Scary Stories Edition

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 There are a few sites around doing scary story contests, and I thought it would be fun to post a scary experience (true story) on my blog, keeping up with Halloween mood preparation.


But first, here and a few 'scary story' cartoons. I guess this is a little self-destructive, since it will put you out of the mood for my story, but what can I say? I can't pass up a good joke.

 This one actually sort of, in a very distant way, relates to my story. No, it isn't about dead animals. I won't be scourging you with tales of undead pets coming back from the grave. At least, not today. Though, I'm pretty sure my mom's cat, Spooky (I know, ironic name, right?) is still haunting the alfalfa field behind our childhood home. This cat once got caught in a bear trap and limped around our house with three legs the rest of it's life. She also had a triangle bit missing from her ear from a cat fight. She was a tough one, wouldn't ever let me touch her without scratching me. And I tried a lot. Had something against little children. You could say she was evil. Then, one day she walked out to the field and...never...returned...

Sorry, my story wasn't about that cat. Don't know where that came from. If you've made it this far into the post, I congratulate you. Now, on to my scary TRUE story...

SPOOKED

by- KPR 

When I was a teenager, my family moved to Germany. To me this was a place of intrigue, of fairytales as well as history. The villages and forests dotting the countryside looked like they were out of storybooks, ancient. Some homes, hundreds of years old, seemed ready to collapse with age. I lived in such a house. 

When I was fourteen, I attended a private school. FIS is still its name. My class went on a trip for three days to the south of Munich, (Muchen to locals). We were to stay in a Youth Hostile,a first for me, surrounded by a dense forest. 

At first, it was fun. An adventure. My eight or so friends and I stayed in two rooms next door to each other. These were barely bigger than closets, with a sink, schrank, single bed and table on the main floor and a loft with two single mattresses squashed together where we would sleep in sleeping bags.

Boys and girls were mostly separated, girls on the second floor (where we were) and boys on the first floor. There was also a co-ed hall. (hmm....) Each night teachers would make sure we were all in our assigned rooms with the doors locked. We could only leave if we needed to use the restroom. Well, after the teacher patrol at 10pm, the girls from the other room would scale from their window to ours, braving the second story height and a not-so-pleasant drop below to hard ground. All night we'd listen to music, talk about boys and eat pizza that some of the girls pitched in to buy, ultimately breaking the rules to have it delivered to us. It was awesome fun.

 One particular night it just happened to be dark and stormy. We had just finished our pizza and were in the midst of partying when my friend, Emma, really needed to use the restroom. But she didn't dare go alone, so begged me to come along. The hall to the bathroom ended in a glass wall, dark, with no hint of what lay beyond. The fact that someone could be standing there, looking at us, was spooky enough, but what happened next confirmed our worst fears.

Emma and I chose windowed-stalls next to each other, and while I was about to do my business, I heard a strange sort of scuffling sound coming from Emma's. Her door slammed and I could hear her running out the door. She didn't stay away long, however. Emma came back. Screaming. Yelling at me to get out of my stall. NOW. Someone had been looking at her through her stall window. A man. And we had to get out of there fast. 

Screaming, we chased down to our door, not wanting to look behind us at the looming glass wall that the man may be watching us through. We made it into our safe-haven, upsetting the rest of the girls with our screams, Emma in hysterics, blubbering about what happened. The others tried to get the story out of me, but I couldn't tell them a thing. We waited until Emma could recount what happened.

A dark man, with a mustache (now, how can one's overreacting imagination come up with that detail?), had been watching her take down her trousers (she's a Brit, just so's you know). She went through her struggle, trying to keep her eyes on the man, while also fumbling with the lock to her stall. She ran out, then, but of course couldn't leave me with a serial killer, ready to jump through the glass and take my life. I'm sure she went into more gut-wrenching detail, but all I remember is that we were all freaking out. What fourteen year old girl wouldn't be?

The rest of our night was unsettling. Teachers on our floor who heard our screams, came running. After they heard our story, they went to fetch the male teachers. Two of them. One was a big burly black gym teacher, and for some reason, had a bat with him. We all huddled close together out in the hallway, after showing them where the man had been, and watched the coach go outside with his bat, as well as the math teacher, to find the intruder. Every second they were gone, was intense and filled with worry. We couldn't be sure the man wouldn't get them. After several minutes, they came back. Alive and wet from rain. No one was seen outside.

The teachers sent us to bed and promised they would check things out more the next day, when the sun came out and they could search properly. The next several hours, we wondered where the man went. And if he was still there. Maybe he was mad that we sent the coach after him with a bat. Maybe he wanted revenge. My friends and I sat huddled together in our loft, talking it out, unable to go to sleep, not wanting to. The storm still spattered rain, though above our windows was a terrace of some sort, blocking the wind and rain. So, the sounds that came next were not storm noises. We were sure of that. 

Tiny stones came pelting at our window, playing with our already panicked nerves. We all froze, some let out shrieks, but mostly we didn't want to make a sound. The man was out there. He was going to drive us crazy, find a way to get to us any way he could. What kind of a lunatic was this? At first we tried to be rational. It could be the boys downstairs, trying to scare us more. But no. They couldn't be outside. The teachers had locked us all in our rooms, and they wouldn't dare sneak out now. Plus, it was stormy, why would they go out in that just to bother us. And besides, we knew the guys well. They weren't mean enough to pull a prank like that. 

That left only one option: The man was out there, right that minute, trying to get at us.

And I was the one closest to the window. 

So, naturally I was the one selected by the

committee-of-scared-girls-club to go down the latter and pull the blinds. REALLY? ME? Ack. I mustered a lot of courage that night. It took all I had in me to get down that latter, pull the blinds--without looking out--and get back up into my sleeping bag. As I hurried, I pulled something in my leg. The pain was so intense that I started to cry. And I'm not the cry-baby type. Everyone thought I was crying because of the ax-killer locale. Maybe it was a mixture of the two. They did their best to comfort me. 

 Normally, the gals from the other room would head back to their room to sleep, since we were pretty crowded. But, no. There would be no more window gymnastics that night. Not when he was just outside, waiting for his chance to get some girl-meat. We all hunkered down there for a sleepless night. With the light on. Sitting up. 

Of course, at some point, we all fell asleep. We awoke the next morning, groggy, unsettled, yet unscathed. The news of Emma's and, yes, MY altercation spread through the entire class. Girls huddled in the hallways, the next night forming a stampede past all the doors when they thought they saw something. When the sun was as high as it could go in the sky, the teachers took Emma and me aside to show us what they found. A tunnel. Behind our room!

They walked with us, bent over, down the long, narrow tunnel to what must have been a bunker or bomb shelter back during the second world war. Shattered beer bottles scattered across the floor, intermingled with what we assumed were drug-injecting needles. Someone had been there at some point. Was it last night? Was that where the man was hiding when the teachers went to find him? 

I'm not sure even to this day where the man went and why on earth our teachers took us down that scary place tunnel, but I do know that my friend wasn't lying. She saw someone. And he wanted her. All I can say is, I'm so thankful for big burly, black PE coaches that carry around baseball bats to class trips.

It was a trip none of us ever forgot.

Now....I'd love to hear your scariest experiences in the comments, or a link to your blog if you would like to do a long one and post it there. I love getting into the 'Halloween Spirit', don't you? This is the awesomest time of the year!