CHILLS

I was sitting alone earlier this evening wondering what to blog about, and the things that gave me chills over the years starting coming to mind. I shall tell you about them here so you can share in the nightmares I may be setting up for later this night.

My grandparents lived in what was once a Colonial home. At he top of the central stairway was a door which used to be the outside door on the north side of the house. It had a single panel on the bottom and 20 panes of glass. One of the glass panes was broken. It had a large, wicked hole a person could put their hand through. I hated that hole, and had nightmares about it when I was young. My grandpa was not fond of me, so the glass went year after year unrepaired. Many years later, my grandmother disclosed that my father had broken it when he was a child, and it had remained that way for half a century! I replaced the glass and never had the nightmare again.

I can’t explain exactly why a broken window should be so scary, but it was. How do I know I’m not just crazy? Because filmmakers use these kinds of “scary” images to give us the creeps in their films—even though it would be hard to define why certain things make our spines tingle. I present some examples:

Anna Mobley, in the movie “Ghost Story,” when she is standing on the deck facing the ocean and says “I want to see the life run out of you.”

The ordinary Honeywell thermostat in “The Sixth Sense” which drops fifteen degrees just before the ghosts appear.

Jack Nicholson in “The Shining,” leering at the model of the hedge maze in the Overlook Hotel… and seeing his wife and child running around in the model.

The bleeding walls of “The Amityville Horror.”

The bullet holes in the swimming pool of the “Ghost Ship.”

Carrie White’s hand reaching up from the pit where her house once stood, which is part of the sole survivor’s dream at the end of the film, “Carrie.”

The 1930s electrical fixtures in the Dark Castle remake of “The House on Haunted Hill.” Even the intro to the movie is a creep-out.

The images collected in the deadly videotape, central to “The Ring.”

Are there oddball things like this that give you chills?

THE HAUNTED MALIBU

Author D.S. Dollman (<-- the picture is not her!) of the online group JustGhostStories found a recent haunted house article in the Great Falls Tribune apparently related to a 1975 disappearance of a woman who lived there.

http://http://www.greatfallstribune.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070906/NEWS01/70906003/1002AID=/20070906/NEWS01/70906003/1002

What is really interesting is the comments. Readers were upset that the Tribune was so callous in sharing this “un-news-worthy” item so soon after the disappearance. (32 years ago!) This brought to mind how our society goes so overboard to make sure there won’t be any lingering memories.

We completely remodeled Columbine High School in Littleton, CO. They bulldozed the Luby’s in Killeen, Texas because of the shootings there. I remember a McDonalds that met a similar fate, but I don’t remember where it was. And more recently, an Amish community built a whole new school rather than fix the bullet holes in the old one.

I remember they didn’t tear down the clock tower at the University of Texas after the shootings there. In fact, I’m a bit fuzzy about when we started razing every building where a mass murder occurs, but I know a place where a most grizzly crime took place that still exists, and I’ve been in it many times!

First, let me warn you. The murders were BAD. Do not read the rest of this post if you are eating.

There is a building on the Southwest Freeway at Westpark in Houston we all know as the Haunted Malibu. It was a Malibu Gran Prix family fun center, with a go-cart track and an arcade. One night in the early ‘80s, just after closing, three disgruntled employees entered the building and murdered everybody. All five victims were mutilated. One 19-year-old, who tried to hide in the bathroom, had a 12-inch knife twisted into his brain like a corkscrew. (Don’t say I didn’t warn you!) The “gentleman” pictured above was found guilty of this murder.

If you look this up on Wikipedia, it says the place was shuttered because of the murders, but not so. After a short while, the center reopened. My Scouts went there many times after washing cars on Saturdays, between 1986 and 1993. When we had someone with us that didn’t know about the murders, we would watch them use the restroom. Often they came out and said something like: “What’s up with that bathroom! I can’t go with somebody watching me!” I swear, from personal experience, that no one is ever alone in that bathroom, and the sensation is most uncomfortable.

The building was a car dealership for awhile, but now it stands abandoned and forlorn, a canvas for gangs to post graffiti on.

What do we accomplish when we destroy a place where ghosts remain? Does it hurt the ghosts? Obviously tearing down the scene of the crime doesn’t satisfy a spirit’s unfinished business, so what becomes of them?

TERROR AT SHEOLL CREEK

This bridge in the abandoned Boy Scout Camp Bill Stark, in far east Texas, was the inspiration for my most-requested ghost story (save those requests for The Forbidden Tale). The photo was taken in 1982 after a frightening lightning storm dropped 12 inches of rain in three hours. Normally, the bridge is about 12-15 feet above the creek.

The name of the creek is actually “Cow Creek.” Not very imaginative. So I renamed it Sheoll Creek and built the story around it. If you’re a student of the Bible and you know the story, you’ll know why I named it Sheoll Creek. A spookier place is hard to come by. Parts of the camp are swampy, so it’s foggy at night, with cicadas and bullfrogs covering the sounds of the creatures that stalk the place at night. The buildings are going to ruin, dark with windows broken and screens clawed apart. Feral cats and mangy dogs roam freely. The swimming pool and what used to be the cinder-block shower rooms are riddled with large, ugly cracks.

After telling the story one typical night, a 23-year-old assistant Scoutmaster pronounced it hogwash. So the Scouts made a bet with him that he would not go down to the bridge alone. His manhood challenged, he strode off toward the creek. The Scouts shadowed him some distance behind. The young leader made it to the overgrown parade ground, about a hundred yards shy of the bridge—and there found he had not the courage to go farther!

“The Sheoll Creek Incident” is one of ten harrowing stories in the upcoming book HAUNTED CAMPS: The Campfire Stories of Scoutmaster B.C. Justice, available in September of 2007.