Spooky season, jump scares and whispers

I love spooky season. October has got to be my favorite month — cooler weather, cuter clothes, and you can wear a costume just to go get coffee! People will just think you have a party to go to, or you are dressing up for work. It’s not weird at all. Just be your freaky self.

I also love to go to haunted houses during spooky season. None of that Zach Bagans paranormal investigator shit, either.

I don’t think I believe in all of that ghost stuff, but I ain’t dumb enough to test that shit either. Going to a “haunted” place that is famous for paranormal activity is just asking for bad shit to happen.

I don’t need to believe in something to have a healthy fear of it. I don’t need a ghost to scare me; if I put myself in a spooky place, in the dark, then my mind will take over and fuck me up worse than any ghost ever could.

When we saw The Blair Witch Project in the theater, I convinced myself that I was seeing stuff in those long stretches of just a dark screen. I was seeing faces and demons.

My mind was scaring me more than the movie.

Don’t get me wrong, the movie, at that time, was creepy af. The marketing for that movie was stellar. At one point before the movie premiered, the whole world thought that the found footage stuff was true.

I fell for it hook, line and sinker. When I found out it was just a movie and saw the actors on a talk show, I was kind of disappointed. I know, I’m horrible.

I remember once having a dream that I was looking out of the window of the house we used to live in and seeing a lone zombie shuffling across our yard. This was in the early 2000s, before the oversaturation of zombie movies and tv shows. Back then, zombies freaked me the fuck out. The zombie in my dream turned his head and looked at me …

I woke up terrified and had to go look out that window to make sure that it was just a dream! It sounds so stupid now, but, at the time it, had me shooketh.

For the next few months, every time I walked past that window, I would check to make sure no one was out there. Then one day there WAS someone there, and I nearly screamed.

It was just the gas or electricity guy taking a reading from our meter, but he was in the same spot as the zombie in my dream, and he turned his head and looked at me in the same way. The look I gave back probably had that man thinking I was crazy.

For the record, I do not scare easily. In the years since, I think I have become so desensitized to scares, especially jump scares, that I wonder if there is something wrong with me. If we go to a haunted house, I am always the first in, first to walk into the dark unknown and — on the rare occasion that I get got — my reaction is always a few beats late.

We went to a haunted house attraction in Austin last week. It was pretty fun. My favorite jump scare was when we walked into a room that was lit up so you could only see the ceiling, so your eyes naturally look up. Immediately, the high ceiling dropped and looked like it was going to land on your head. We all threw our hands up to protect the money maker — only to realize it slammed to a stop way above our heads.

It was surprising and fun. It takes a lot to surprise me and my friends, but that simple gag was very effective. I was positive something had gone wrong, and I was about to get squashed.

When I was a kid, they had a stupid little ride at the Texas State Fair. You got in a small cart, and it took you through a “haunted house.” You drove by mannequins dressed as monsters, and, thanks to the magic of hydraulics, a few lunged forward at you as you passed them. Even as a kid I thought it was pretty lame.

But then, near the end of the ride, you’d go into a pitch-black room, and the front of an 18-wheeler truck would shine its headlights in your face as its obnoxiously loud horn blared.

It nearly scared the piss out of me. And it went from being lame and boring to fucking awesome in one second.

Every year that we went to the fair, I always made sure we rode that ride. Even knowing that jump scare horned-up truck was coming, I still jumped every single time. Oh, to be a simple minded, unjaded idiot kid again.

Sitting here trying to think of other times I was actually scared, I can remember one time so vividly. I was maybe 13 or 14 years old, and my best friends at the time — Adam and Matt — and I were bored. So we decided we were going to walk about half a mile away to an old, closed-down mortuary. Actually, we weren’t sure if it was a mortuary or what, but it was a creepy run-down building that everyone in the neighborhood had a spooky story about.

The day was overcast. It was a very gray day, but it was also humid and unseasonably warm. We got to the building and walked around it and were able to force a window open. We dared each other to be the first to go inside and eventually settled on rock-paper-scissoring to see who was going to be the “volunteer.” Matt won, and we hoisted him up and into the window. I went next, then Adam.

We were standing in a room with an old metal gurney on wheels. Everything had a blueish glow from the once bright white paint. There was some light from the windows, but most of the light came from the skylights in the hallway that were overgrown with vines.

It was fucking creepy.

We walked trough a few of the rooms and found nothing but empty space. Adam kept trying to scare us by slamming his fist into the walls near us or making creepy sounds. The weirdest thing for me was how cold it was inside the building — like really chilly.

Then, while we were all standing in the hallway, we heard whispering. I couldn’t tell you what was being said or where it was coming from, but we all agreed through our actions — running at full speed — that we had had enough of an adventure for that day.

We exited through that window Three Stooges-style — me first, no me, slap, shove, push — until we were free of that cold creepfest. We ran more than walked back to their house, and we laughed about which of us was the biggest pussy. We finally agreed it was Adam, since he was the first out of the window and hauled ass, never once looking back to see if his best friend or his brother made it out.

It’s funny, but we never felt the need to visit that place ever again. Stupid kids.

I miss the innocence of the things that used to scare me, because the things that truly terrify me now are things like Trump getting a second term or what will his followers do if he doesn’t win. Hell, what will they do if he does?!

That kind of stuff has me shaking in my high heeled boots. Y’all betta vote!

Remember to always love more, bitch less and be fabulous! XOXO, Cassie Nova