3 Days of Halloween. Day 1: A Very (not so) Scary Story

One of the things that I enjoy about the Halloween season is the terror that comes with it. For example, when I was really little we used to go to tons of haunted houses. I hated and loved them at the same time. The only one I didn’t actually like in any way was this really crappy one my family went to that was in the middle of nowhere. What made it so bad was that you could see the fake monster puppet thing before it popped out at you, thus making it not very scary. I mean, you couldn’t sink a little more money into this attraction to make it a little scarier? The only thing about that haunted house that made it slightly scary was the fact that the tour guide had a razor knife that he pulled on us. Haha, now that I think of it, he totally could have slit our throats and killed us because it was definitely a real knife. I mean it would be easy to hide the bodies because we were in the middle of nowhere. Anyway, that wasn’t the scariest, not scary haunted house I’ve been to. There was this one haunted house ride I went on that freaked me out way more. It wasn’t even that scary, or so I am told. I wasn’t able to really experience the ride because I freaked out too early and missed most of the actual “haunted” part. Let me explain. It was a cart ride, one where you sit in a cart and it takes you through the house and you see scary things that jump out at you and there is this scary music playing in the background to enhance the mood of scariness. I went on the ride with my younger cousin and her Dad. To get into the haunted house, the cart had to pass under these streamers that were meant to block out the light from outside. Well, I thought the streamers were part of the ride, and I thought that they were supposed to be snakes hanging from the ceiling. If you know how much I hate snakes, you wouldn’t be surprised how I reacted. I freaked out and wanted to get away from the “snakes”, so I managed to wiggle out of the safety bar, curl up in a little ball at the bottom of the cart, and close my eyes for the rest of the ride. I was like 7…. Give me a break. I think I scared the operators of the ride because the cart emerged from the haunted house with only 2 visible riders when it went in with 3. They probably thought I was running around the inside of the house lost and alone getting attacked by the evil spirits. Once they found out that I was just curled up at the bottom, I think they were more confused as to how I even got out of the safety bar in the first place. Lets just say that even though I like haunted houses, I usually freak out a little more than the average person. And that’s why I consider this was a very (not so) scary story!

I do have an actual scary story though. Well, more like creepy and hilarious and innocent and maybe a little bit scary. Have you ever heard of, or been to one of those things where you reach your hand into something and you feel spaghetti and they tell you it’s hair? Or peeled grapes are the eyes? You usually see these things at Halloween parties and stuff. Well, when I was still a Girl Scout, our Girl Scout troop hosted one of those things for some younger girl scouts. My best friend, Kathryn, and I were mad scientists and we had one of those “reach-in-and-feel” board things…. Only we got too into it. We had the normal peeled grapes for eyes, and spaghetti for hair, and frozen corn for teeth, but we also had a lot of other stuff. One of the holes that the girls had to reach into was labeled “Heart”. The girls would reach in and feel what felt like an actual heart and when they pulled their hand out, it would usually have a little bit of what looked like blood. It was blood, but they didn’t know that. You see, when they asked us, “Ewwww. What is that?” we would respond by saying, “A Heart”. Then, they would say, “No, I know what it’s supposed to be, but what is it really? It feels so real!” and we would respond, “It really is a heart. It’s a cow heart. And that is actually left over cow blood, so you should probably wash your hands when you’re done.” Then they would freak out a little because they weren’t sure if we were just really into our roles, or if we had actually made them feel a cow heart. I’ll let you in on a little secret. It was actually a cow heart. We had gone to the butchers the day before and bought a cow heart to put in the hole. The little innocent girls had actually felt a cow heart! Haha! Isn’t that disgusting, yet hilarious? I mean, what else were we supposed to use? We also had a cow’s liver for liver, and a sheep’s brain for brain. Gross, I know. But it made for probably the most intense and awesome “reach-in-and-feel” board ever! We may have made a few girls cry when they found out that we weren’t joking, but hey, it’ll be a great story for them to tell in the future!