Ghosts

I don't seem to get spooked easily these days. I mean in the sense of genuinely frightening myself over the possibility of ghosts and demons and bogeymen and the like. This realisation came to me strongly at our camp back in September for drama when I told a bit of a ghostly tale late on the Friday night to the drama guys and realised that probably a majority were genuinely scared by it. (I pretended it was a true one, of course.) I further realised that at their age I would have been satisfyingly scared as well, and felt something had been lost.

I think I'm right in saying that the last thing I read in terms of ghost stories that got under my skin was Stephen King's The Shining, and that was back when I was in my mid-twenties. I remember not being too happy at the book being in the house yet not being able to stop myself from picking it up. But much as I've enjoyed most of King's other work since then nothing else has been close to being as powerful as that was on a purely visceral level.

Sometimes, once or twice, when Noi has been away over the weekend I've found myself thinking I'm standing here in the dark and there's nobody else around - this should be spooky (this on going to bed) and it has been mildly disconcerting for all of a few seconds, then I just forget about it. Similarly alone in a deserted place - the Victoria Theatre comes to mind when I did a few shows there with a previous school and I was the first and only one in - I've felt a distinct discomfort at what might just decide to manifest itself but I soon get busy and just forget to bother.

Yes, something has been lost. Now I just get frightened by stuff that's all too real and doesn't go away so easily.