Irish Cycle

Halloween is around the corner.
For storytellers this is the time of scary stories.

For me - this is a ghostly week.

I worked all day on ghost stories - getting ready for my annual solo "haunts" for adults program Wednesday night.

The theme has emerged as "haunted houses". I have worked in two haunted houses and I am combining that story with a few haunted hotels. All are personal stories and most are about ghosts. These are stories I have collected myself. When I am smart enough to ask - people tell me scary stories that happened to them. And a couple of family ghosts.

My family is a little bit haunted. In fact its the family haunts that started me telling ghost stories.

These stories are so much fun. Now.

I am surprised at myself sometimes that I like to tell the scary stories so much - because when I was a kid I hated them. They gave me the shivers and I was the one in the group that could get really scared.

So far as horror movies were concerned - I was the girl in the lobby drinking all that water - you know the one who - at just the right moment - dashes up the aisle like someone is after them.

Now I can tell them so that they scare YOU.

Reminds me.

My mother had a macabre bent. She liked to hear about weird happenings and she went through a period when she read True Crime magazines.

Have you ever looked through those things? Graphic up close photos of the killings and the killers. That was Mama's bedtime reading -- to put herself to sleep. Wasn't she afraid she would have killers lurking in her dreams?

Now how funny is that? I should have asked her about it. Was she looking for something - in particular?

Or just enjoying not being scared.