I thought I would throw out a little Halloween spirit tonight with this post.

I enjoy a good scare – plain and simple.  And I’m not talking about the kind of scare where somebody sneaks up behind you, or the kind of scare where you see a deer run in front of you as you’re driving;  I’m talking hold me mommy, I lost control of my bodily functions, sheer frightened.  There’s always been something fun about it for me that I suppose I can’t really explain.

Obviously since I am now a grown man, I don’t really get scared this way (at least, not nearly as often as I did growing up).  🙂   so I wanted to document some of the better scary moments I had back in the day…

Starting off with a light one – One scary thing I can remember is renting “Resident Evil” with Vanbergs on some random Friday night.  We rented that game, and holed up in our room all night long with no lights on taking turns playing through the game.  At the time, we were just terrified, but we had fun doing it…  The game played like a legit horror movie, and we psyched ourselves out by playing it in total darkness.  “Barry… where’s Barry??”.  Granted this one doesn’t make the greatest story to tell – you kind of had to be there, but it’s worth mentioning.  If you played resident evil, you probably know what I’m saying.

Now we’ll up the anty just a bit with this story – One time when I was in jr high, a group of friends and I were playing a “Ouija” board at like midnight.  This group went the whole 9 yards.  We had candles out, lights out, a brand new Ouija board, everything.  Mostly it was kind of boring, and I was thinking it was one of the dumbest things I’ve ever seen.  but then I distinctly remember one of the girls saying “please give us some kind of sign if anyone can hear us” – at which point the big candle next to her went out instantly and completely.  We turned the lights back on.

Finally, one of the scariest things I can remember – The story of Otis – We’ll begin with a background:
Growing up in Hart – one of the ‘town legends’ was that State Street gym was haunted by a man named Otis. I am unaware of his last name, and I’m not aware if this is true to any degree.   Anyway – St. Street gym was just ancient, it had a dingy basketball court with pale wood flooring, a grim looking theater stage with large retractable curtains, and back rooms with hallways that ran behind served as storage and locker rooms.  The large flourecent lights hummed loudly, and dark carpeting on the walls seemed to steal the light out of the room.  Even with a full crowd for junior high basketball games or school programs, it was an eerie place.

The story says that Otis was doing some roof work in the rafters of this gym, and somehow in a terrible accident he fell from the roof and died.

I’ve always thought this ‘could’ be true – because the basketball court floor had one spot where the wood flooring was different color.  On the court, about 10 feet in front of the drinking fountain, the wood was noticeably darker and textured differently.  I once laid down on that spot, and it was pretty much a direct shape and size as if somebody had fallen through the floor.  (Although, realistally it was probably cut up to replace some plumbing or something).

With that background, here’s one of the scariest moments I can remember.
After a basketball practice one night, there were a few of us hanging out in the gym shooting basketball.  As it got later into the evening, everyone started going home for the night – until finally there were only three of us left.   Lol – this is seriously so scary that I’m getting goosebumps writing about it.

Well, it got dark early (it was fall) so it was pretty dark outside by the time the last three of us headed into the locker room to change our clothes.  The lights were out, but you could make your way through the locker room by the light shining in from the court.  We were in the very back locker room….  The furthest away from the exit.  Just as we’re getting ready to start heading out of the gym, we hear a very loud “KLANG – KLANG – KLANG”  three distinct metal sounding bangs.  My heart fluttered a bit and the three of us looked at each other and shrugged it off.  But then we heard it again – “KLANG – KLANG – KLANG” the same sound.  At this point I was scared, but trying not to show it.  I zipped up my bag and we started walking out onto the court when we heard the same noise a third time.  This time it seemed much louder and much closer to us.  The frightened child in us overtook the rational young adult and we sprinted out of that gym like frightened school girls.

As we made our way outside, caught our breaths, and started to really think about it – we figured somebody had to be playing a joke.  There was only one entrance into that gym, and we just came out of it.  We decided we had to find out who was doing it.  One guy waited at the door while me and the third guy went in to check both locker rooms, the stage, and the seating.  We each went through one end of the gym and met back at the court, neither of us had found anybody inside.  Just as we start to make our way out, we hear the sound again – ‘KLANG…. KLANG….. KLANG…”.

I sprinted out of that gym, and all the way to my house…

So, with that type of feeling in mind I’m scouring google, netflix, and imdb for the scariest movies out there.  I’ve been queueing them all up in my Netflix.  But really, I struggle to find a ‘good’ scary movie.  I always come back to The Shining, Aliens, Saw (the only good one, imo), etc.

Newer movies almost always seem to miss the mark.  The Ring, house on haunted hill, movies like that have a great base but for me the endings just ruin the whole thing and make it cheesy.

Any scary movie ideas, readership?