The Heebie Jeebies

Alright, I am a 31, almost 32, year old woman. Girl. Whatever. I feel like at some point I should stop waiting for the boogeyman to appear in reality, but I just can't. I chalk it up to a VIVID imagination and an unfortunate sense of pessisism. Regardless of the reasons, whenever I enter into any setting that mirrors any thriller/horror movie I am instantly transported into a fantasy world that terrifies me. Nothing even has to happen, I just give myself the heebie jeebies. Here are a couple of examples.

My parents used to live out in the boonies in Monument, CO. On the drive to their house I would pass this older home and big barn. Then I saw The Ring and decided that this house and barn looked just like the ones in the movie. Immediately I started hating the drive to my parents home. Forget that I later had a second viewing of this movie and realized they're nothing alike, it was in my mind and my mind was not letting go of this comparison. And often they would have me housesit for them so there were many drives down this particular road. To make matters worse, on their property was a stable where they kept their dogs and it was just a quick few steps from the house to the stable, but it was dark and you had to cross this tiny bridge and go through some overgrown bushes. With the combination of the setting of what to me was a terrifying movie, and being all out in the open, completely alone, when walking to the stable, I really started hating housesitting for the folks. I was expressing this to my dad one day and he seemed very confused about why I was scared.

DAD: "You mean to tell me that you can live downtown around a bunch of college kids and bums and that doesn't scare you as much being out here with no one around you?"

ME: "That's exactly it. Out here, there's no one to hear me scream."

The most recent scene of my self inflicted terror is at my new place of employment. I work for an older hotel. The basement of this hotel is pretty extensive and is where the housekeeping and laundry operations are. It also houses the employee break room and bathrooms. To get to the basement you have to walk down a flight of stairs and it's full of cement stairs and clanging doors. Then you come out into one end of a long hallway that is painted yellow and orange. Down towards the end are the bathrooms and employee break room, so essentially, I get to walk down this long hallway, complete with flickering flourescent lights, all the while staring at the double doors at the end of the hall (I've included a picture of said hallway). And what I know is that on the other side of those doors is a meeting room that used to be a night club in the late 80's. What I also know is that some people believe that old night club to be haunted. Nuff said. I'm done for. As I'm walking down this hallway I'm just waiting for any one of cliche movie psychos to come out with a knife and chase me down. Will it be the prom queen who got stood up and blood poured on her when everyone realized what a fraud she really is? Will it be the janitor who's had it with feeling lower than everyone else? Will it be the masked insane asylum escapee? What about some random figment of my dreams and/or imagination? Or will it actually be the ghost of some 80's yuppie that overdosed on cocaine and George Michael? Whoever it would wind up to be in my imagination is enough for me stay the H-E-L-L outta that hallway thankyouverymuch!

Everyone seems to get a kick out of these fears of mine and I'll admit that I find them pretty entertaining myself, but no matter how absurd I realize they are, they are still there...haunting me. Yeah, that just happened.