ghost stories

I woke up in the middle of the night last night when one of my dogs brushed up against my arm, which was hanging off the side of my bed. This isn't completely unusual, although with my three dogs it's odd that they're off the bed instead of on it. A California King doesn't go far with two adults, three big labs and any combination of night wandering children. Sometimes I think it would be more comfortable sleeping in the front seat of my car. It would certainly be less hairy.

What got my attention last night was that the arm brushing episode threw me back to my pretty young childhood and made me think of ghost stories. Specifically this one. Some blind person has to spend the night in a haunted house for some reason. Do not ask why. This was always the weak point in all the ghost story plot lines. Seriously. It's always a person at some physical disadvantage and they always have to stay in a haunted (possessed, Bermuda Triangle-ish, etc.) house for the sheer hell of it. As an adult I want to know why this fool felt the need to do it. As a kid I was enthralled. Anyway, this blind person had a dog and when they got scared in the haunted house they would reach out for the dog, who would reassuringly lick their hand. Well, of course this poor schmuck was never heard from again until the next thrill seeker went into the house, where they found the blind person's dead body and a note that said...

Humans can lick hands, too.

Ewwww. Can I tell you that this story scared the bejeezus out of me until I was about thirty? Part of it was that I loved ghost stories as a kid, even though I was a wimp. Part of it was that any story with a dog was okay with me, even if the dog turned out to have two legs. But most of it was the way I heard the story in the first place. At the Gun Club...

My grandparents belonged to a Rod and Gun Club when I was little and I spent a lot of time there with them. There were a lot of social events, mostly involving food, beer and cards. Surely I'm wrong, but I don't remember much in the way of rods or guns. But I guess if you called it the Beer and Poker Club you'd get a whole different clientele. While the adults did their adult things, the kids would go into this big club type room with a fireplace and tell ghost stories. We would all sit around in a circle and see who could scare the others into a quivering pile of kid flesh. It was an ongoing competition to see who could, week after week, dominate the floor with their scary stories. Being one of the youngest ones there, I was almost always the scare-ee instead of the scare- er, but it didn't matter. I loved all the stories, but the blind fool and the dog tale was the one that made the biggest impression on me. It still kind of gives me the heebees.

And I have absolutely no idea what made this whole subject pop into my head.