10 Most Terrifying Places on Earth

There are places on this planet that are stranger than the most alien landscapes we have ever imagined. Places that make your skin crawl. Places that induce heavy breathing and paranoia, before anything has even happened. We walk the dark, dusty steps of old castles and houses. We roam the halls of asylums and tunnels, hoping to glimpse something otherworldly. But sometimes, we wish we wouldn’t. Sometimes, our curiosity gets the better of us in the beginning, and is then squashed by a feeling that no human ever wants to be familiar with: absolute terror.

We hear screams in the night, footsteps in the hall. We see shadows flit by, and fog taking the shape of something eerily familiar. We breathe, we pray, and step lightly. We scream, we curse, and we sprint. Some encounters are mysterious, others violent, all terrifying. Why do we insist on investigating places such as these? Mere curiosity only gets us so far, and then we need a driving force embedded much deeper into our psyche in order to power on. Would you spend the night alone in these places?

10

Riddle House

The History

The Riddle House in Palm Beach County, Florida, was originally a funeral parlor. The Victorian house was dismantled and rebuilt in Yesteryear Village at the South Florida fair grounds. In the 1920’s the house became privately owned by Karl Riddle.

The Terror

Joseph, one of Riddle’s former employees, committed suicide by hanging himself in the attic of the house. Joseph, for whatever reason, hated men, and displays this hatred by attacking men who enter the attic. One man had a lid flung at his head, and men are now no longer allowed in the attic. Other places in the house are haunted as well, with furniture being frequently moved.

9

Helltown

The History

The Northern part of Summit County in Ohio is known by the eerily blunt moniker, Helltown. In the 70’s, Boston Township was the site of a government buyout, and subsequent mass eviction of citizens. The houses were intended to be torn down and the land used for a national park, but the plans never quite manifested. Legends spawned wildly, and who can blame the legend mongers? Driving through the dark, wooded landscape was enough to give you chills even when it was populated, let alone when you have to drive by boarded up houses standing next to the burnt out hulks of others (the local fire department used some buildings for practice).

The Terror

Whether based on a kernel of truth or cooked up in the heads of creative visitors, the persistent legends of Helltown add to the creep factor. The steep Stanford Road drop off, immediately followed by a dead end, is aptly named The End of the World. If you get stuck at this dead end for too long, according to ghost story enthusiasts, you may meet your end at the hands of many members of the endless parade of freaks patrolling the woods. Satanists, Ku Klux Klan members, an escaped mental patient, an abnormally large snake, and mutants caused by an alleged chemical spill proudly march in this parade. And if you stray from the roads, you may find Boston Cemetery, home to a ghostly man, grave robbers and, the quirkiest of all, a moving tree.

8

Stull Cemetery

The History

Stull, Kansas, is a tiny, unincorporated town in Bumfuck, Nowhere- er, pardon, Douglas County. Ten miles west of Lawrence and thirteen miles east of Topeka puts it far from anything resembling a large population center. The population of Stull is approximately 20 people. But, don’t let the deceptively quaint village fool you. A darker side lurks behind the bushes and in the shadows.

The Terror

In the early 20th century, two tragedies rocked the tiny settlement (please observe, these are not legend or folklore, but fact). First, a father finished burning a farm field, only to find the charred corpse of his young son in the aftermath. The second incident to occur was a man went missing, and was later found hanged from a tree. As far as legends go, the infamous cemetery is where you can find your fill of supernatural lore. The book Weird US has this to say on Stull Cemetery:

“There are graveyards across America that go beyond merely being haunted and enter into the realm of the diabolical. They are places so terrifying that they say the devil himself holds courts with his worshippers there. The cemetery on Emmanuel Hill in Stull, Kansas, is one of these places.”

Rumors exist stating that Stull Cemetery is one of the 7 gateways to Hell. While the old church is now demolished, many attempt to sneak in at night for a peek at the unsavory goings-on. But be warned, the police patrol heavily, especially on Halloween and the spring equinox. The place is supposed to be so unholy, in fact, that some claim Pope John Paul II refused to allow his plane to fly over eastern Kansas, on his way to an appearance in Colorado. The validity of this last claim is up for debate, but none can deny that legends or not, Stull Cemetery is a terrifying place to be.

7

The Ridges

The History

Originally known as the Athens Lunatic Asylum, The Ridges was renamed after the state of Ohio acquired the property. The hospital saw hundreds of lobotomies, and often declared masturbation and epilepsy to be the causes of insanity in patients.

The Terror

Athens, Ohio, is listed as the 13th most haunted place in the world, as per the British Society for Psychical Research. The nearby Ohio University (which currently owns most of the property on which the Ridges is located) is said to be heavily haunted. The notorious rapist with Dissociative Identity Disorder, Billy Milligan, was housed at the facility for years. The most famous story, however is that of a 54 year old female patient who ran away and was missing for 6 weeks. She was found dead in an unused ward. She had taken off all of her clothes, neatly folded them, and laid down on the cold concrete where she subsequently died. Through a combination of decomposition and sun exposure, her corpse left a permanent stain on the floor, which is still visible today. Her spirit now haunts the abandoned ward.

6

Humberstone and LaNoria

The History

These two abandoned mining towns in Chile were recently featured on an episode of the SyFy Channel’s show, Destination Truth. In 1872, the town was founded as a saltpeter mine, and business boomed. However, after several heavy blows (including the Great Depression), the business declined and then collapsed in 1958, and the town of Humberstone and it’s surrounding towns were abandoned by 1960. Treatment of workers in both towns bordered on slavery, and now the towns are left standing derelict.

The Terror

It is rumored that the dead of the La Noria cemetery rise at night and walk around the town, and ghostly images frequently show up in photographs in Humberstone. These towns are so terrifying, the residents of nearby Iquique refuse to enter them. The former residents never left, and can be seen walking around, and children have been heard playing. The cemetery of La Noria, regardless of whether its occupants actually walk at night, contains opened graves where the bodies are fully exposed, leaving you to wonder why. Is it ghosts, or is it grave robbers? As if either prospect is very appealing.

Full episodes of Destination Truth, including the episode featuring Humberstone and La Noria, can be seen here.

5

Byberry Mental Asylum

The History

The Philadelphia State Hospital at Byberry, or known simply as Byberry, was the poster image for patient maltreatment. The hospital, in its most popular form, was founded in 1907, and known as the Byberry Mental Hospital. It exceeded its patient limit quickly, maxing out at over 7,000 in 1960. It housed everything from the mentally challenged to the criminally insane. Due to its atrocious conditions, and the sub-human treatment of its patients, the hospital was closed and abandoned in 1990. It had since become a nuisance for the neighborhood, as it was a breeding ground for vandals, arsonists, Satanists, and urban explorers. It was demolished in 2006, in spite of the fear of spreading asbestos, (which is what kept it standing for 16 years).

The Terror

The terrifying aspect of this location isn’t so much it’s hauntings or the unsavory characters that lurked after dark (although you would have been wise to be wary of both while exploring the building). The terror here comes from the facts of the how the hospital was run. Human excrement lined the hallways, which were also where many patients slept. The staff was abusive, and frequently exploited and harassed patients. One patient had a tooth pulled without Novocaine, while another killed and dismembered a female patient. Although the killer, Charles Gable, was never found, the victim’s body was found strewn across the property. Her teeth were found being played with by another patient. Even as the hospital was in the process of closing, two released patients were found dead in the Delaware River, two successive days after their release. Perhaps that gate in Stull Cemetery opens here.

4

Leap Castle

The History

While this Irish castle is perhaps the most popular location featured on the list, it is worth recapping the long and often gruesome history. Although it was built by the O’Bannons in the late 15th century, the castle was taken over by the ruling O’Carrolls, to whom the O’Bannons were subject. After the death of Mulrooney O’Carroll, a fierce rivalry erupted, culminating in two brothers struggling for control. One of the brothers, a priest, was brutally murdered in his own chapel, in front of the family, by the other brother. This chapel is now know as the Bloody Chapel, for obvious reasons. Many people were held prisoner and even executed at the castle.

The Terror

The castle is rumored to be haunted by a vast number of spirits, including a violent, hunched beast known only as the Elemental. It is most recognizable by the accompanying smell of rotting flesh and sulphur. While renovating the castle, workers discover an oubliette, which is a dungeon accessible only through a ceiling hatch, into which prisoners are thrown, then forgotten and left to die. This particular oubliette contained three cartloads of human remains, and was filled with spikes to impale those thrown into it’s depths.

3

Shades of Death Road

The History

This New Jersey road winds through 7 miles of countryside, and along that stretch it gives us no definitive clues as to the origin of its eerie name (for those wondering, Shades of Death is not a nickname given by locals, but is in fact the road’s official moniker). While the explanation for this highly unusual name has been lost, many theories abound. Some say that murderous highwaymen would rob and kill those along the road. Others say the reason was because of violent retaliations by the locals against the very same highwaymen, resulting in their lynched corpses being hung up as a warning. Some attribute it to three murders that occurred in the 20’s and 30’s. The first murder saw a robber beating his victim over the head with a tire iron, the second saw a woman decapitate her husband and bury the head and body on separate sides of the road, and the third consisted of poor Bill Cummins being shot and buried in a mud pile. Some attribute it to massive amounts of fatal car crashes, while others consider it the fault of viscous wildcats from the nearby Bear Swamp. The most likely explanation, however, is that malaria-bearing mosquitos terrorized the locals year to year, and the remoteness of the area prevented good medical attention from being prominent in the area. This is supported by the fact that, in 1884, most of the swamps in the area were drained.

The Terror

Gruesome history and spooky name aside, you have much to fear along this byway. South of the I-80 overpass lies an officially unnamed lake, that most will tell you is called Ghost Lake. This lake is frequently the home of specter-like vapors, and the sky is supposed to be unusually bright, no matter what time of night you are there. As per the name, ghosts of the highwaymens victims roam the area, and they are most frequent in the abandoned cabin across the lake. The dead-end road known as Lenape Lane is home to thick fogs and apparitions, you may be chased off the road by a white light. I’ll let Wikipedia detail the most disturbing aspect of the road:

“One day during the 1990s, some visitors found hundreds of Polaroid photographs scattered in woods just off the road. They took some and shared them with Weird NJ, which published a few as samples. Most of the disturbing images showed a television changing channels, others showed a woman or women, blurred and somewhat difficult to identify, lying on some sort of metal object, conscious but not smiling. Local police began an investigation after the magazine ran an item with the photos, but the remainder disappeared shortly afterwards.”

2

Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum

The History

Welcome to Phnom Penh, Cambodia, home of the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum. This former high school was converted, in 1975, to Security Prison 21 by the Khmer Rouge. The prison was used as a base to torture and murder prisoners. Most of the prisoners were former soldiers and government officials from the Lon Nol regime. However, the Khmer Rouge leaders paranoia soon caught up with them, and they began shipping people from their own ranks to the prison. Many prisoners were tortured and tricked into naming their family and associates, who were them also arrested, tortured and murdered.

The Terror

The ghosts of the estimated 17,000 victims of Tuol Sleng continue to roam the halls, and odd happenings around the place are often attributed to them: and it isn’t hard to see why. Most were forced to confess to crimes they didn’t actually commit. Although most victims were Cambodians, many foreigners fell victim to the death machine, including Americans, French, a New Zealander, a Briton, Australians, Arabs, Indians, Pakistanis and Vietnamese. Only 12 people are thought to have survived. To close the entry on this sad history, I’ll leave you with the actual security regulations, the ten rules all prisoners had to abide by. All imperfect grammar is said in context due to poor translation.

1. You must answer accordingly to my question. Don’t turn them away.
2. Don’t try to hide the facts by making pretexts this and that, you are strictly prohibited to contest me.
3. Don’t be a fool for you are a chap who dare to thwart the revolution.
4. You must immediately answer my questions without wasting time to reflect.
5. Don’t tell me either about your immoralities or the essence of the revolution.
6. While getting lashes or electrification you must not cry at all.
7. Do nothing, sit still and wait for my orders. If there is no order, keep quiet. When I ask you to do something, you must do it right away without protesting.
8. Don’t make pretext about Kampuchea Krom in order to hide your secret or traitor.
9. If you don’t follow all the above rules, you shall get many many lashes of electric wire.
10.If you disobey any point of my regulations you shall get either ten lashes or five shocks of electric discharge.

1

The Mines of Paris

The History

The seemingly infinite tunnels that run below the streets of Paris should not be confused with the Catacombs of Paris, the famous underground ossuary, although the mines are also mistakenly referred to as the catacombs. Exploring the mines is illegal, and penalties include heavy fines. The mines were used to dig out minerals from Paris’ varied sediment (the location where Paris is was submerged for millions of years), and the tunnels are what got left behind.

The Terror

The mines are now unkempt, unpatrolled and unsafe. As far as legends go, ancient cults and creatures patrol the depths. Spirits dwell in the infinite shadows, and if one wanders deep enough, and survives, they may even enter Hades itself. As far as reality goes, those legends can take a back seat. The tunnels stretch for close to 600 kilometers throughout the Parisian underground, and most of them are unmapped. Saying it is easy to get lost is an understatement. It is nearly impossible not to get lost. Many parts of the catacombs are hundreds of feet below street level. Some hallways are flooded, or are so narrow you have to crawl through them. There are holes that drop hundreds of feet, and manholes that are unreachable, luring unwary urban explorers in with false promises of freedom. The infinite underground maze absorbs sound, mutes it, making it unlikely you will hear somebody yelling for help, even if they are not far away. Or, worse yet, making it unlikely somebody will hear you. Thousands of human bones litter the tunnels, due to overcrowding in many of Paris’ cemeteries. Weird paintings adorn the walls. Are they ancient? Are they new? Are they warnings? Or pleas for help? If you have claustrophobia, you will want to avoid the mines at all costs. If you don’t have claustrophobia, you probably will after a trip through the mines. Bring plenty of batteries, backup flashlights, clean water, a friend, and say a prayer before entering the mines of Paris. You will need them all.

History of Halloween

Halloween is a holiday celebrated on the night of October 31.  The word Halloween is a shortening of All Hallows’ Evening also known as Hallowe'en or All Hallows' Eve.

Traditional activities include trick-or-treating, bonfires, costume parties, visiting "haunted houses" and carving jack-o-lanterns. Irish and Scottish immigrants carried versions of the tradition to North America in the nineteenth century. Other western countries embraced the holiday in the late twentieth century including Ireland, the United States, Canada, Puerto Rico and the United Kingdom as well as of Australia and New Zealand. Halloween has its origins in the ancient Celtic festival known as Samhain (pronounced "sah-win").
The festival of Samhain is a celebration of the end of the harvest season in Gaelic culture. Samhain was a time used by the ancient pagans to take stock of supplies and prepare for winter. The ancient Gaels believed that on October 31, the boundaries between the worlds of the living and the dead overlapped and the deceased would come back to life and cause havoc such as sickness or damaged crops.
The festival would frequently involve bonfires. It is believed that the fires attracted insects to the area which attracted bats to the area. These are additional attributes of the history of Halloween.
Masks and costumes were worn in an attempt to mimic the evil spirits or appease them.
Trick-or-treating, is an activity for children on or around Halloween in which they proceed from house to house in costumes, asking for treats such as confectionery with the question, "Trick or treat?" The "trick" part of "trick or treat" is a threat to play a trick on the homeowner or his property if no treat is given. Trick-or-treating is one of the main traditions of Halloween. It has become socially expected that if one lives in a neighborhood with children one should purchase treats in preparation for trick-or-treaters.
The history of Halloween has evolved.  The activity is popular in the United States, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Canada, and due to increased American cultural influence in recent years, imported through exposure to US television and other media, trick-or-treating has started to occur among children in many parts of Europe, and in the Saudi Aramco camps of Dhahran, Akaria compounds and Ras Tanura in Saudi Arabia. The most significant growth and resistance is in the United Kingdom, where the police have threatened to prosecute parents who allow their children to carry out the "trick" element. In continental Europe, where the commerce-driven importation of Halloween is seen with more skepticism, numerous destructive or illegal "tricks" and police warnings have further raised suspicion about this game and Halloween in general.
In Ohio, Iowa, and Massachusetts, the night designated for Trick-or-treating is often referred to as Beggars Night.
Part of the history of Halloween  is Halloween costumes. The practice of dressing up in costumes and begging door to door for treats on holidays goes back to the Middle Ages, and includes Christmas wassailing. Trick-or-treating resembles the late medieval practice of "souling," when poor folk would go door to door on Hallowmas (November 1), receiving food in return for prayers for the dead on All Souls Day (November 2). It originated in Ireland and Britain, although similar practices for the souls of the dead were found as far south as Italy. Shakespeare mentions the practice in his comedy The Two Gentlemen of Verona (1593), when Speed accuses his master of "puling [whimpering, whining], like a beggar at Hallowmas."
Yet there is no evidence that souling was ever practiced in America, and trick-or-treating may have developed in America independent of any Irish or British antecedent. There is little primary Halloween history documentation of masking or costuming on Halloween — in Ireland, the UK, or America — before 1900. The earliest known reference to ritual begging on Halloween in English speaking North America occurs in 1911, when a newspaper in Kingston, Ontario, near the border of upstate New York, reported that it was normal for the smaller children to go street guising (see below) on Halloween between 6 and 7 p.m., visiting shops and neighbors to be rewarded with nuts and candies for their rhymes and songs. Another isolated reference appears, place unknown, in 1915, with a third reference in Chicago in 1920. The thousands of Halloween postcards produced between the turn of the 20th century and the 1920s commonly show children but do not depict trick-or-treating. Ruth Edna Kelley, in her 1919 history of the holiday, The Book of Hallowe'en, makes no mention of such a custom in the chapter "Hallowe'en in America." It does not seem to have become a widespread practice until the 1930s, with the earliest known uses in print of the term "trick or treat" appearing in 1934, and the first use in a national publication occurring in 1939. Thus, although a quarter million Scots-Irish immigrated to America between 1717 and 1770, the Irish Potato Famine brought almost a million immigrants in 1845–1849, and British and Irish immigration to America peaked in the 1880s, ritualized begging on Halloween was virtually unknown in America until generations later.

Trick-or-treating spread from the western United States eastward, stalled by sugar rationing that began in April 1942 during World War II and did not end until June 1947. Early national attention to trick-or-treating was given in October 1947 issues of the children's magazines Jack and Jill and Children's Activities, and by Halloween episodes of the network radio programs The Baby Snooks Show in 1946 and The Jack Benny Show and The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet in 1948. The custom had become firmly established in popular culture by 1952, when Walt Disney portrayed it in the cartoon Trick or Treat, Ozzie and Harriet were besieged by trick-or-treaters on an episode of their television show, and UNICEF first conducted a national campaign for children to raise funds for the charity while trick-or-treating.

Trick-or-treating on the prairie. Although some popular histories of Halloween have characterized trick-or-treating as an adult invention to re-channel Halloween activities away from vandalism, nothing in the historical record supports this theory. To the contrary, adults, as reported in newspapers from the mid-1930s to the mid-1950s, typically saw it as a form of extortion, with reactions ranging from bemused indulgence to anger. Likewise, as portrayed on radio shows, children would have to explain what trick-or-treating was to puzzled adults, and not the other way around. Sometimes even the children protested: for Halloween 1948, members of the Madison Square Boys Club in New York City carried a parade banner that read "American Boys Don't Beg."
A jack-o'-lantern (sometimes also spelled Jack O'Lantern) is typically a carved pumpkin. It is associated chiefly with the holiday Halloween. Typically the top is cut off, and the inside flesh then scooped out; an image, usually a monstrous face, is carved onto the outside surface, and the lid replaced. During the night, a candle is placed inside to illuminate the effect. The term is not particularly common outside North America, although the practice of carving lanterns for Halloween is.
In folklore, an old Irish folk tale tells of Jack, a lazy yet shrewd farmer who uses a cross to trap the Devil. One story says that Jack tricked the Devil into climbing an apple tree, and once he was up there Jack quickly placed crosses around the trunk or carved a cross into the bark, so that the Devil couldn't get down. Another myth says that Jack put a key in the Devil's pocket while he was suspended upside-down;
Another version of the myth says that Jack was getting chased by some villagers from whom he had stolen, when he met the Devil, who claimed it was time for him to die. However, the thief stalled his death by tempting the Devil with a chance to bedevil the church-going villagers chasing him. Jack told the Devil to turn into a coin with which he would pay for the stolen goods (the Devil could take on any shape he wanted); later, when the coin/Devil disappeared, the Christian villagers would fight over who had stolen it. The Devil agreed to this plan. He turned himself into a silver coin and jumped into Jack's wallet, only to find himself next to a cross Jack had also picked up in the village. Jack had closed the wallet tight, and the cross stripped the Devil of his powers; and so he was trapped. In both myths, Jack only lets the Devil go when he agrees never to take his soul. After a while the thief died, as all living things do. Of course, his life had been too sinful for Jack to go to heaven; however, the Devil had promised not to take his soul, and so he was barred from Hell as well. Jack now had nowhere to go. He asked how he would see where to go, as he had no light, and the Devil mockingly tossed him an ember that would never burn out from the flames of hell. Jack carved out one of his turnips (which was his favorite food), put the ember inside it, and began endlessly wandering the Earth for a resting place. He became known as "Jack of the Lantern", or Jack-o'-Lantern.
There are variations on the legend:
Some versions include a "wise and good man", or even God helping Jack to prevail over the Devil.
There are different versions of Jack's bargain with the Devil. Some variations say the deal was only temporary but the Devil, embarrassed and vengeful, refuses Jack entry to hell after Jack dies.
Jack is considered a greedy man and is not allowed into either heaven or hell, without any mention of the Devil.

Despite the colorful legends, the term jack-o'-lantern originally meant a night watchman, or man with a lantern, with the earliest known use in the mid-17th century; and later, meaning an ignis fatuus or will-o'-the-wisp. In Labrador and Newfoundland, both names "Jacky Lantern" and "Jack the Lantern" refer to the will-o'-the-wisp concept rather than the pumpkin carving aspect.

Halloween costumes are outfits worn on or around October 31, the day of Halloween. Halloween is a modern-day holiday originating in the Pagan Celtic holiday of Samhain (in Christian times, the eve of All Saints Day). Although popular histories of Halloween claim that the practice goes back to ancient celebrations of Samhain, in fact there is little primary documentation of masking or costuming on Halloween before the twentieth century. Costuming became popular for Halloween parties in America in the early 1900s, as often for adults as for children. The first mass-produced Halloween costumes appeared in stores in the 1930s when trick-or-treating was becoming popular in the United States.
What sets Halloween costumes apart from costumes for other celebrations or days of dressing up is that they are often designed to imitate supernatural and scary beings. Costumes are traditionally those of monsters such as vampires, ghosts, skeletons, witches, and devils. There are also costumes of pop culture figures like presidents, or film, television, and cartoon characters. Another popular trend is for women (and in some cases, men) to use Halloween as an excuse to wear particularly revealing costumes, showing off more skin than would be socially acceptable otherwise.

(Comeback) and (Bella and Scooby)

Comeback

How do I end this unplanned, self-imposed hiatus from my blog?

 

What exactly happened? Was it a bit of depression? Have I really been that busy - just as I have been constantly over the years of my blogging life - that I had trouble finding time to set out my thoughts? Am I at a standstill as to what direction I want to move with my blog? (Well, that latter has been a constant theme.)

 

The answer, I think, is all that.

 

I have made some real friends through my blogging. That is deeply appreciated. I miss the interaction when I'm not blogging. I appreciate those who check in on me when I'm not active on my blog. But sometimes I just have trouble getting going. Or maybe I sense a struggle to motivate myself to go on - with the blog, I mean, not with life.

 

Maybe I should do more posts on my life in general. You know, short, chatty little "letters from home" type of things. At least that way those of you who are curious would know what is going on with me. Maybe that should be my new blog format. (My fear is that it would bore you guys to tears.)

 

Believe me, I grope myself much, much more than I grope the elephant of life per se. But in a sense, I guess, to do one is to do the other. Can anyone be truly objective? We all put on our own unique spin on everything we experience.

 

I mentioned depression earlier. The changing of the seasons, especially from summer to autumn always brings a time of deep introspection for me. It starts well enough but always it seems tends toward melancholy. It really isn't deep enough into the season for that yet.

 

So I think it is just my life in general that has me down. It isn't going the direction I would like. I've lived by myself for a long time now, with no prospect of that changing. Somehow, for some reason I'm not really sure of, this is getting harder for me. Or maybe I should say it is becoming less pleasing to be alone all the time. Sometimes I'm glad I'm alone, though. So which is it? Depends on when you ask me.

 

The pressures of my job are beginning to take a real emotional toll on me. This modern trend of trying to get more and more done with fewer and fewer resources (read: aging, ill-maintained equipment and less people power), leads to a constant state of missed deadlines, unplanned overtime, and overall unsteadiness. I used to love my job, but now it is really getting to be a dreaded chore. That's not good. The contrast between my work life and my personal life is becoming too stark. Hopefully this will change if times get better and corporate purse strings loosen a bit, allowing for more help.

 

There is one more factor I should probably mention. I'm going through - and have been going through for some time now - a period of personal reassessment. In a sense I'm taking another look at my life. For some reason, especially in recent months, my mind has been flooded with vivid memories of things long forgotten. In some of my quieter moment, without warning, I will suddenly be seized with recollections of things long past. These are nothing less than vivid flashbacks. I recall thoughts I think I must have suppressed thinking about over the years. Some of these memories are quite painful and troubling. Yet I have to deal with them. They are a part of who I am. If I don't make peace with them, come to understand them, it can only continue my mental unrest. I think I've been seeing that with the explosion of dream activity that has troubled me for some time now. My mind has never been totally at ease and I suspect it never shall be.

 

Maybe I'm beginning to lose my grip on sanity. I've come to wonder about that. I don't know what that would look like from the inside. And I'm not at all certain I know what insanity looks like from the outside except maybe in extreme cases. Yet I suspect I'm just as sane as you or the next person. Maybe I'm just spending too much time alone, with my thoughts being centered within. Yet when I make the effort to go out and mingle I find myself longing for my time alone.

 

Anyway, so now for those who have wondered, this is where I've been and what I've been up to. I think I am ready to start blogging again and to make the journey more personal than ever before. Everyone seems to have a secret self. A self so personal and sacred that it is hard to draw out or allow to be drawn by others. I've seen glimpses of such in others in their less guarded moments. I'm aware of mine and aware of the efforts I make to keep mine hidden.

 

This isn't to say I'm willing to lay my secret self totally bare before all of you. Some things will always remain hidden in the shadows. Despite my best efforts some of those aspects of my secret self are hidden from me. But perhaps in sharing some of the things I'm willing to share my readers might get a glimpse of something of their own hidden selves. Maybe at least some of you will be encouraged to look deeper within. Maybe some of us have trod the same or similar pathways.

 

If this latest experiment with my blog fails, I guess then it will be time for me call it quits and do something else. 

Bella And Scooby

The above picture is one my ladyfriend took with her cell phone and then she sent it to me a while back. It's a picture of her wiener dog Bella and Bella's companion, Scooby.

 

I've written from time to time about my sweet little Bella, but Scooby is a recent addition and her entrance came about in this way. My ladyfriend's son and daughter-in-law had gotten Scooby as a puppy for their young son. Scooby is a mix of wiener dog and Chihuahua. He has a wiener dog-like body and tail, but his snoot is somewhat shorter, has the longer Chihuahua legs, but his ears are more similar to a wiener dog except not quite as hound dog long and floppy. In short he is cute as a bug's ear and sweet to boot. Bella is black and tan; Scooby, chocolate and tan. Unfortunately my ladyfriend's son and daughter-in-law separated. My ladyfriend took on Scooby, who had always had a delightful relationship with Bella anyway. And now they are inseparable.

 

What a difference Scooby made in Bella's life! Now it is no longer a problem leaving home without her. She has Scooby. They eat, play, sleep, just do everything together. Bella has been "fixed" so there is no hanky-panky, but they are quite affectionate with each other. Bella is a licker (Scooby, a nuzzler) and she "kisses" Scooby constantly and cleans his ears often. They are so cute together. Plus, they seem genuinely content with each other's company.

 

Now about the picture. I look at it often and it gives me a warm feeling. The two of them side-by-side staring out at the world they face together. (A dog's life and challenges, of course, are quite different from a human's, especially with dogs as spoiled as those two are!)

 

It represents an ideal that was instilled in me from my earliest days: you go through life with a mate. Okay, within the narrow confines of my childhood religion, with someone of the opposite sex. But I'm not so narrow of mind as an adult. Still there is that emotional pull for finding that soul-mate or significant other. You know.

 

Honestly, I can see me sitting on the front porch side-by-side with the person I love. (Of course I can also see me coming into a large sum of money and retiring to live out the rest of my years in ease!) I'm just not cut out to be a player or a polyamorist. So I have that ideal.

 

As for my ladyfriend, there is no real chance we can ever be more than the close friends we are. She raised her three sons (who are now grown) mostly by herself and their lives are so intertwined that there is no place for me in that tight circle. Plus her aging mother is becoming ever more dependent on her. I'm something of an outsider who waits for the rare (increasingly rare, I might add) occasion that she and I can be together for a little while (but we talk on the phone every single day).

 

This isn't a perfect state of affairs, but I've been in worse. It certainly falls well short of that ideal, that Bella and Scooby charmed dog's life. Most of the time I sit on my porch alone and look out on the world by myself. Freedom has its advantages, but occasional pangs of loneliness can distort that at times. Besides, we have to be careful, I think, about that "way things are supposed to be" type of thinking.

 

But I love that picture!

With Halloween Approaching, Some Tales From The Crypt

We had our first real cold snap where I live this weekend. The changing and falling of the leaves will receive a boost. Certainly it's truly starting to feel like fall, and early fall always reminds me of Halloween. My ex-wife's second favorite holiday (right behind Christmas) was Halloween. She always made much of it. In fact, as the day - or rather the evening - hastens toward us, I thought about her this weekend.

 

She and I were high school sweethearts. How well I recall those long, long phone calls when I was sixteen and she was a year younger. She was something of Goth, loved to wear black, loved horror, (as I said loved Halloween, a celebration of the day when the veil between the living and the dead was thought of as being at its thinnest), and oddly enough her stepfather worked at a local monument company and his main job was placing monuments and stones on graves. She had a whole bag full of weird and eerie tales he had shared with her.

 

I remember seeing her stepfather being interviewed on the news one evening. He and a coworker had arrived at one of our many rural and not-so-frequently-visited cemeteries for the purpose of placing a gravestone. However, they soon came upon two male corpses lying on the ground. One of them, he told me later when I spoke to him about it, was lying in a position indicative that he was running when he fell dead. My sweetheart's stepfather went down the road to a payphone to call the police.

 

He: "Hey, I came to the so-and-so cemetery and I've found some dead people."

 

Police: "Yeah, sure. Now quit playing with the phone."

 

He: "No, really, And these people aren't supposed to be dead."

 

Evidently he had a bit of a problem convincing them he was serious, but finally he got them to come investigate. Her stepfather stayed during the preliminary investigation and spoke to a news crew who had heard the call on the police radio. It seems that was a drug deal that turned bad. The two victims had been shot, one as he was attempting to flee. The police found several hundreds of dollars hidden in the belt of one of the dead.

 

"Now if I had known that was there..." Her stepfather told me.

 

She told me another story that I found interesting when I was teenager. Horror buff that I've always been, of course I have the morbid curiosity that goes with it. And it so happens that one time in the course of his work her stepfather had the opportunity to take part in an exhumation for the purpose of relocating the grave to another cemetery. A young lady had been deceased for twenty or so years and she was being dug up. My sweetheart's stepfather was talking the deceased's father who was attending the exhumation. The casket was taken to a maintenance shed where the funeral director and the workers changed coffins for the body for the trip to the new grave. Her stepfather recalled that the lady's father observed that apart from a sinking of the forehead, she looked just as she had the day she was buried some twenty years before. I found that interesting, I confess, having wondered about the rate of decay down there in the grave. Her stepfather added that the stench of rot was so intense that he and the workers burned their clothes afterwards.

 

But perhaps my favorite story that she used to relate to me - and we spoke about it often during late night/early morning phone calls when it was dark and cold - concerned some devil worshippers her stepfather had encountered on Lookout Mountain. This was occurring, he said, at a location known to locals as Arrow Rock. (The Native American influence is strong in these parts.)

 

This was at a time in my life when even though I had began to investigate problems I had with my childhood religious beliefs, I still attended church and certainly believed in both a personal God and Devil. It got no more horrifying to me than thinking of people devoting themselves to evil. And, mind you, this was a few years before the Satanism panic of the 80s.

 

When I got older I tried to investigate the devil-worship stories. I never found Arrow Rock. It must have been an informal name. There was no newspaper accounts that I have yet been able to discover. The only source I could find was my sweetheart's stepfather, now deceased. But he always seemed trustworthy in his tales. No matter, I suppose. These stories provided my young adulthood with a touch of creepiness that I've not forgotten.

 

Halloween was off-limits to my brothers and me when we were young. It was religious thing. Our Pentecostal faith with its active demonism ruled out such things. It was only after my parents' divorce and we left Pentecostalism that my mom eased up on this and we were able to take part in the fun. I remember being a skeleton the first time I went trick-or-treating.   

 

Now I get accused of being a Goth because of my habit of dressing in black, my interest in thanatology. all things dark and creepy, and, of course, Halloween. Sometimes I think my ex-wife is the only one who ever really understood me.