The Witch's Ride

Even though I've always been a fan of ghost stories and tales of paranormal activities, in most of my forty plus years on this earth I've never had any personal experience that has ever occurred that has ever really been a  real creep out.... until recently.

Sure, I've been plenty spooked by haunted attractions and some horror movies, but not anywhere as much as the experience I had a week ago in the dark, wee hours of the morning while laying in bed.

I was in a state of sleep with my head under the covers when I was awoken by the feeling that a person was getting into bed beside me.  I could feel the covers being pulled and weight being put on the left side of my bed.  Instead of being able to get up and see what was going on I found myself unable to move or speak.

I seemed to have just enough strength to peek out form below the covers, but all I could barley see was the pitch black darkness of my room.  My head found its way back below the covers.  That's when I could hear it's breathing to the left of me.  It sounded as though it was right up in my left ear, but I could feel no breath.

The breathing seemed loud and forced and got louder as I could feel some sort of pressure coming from the left of me.

Once the breathing got louder I could feel my body being pushed to the right side of the bed.  Slower and slower I reached the side of the bed where there is a wall.  Would I be crushed against the wall beside my bed?

At this point there was a palpable loud vibration coming from where the breathing was originally coming from.

Then it all stopped at once.

I found myself able to move and come up from the covers to see a dimly lit room, nowhere near as dark as it was during the "haunting".

I sat up in bed, slightly shaken, but ultra terrified as suppose I was supposed to be.  I guess I was able to rationalize that the experience was a full, blown, no holds barred witches ride, medically known as 

Hypnagogia.  I actually found it slightly entertaining in a very odd way.  I considered it a mind projected virtual reality haunting.  Now if only I could find a way to bottle it and sell it as a the next level of haunted attraction.  Brouhaha....

I'm hoping to visit a haunt or two next weekend, so look out for a review next time around.

Until then, stay vertical.

Zangz.

Another Ghoulish Gem I had Almost Forgot About. How Could I?

At the end of 2012's Halloween season, my family got together for our annual Halloween diner.  After we finished the meal and put my niece to bed, we gathered in the living room, lit candles, turned the lights off and watched this movie, The Woman In Black.  It scared the crap out of all of us!  I was going to post about it on my blog, but Halloween was coming to an end and I never gave myself a chance.  Skyfall was right around the corner and I was putting all of my movie viewing excitement into the next James Bond opus.

I watched The Woman In Black again yesterday and realized I never reviewed it here and what a crime and mistake that had been.  Especially since I'm the kind of Horror fan that is verry drawn to a real good and creepy ghost story.  And boy, does The Woman In Black deliver in that department.

I love movies like, The Sixth Sense, The Others, and Ghost Story.  Heck, I even love the more cheesy ones like House on Haunted Hill and The Haunting.  There's something about the stories of spirits haunting the living that I appreciate slightly more than the tried and true, axe wielding homicidal maniac chasing a bunch of horny teens around in the wilderness.  I'm always looking for the next chilling fright rather than the next blood, guts and severed head fiesta.  Chilling freights are the focal point of this Edwardian ghost story has to offer.

Based off of the book and play by Susan Hill, the story follows a young widower as he is assigned by his law firm to go a creepy old mansion in an old town on the coast of England to take care of the paperwork of the recently passed owner.  What the young lawyer, Arthur Kipps (Played by Daniel Radcliffe) eventually finds out is that the town is cursed and the mansion is haunted by the ghost of an angry spirit of a woman who lost her child in the muck of the nearby bog.

I wont give away the whole story, but I will tell you that this was one of the creepiest movies I have seen and absolutely love it for that sole reason.

Here are four reasons why this movie has a high level of creep-factor going for it.

1.  It takes place in Edwardian England.  Both the Edwardian and Victorian times are just creepy in general. You had people dressed in back all the time.  Spiritualism and the first signs of paranormal investigations were hugely popular in those days.  You look back at photos from those eras and everybody in them looks unnervingly stoic like their eyes are piercing the viewers soul.

2.  The setting is quite unsettling.  First you have this small, crusty township of frightened and seemingly superstitious folks.  Then you have the huge, Victorian mansion itself, sitting in the middle of a seaside bog where the tide comes in at night and blocks off the only small road leading in and out of the property.  The mansion also sports its own family burial ground upon its property.  And don't all old Victorian English manors have their own cemetery?  I'm pretty sure it's a law in the UK.

3.  Ghostly children and their creepy old time toys.  Again, I won't go too far into the story but, yes, there are a few ghost children in the film and ghost children are always creepy.  Whether it be two twins staring at you in a hallway or some girl crawling her way out of a well, they scare the livin' bajeesus out of everybody.  And I don't think I have to even start on the creepy old, wind up dolls that go off for no reason whatsoever.  Monkey with the symbols, anyone?

4.  The Lady In Black herself.  The Grand Dame of this ghost tale is pretty simplistic in looks, but can still give viewers night terrors.  When a pale woman shrouded in a mourning dress is viewed out of the corner of one's eye and then disappears, don't tell me that it's not enough to crap your pants a little bit.  Of course the writers and director make sure she has some great pop-out moments that had the hairs on the back of my neck shoot straight up.  And I don't use that term as a euphemism, that physically happened.  It's science!

So if you're looking for a real good horror film this spooky season that truly scares you and you don't want to be grossed out, The Woman In Black is definitely Halloween viewing material.  Especially with candles and pumpkins being lit as you only light source.  You'll have nightmares for weeks.

In other Halloween happenings, some friends and I went on a moonlight ghost tour of downtown Milwaukee last night.  We went last year, but we were hit with a downpour of rain that blew sideways and destroyed the umbrella I had brought.  So we decided to give it another try this year with far better results.  We didn't see any ghosts, but did hear of the old ghostly folklore of the Haunted Pfister Hotel where Joey Laurence as well as a few professional sports players got spooked. Another particular eerie story involved an woman shrouded in black (familiar?) who haunts the outside of an old church in downtown Milwaukee.  A fun, if not chill filled evening was had by all.  If you're in the Milwaukee area during the Halloween season and want to go on the tour.  click here for more information.

And in tradition before I end this post here is another walkthrough of a haunted attractions called Reign of Terror located in Thousand Oaks, CA.  This is last years show.  Pretty impressive!

Them Park Adventure on YouTube

That's it for now.  I'll try and find more Halloween high-jinx I can drum up or get myself into in the coming weeks.  Stay tuned and stay vertical.

Zangz.

More Haunts Have Been Visited.... more pants have been moistened.

We're smack dab in the middle of Halloween season.  It always goes by too fracking fast for me.  I'd like to savor this season, but, that is quite difficult with work being so busy.  I find myself both mentally and physically exhausted when I get home from work.  The weekends seem to be my only time for solace.  Well, if you consider seeking out the living dead and infiltrator their domains a form of solace.

That's just what I did as I dragged my buddies Bones and Roberto to a couple more haunted attractions this weekend.

After trying to get out of work as early as I could on Friday I stormed down the freeway and picked up Bones.  Then the two of us headed west, toward Roberto's headquarters, during Friday afternoon rush hour.  This gave us a good hour's worth of heavy traffic travel time.  So I decided to pass the time by playing Bones one of my all time favorite, true ghost stories that I heard off of one of the Nerdist Podcast.

If you want to give yourself the chills go to HERE.  It's the second part of the show.  The first part features the famed astrophysicist, Neil deGrasse Tyson.  Feel free to listen to his portion of the show, but, if you want to get straight to the creepiness, forward to about 53 minutes in.  It is there where film director, Liam Lynch, spins a true tale of pure ghostly goodness involving his time living in a very old apartment building in England.  Be sure that you are alone and the lights are down low and you have at least one Jack-O-Lantern lit in the room.

Back to the haunts!  After some laborious traffic, Bones and I found ourselves at Roberto's where the three of us gathered and readied our ghoul fighting gear (warm jackets and sweaters and enough cash for two haunts and some dinner afterward.).  The three of us jumped into the Roberto mobile and headed over to the next county where we first visited......


Terror @ 212 - Formally called "Haunted High presents Terror @ 212" this reboot of the old Oconomowoc Haunted High attraction (that has since been torn down) was a very pleasant surprise.  I did a review of the old Haunted High last year.  Having lost the old high school building to development projects, the organizers secured a business building right in the downtown area of Oconomowoc.  The outside of it doesn't look that big, but the amount of freights they put inside is quite impressive.  In fact, it feels far more intimate than when they ran it in the old high school building.  The high school had a lot of large open spaces, but the new haunt is a lot of narrow hallways that wind around wonderful scenes, effects and tableau's.  The scare-actors, though young, put on a darn good show.  One of the best things is that it's pretty much a whole new show and experience which tore itself away from the repetitiveness that the Haunted High was starting to get into.  Definitely worth checking out if you're in southeastern Wisconsin.

Fin and Feather Haunted Woods - After 212, we darted down a very long and very dark road.  At one point we thought we took a wrong turn and were lost in the dark countryside.  But, we pressed on down the road were we barley noticed the sign to the entrance of the Fin and Feather outdoor club.  For the last several years these folks have been putting on a great haunted trail attraction that tends to be a bit of a sleeper hit and word of mouth haunt.  This year was one of it's best and most interactive as I found out the hard way.  It starts with a very dark trail dimly lit by strands of lights on each side and creepy eyes peering at you from the wooded darkness.  This leads you up to a huge castle that you go through while trying to avoid the creatures within.  After you escape the castle you're back in the dark woods winding you way through the darkness and trying hard not to wet yourself as chainsaw wielding mad men sneak up on you.  I don't want to give too much away, but I will tell you of my personal journey into dark madness.

Toward the end of the haunt we were ushered into a building that housed one of the darkest mazes we had to go through.  At first the three of us were venturing through it pretty well until we reached what appeared to be a dead end.  I was at the front of the group at that point and told the other two, that we needed to head back the way we came.  At that point we heard a ghastly, female voice from out of the darkness mock us.  We started to head back the way we came with Roberto in the front.  We reached another dead end.  This time two female voices started to chastise us.  They were very close by, but we couldn't see anything.  Between the three of us calling to each other back and forth, the seemingly disembodied voices caught on to our names and started calling out to us.  I felt my way along the walls and managed to pass by Bones and Roberto.  Roberto was right behind me.  I called out to him to grab on to me as I led the way.  I was expecting him to gab on to the back of my sweater.  Instead I felt a hand grab my own as I moved forward to find us a way out.  I called out to Roberto again and was surprised to hear his voice was far behind me.  Too far for his hand to still be in mine.  I should have realized, Roberto would have never emasculated himself by holding my hand.  I also should have realized that Roberto's hands were mysteriously Palmolive soft.  It was then one of the voices revealed itself to be right next to me and was the hand that was holding mine.  It was a scene right out of an episode of Scooby-Doo.  Then another voice was right in front of me.  Then a third voice appeared right next to me.  I heard Rob and Bone's voices well ahead of me now and it sounded like they had found their way out of the maze.  I was alone in the dark, trapped by three specters who held me there for a spell.  After tolerating a bit more of their chastising, they led me out of the maze to the end of the attraction. 

The three ghouls were actual three lovely scare-actresses whole were nice enough to pose for a picture with me after my escape from their clutches.  Excellent job, ladies!!!

Well, I think that will be it for this post.  I still have a few spooktastic treats up my sleeves for this season.

In the meantime, please, stay vertical!

Zangz.