A Walk on the Spooky Side

HALLOWEEN WEEK! So it’s time for a little walk on the spooky side…

I have no idea why I decided to start reading Anne Rice’s The Witching Hour just before my husband had three business trips over the course of three weeks. When I’m home alone this big old house does a lot of settling and creaking, and things tend to go bump in the night. Reading a scary book at night when you’re alone in the house is not a good idea. Reading a book that puts frightening ideas in a mind that tends to have a fairly fertile imagination? Also not a great choice. Put the two together and you have a recipe for a haunting.

Let us recall, for a moment, how I’ve mentioned in this space that Stephen King terrifies me, and we can put the amazingly talented Anne Rice in that category too. However, when I read that one of YA author Tessa Gratton’s all time favorite books is The Witching Hour I knew I had to read it. My timing was just a little off…

A little background on The Witching Hour: There is an evil entity that does nasty things to people. It might also be able to manipulate objects and truly make things go bump in the night. As I tried to go to sleep on the night in question, after a good two hours of reading in bed, I was sure that there was some kind of entity in my house and it was going to do something during the night. Maybe just your basic minor destruction—I was fairly confident that it didn’t want to hurt me. (Yes, I was one of those kids who couldn’t go upstairs in the dark after watching something scary on the TV.)

But when I got up in the morning I saw that everything looked just as I had left it the night before.

Phew! Dodged that bullet. I didn’t, however, have any reason to go into the family room until later in the day. {cue scary Bach fugue type music}

What I found was my high school graduation picture lying on the floor, the glass shattered into a zillion pieces. It had sat on that shelf for years without deciding to fly off the shelf and flinging itself to the floor. Why now?

My reaction to this was exactly what you would expect of someone who was brought up to be a superstitious Irish Catholic girl. Seeing the picture and the broken glass freaked me just a little. Okay, there may have been a search for some holy water, and what kind of Catholic am I that I have none? A cross may have been placed on the shelf where the picture had sat. Just rational precautionary measures, you know.

And I was FINE a few days later when the St. Brigid’s cross I was wearing came unclasped and was lost in my shirt. I obviously didn’t clasp it properly. The fact that I’m rather OCD about making sure necklaces are clasped is irrelevant. Later in the day, home alone in the house, when I felt someone tug on the back of my sweatshirt, I was as calm as can be, as I knew it was just settling into place. For some reason, unknown to me. But, ghost? No. Certainly not.

My husband finally returned from that business trip! Yay! No more ghosty stuff, not with another person in the house. Shortly after he arrived home he asked me if I’d pushed aside a bunch of stuff on his desk. Huh? Of course not. Why would I do that?

And I know a ghost wouldn’t. Right.

My current theory is that my reading of The Witching Hour  opened some kind of ghosty portal, allowing my ghost entry to my home. Or that I have a mouse in the house. So, so, so prefer the idea of a ghost over vermin.

This I know for certain however: no more reading scary books when alone in the house. Oh, and I need to stock up on holy water. Duh.

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