I think the monster that frightens me most is the ghost. Although it might be cliché and not seem scary to most, I think the ghosts of the once living are really, really spooky.
I’ve lived in an old plantation home my whole life and there is nothing like my house at night. Creeping floorboards, mysterious sounds, a slight chill from the stories my family members used to tell me about ghosts. I think the fact that there could be spirits roaming the earth that once had bodies is kind of disheartening. I also am so attracted to the fact that they could be here trying to communicate with us. Though I would never try to communicate with a spirit, I think the idea that some people think they can hear and see ghosts.
Movies like The Sixth Sense puts ghosts in a very realistic form...which is scariest of all. Nothing would creep me out more than having a hologram-like image to surprise me. Another movie that depicts both the good and bad of ghosts is the Patrick Swayze hit, Ghost in which he is a deceased husband communicates through (who else?) Whoopie Goldberg to his widow, Demi Moore. The movie has a lot of creepy scenes, especially when there is a very sexual scene with Swayze and Moore...Yeah, even though he’s dead.
I feel like there can be presences that not everyone can see or hear, but you can definitely sense. This phenomena is attractive to some people, that is why there are ghost-hunting television shows and movies about ghosts and spirits of those who have lived and then passed away.
This is an important “monster” to our culture because it heightens paranoia of death and makes the dead seem like they are out to haunt us. This can be frightening to think that just because a person dies, they automatically have superpowers of the dead. It sounds cheesey, but nothing freaks me out more knowing that I could be picked on by the dead.
I remember visiting the Myrtle's Plantation when I was little and being too petrified to stay overnight there. The pictures of the ghosts of the dead soldiers and the little kids on the roof were really interesting to me, but really kind of unsettling at the same time.
ReplyDeleteI recently became good friends with someone who's mother is a Voodoo priestess, and during the summer she brought us on a private ghost tour through the city. Seeing all of her pictures of ghosts and listening to her stories and knowing she wasn't just making it up was really eye-opening to me because ghosts seem to be so scrutinized and, like you said, cliche. But I do think that there's a good chance of them being real, though not something to be too scared of.
For as long as I can remember my mom has been telling my brother and I ghost stories. She loves to creep us out and get us almost crying. Some of the ghost stories that she tells sound pretty ridiculous, but some I actually believe are real. It may sound ridiculous to say that I believe in ghosts, but I do think that there are spirits stuck here on earth.
ReplyDelete