Ghost story

So, as Halloween approaches, I find myself writing a Ghost story.

One of our family "legends" is that when I was young - perhaps as young as three, and certainly no older than five - my parents went to visit friends or relatives and sent me off to play in another part of the house. The adults hadn't been chatting long before they heard a pattern of banging sounds and short shrieks coming from my general direction.

When my mother went to investigate, she found that I had been stepping into a closet, shutting the door behind me, and standing there until a primal fear of the dark or my hyperactive imagination (or both) had built up enough that I was terrified. I would then scream and slam the door of the closet open again. I was doing this over and over again.

When my mother asked, "What on earth are you doing?" my answer had been, "I'm scaring myself."

By the time I was around 10, having suffered plenty of nightmares and anxieties thanks to my imagination, the fear thing had lost most of its glamour, and to this day, I seldom intentionally chose scary movies to watch or books to read (Donnie Darko was an exception).

But I'm enjoying writing this story all the same. We'll see what comes of it. Maybe if it unsettles me, it'll unsettle others. One can only hope.