It is well after midnight, the moon is full, and you are in a strange area near a cemetery full of old tombstones in a car that will not start. There is no signal on your cell phone, it won’t even send or receive a text. You could very easily walk back a few miles to civilization but you are afraid so you lock yourself in your car until the next day when a passing motorist stops to offer assistance. In the daytime, you can see the beautiful countryside and the well-kept cemetery that hours before sent chills down your spine. And you wonder… what exactly was it that you feared so much?
It is Halloween the witching hour, and you and some friends decide to visit the local haunted house that is open annually at this special time of year. You pay the fee and enter the building clinching ever so tightly to your friends both in front of you and behind you. Slowly you inch forward as scared and afraid as you have ever been. A guy dressed in a creepy costume jumps out with a chainsaw revving it up as he chases you and your screaming friends into the next horror chamber for even more ghouls and goblins. Scared half out of your mind, heart racing to dangerous levels you finally find your way out. You and the friends that accompanied you all look at each other and swear that is the most horrifying experience you have ever had and never want to do it again. You make your way to the concession stand only to find the very creature that just chased you with the chainsaw taking a break as well and having refreshments just like you are about to do.
How is it that one can be around a cemetery at night and be afraid when you know that everything there is dead and buried and was once just like you? How is it that you can go to a haunted house knowing before you go that there are people just like you dressed in costumes to scare you and still be afraid? People are scared to death of everything that will do them no harm and have no fear at all of the things that will. These things are far too vast to list here. You are surrounded every day of your life by the reality of it. The phone you have grown so attached to, the vehicles that take you from here to there, the chemicals you consume or administer into your bodies. Yes, the real haunted house is the world we live in, not the make-believe theatrics that made you wet your pants. We cannot truly experience what real life is all about when we are too busy living in a make-believe world. Turn off the music and listen to the news. Put down your Better homes, and gardens and read the local papers. Don’t be afraid of what isn’t…. be afraid of what is.
Simply My Thoughts
Dean Butler
