*shivers*

[toomuchplor]

Today I woke up to deep fog and the quiet that it brings, and it wasn't until after noon that it finally burned away. Now it's dark again, raining and not so much cold as holding the promise of cold, still and dark and hushed. It's perfect ghost story weather.

Tell me your scariest stories -- personal or second-hand or invented on the spot, I don't care... I'm in the mood for goosebumps!

Comments

[redteekal.livejournal.com]

This story is true! A friend of a friend of a friend owned a pet python. She'd had it for a couple of years and it was not quite fully grown. Anyway she ended up taking it to her vet because he hadn't eaten anything in 3 months. Now pythons can go a long time without food but she was getting concerned. Vet gave it a full check over and pronounced the python healthy and that she shouldn't be concerned he would eat when he needed to, just to make sure she offered it something at least once a week. So she took him home and they carried on their lives. Still three months later the python still hadn't eaten and now she was getting really worried. Took it back to the vet. Again vet gave a thorough physical check and found nothing wrong so the vet asked her if the python had changed any of it's usual behaviours or done anything unusual recently. The girl thought about it and finally remembered something it was doing differently. She said it normally slept all coiled up on the end of her bed (don't ask me why you would let a python sleep on your bed that's a whole nother story) but in the past couple of weeks it had taken to uncoiling and stetching out along the length of the bed and sleeping straight. She had noticed this when she was lying down on the bed. The vet shook his head and said gravely that they were going to have to euthanase the python. The girl was horrified and asked why. The vet told her; the python was measuring her up for his next meal. What pythons do to try and see if they can digest a big meal is lay along side it to see if it will fit. The girl was basically prey. It had been doing this on and off for a couple weeks and that was why it wasn't eating because it knew a big meal was coming!

Luckily, I have mostly good ghost stories.

[beadattitude.livejournal.com]

I was ten years old and visiting my grandparents at their farmhouse in rural South Carolina. Their house was over a hundred years old already and people related to me had lived and been born and died in that house. My mother and sister and I all slept in the back bedroom together - lots of windows and a door to the outside. I never wondered why we all slept in the same room other than we could put all the fans in there.

I had a nightmare. I was trapped in something, a sled or a wheelchair and racing through ghostly figures that grasped at me. I steered over to a hill and was in the process of sliding helplessly, brakelessly down the hill into a dark late when I woke up abruptly, screaming, but not a sound came out of my mouth. I had to go to the bathroom terribly - needed to pee - and through the screen door separating us from the backyard, I thought I could see a figure reaching out for me.

I was also aware that there was someone in the room with us, but I couldn't move my head - couldn't move anything. I used all my strength to call my mother - to reach out to her lying in the bed beside me. It came out in a horrible low moan.

The next thing I knew I was on the ceiling in the corner, looking down at the room. My mother was holding me in her arms and I was having some sort of seizure. I was embarrassed to have wet my pants and the bed.

My sister was dressing, though she was clearly terrified, and my mom was telling her to run across the chicken yard to my uncle's house.

Another woman was standing at the head of the bed, looking down at me. I thought it was my grandmother at first, until I realized I could see the floorboards on the other side of her right through her body. I whispered, "What's happening?" And she looked at me sharply and put her hand to her lips. She pointed out the door. Outside were the pale people from my dream. They looked at my body longingly and were pressing close to the sides of the house.

The lady gave me a "hang on" look and put one hand on my head (I didn't think about the fact that she stretched all the way up to the ceiling to do so) and the other on the me in the bed. My mother didn't notice. The kind-faced lady smiled at me and closed her eyes.

The next thing I knew the back door right next to the bed slammed closed and I woke up, feeling disoriented and demanding why the bed had been moved to the other side of the room. It wasn't, I was in the same place I'd been when I fell asleep, but I was awake and fine and whole, if in need of a bath and clothes and bedding.

Later, after many tests, they told me I'd had a petite mal seizure, cause unknown. My mom said it was a poison ivy medication I'd taken. My sister said it was because my grandparent's house was possessed. I didn't say a word. Because I just. don't. know.

Scariest or stupidest? You decide!

[beet]

When I was in India the first time I was only 21 and got sick of my cohort of study-abroaders. When our three-week break came around I decided that I needed to get the hell away from every I knew in the country. Ever.

So, I lied to my mom and set out to travel on my own for three weeks with no itinerary. After a fairly nervous first three days full of dehydration and trying to get further from the group heading in vaguely the same direction, I decided to make a bigger effort to push myself. Rather than getting the name and number of the rich woman with the tea plantation on the bus, instead I booked myself a bus ticket from Delhi to Dharamsala (where the Dalai Lama lives) on a private company.

With an one-room office hidden in the third floor of the bus station, indicating zero legit connections to the travel industry. After making out a hand-designed "ticket" I was told to meet the "bus" at an intersection at 10pm in a part Delhi I knew nothing about. Of course, I went there and waited in the gathering dark with 4 other men. The proceeded to get into the back of a jeep with 6 other men. Did I mention they had chains around their necks when I climbed in?

I arrived at an actual bus to my acute relief. I had 45 minutes to reflect on how extremely stupid it was to climb in in the back of jeep with 6 men with chains, where I would not be able to let myself out if things went pear-shaped.

So, on the bus, I enlisted the help of two nice young men who put my bag on the bus roof and sat with one of them on the bus. I enlisted the "brother" analogy as often as possible, but still didn't manage to get off the bus without getting completely, utterly, frankly propositioned by the guy who kept "falling asleep" on my shoulder and trying to get his head on my breast. ("Do you want to have sex?" being que suave in the lower class Delhi crowd.)

Ditched them at the arrival point and stayed in a monastery! Then (*koff*) made a point of traveling with foreigners back to Delhi after. Yeah. Racist or not, sometimes it's just easier than trying to figure out what the basis of trust is.

If you are looking for a scary-ass story, check out Martha's "The Fall of the House of Sheppard". Waaaay scarier than my story!

[inkscribe.livejournal.com]

Erm, you woke up and discovered Stephen Harper had won a second time?

*runs and hides*

(Attempt to find find Rick Mercer clip with that very joke failed utterly. Please note the joke is intended to be apolitical ... merely stealing from a Canadian master. *g*)