October is for...

It seems that many people like to be safely scared. This is the only explanation I have for Horror movies, which I gave up watching as a pre-teen, when it quickly occurred to me that girls who have to walk about in the dark woods by themselves at night (when you live in the woods and have to go to the barn...)should not make it seem scarier by picturing masked men with chainsaws hiding behind each tree. When I was small, one job I had was to take dinner scraps out to Jeepers the rabbit in his hutch at the back of the lawn. The lawn was bordered by a small wood. When I got out to the hutch, already nervous, I spotted a pair of blue jeans behind a tree. There were legs in them, they were big. I screamed the whole way back to the house. Evidently, my father, a great one for fun, thought it might be a bit funny to jump out and scare me. I was scared before he jumped out, and I think he probably felt bad, because to me, it was not funny. My only explanation for his plan was that he was about 14 at the time (okay, maybe 30), and did not consult my mother. So, being scared, safely, or unsafely is not my thing. The Horror Walks and Haunted Houses advertised on the radio are of no interest, and baffle me completely. I do horror okay myself (just ask my kids). A local family has a penchant for Halloween, and one year, the kids wanted to go to their bonfire and haunted house party. I was not in the mood, so, decided to be a vampire. Like a real one. Scared the kids. Scared the adults. Didn't have to talk to anyone. Perfect. We've never been invited back.
We live in an old house, and I do get asked if it's haunted. My answer is "Probably". I mean, if you go in for that sort of thing, why wouldn't it be? I have a sister who claims to have a feeling for the dead, and she declares my barn too haunted to enter. Since she was not to be willingly found in the barn we had growing up, I wonder if it's the haunting, or the real and imminent threat of manure management that keeps her away. In any case, my barn probably has a lingering spirit. I just wish he could still manage manure himself. As for the house, well, when we first moved here, each morning when I got up, the bedside chest would have all the drawers open. I'd close them, and wonder what in the world my husband was hunting in the wee hours of the morning. Finally, I asked him "WHY do you have to leave the drawers on my bedside chest open?!" He was confused, lacked remorse and claimed to have no interest in my bedside drawers. I moved the room around shortly thereafter as the current position, combined with the angle of the floor meant we slept feet down, heads up. If you don't have an old house, you might not understand that there is NO plumb in an old house. There is no flat. If you put down a marble, you won't catch it again until it hits the opposite wall. My chest of drawers stayed shut in the new arrangement. Maybe it was just gravity?
And, we have a ghost cat. He lives under the floor. The first few years we were here, I blamed our house cat, Hallelujah for going under the house and meowing. I would call him and call him, because I thought he was stuck under there. He never came, but that was nothing new. He does not come like a dog. Eventually, I got annoyed enough that I blocked off the crawlspace. Darned if that cat found another way in, and would meow underneath the house. Oh well, he seems to thrive, maybe he just likes to do that. Then, one day, there was "Lu", drinking out of the water bowl in the kitchen, and "Rrrow".... from under the house. Hmmm. It isn't our cat. So, just another quirk of living here. Now if the ghost cat would just catch the fall mice that come in from the corn field when it gets cold.

The still alive "Lu"kitty.

If we do have a ghosts, they are happy. That's what I believe. They are happy the barn is full of animals, they are happy the house is full of kids. They are happy that I'm making pie with apples from the tree they planted. They're friendly. Like Casper. October may be for haunting, but do you have to be scared?