Creepy Ladies at Night

We receive a staggering amount of input on a daily basis, through all our different senses, and it is a wonder that none of us has crashed due to an overload, well, except some people, perhaps but that is not what this post is about. Now, the way I see things, I find that stories of creepy nature creep me out the most when they're located nearer to me, for instance, when I was a wee kid of five, I had gone to the bathroom late at night, and on the TV was a local Malay horror movie, and at that very moment I looked at it, an image of a woman with long black hair and fangs looked back at me from the screen. At the same time, the story about the sounds of animals in chains late at night in an Australian Outback (the animals were apparently ghosts), although gave me the creeps when I first read it a few years ago seems to have not much of an effect on me these days.

Yesterday, while I was reading one of the blogs I usually read, I came across the blogger's fear of monsters and things alike, which reminded me so much of myself - watch a horror movie and sleep with the lights on, or get someone to accompany you to the darker parts of the house at night, where shadows lurk. I always have this fear that if look out the kitchen window, I'd see something scary out there! The thing is, in the past few months or so, I've been scaring myself silly (with the help of G, my sister) to the point where scary things supposedly don't scare me as much, and me being the kind of person I am, offered some advice. I believe my actual words in his comment box were:

I am/was scared of scary stuff as well. There was a time when I used to sleep with the lights on because it was creepier when dark.

Anyway, I've overcome it now.. how? Scare yourself silly. Watch episodes of A Haunting on Discovery (Saturday nights,, 10 pm), or even you tube them. Overdose yourself with scary/horror movies/shows, and one day you'll realise that you're not scared of that shadow in the corner anymore! :)

Later that night, we ended up watching about 4/5th's of a horror movie, locally made about a haunted house in a kampong (the spelling here is inaccurate) which involved a game of congkak late at night. I got my first scare when a little girl started screaming when she saw an old lady outside her window. The old lady and her then became friends because of the board game, and they used to play it late at night. The members of the family succumbed to the hauntings one by one where the older daughter was possessed by a spirit, the younger daughter befriends and old lady in a game of congkak, and the mother faints in shock after the old lady shows her her face. (What happened is a mystery, and my description makes the movie sound so cheesy, but it is not... I actually enjoyed it while I was watching it with the lights on!)

I also happened to have a bad headache last night, and after I went to bed I figured I'd better take some panadol so that the pain will be gone by the morning, and guess what? I kept seeing images of the lady in my head and I had to turn on the lights to get the medicine which was only about a 15 steps away from my room (I usually have no problem moving in the dark because there is a small salt lamp outside my room)

I guess that means that my method of getting rid of getting creeped out easily does not apply to local horror. Oh well...