#6 (Best Places for a Showdown)

-HAUNTED and/or ISOLATED and/or COVERED BRIDGES-

But you don’t have to take my word for it…(ba dump, BUMP!)

Jeepers Creepers!

It’s a creepy day outside.  The weather is…a bit creepy:  just crossing the fine line from cool into cold; the sky is a low, uniform ceiling of translucent gray cloud; calm at one moment, windy enough at the next to raise goosbumps…but not just cold goosbumps, creepy goosbumps.

What makes it creepy, you might ask?  Is there something real to be feared, or is the fear fueled by experience–too many of the same horror movies, vampire movies, awesome movies? Horror cliche and real life fear–which is the chicken and which is the egg?*

Whatever causes it, the fear here is fueled by potential.  The possibility of the unknown.  You get this otherworldly feeling that something else is existing on the same plane as us.  Like our two worlds have slid past each other, but paused in this moment to stop and mingle.  But the other world isn’t out of this earth.  It’s here, and it’s banished.  A world of the dead.  Their time is over, but on days like this, it comes back.

Of course Hallowe’en, the awesome’st holiday of the calendar year, originated from this very idea–this world aligning with the next so closely on one day of the year that spirits could just hop back and forth like as between two hayracks passing each other.  This is a very dangerous thing!  You could slip on some loose hay and fall between the trailers, maybe hitting your head, maybe the drawstring of your hoodie gets caught in the wheel and strangles you, dragging you along the dark, unforgiving gravel road.  That’s why the driver told you no getting off and back on!! It’s the same with the spirit world:  you’re not supposed to do that!

Which brings us to our point:  things are only creepy if they don’t belong–if we’re not used to them.  That’s why the teen horror flick industry fails so miserably.  If a movie is set in the present day, in a realistic setting, then *gasp* some guy starts murdering people…That’s not creepy. That might be frightening, there might be suspense and timing that causes us to jump in our seats, but the creepiness is no where to be found.  Creepy is all about place, time, sound, mood, and it must always be unfamiliar.  New houses are not creepy, old houses are creepy.  Creepy ghost stories don’t involve characters in everyday clothes who suddenly appear. “Oh, hi, I didn’t know anyone was here.”  But dress the character in *gasp* clothes from like a hundred years ago and WHOA UGGH WHA??

SO:

Time Periods or Cultures That Are Creepy or Have Potential to Be Creepy

Puritan New England

Antebellum Deep South

Old West

1920s Urban

WWII Military

1950s Rural

1970s Suburbs

All times in Louisiana and the Bayou

(*Egg=Fear, Chicken=Your Mom)

See what doesn't belong.