Don’t go in the basement!!!

Being the Halloween season and a time for spooky scary things, I thought I would focus on the part of the house that we dare not speak its name... the basement! Dammit! I spoke its name! Oh well, it's not as if The Basement is like "Bloody Mary" or "Candyman". Or is it? Let's not press our luck.

However, basements are inherently scary. If your house had one when you were growing up, then you know what I'm talking about. If it didn't, then you'll just have to wait until next year when I talk about attics. And if you don't have one of those, then closets. And if you don't have one of those... then what kind of house do you live in man, geez! Oh, you're homeless? Then how are you reading this blog?

As I was saying, basements are inherently scary. Never underestimate the power of boxes of children's board games, holiday decorations, and that Nordiqtrak you never used with clothes piled on it; to cast evil and ominous shadows, not to mention act as terrific hiding places for the Boogeyman. I don't care who you are, there has been a time in your life (and probably fairly recently) where you turned off the light, started walking calmly up the stairs, reasoned with yourself that there is no way anybody could be following you, and then bolted up the rest of the stairs while making paranoid glances over your shoulder. Oh you say you haven't? Well then I have some stories for you.

My cousin was house and dog sitting for a friend of hers one summer day. One evening during her stay, there was a tornado watch... or warning... or whatever it is when you're supposed to take cover. So she led the dog downstairs... into the basement. (See, scary already, huh?) She started walking into the main room, over to the pullchain lightbulb to turn on some light. Before she got there, she thought she heard a little noise. Paying more attention and stopping the dog's nails from clicking on the floor, she heard "Hello, what's your name" in a quiet, child-like voice. Needless to say, she took her chances with the tornado.

Not scary enough? I have another friend who has a dark, dank basement; and in that basement is a bathroom. Not too scary, you might say. Well, that bathroom is just sitting right in the middle of the floor, right next to the washing machine. It has a small pullchain lightbulb (those things are just plain freaky, admit it!) and is smaller than an airplane toilet. However, the bathroom is boarded up and is never... in... use! It is always empty, save for the large Disney-like spiderwebs that accumulate within. Every once in a while, the toilet will sound like it's running... despite not being currently hooked up to plumbing. That would apparently be "George" the resident ghost who has an afterlife of the shits.

You still need more? Well, I shall describe the scariest basement ever. It belonged to an ex of mine. Descending the stairs, nothing may seem out of the ordinary. Normal flight of stairs; normal poured concrete floor; normal dryer and vent; normal place to put the cat litterboxes. That is where normalcy ends. The basement was divided into four sections; and rather than have a few rooms off a main hallway or room, it just had equal sized rooms that were divided by a wall the length of the house. Each successive room was further and further away from being normal, as well as the stairs... your only means of escape.

Entering the doorway without a door, you came to the room with the washing machine. This was rested upon two rotten railroad ties, because half the floor was always sort of wet with dark, grimy, thick water. The furnace was also in this room. The rest was empty, mostly because you really couldn't store anything in a room that had dark, grimy, thick water flowing, or more likely oozing, across the floor. This was the last room that you really had any business going into, but the next room was even scarier.

Once again, no door in the doorway. Also it was completely empty, and due to the construction of the rooms, none of the basement windows lined up with it. Besides this fact, there was no electrical outlet or light socket (even a pullchain one) to provide luminescence. Given these two facts, it was nearly pitch black. The only two reasons it wasn't, was because there was a sliver of light from the previous room, and Vin Diesel wasn't in it. But it housed the scariest thing of the entire basement... the doorway to the next room.

This last doorway DID have a door. The sliver of light from the second room shone perfectly onto it. It was an old, dirty wooden door, with no doorknob, and what appeared to be the remnants of cracked purple paint. As you got closer to the door, you came to realize it wasn't just a peeling purple paintjob. No. It was little children's purple handprints adorning the entire surface of the door. Needless to say, I did not even venture to open this door. Now there may have been someone braver than me to enter the last room, however I have never met that person yet, so this last room will, at least for the time being, remain a mystery...

So that is why basements are scary. I am not afraid to admit that I can be afraid of them at certain times; and if you falsely state that you are not, then just go on down to the basement the next time you are getting strange nighttime calls or have a knife-weilding maniac stalking around your house. Go ahead and do it. And when the pullchain lightbulb doesn't turn on, don't say that I didn't warn you when you turn out to be freaking scared of your basement... and end up getting stabbed in the chest.