I recently read a collection of “Two Sentence Horror Stories.” They were all along the lines of that 1970s movie, When a Stranger Calls, where the guy keeps crank calling the babysitter all night long until finally the police call and tell her, “We’ve traced the call… it’s coming from inside the house… get out!” (Even seeing that movie as a ten year old girl I remember thinking, Stellar police work there, boys.) Of course, these modern horror stories were a little more up to date: “There are pictures on your cell phone of you sleeping. You live alone.”
Despite the update, though, the theme remained the same: that terrible clutching fear you get when you realize that even though you thought you were safe within your own house, you weren’t, because unbeknownst to you, you are not alone.
I know that that is supposed to be a terrifying thought, and maybe at one point in my life it still was, but to be honest it is not even in my Top Ten list of things to fear anymore; in fact, I don’t that it’s even cracked my Top 100 lately. And that isn’t just because since having children I never, ever, seem to be alone in the house. (Although that is partially why: it does seem like they are always here. Weren’t they meant to have run away from home at least once by now?) No, it’s because I know that even if there was some sort of crazy axe murderer hiding in my closet he’d probably still make a better roommate than the children I live with now. For one thing, to even fit in the closet in the first place he’d have to clean it up quite a bit, and if you ask me having some guy swing an axe at your head is a small price to pay for a clean closet.
In fact, when I think about all the creepy ways some intruder might threaten and/or terrify me, I realize that they all probably involve cleaning of some sort, and suddenly I become okay with it. Take the shower scene in Psycho, for example: I know for a fact that there is no way anyone would be able to attack me in the shower without picking up at least some of the towels off the bathroom floor. If they didn’t then there would be a good chance that they get their feet all tangled up, and that, coupled with the constantly wet floor due to the fact that neither one of my children seem to understand that the shower curtain goes inside of the tub when they shower, would lead to them tripping, falling, and probably stabbing themselves with their own knife. And how embarrassing would that be? You’d be the laughingstock of the serial murders club.
Or what about that scene in Paranormal Activity (and a million other similar movies) where a malevolent poltergeist messes up a previously clean room in the blink of an eye? Yeah, for me to actually notice that happening I would first need a clean room. I can just picture myself walking into a room that has been paranormally “tossed” only to squeal not in horror, but delight upon finding the t-shirt I had been missing for weeks. I think that reactions like that would probably frustrate any poltergeist so much that eventually they would stop trying to get a reaction out of me by making a mess, and start cleaning up. (I wonder how many times I could scream and run out of a clean room before the poltergeist wised up to me?)
The fact is, it’s hard to terrify someone who has already lived through the ultimate horror movie. After all, what could ever top 12-Year-Old Boy Has Sleepover: The Morning After?