When I was in fourth grade, the school librarian created a display of Halloween books. Ranging from scary, ghost story-filled tomes to silly, costume idea-filled workbooks, the display was irresistible. As yet unaware of my own inability to properly process and then discard anything remotely frightening, I checked out a book of reportedly “true” ghost stories.

I spent that afternoon and early evening devouring terrifying tale after terrifying tale. I was really enjoying it. Until about dinner time. Mom called us to the table just as I finished a story about a pilot who crashed his plane but before word got to the airfield where he was due to arrive, his ghost arrived in the ghost plane. Not until much later did the air traffic controllers realize he died mid-flight and that they must have seen his postmortem soul.

I didn’t eat dinner that night. Nor did I sleep that night. I went to school the next day exhausted and a little sick to my stomach. After school the next day, I complained to mom about my upset tummy. I laid on the couch until she decided it was time to take me to the doctor.

The doctor’s clinic in Hometown is just that, a clinic. Getting an after-hours appointment requires knowing one of the two doctor’s home phone numbers, calling it, and pleading with them to meet you downtown. All of which my mom did. As we sat in the exam room, waiting for the doc to come examine me, my mom said to me, “What you’re describing sounds kind of like menstrual cramps. But you’re too young for that. I’m worried about what it might be.”

And that’s when I threw up. I remember it vividly because she grabbed the first thing she could find which was one of those kidney shaped pee collector dishes.

I never did tell my mom that my illness on that particular occassion was due to overconsumption of scary stories. And I don’t remember what the doctor’s diagnosis was or how long it took me to sleep through the night again. But I do know that I learned from that experience that no matter how cool or interesting a scary story might seem to me during daylight, it’s a foregone conclusion that sleep will evade me for several nights to follow and, if I’m not too careful about my ghost-story consumption, full-on vomitting is also highly likely.

When I tell people that I don’t like scary movies, some of them will say things in response like, “Oh, me either! They give me nightmares.” They, of course, have no idea how I long for nightmares after I see a scary movie, because having a nightmare implies that you were asleep at some point.

I accidentally saw a scene from “Witchboard” when a babysitter was watching it and that pretty much did me in for a good three nights. Just seeing the TV trailers for “The Blair Witch Project” turned me into a lights-on insomnia sufferer for most of the summer of 2000.

Movies I have never and will never see, not an inclusive list: the Exorcist, Blair Witch Project, Silence of the Lambs, the Omen, Rosemary’s Baby, Halloween, Nightmare on Elm Street, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, the Ring, Friday the 13th. Don’t ask me to. I won’t.

Also, I should clarify that when I say “scary” movies or books or stories or whatever, I am not necessarily talking about what you think of as a scary movie. After seeing “The Usual Suspects” I was awake for a full 52 hours. Remember that Muppets where Kenny Rogers sings “The Gambler” and he’s on a train and one of his fellow poker players is or becomes a ghost? Yeah, I do, too, because it haunted me throughout my early adolescence.

I don’t know why I’m like this. I do know that I don’t ever lose images. I can as clearly see that scene in “Apocalypse Now” when they cut the cow in half with an ax as I could the first time I saw the movie and didn’t yet know to avert my eyes during that part. You know in “Poltergeist” when the short woman is explaining why Carol Ann won’t come back from the light, and it’s because she thinks the devil thing is a friend or fellow child but, Short Woman says, “To you and me, he’s the Beast.”? There are still nights I will lie awake hearing her creepy little voice saying those words.

The thing is, even though I know this about myself, I’m still drawn to things like this or this. “Oh, I can handle it,” I think to myself. And next thing you know, I can’t go pee in the middle of the night without turning on a light. I can’t go to bed without checking under the bed and feeling the urge to close my closet door. And I can’t even walk into our garage.

I like Halloween, and, goodness knows, I have to have at least one holiday I actually enjoy. But I hate how I can’t even go to the gym in the morning at this time of year without having to physically make myself turn my eyes away from some stupid shit like this.

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