Living with Ghosts

I like a good ghost story. Not a gory tale of zombies and slashers, but an old fashioned ghost story passed down through generations of storytellers. Chicago has her share of resident ghosts, the Lady in White, The Italian Bride, the Devil Baby and back in the late 90's Chicago ghosts were popular due to the publication of Chicago Haunts: Ghostlore of the Windy City by Ursula Bielski. I saw Ms. Bielski speak at a few Chicago libraries back then around Halloween and learned a few ghost stories I hadn't heard before. Many of the stories she has in her book are well known to Chicagoans and always fun to revisit.

In 1995 a friend and I spent a night or 2 exploring one of the most haunted (supposedly) locations in the country, Bachelors Grove Cemetery. This small hard to find abandoned cemetery has been the subject of more than a few TV spots on hauntings, included in many books on ghosts and paranormal activity and regularly included on people's creepiest destinations list. Now in 1995 there were no websites about hauntings or Google maps directions to the cemetery. We didn't have cell phones connected to the Internet or tiny cameras in our pockets. You could only find the cemetery if you had heard about it and went with someone who could find it. So we went, I didn't see any ghosts or feel anything brush by my shoulder. But it was a strange place. Now there is so much online about the cemetery, videos, supposed ghost pictures etc, you really don't even need to venture out of the house to find out more about it.

I couldn't sleep 1 night this week so I got up, made myself a cup of tea and turned on the TV to watch the news. Instead I found one of those ghost hunting shows and watched for awhile until I realized how scripted it was and turned it off. It got me to thinking though. Not so much about ghosts (which I fully believe in by the way), but about what people leave behind when they leave a place. Is there an energy a person leaves behind in a location where they loved deeply or met a tragic end? And what about when someone just leaves, what is left behind?

When you've left a place, you leave your routine, your things might remain in your former residence, and then...what happens to the person you left behind? I imagine it like Miss Havisham, the tragic jilted bride from Charles Dickens Great Expectations. After being left on her wedding day, she stops all the clocks, never removes her wedding dress and retreats into her mansion. She lives with the ghosts of memories. I suppose that when a relationship ends either through a breakup or a death something is always left behind. If someone remains in the home, with the personal possessions and the routine, and still visits the same restaurants and takes the same vacations, it's like living with ghosts.

Monday List-#6

Because yesterday was Halloween and because it's been nothing but scary movies, ghost hunters and scariest location television shows on for the past month. Here are the 5 scariest movies I've seen so far.

1. The Shining. "Come play with us Danny. Forever and ever and ever." Those bloody dead ghost sisters scarred me for life.
2. Signs. Sure this movie is strange and stars the even stranger Mel Gibson, but geez those aliens freaked me out. Still have nightmares. Shiver.
3. Nightmare on Elm Street. The 1984 original of course with a very young Johnny Depp.
4. Children of the Corn. Another freaky movie from 1984. Every teenager who saw this movie in the 80's can quote it, name the scary kids and still avoids cornfields.
5. Friday the 13th. Camp counselors, isolation, murder. The 1980 original spawned 11 sequels. This movie terrified me. I only saw it once. I will never watch it again.

What movies are on your list?

Too Scary for Children?

I've recently read that there has been some controversy concerning Spike Jonze's adaption of Maurice Sendak's classic children's book, Where the Wild Things Are. Apparently some parents are disturbed that the film is "too dark", "too scary" and "not suitable for children". Hmmmmmmm.

As a parent, I read Where the Wild Things Are over and over to my son when he was a small child. We loved the monsters, Max in his wolf costume and following Max's journey to the land of the Wild Things and back home again. It was and remains a favorite book. I haven't seen the Spike Jonze film yet but am anxious too, I want to see for myself how "dark" he made a book that wasn't very light to begin with.

I've been wondering what I would do if my son was still small enough to be scared by a film based after all on monsters and a little boy taking a journey by himself. Would I see the film first? Would I ask other parents or friends who have seen it what they thought? Would I reread the book with my son first and then explain the movie is someone taking the book and making it into something you can watch, like a dream? I would definitely ask my son if he was even interested in seeing the film. He was never a child who scared easily, might have been all those Grimm's fairy tales I read him.

Maybe it is the scariness of certain books that appeals to children and adults alike. Fairy tales like those collected and/or written by the Grimm's are certainly not fluffy Disney tampered tales. There is as much death, wickedness and sadness in fairy tales as any Greek legend but fairy tales somehow retain that child friendly feel about them. Orphans, step mothers who want you dead, malicious forest animals, broken hearts and monsters are all common and sometimes there is no happy ending. (Have you read the original Hans Christian Anderson book The Little Mermaid?) But still children and parents alike return to these stories generation after generation.

As a child my favorite books besides my cherished and dogeared collection of Grimm's Fairy Tales were books by rather "gothic" children's authors like Roald Dahl, or by cartoonist Charles Addams. I loved the conflict between good and evil, the triumph of bravery over cowardice and the reality that sometimes there just isn't a happy ending. To this day I can still recite from memory a dark children's poem I found in a book of nursery rhymes about 2 siblings who get lost in the forest and guess what...they die. The nursery rhyme book, yes a NURSERY rhyme book had a drawing of the children dead in the forest too. Dark, hell ya. Do I still have the book, hell ya.

So who is more disturbed by the "darkness", parents or children? And what does the author of Where the Wild Things Are Maurice Rendak have to say to those disturbed parents? Well you can read his response here.

Library Build on Bodies

Well if this isn't a poltergeist situation waiting to happen. Creepy.
http://www.pjstar.com/news/x1594716021/Body-count-shocks-library-panel

Flash Back Friday #8

Because it's summer and you're getting back in the water. And because this movie still scares the sh*t out of me.
Enjoy the original trailer from Steven Spielberg's Jaws.