CREATURES OF THE NIGHT!
We have an obsession with things that scare us! Things that go bump in the night pique our interest. Most of my bizarre writing ideas strike me after the sun goes down. The topics irk me until I commit them to paper and you read the resulting horror….er.….humor! As a culture the interest in scary things has been heightened since the 1960’s. Rosemary’s Baby was the vehicle for that decade by which this dementia presented itself. The actress Mia Farrow played the trembling and naive victim of the evil one himself (and I don’t mean Woody Allen).
The Exorcist took it a step further with quite a visual depiction in the 1970’s. It also sent split pea soup stock into a tailspin. It might have done wonders for the chiropractic industry too. Too bad failing medical students still wanting to practice didn’t come up with the idea of being a witchdoctor sooner. Chiropractics use to be considered practicing something akin to voodoo medicine before becoming respectable. Who better to fix that 360 degree kink in Linda Blair’s neck than a chiropractor? On top of that ,our family pet wasn’t even allowed to walk on the carpet. When the character little innocent Meagan "let it leak" on the carpet in the movie and no one smacked or rubbed her nose in it, you knew you were in the presence of true evil!
Of course literary works were pervasive in our subconscious long before the 20th century. Terrifying writings included topics about vampires (Bram Stoker’s Dracula), the mystery of Jack the Ripper and those Dick and Jane books!
The fact that Italian families tend to pass on ridiculous superstitions also meant I was doomed to be haunted throughout my childhood by some malokya (muh-low’-kyah, which means evil eye). When the evil eye was determined to be upon you or odd things kept happening in our Italian household, you said a lot of prayers and hung a lot of garlic! Sure it was very old world and you smelled like you hadn’t bathed in 3 months, but at least it gave you the opportunity to ward off garlic hating spirits. It kept you alive so you could actually skip bathing for 3 months.
As children there was quite a bit of relating ghost stories, but a grandmother could spin a yarn scary enough to send you back to the womb. Their stories were true no matter how ridiculous! If they tell you that “the baby was in the crib when I left the room and then when I returned the infant was on the floor under the crib” you would then believe their conclusion that evil spirits lurked in the domicile. There was no questioning that there might have been a thud to mark the incident that went unheard! The ladies couldn’t hear something as simple as a baby doing a double summersault swan dive onto the floor among all of the banging of pots and pans that were normal everyday sounds for cooking in our house. We Italians use our hands a lot for emphasis when talking, so get out of the way before you get bopped upside the head with a garlic loaf, or your new white clothes get drenched in pasta sauce.
There are other kinds of horrors also that cross all cultural boundaries. We love a good eye popping, breath taking, heart thumping, underwear changing, head shaking story. Take for instance medical yarns. Every once in a while the local news will report something along the lines of this: "Mr. Jones who was admitted to the hospital on an outpatient basis to have a hangnail removed woke up from the operation only to have his keester fall off!" It’s not that having one’s hiney hit the floor without you in it would be so bad. For some of the derrière’s that I’ve seen (especially the ones I come across in mirrors) doing without would be okay. It would keep the Mrs. from asking that impossible to answer, breath stealing, you’re gonna sleep in the basement if you don’t answer correctly question, “does my butt look big in this?” On top of that they always ask it after they’ve squeezed their fanny into some ridiculous item in a size they would have worn when they first entered grade school. “Honey why don’t you let our 8 year old wear that” is not a good response.
It is a fact that as a culture we have great interest in the suffering of others. Sometimes the combination of fear and just plain stupidity entertains us. According to Psychic News of London, a French farmer had an unfortunate accident after watching a horror movie late at night. “It seems that shortly after retiring, Michel Maumond, 40, reported seeing "a ghost in white at the foot of my bed." The frightened Maumond grabbed his gun and subsequently shot-off the toes of one of his feet. Maumond has since determined that from now on he will stick to reading safe books at night.”
The darkness seems to be a natural setting for scaring us pantless. How many times did your parents tell you “there is nothing in the darkness that isn’t there in the light? “But mom” you’d plead in the terrified high pitched haunted tone. They never saw the horrid things that came out of the inside of my anxiety closet like my brother and his date. On dull yet stormy nights the biggest thing shaking wasn’t just me under the covers.
It didn’t help that as a child my daily afternoon ritual included watching Dark Shadows, the only soap opera ever aired devoted to vampires. Not to worry though, as a clever youth I had a plan of action if one of those blood suckers ever arrived at the foot of my bed. As I recall it involved a lot of screaming and bleeding.
If I could I would have slept with a silver bullet under my pillow, or a well sharpened stake on the nightstand. I could never get the old folks to agree to such risky items. At my house anything with a sharper point on it than a baseball was considered too dangerous for a young hand. I was forced to rely on my wits for my own defense when going to bed. Sleeping on my left side was the only hope I had available to me. Vampires you know (as Dark Shadows illustrated) only bite people on the left side of the neck. I scrunched my precious carotid artery ever so strategically next to the bed and cushioned around it extra thick fluffy pillows to assure the best hope I had to avoid being drained during the night. It was like wearing a neck brace. I spent a decade with a perpetual stiff neck. It was no wonder to me why my school class pictures always highlighted my head tilted ever so artistically. “How come you never smile in your class picture,” my parents would ask. Since they were no help and left me to fend for myself against the monsters they didn’t ever get the true answer that I WAS IN AGONY!
You also knew that the toe monster lurked under your bed too. Any attempt to get up in the night took a spectacular amount of bravery. It made for a swollen bladder and blood shot eyes come the morning. I still don’t understand how my daughter can get up in the morning and not run as fast as she can to the bathroom. She has to be reminded to get in there. I can still remember some nights just trembling and waiting to be devoured by some nondescript creature that lurked in the darkness and under the floor boards. You could hear them any evening. They always made noises, but only after dusk or was that my brother and his dates?
There were no cute and cuddly movies like Monster’s Inc. when I was growing up. No! We had The Outer Limits, and Rod Serling’s hallmarks, The Twilight Zone and Night Gallery. Rod Serling seemed like a creepy dude all by himself with his own eerie style of delivering monologues. I’m convinced that his most sinister creation is Stephen King. He carries on haunting us with his literature in Serling’s spirit even though Rod is no longer among us….or is he?
Our special Saturday night offering in the nation’s capital included a program called Creature Feature! It was a humorous to corny program for an adolescent, but it could make the eyes of a youngest bug out. This show was a different series of old horror movies introduced and commented upon during the commercials, by a campy stage host dressed like a vampire (his name was Count Gore Vidal). Count Gore, who offered bad makeup, jokes, sight gags, and B-movie horror flicks is still around. There was a reunion show with the Count that aired at the turn of the century during the Y2K scare. I even have a videotape of it though, I’m afraid to watch it!
There are the truly odd and real things that happen at night if you stop, look, and listen. As reported in West Memphis Tennessee newspapers and on various television news channels: West Memphis - Officers have arrested a man for making late-night runs along Airport Road in the nude. Officers said they used a Taser to subdue Fate Patterson, 39, who had dodged police for about six months. He was arrested after he ran past a police car, and ignored orders to stop.
What does one officer say to his partner upon landing the big electric jolt? “Hey man nice shot!” I think I’ve seen that scene in some x-rated genre Movies! There are probalby allot of other punch lines for jokes regarding the police, a naked man, and a taser gun, but I’ll let you amuse yourself by thinking up your own. I’ll wait! (Pause… while you think). Okay that’s enough!
The point is that we now build themeparks, make movies, and indulge in other icons devoted to scaring us out of our wits. What kind of sick twisted and perverted person is drawn to such hair-raising things? The one who is under an evil spell that’s who! Momma mia, I have been touched by the malokya. Check the baby! It’s time to hang the garlic!
The Exorcist took it a step further with quite a visual depiction in the 1970’s. It also sent split pea soup stock into a tailspin. It might have done wonders for the chiropractic industry too. Too bad failing medical students still wanting to practice didn’t come up with the idea of being a witchdoctor sooner. Chiropractics use to be considered practicing something akin to voodoo medicine before becoming respectable. Who better to fix that 360 degree kink in Linda Blair’s neck than a chiropractor? On top of that ,our family pet wasn’t even allowed to walk on the carpet. When the character little innocent Meagan "let it leak" on the carpet in the movie and no one smacked or rubbed her nose in it, you knew you were in the presence of true evil!
Of course literary works were pervasive in our subconscious long before the 20th century. Terrifying writings included topics about vampires (Bram Stoker’s Dracula), the mystery of Jack the Ripper and those Dick and Jane books!
The fact that Italian families tend to pass on ridiculous superstitions also meant I was doomed to be haunted throughout my childhood by some malokya (muh-low’-kyah, which means evil eye). When the evil eye was determined to be upon you or odd things kept happening in our Italian household, you said a lot of prayers and hung a lot of garlic! Sure it was very old world and you smelled like you hadn’t bathed in 3 months, but at least it gave you the opportunity to ward off garlic hating spirits. It kept you alive so you could actually skip bathing for 3 months.
As children there was quite a bit of relating ghost stories, but a grandmother could spin a yarn scary enough to send you back to the womb. Their stories were true no matter how ridiculous! If they tell you that “the baby was in the crib when I left the room and then when I returned the infant was on the floor under the crib” you would then believe their conclusion that evil spirits lurked in the domicile. There was no questioning that there might have been a thud to mark the incident that went unheard! The ladies couldn’t hear something as simple as a baby doing a double summersault swan dive onto the floor among all of the banging of pots and pans that were normal everyday sounds for cooking in our house. We Italians use our hands a lot for emphasis when talking, so get out of the way before you get bopped upside the head with a garlic loaf, or your new white clothes get drenched in pasta sauce.
There are other kinds of horrors also that cross all cultural boundaries. We love a good eye popping, breath taking, heart thumping, underwear changing, head shaking story. Take for instance medical yarns. Every once in a while the local news will report something along the lines of this: "Mr. Jones who was admitted to the hospital on an outpatient basis to have a hangnail removed woke up from the operation only to have his keester fall off!" It’s not that having one’s hiney hit the floor without you in it would be so bad. For some of the derrière’s that I’ve seen (especially the ones I come across in mirrors) doing without would be okay. It would keep the Mrs. from asking that impossible to answer, breath stealing, you’re gonna sleep in the basement if you don’t answer correctly question, “does my butt look big in this?” On top of that they always ask it after they’ve squeezed their fanny into some ridiculous item in a size they would have worn when they first entered grade school. “Honey why don’t you let our 8 year old wear that” is not a good response.
It is a fact that as a culture we have great interest in the suffering of others. Sometimes the combination of fear and just plain stupidity entertains us. According to Psychic News of London, a French farmer had an unfortunate accident after watching a horror movie late at night. “It seems that shortly after retiring, Michel Maumond, 40, reported seeing "a ghost in white at the foot of my bed." The frightened Maumond grabbed his gun and subsequently shot-off the toes of one of his feet. Maumond has since determined that from now on he will stick to reading safe books at night.”
The darkness seems to be a natural setting for scaring us pantless. How many times did your parents tell you “there is nothing in the darkness that isn’t there in the light? “But mom” you’d plead in the terrified high pitched haunted tone. They never saw the horrid things that came out of the inside of my anxiety closet like my brother and his date. On dull yet stormy nights the biggest thing shaking wasn’t just me under the covers.
It didn’t help that as a child my daily afternoon ritual included watching Dark Shadows, the only soap opera ever aired devoted to vampires. Not to worry though, as a clever youth I had a plan of action if one of those blood suckers ever arrived at the foot of my bed. As I recall it involved a lot of screaming and bleeding.
If I could I would have slept with a silver bullet under my pillow, or a well sharpened stake on the nightstand. I could never get the old folks to agree to such risky items. At my house anything with a sharper point on it than a baseball was considered too dangerous for a young hand. I was forced to rely on my wits for my own defense when going to bed. Sleeping on my left side was the only hope I had available to me. Vampires you know (as Dark Shadows illustrated) only bite people on the left side of the neck. I scrunched my precious carotid artery ever so strategically next to the bed and cushioned around it extra thick fluffy pillows to assure the best hope I had to avoid being drained during the night. It was like wearing a neck brace. I spent a decade with a perpetual stiff neck. It was no wonder to me why my school class pictures always highlighted my head tilted ever so artistically. “How come you never smile in your class picture,” my parents would ask. Since they were no help and left me to fend for myself against the monsters they didn’t ever get the true answer that I WAS IN AGONY!
You also knew that the toe monster lurked under your bed too. Any attempt to get up in the night took a spectacular amount of bravery. It made for a swollen bladder and blood shot eyes come the morning. I still don’t understand how my daughter can get up in the morning and not run as fast as she can to the bathroom. She has to be reminded to get in there. I can still remember some nights just trembling and waiting to be devoured by some nondescript creature that lurked in the darkness and under the floor boards. You could hear them any evening. They always made noises, but only after dusk or was that my brother and his dates?
There were no cute and cuddly movies like Monster’s Inc. when I was growing up. No! We had The Outer Limits, and Rod Serling’s hallmarks, The Twilight Zone and Night Gallery. Rod Serling seemed like a creepy dude all by himself with his own eerie style of delivering monologues. I’m convinced that his most sinister creation is Stephen King. He carries on haunting us with his literature in Serling’s spirit even though Rod is no longer among us….or is he?
Our special Saturday night offering in the nation’s capital included a program called Creature Feature! It was a humorous to corny program for an adolescent, but it could make the eyes of a youngest bug out. This show was a different series of old horror movies introduced and commented upon during the commercials, by a campy stage host dressed like a vampire (his name was Count Gore Vidal). Count Gore, who offered bad makeup, jokes, sight gags, and B-movie horror flicks is still around. There was a reunion show with the Count that aired at the turn of the century during the Y2K scare. I even have a videotape of it though, I’m afraid to watch it!
There are the truly odd and real things that happen at night if you stop, look, and listen. As reported in West Memphis Tennessee newspapers and on various television news channels: West Memphis - Officers have arrested a man for making late-night runs along Airport Road in the nude. Officers said they used a Taser to subdue Fate Patterson, 39, who had dodged police for about six months. He was arrested after he ran past a police car, and ignored orders to stop.
What does one officer say to his partner upon landing the big electric jolt? “Hey man nice shot!” I think I’ve seen that scene in some x-rated genre Movies! There are probalby allot of other punch lines for jokes regarding the police, a naked man, and a taser gun, but I’ll let you amuse yourself by thinking up your own. I’ll wait! (Pause… while you think). Okay that’s enough!
The point is that we now build themeparks, make movies, and indulge in other icons devoted to scaring us out of our wits. What kind of sick twisted and perverted person is drawn to such hair-raising things? The one who is under an evil spell that’s who! Momma mia, I have been touched by the malokya. Check the baby! It’s time to hang the garlic!
posted by Giosue' Santarelli at 1:58 PM
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