When Shadows Fall

So, what scares you? It’s a very personal question, you know? For some it’s very general: Insects, reptiles, bears, wolves, sharks, Etc. For others it is very specific: The possessed girl in “The Exorcist”, the demented clown in “It”. Maybe the formless creature in “The Thing”? For Winston in “1984”, it was rats. For a friend of mine, it was the human actors depicted as talking primates in “The Planet of the Apes”. (It really freaked him out!) Yes, fear is a very up-close and personal thing…I guess for me, it’s always been, more-or-less, the haunted house. In my youth, it really seemed like every neighborhood had one. Even Harper Lee’s “To Kill A Mocking Bird” had Boo Radley’s formidable estate. It’s always fascinated me how a house (or in some cases a hotel) becomes a malevolent character in the teleplay, as in “Amityville Horror” or “The Shining”.

I’d almost dismiss it as a relic of the past, were it not for a number of regulations, passed in recent years, that literally outlaw the sale of “haunted” property. Which begs the question: At what point does a house become haunted? Is it the people who lived there? The acts they committed? Or is it something else? Another question I have is: Is the past “alive”? Does it “echo” like a scream in the basement? Does it still hum and buzz, like a telephone left off-the-hook? I’m not really sure. But I do know that some people will line-up around the block to spend the night in an old structure, just for a glimpse of an apparition. Not me. I’m only too happy to walk on the other side of the street; Whistling past the graveyard, as they say. So, what scares you? It’s a very personal question, you know?