I'm Scared!!!

 RHYS BOWEN: 

It’s Halloween today so what else can we talk about other than being scared? My kids used to love to dress up as scary things.. witches, ghosts, fangs, fake blood. My granddaughter just attended an awesome haunted house, with actors playing parts in every room. Aliens who grab you to suck out your brains, mad scientists doing experiments, ghosts and ghouls.  She loved it. You would not catch me going to it.

Some people love to be scared. My granddaughters will go on the most insane roller coasters that twist you around and plunge you down. My daughter Anne loves horror movies. Me?  I’m a great big chicken.

I won’t go on roller coasters.  I was tricked into going on Space Mountain once. My kids went on earlier in the day at Disneyland and Clare said “You’d love it. It was like gliding through space.”  She wanted to take me on but it was shown as out of service.  I should have known.  It came back on before we left so I agreed to ride it with her.  When we went up the second gradient I decided it was not going to be good. Then we plunged down. Pitch blackness, twisting, turning… and the child behind me kept saying, “Isn’t this fun dad, huh dad?”  I thought if I could let go of this rail I’d kill him.  We get to the bottom and Clare says, sweet smile on her face, “it went much faster tonight.”  So that was why it was taken out of service earlier… because it went too slowly. Grrr.

Never again.

I hate scary movies. I remember watching The Invasion of the Body Snatchers when I was young. It freaked me out for decades. One of my good friends directed a movie and invited me to a private screening, in George Lucas’s private screening room.  With George Lucas!  Big soft couches. Only a dozen people. The movie starts. It’s about a drug that can make soldiers aggressive. Only it goes wrong in the lab and makes the lab workers homicidal. They are trapped in this dystopian building. People come around corners and hands grab them. I want to leave but I can’t. It’s my friend’s movie. I want to scream, but I can’t. So I sit there with shut eyes for ninety minutes.

When I wrote YA novels I was asked to write a scary series…vampires, ghosts..  Kids love that stuff, the publisher said. You’d make a fortune. uh, no thank you.  I said “I’m sorry. I believe in that stuff too much.” I suppose it’s because I grew up in a big old house that I’m sure was haunted.  My brother and I had bedrooms on the top floor. Rugs flapped by themselves. Windows blew open. And I used to dream (?) about a procession of hooded figures coming up the stairs toward me. I once asked my brother, who was only a small child at the time, about the house. “Do you think Britomart was haunted?” I asked. He looked amused. “Of course it was,” he said.

So I’m afraid of the dark.  I have to sleep with enough light. I don’t like going downstairs in my perfectly modern house until the light down below is on.

I’m afraid of spiders. But I have to say that I’m very good about it.  If I find one in the bath I get a glass and a piece of paper and rescue it, dropping it outside. After the same one,( I swear) came back three times, I took it to the far end of our property before releasing it.  Find your way back from there! My worst spider incident happened in Australia. I was visiting my parents. We went to a state park. I went to the toilet. It had one of those door where you can see over the top.  As I closed the door with me inside a huge, hairy Huntsman spider crawled up and sat on top of the door. I mean huge… four or five inches of spider sitting just above the door latch.  My first thought was that I could never leave. I’d have to spend my life in this toilet because if I touched that door latch it would leap down on my hand. I stood there, watching it.  It watched me. I took a pen out of my purse and, centimeter at a time, I raised the latch. With my foot I inched the door open. The spider didn’t move. When It was open enough I ran. As I ran I pictured that Huntsman sitting on my back, laughing.

Strangely enough I was once in a loo in Northern Australia when a six foot lizard planted itself outside my door.  Not at all afraid of that.  Nor of snakes. Certainly not of lions and tigers.

I know it doesn’t make sense. So confession time. What scares you?