I have very few legitimate fears. I'm not afraid of heights or insects or aeroplanes or death or public speaking. I am not totally hardcore though - I'm afraid of less tangible things, such as abandonment and dying alone, unnoticed and penniless...minor stuff like that. Oh, and I'm also terrified of ghost houses. By ghost houses, I mean the kind of thing that you might go into @ a carnival/state fair...or here in Ontario on Clifton Hill in Niagara Falls. This debilitating phobia began [like many] in childhood, but persists to this day. It's particularly discouraging as I was born on Halloween so of course everyone assumes I've got some sort of affinity with all things ghoulish. And while I've reconciled with pumpkins [and gourds of all types] and I've always been a-okay with horror films - the fear of creepy houses will always be with me.
My family, in fact, has a long and varied history of fear of ghost mansions. I went on many family holidays with my cousin Mark, who is the same age as me. I was always more adventurous in terms of amusement parks and the like - what with my lack of fear of heights and love of roller coasters [that I was always too short for]. I suppose it was this knowledge that made my aunt and uncle [my godparents] take us on a ghost mansion ride @ the CNE when we were little. We got on the little cart things with our respective adult chaperones, but I barely made it into the interior of the house before I hit the deck. I huddled on the bottom of the cart for the entire ride. Mark assured me that he survived in an upright position, but expanded his story with all sorts of ghoulish unpleasantness and even said that whomever/whatever was inside the house caused him physical harm. And yes, I was a smart kid and all, but I fully believed him [I think I still do]. A couple of years later my godparents let us go on a walkthrough ghost mansion/fun house thing by ourselves. We reached the second room and freaked out so badly that my godfather had to come in and rescue us, taking us out backwards, which was highly illegal and resulted in much shouting at of us by various carnies [kings amoung men]. We would wind up our ghost mansion adventures around age nine when we couldn't make it through the Smurf Village @ Canada's Wonderland without sneaking out upon seeing that Gargamel had set himself up inside a spooky house that they [the Wonderland people] wanted us to walk through. We had become greatly familiar with emergency exits by that point.
The thing is - this all started when I was even younger than the initial CNE visit. When I was three years old my grandmother, parents and other assorted relatives took me to the happiest place on earth. While @ DisneyWorld we went to the Haunted Mansion. It was terrifying...I had been so greatly mislead...I thought Disney was happiness and light? It wasn't. I hated it and spent the entire time biting into some poor relative's shoulder while being carried. At the end of our visit to the Haunted Mansion we were told [okay, so was everyone] that a ghost would be coming home with us in our suitcase. A few days later @ the airport I was so greatly disturbed by this that I very nearly started an international incident - so insistent was I that a ghost was in our luggage. These days I'm sure I would have been tasered or sent to Gitmo or something [yes, even if I was three years old].
And a bit later on in life - once Mark and I had both sworn off ghost houses forever - we were vindicated. Mark was in Niagara Falls competing in a hockey tournament and many of his rough and tumble hockey playing friends took part in one of the 850 ghost houses on Clifton Hill [he did not]. One of the coolest guys [the one that oh-so many Catholic girls would have a gigantic crush on] totally wet his pants inside the ghost mansion. A-ha! I will never be that fool!
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I'm not a big fan of anything where people jump out at me randomly. It just makes me tense.
ReplyDeleteI've never backed out of one, though, but the first time I went to the Museum of Civilization, it was a night where admission was free, and we somehow ended up going through the museum backwards. Since the museum is set up so you start with the native people, going through the vikings and fur traders, it was a bit odd to be getting progressively more uncivilized as we went on. We also had do dodge museum workers, who were no where to be found when we were looking for the starting place, but wer anxious to tell us we were going the wrong way.
The one and only time that someone jumped out @ me randomly was @ my 13th birthday party. It was a surprise party. I punched that person right in the face. He went down. It was completely involuntary.
ReplyDeleteI quite like the Museum of Civilization - I've only been there once, but they had this amazing temporary exhibit on Pompeii. Ottawa has many great museums - I think more interesting ones than Toronto.