triskaidekaphobia
Who’s got a scary story?
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Don’t be scared kiddies, ’twas only the Ghost of Greenfield.
~tigtog
tigtog, I was hoping to show some clips from a couple of scary Aussie films from the 70s…but I couldn’t find any of:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wake_in_Fright
(Wake in Fright: Directed by Ted Kotcheff - 1971)
Or:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Summerfield_%28film%29
(Summerfield: directed by Ken Hannam - 1977)
I’ve always wanted to see both. But they reckon copies are as rare as hen’s teeth. Or maybe I just don’t get out enuff these days…:)
What happened to ‘triskadecaphobia’? Where did ‘triskaidephobia’ come from? Any entomol…etymol…word experts have an idea?
I watched Child’s Play 4 - Bride of Chucky [tagline: Chucky gets lucky!] Last week.
Not scary, but pretty funny at times.
Tonight I’m going to a superstition-themed party, but I can’t think of a cheap and easy constume. I can has sujeschuns?
Merc, you’re quite right, I left out a syllable! Although I will use the Attic ‘k’ rather than a ‘c’.
Ooh, I was just reminded of a word previously encountered in passing: paraskevidekatriaphobia, which is the specific fear of Friday the 13th.
urbanlegends.about.com
Tuesday’s a re much scarier than Fridays. Regardless of the date.
&*%## PS keyboards.
Tuesdays are much scarier than Fridays. Just leave it at that.
A tinfoil-lined colander to wear on your head?
“Tonight I’m going to a superstition-themed party”
Not like this one I hope FDB?:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tN5V8cQ2DAk&feature=related
(The Lottery (part 1 of 2)…good old Shirley Jackson…superstition gone mad)
My youngest son was born on Friday the 13th (a source of constant cruel jibes from the rest of the family, as you can imagine), but surprisingly he doesn’t suffer from paraskevidekatriaphobia.
I’m not going outside today. But then again, I don’t go out most days.
Cujo is scary. I only ever managed to watch it to the end on commercial TV.
Frankenstein and Dracula are not scary.
Another suggestion for FDB - stick shreds of aluminium foil all over yourself and go as a shattered mirror.
Wht, n dsmvwlmnt?
N, cldnt b bthrd. t ws nly Grnfld’s Ghst, ftr ll.
FDB - a curse on you if you don’t go dressed up like Stevie Wonder
Cheers TT!
How did you know I only have time for foil? 2 weeks back, I chucked a sickie expressly to spend all day on my Robot Ball costume. The effort was sorta worthwhile, but I had to hedge my bets to be able to play synth, guitar, electro-drums and vocoder, and in the end compromised all four pretty badly. Tinfoil on my head it is!
Mysterious mind reading powers. How else?
This is the most frightening story I’ve read today…filled w/ horror, deformities, mutations:
http://www.antiwar.com/ips/fadhily.php?articleid=12984
Oh, ok, ok, - You wanna really scary story?
I once very nearly married a Young Liberal.
I couldnt do it. After staring at it hard and then vomiting quietly one day at the thought of the wedding vows, I split quietly, so It wouldnt notice, like. It did notice, but thats another story.
But I am no coward, I adjure you. It was unearthly. It spake with daemons and ghouls. Worse. It wore young Liberal suits and had young Liberal haircuts. It shouted at Young Liberal conventions and hung out with Young Liberal Presidents. It liked to do cheese platters at The Treasury. It was an unholy hell of branch fundraisers and Dame Pattie Menzies dinners. Who the fuck survives these things intact? One day I looked up at the wallpaper and said: One of us has to go. It was me of course. (yes, yes thats Wilde that spake that one).
Im pretty sure that It would be dead by now if I married It. Smothered quietly by a pillow in its own bed - probably after a night of a once too often rendition of God save the Queen at its bedside before it turned in. Monster. I would have got off. Insanity by way of exceedingly egregious Young Liberalness.
Its just like someone walked over your grave isnt it? Its so damn gothic. Its like, a phantasmagoria of the nursery, or something wierd like that.
Ive just been dying to confess that. Dying. I feel like Wilkie Collins. I should write a book actually. The Woman in Blue (Ribbon).
youngliberalphobia - the fear of young liberals.
Here’s a really scary story…I bet a certain preacher knows this one:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuskegee_experiment
That’s scary, Socket Puppet.
I can give you a true ghost story, once removed, not perhaps all that scary but I can’t explain it.
When I was at boarding school we had to do chores from time to on Friday afternoons and Saturday mornings, which included working in the gardens of three official residences on campus. Once I was assigned to the Chaplain’s place. Over afternoon tea the Chaplain’s wife told us a story I’ve never forgotten.
She was a very grounded person, you might almost say plebeian, who had practiced as a nurse. On one occasion she was home-nursing a very sick woman and sat by her bed through the night. Suddenly this old man appeared, dressed in tails, who walked around the bed, hung around for a while and disappeared. The problem was that the bed was against the wall.
When she told the people she was working for next morning, they said, “Oh, that’s old ’so-and-so’. He often turns up!”
I have no doubt at all that she experienced what she experienced and reported accurately on what the other people said. Even if she was dreaming, it’s intriguing.
I have a friend to whom that experience would seem ordinary. This friend has had a near death experience when in a coma and unlike Kerry Packer is very sure there is something on the other side. He told me that he had recently had a conversation with a friend, a Catholic nun who had died some years ago. That could of course be a dream, or something that entered his mind during meditation, which he practices. But it’s one story of heaps that make for him the world of the spirit as real as anything else. I’m here to tell you he’s as sane as anyone living.
There’s more, with other people.
I used to call myself an agnostic, but reflecting on these things I don’t know what to say now. I think we take our experience as it comes, try to find meaning in it, but no more meaning than the experience will bear.
Does anyone else have any ghost stories?
Pavlov’s Cat [15]:
I’ve shovelled up what I could of your vowels and put them in a bucket over there ….
Everyone:
666? [or NRN KSR in the alphabet of your choice].
“Does anyone else have any ghost stories?”
Not me. I suffer from spectrophobia.
Good band or blog name though, you gotta admit.
Isn’t that a fear of rainbows?
On the other hand, it was very like Kerry Packer to take it for granted that if there was something on the other side, then he would automatically be granted the privilege of experiencing it.
Y’know I do have a good ghost story after all.
Allow me if you will to take you back to that apparently tranquil year of 19– where I was comfortably ensconced in my chambers, anticipating the appearance of Mrs Hamilton with one of her famed cold collations and exchanging observations with an imaginary interlocutor about the unseasonable autumn gale, a freak occurrence that rattled the casements like a snare drum constructed by the devil himself from the whitening bones that littered a certain valley leading onto the dread cold Taklamakan Desert plateau, a memory that still haunts to me to this very day, one that suddenly swept up the stairs to abruptly fling Mrs Hamilton’s skirt over her head to reveal a surprising purchase of close-fitting and luridly-rendered lycra undergarments apparently endorsed by some renowned contemporary velocipidist, when suddenly he started up and made for the door, stepping across the debris now spread across the carpet as a sad testament to Mrs Hamilton’s inability to cope with both the demands of gravity and sudden inexplicable and localised meteorological disturbances, pausing only at the vestibule to wring my hand, look me earnestly in the eye and mutter something about how even Henry James would not have crapped on so much with his opening sentence, and then intensely enjoined me to make my acquaintance of “modern” masters of speculative fiction like HP Lovecraft, Clark Ashton Smith, H H Merrit and Henry Kissinger, before taking his leave, with a slice of the good Mrs Hamilton’s home-smoked ham adhering to his boot heel.
I brooded upon his parting words over a port and a pipe of good shag before finally taking them to heart. So all I can reveal to you now is that what happened next was indescribable and unnamable.
Thank you for coming along. I’ll be autographing my latest bestseller shortly in the foyer. Along with a range of merchandise only otherwise available online. And yes we accept PayPal.
*snort*
I wonder if Mrs. Hamilton would’ve been happier growing organic veges…;) Tho one wonders how they will cope w/ the “localised meteorological disturbances” & perturbations in Murdoch space.
Well, I’ve got another ghost story and it happens to be true.
Once upon a time, long, long ago, when my wife and I were asleep one night we woke to a distinct tapping sound. We ran around the house looking for it and soon worked out that the sound was coming through a wall that separated the bedroom from the lounge room. So we went into the lounge, checked the stereo speakers. It wasn’t them. The sound was clearly coming through the wall from the bedroom. So back in the bedroom we decided the tapping sound was coming from a point about head high, inside the wall.
It’s a wooden house, built in 1935. Well built. There has never been a possum or other animal inside the ceiling. The wall would have a space inside it, but at that point the space would have been fully enclosed by the wall, lining and beams. Furthermore, there’s no animal I know that could have made the noise we heard.
When we identified the source of the tapping, which had been intermittent but quite urgent and persistent to that point, it stopped. There was nothing more to be done, so we went back to bed and slept soundly.
We never talked about it again for over 20 years until recently when I asked my wife whether she remembered the events of that night. She did, very clearly.
It was almost as though a restless spirit, once acknowledged, could rest again. I say “almost” because I don’t have a good explanation for what happened.
Spooky, Brian.
That has been my experience, Brian, and some of it has been quite disquieting. The older one gets the more of these one racks up, of course, and the less one knows what to think. Everyone I know who’s ever worked in a hospital, for example, is quite matter-of-fact about the near-death experiences of the ill and injured, and the hovering spirits of the newly dead.
I don’t believe in “ghosts” as they are usually conceived of but I have certainly had a few experiences for which there’s no commonplace rational explanation, most recently a couple of months ago when I went back to my small rural home town with my father and checked out the now-boarded-up 19th-century town well, which I’d never been near before and which, the closer I got to it, made me feel first scared and then ill. When I got back to the car my father said ‘What on earth is the matter, you’re as white as a sheet,’ and I said ‘That place is horrible, how many dead children are there down there?’ and he looked very grim and said ‘Just the one.’ A child the same age as he was, some time in the 1930s, had fallen 30 metres and landed on a ledge of limestone rock.
What I think is that there’s a great deal about time, space, and subjectivity/mind/soul/whatever that we don’t actually know yet.
Reckon that right about now, all you funk soul brothas oughta read C. McPherson’s “The Weir” if you haven’t read or watched it already.
Seriously, no disrespect meant here, but I couldn’t help wondering about this…
PC: “…he looked very grim and said ‘Just the one.’”
And how could he know for sure it was only the one?
Well let them rest, as Buckingham said to Gloucester…
Got a couple-three ghost stories of me own, ye unnerstan’, but I sure as SHIT ain’t tellin’ em casually…
Well, indeed. He meant ‘Just the one that he knew of’, but for my father there is usually no difference.
Considering that the well is part of an underground river and of one of the biggest limestone cave complexes in the Southern Hemisphere, and that they’ve found prehistoric macrofauna fossils in other parts of it, the odds are overwhelmingly in favour of there being more than one. Relatively few of them Europeans, though, I should think.
My thoughts exactly, PC.
j_p_z, I’m not going to tell some of the more wayout ones either. But here’s one that comes from a local newspaper report.
They were doing a special on ESP and such and related the story of twin sisters. One was a practicing school teacher, the other had worked for me in media production and had since gone on to a position in Corrective Services where she was supervising attempts to rehabilitate prisoners. She is one of the most grounded and professionally competent people I’ve known.
The story was that the teacher sister was in Tasmania for a visit and while there had a severe toothache, bad enough to get emergency treatment.
The sister I know in Brisbane also had an excruciating toothache at exactly the same time, but her teeth were healthy.
The article ended with some university psychologist saying that on examination all these stories had commonsense rational explanations. What, I wonder, would his explanation be for that one? He’d probably argue coincidence, but why would the dentally healthy person have pain at all, let alone at that time? What are the odds of coincidence?
I fully expect that these phenomena will be found to have a physical explanation. There is a phenomenon in physics where two particles joined together are altered in some way. Later when they are separated, if you then alter one, the other alters also no matter how far it is physically removed. When we have an explanation for that, as well as understand dark matter and dark energy, we might understand a lot of things that now seem extraordinary.
Here’s my true story - one night when I was living in Brisbane with the first husband, I woke suddenly in the middle of the night because I had felt someone get into the bed in between us. I turned on the light and the husband freaked, as he’d woken at the same moment as I and thought the light came on by itself. We both saw the wisp of a shadow of a little boy, about ten, who’d run to stand in the corner of the room. He was scared and cold and lonely, and we were at a very, very happy point in our relationship. We told him it was OK to stay, but I never encountered him again. I hope he’s found somewhere warm and safe and peaceful.
A buddy & I were crossing a park after watching the Amityville Horror on…
well, let’s just say it was a nice trip home.
…when we decided to perch ourselves atop of a boulder & chomp on the leftovers from a visit to Harveys. We were slurpin’ & chompin’ merrily away when suddenly I felt the temperature drop, drastically. Got the shivers all over, hands went rigid & dropped the drink in the right one.
Thought I was hallucinatin’ or somethin’. Considerin’ the trip had been on a flat path I got to thinkin’
“this a strange occurrence for this late in the night”…
and as I tried to slip from the mega-rock to retrieve my drink, I came to the horrific realisation I was somewhat paralysed. It was then that I noticed my compatriot had also fallen silent. I was able to turn my head enough to see his eyes were bulging, bit of lettuce hangin’ like entrails from his mouth, his skin had taken on a sickly greenish hue. Tremblin’ was takin’ him like a lightnin’ storm rapes a house.
“F*ckin’ cold” I burped out. “mmm” he responded.
Then I got this feelin’ the somethin’ heavy, dense, threatenin’ was directly in front of us, just at the edge of the park…the expression of light from the lamps began to shrink. And there was a distinct rumblin’ sound that accompanied a shakin’ of the boulder.
“Not good” I blurted out. Heard him inhale like a wheezy old fella on his last breath.
Then it rushed at us…the invisible thing…pertubation in time & space…seemed to be battered for an eternity…mind & sense of self shrunk, diminished, almost fled permanently in the shrieking fear of the pregnant moment as it assailed us…then knocked us off our perch like a gale force wind.
Hit the ground, scrambled up ran…giggling…foolishly, inanely laughing like madmen escaped from the loony bin. Breathlessly:
“Bad sh*t man”…”yea”…we were out of there & on a bus by the time we looked into each other’s eyes.
“Quite a trip”…”Yea, that movie was f*cked up”.
Nothin’ said about the events in the park. Just a glint of amusement in the eyes, and bravado in the voice…tough guys…opposite each other, throwin’ out the bold & brave & cool signs on a bus, for all to see.
And a spot…deep inside those shrunken pupils…of terror. The first stage of the infection.
Later my genes adapted w/ the help of another trip…then came clarity…but it took awhile. Can still feel the burrower, lying dormant now. Remain AWAKE & I should be fine. EYES WIDE OPEN.
N’
The previous house I owned (built in the late 1920s) had a ghost. An old man, who wore quite old fashioned clothes, used to come late at night. For some reason, he always seemed very sad.
Could have been a dream, except several people saw him at different times, and without prompting (i.e. they saw him before being told of him.) Everyone who saw him always described him the same way.
Also, my cat (sadly now deceased at the fine old age of 21) used to rub up against the ghost’s legs and do figure-eights around his feet as if he was actually there, so we assumed she could see the ghost too.
I never believed in ghosts until I met this one.
6 years ago, I met my then-boyfriend (now-husband) who, when he saw the ghost (again unprompted), told him it was ok to rest now, and no one ever saw him again. The ghost, not the boyfriend, that is.
Zoe, great story. I also like the ghost-seeing cat, no surprises there. CATS CAN SEE THINGS WE CAN’T.
Re ESP and pain, isn’t it quite common for pregnant women’s twins, sisters and even husbands to have sympathetic labour pains, even when far away and not knowing what’s happening?
My thoughts on ESP took a new and mystified turn during the period some years ago when the two people I was closest to were in, respectively, New York and Antarctica and I started snapping wide awake out of a sound sleep three or four times a week. I finally worked out that I was waking up whenever one of them sent me an email in the middle of the night.
Well here’s my anecdotes:
Went down to Port Arthur and into one of the rooms that’s supposed to be haunted: nothing happened.
Went on a Ghost Walk tour of York with a man who said he got the places and the Seeing from his mum: nothing happened. A great way to wander around York, though. York is supposed to be the most haunted city in Europe.
Went on a Ghost Walk tour of Edinburgh, into rooms built under the arches of ancient bridges and into rooms in mews where people lived and died cheek-by-jowl and nothing happened. You get a drink of whisky at the end.
Went on the Ghost Bus tour of Dublin with the guide yarning away all over town. Nothing happened.
Story of my life: nothing happened.
Oh dear, what have I started?
The friend I mentioned who had had the near death experience told me that when he was young he had a girl-friend who was even more ‘gifted’ than he was in relation to the spirit world. To the point of disability.
They split up because being together just took them too far away from the ‘normal’ world. The Catholic nun who was a friend of his wanted him to become a Catholic. He said he had no problem with spirituality, but found any particular brand too constricting.
I met a ghost once on Macquarie Street at St Lucia, but it was a personal ghost so I’ll keep the particulars quiet!
A house in the street behind my place is said to be haunted, said, that is, by a friend of my flatmate’s who lived there back in the 70s. I’ll have to ask for the story.
My wife read my story & asked me what I meant by “Later my genes adapted w/ the help of another trip…then came clarity…but it took awhile.”
I replied w/ a smile:
“the journey thru that educational institution where I eventually found LOVE and JOINING bub…where I eventually found you…that, combined w/ the tools the education had provided me with that assisted me in WAKING UP”
As did the internet. And the GARDEN. And our HOME. And our animal friends. And close friends. And a man who taught me about FORGIVENESS of myself…& others(still working on that one…change is often a gradual process).
Then she got it, as she always does…her face lit up.
I’d met her at a party during my teaching diploma days…11 years after that initial trip to the movies.
I met her in 1990 when all had become confusing…I was a far more educated individual, was getting physically fit at the gym…had learnt much about healthy food…and the lives of others…& that was a GOOD thing.
But my life still felt infected w/ fear & anxiety based on post-traumatic-stress-disorder, guilt stemming far too often from brainwashing…or stupid acts made in the heat of the drinking moment, often the self-medicating moment…
And of course, a seemingly screwed up brain, neurological & mood chemistry…perception of the world wobbling…and feeling a little unsure of how to apply Uni-learnt skills & knowledge to career pathways…
And underlying them all, that sense of abandonment & rejection that can come w/ broken families, complex relationships, including marriage & divorce…and a feeling of no continuity/consistency/security…feeling like a tennis ball in a game of survival.
Like I said “it took awhile”…but her LOVE for me…tolerance of my UNIQUENESS & QUIRKS…and vica-versa…made a huge difference.
As did looking beyond the surface, whilst learning to love the surface…the totality of being (wasn’t Naked on the Inside, shown on SBS a wonderful, insightful doco?)…
And working together towards goals…& adapting…communicating…forgiving…using each others skills to the best of our ability…working as a team…a partnership…trying not to compete unless for fun or to enhance motivation…creating individually & together…sharing…& compromising…has brought me more peace…& clarity than ever before.
We also try to be fearless…whilst remembering that nothing is forever…or so it seems…& that ghost stories are more terrifying & less satisfying in the long run if told by those who put profit over spreading compassion, empathy & knowledge.
Some trips can really f*ck you up…some should be extended…& are worth the effort. They can start THE HEALING process. And keep the burrowing things at bay. Maybe oneday make humanity immune.
I sometimes wonder if that trip in 1979 to the cinema & the scary event that happened afterwards had something to do w/ an accident that I was involved in on an icy road a few months before…I sensed it…someone died, in fact a few, because of impetuous decisions/impatience (partially me, part him, part the driver), fate(?) & drinking grog at the wrong time (not me)…and a final year of high school love/crush triangle of obsession (me & two others, including him)
…& I’d dreamt of him & his fatal injuries the day after his passing- even tho I hadn’t seen him sprawled there in the snow - the injuries were confirmed later by those who saw his body in the hospital morgue. A palm reader grew pale & refused to read his hand a week or so before he was tragically killed when the truck hit the school bus.
I know, I was there.
She blamed me for his death because she could not accept his passing. She needed to have a cathartic act. She felt guilty and needed to finger point in order to distract and pass on her mood. She was suffering. We all were. And the media did what they do best. Distorted & divided…sensationally played up the love angle. Regardless of who suffered further due to their irresponsibility in the need to earn more bucks…to hook in the reader.
I think he’s at peace now. Or maybe I needed to be more at peace?
They were strange days indeed.
Of course a TRIP & The Amityville Horror were not going to bring good, positive things that night in THE PARK.
A HEALING movie would’ve been much better.
Other than on hallucinogens, DMT especially, I’ve not seen anything strictly out of the ordinary. My ex-girlfriend however, one night when I was driving us home, suddenly said “look out for cats”.
Apropos of nothing, never said it before or since.
That’s an odd thing to say, thought I, but sure… I’ll also look out for other cars, humans, cattle, rhinos…
Then turning the corner into her street, a black-and-white cat tears out right in front of us. I thought for a second I had hit it, and stopped but couldn’t see it anywhere, despite no nearby cover. It was gawn.
(Dorothy L. Sayers, The Nine Tailors)
Let’s not forget the cat which spooks Paulie in the last episode of the Sopranos:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Made_in_America_(The_Sopranos)
I hate wikipedia urls!
Here’s the link.