still do when I think of it.
Sherry: A friend of mine growing up lived right next to a cemetery. We loved walking through it and looking at headstones. We’d also clean off the old, neglected looking ones. I loved it during the day, but after it got dark was a whole different story. When I spent the night, I always made sure the curtains were completely closed as if they alone could keep out the spirits I was sure wandered outside. If it was a windy night, I was convinced it was ghosts calling out to me.
Liz: My best friend in high school lived across the street from a cemetery too – and my cousins grew up next to one when I was much younger. When I was really young my mother used to get freaked out going to visit my cousins and so I was always expecting something scary. It never happened. When I was older, though, my friends and I would spend a lot of time walking the cemetery at night hoping for something scary – but alas, it never happened there either.
Barb: One summer night a couple of decades ago, Bill and I, new to the miracle that was the DVR and binge-watching, stayed up way too late watching Prime Suspect. It was a summer Sunday night and all the windows and doors were open. At last, we decided we had to stop. Work and school the next morning. Bill went outside to make sure the grill was cold. I will never forget the look on his face when he came back in the house. Wordlessly, he held out 3 glossy, black and white, 8 x 10 photos. I took them and looked. They were autopsy photos! The photos had numbers and stamps on the back and were obviously official. We called the local police. A fresh-faced young man in a uniform appeared at our door right away. “You found some, too!” He was laughing. It turned out a man who had been convicted of murdering an organized crime figure in our town 20 years before had escaped from state prison. For some reason, the police thought he might return to the scene of the crime. A detective had been reviewing the paper file for the case while parked in a cul-de-sac half a block from our house. He’d stood outside the car, looking through the paper file on the car roof, enjoying the beautiful summer day. He got an emergency call, jumped in the car, and sped off. The young policeman said people had been finding the file contents all day. I never found out what happened to the detective, but the escapee was caught in his own hometown many miles away. And though there was a logical explanation for the photos, remembering the look on Bill’s face when he came through the back door still gives me the willies.
Readers: What about you? Do you have a story that makes the hair stand up on the back of your neck?
The Wickeds 
None for me, though there was the one time that I was up late by myself reading a Stephen King novel and I became convinced something creepy was outside. I stopped reading for the night.
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It definitely makes the heart beat faster! Later this month we’ll blog about scary books and you’ll have to tell us which one this was.
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For me, it would have to be on our trip to Tombstone. We were there for a clown event. Emmett Kelly Jr., a good friend that we loved clowning with, lived in a historical home on the edge of town. He invited a few of us up to his home one evening to see if we could experience the ghost that they said lived there. Seems he had been been a murder of a little girl and her mother in the house many, many years ago. They were known to let themselves be know to some by sight, but mostly by smell and physical events. So we all gathered and sat on the porch late one night and the conversation stopped to enjoy the evening and to see if anything happened. Some of us, me included, smell this old time floral perfume. And we all heard some slight ping sound. Later when we were all tired and decided to call it a night, we found many small pebbles on the porch, which we purposedly swept earlier. At the time, it made the hair on the back on my neck rise. I still think of the time and wonder were our senses able to pickup this ghost, but the practical side of me thinks there has to be a logical explanation. Either way it was a great time that made for many fond memories – some happy, some cool and some mysterious.
2clowns at arkansas dot net
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I don’t have any stories that happened to me but, like JC, I don’t read Stephen King late at night.
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That’s two people. I bet you’re not the only ones.
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One of the first times I was staying home alone, so I was early high school. I thought I heard someone walking around upstairs. Maybe. I wasn’t completely sure. I freaked and locked myself in my parents’ bedroom. When they called to see how I was doing, I told them. They said it was probably just the house settling, but stayed on the phone while I made noise and went upstairs. Sure enough, they were right. But it was scary.
(And yes, they were very supportive. Asked lots of questions before we concluded I was just hearing the house settling. And never made me feel badly for being afraid.)
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There is nothing like house noises to creep you out.
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Oh, yes. It turned out to be a complete case of mistaken identity, but that didn’t make it less scary. When we were living in Florida, I went downstairs late one night. Didn’t bother to turn the lights on. There was enough ambient light not to fall down the stairs. At the foot of the stairs, I heard something. Something not human. The hair on my entire body stood up. I thought that only happened in cartoons. Together, we crept downstairs. Sure enough, we heard it again. It was a voice. It sounded just like the voice of the mannequin on the old movie Magic. My hair stood up all over again. My husband looked at me and said, “That’s Harley. She’s talking in her sleep. You never heard her before?” Harley is our macaw. Her cage is in the living room. No. I never heard her talk in her sleep before. My hair fell back into place. I hope to live this down. Someday.
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That is hilarious, Kait. I can just picture it.
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When I flew to Chicago to see The Long Red Road with Tom Hardy debut (Philip Seymour Hoffman directed), I stayed at a boutique hotel in the theater district within walking distance of the Good Man Theatre. After the performance, I went back to my room, went to bed, and someone came into my room and laid down on top of me, but no one was there!
I firmly told the ghost that this is my room, s/he needed to get off me and go haunt someone else because I was tired. Not sure of the name of the hotel. I think it was a Kimpton because that’s where I had a rewards program, but I don’t see one listed. It was an old building.
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I think feeling something is so much creepier than hearing or smelling things.
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