Peg Herring's Blog - Posts Tagged "scary"
It's Too Close to Halloween for This
Last night I was about to head to bed, and the chores thereto include letting the cat out for the night. When I opened the door, the most bloodcurdling howl you would ever want to hear sounded from my back yard. A dog, but a dog in a state of high emotion, for sure. It was...well, think Baskerville and you'd be close. I listened for a while, a bit of a chill creeping up my neck, but it is not unheard of for dogs to wander away from home and "visit", so I didn't panic.
Until the lights showed. Out my kitchen door, about forty feet away, is a shed, and suddenly I saw two lights in the woods behind it. They moved slowly around and around, shutting off for a few seconds and then coming back on. "Reflections of car headlights on the road," I told myself, but it was hard to see how something happening in front of the house could reflect around to the side, behind a building.
The lights kept circling. After watching for a while I gave up trying to figure it out and started for my bedroom. In the window facing the back yard was another light. This one shone straight up, lighting the tree branches high above. I could see the feet of someone holding the light. There really were people in my back yard.
Was I scared? Yeah, for a second. Then my husband came along, took one look, and said, "Coon hunters."
Yup. These crazy people hunt raccoon with dogs at night near cornfields. The animals tend to climb a tree to escape, so the hunters were tramping around my back yard, within a few feet of my house, looking for their prey.
The question is, what would they have done if they'd found it? It's bad enough that they made me think my home was under attack. What if they'd fired off a few rounds?
Until the lights showed. Out my kitchen door, about forty feet away, is a shed, and suddenly I saw two lights in the woods behind it. They moved slowly around and around, shutting off for a few seconds and then coming back on. "Reflections of car headlights on the road," I told myself, but it was hard to see how something happening in front of the house could reflect around to the side, behind a building.
The lights kept circling. After watching for a while I gave up trying to figure it out and started for my bedroom. In the window facing the back yard was another light. This one shone straight up, lighting the tree branches high above. I could see the feet of someone holding the light. There really were people in my back yard.
Was I scared? Yeah, for a second. Then my husband came along, took one look, and said, "Coon hunters."
Yup. These crazy people hunt raccoon with dogs at night near cornfields. The animals tend to climb a tree to escape, so the hunters were tramping around my back yard, within a few feet of my house, looking for their prey.
The question is, what would they have done if they'd found it? It's bad enough that they made me think my home was under attack. What if they'd fired off a few rounds?
Halloween Survey
What's your favorite Halloween/scary song/poem?
What's the scariest story you ever read?
What movie scared you so badly it took ages to recover?
I'll go first!
My favorite poem is James Whitcomb Riley's "Little Orphant Annie."
"...An' the Gobble-uns 'll git you
Ef you
Don't
Watch
Out!"
The scariest story I ever read is probably Poe's "The Premature Burial," because I have big-time claustrophobia. (As a side note, I had some trouble writing the ending for *Dead for the Money,* because they were climbing the Mackinac Bridge, and I also have big-time acrophobia. I'm just a bundle of phobias.)
The scariest movie was *The Birds.* I had to drive home after watching it by myself, and I was terrified that birds were going to start dive-bombing my windshield. (Hey, I was seventeen--and Hitchcock was GOOD!)
What's the scariest story you ever read?
What movie scared you so badly it took ages to recover?
I'll go first!
My favorite poem is James Whitcomb Riley's "Little Orphant Annie."
"...An' the Gobble-uns 'll git you
Ef you
Don't
Watch
Out!"
The scariest story I ever read is probably Poe's "The Premature Burial," because I have big-time claustrophobia. (As a side note, I had some trouble writing the ending for *Dead for the Money,* because they were climbing the Mackinac Bridge, and I also have big-time acrophobia. I'm just a bundle of phobias.)
The scariest movie was *The Birds.* I had to drive home after watching it by myself, and I was terrified that birds were going to start dive-bombing my windshield. (Hey, I was seventeen--and Hitchcock was GOOD!)
