Halloween is fast approaching, and the Whimsies are so excited about it, trying on all sorts of different outfits, hoping to out-do their Halloween costumes from last year. They are also leaving me little notes and clippings from the newspaper showing what candy is on sale, with suggestions on how much we’ll need to accommodate all the trick-or-treaters. Of course their estimates on how many trick-or-treaters we’ll have here in Whimsieville is tremendously more than anyone would realistically imagine. Wonder what they’re planning to do with all that extra candy, hmmm?
Anyway, I went to the Thrift Shop Boutique recently and found this adorable little Halloween pajammy, but there was only one, so the Whimsies decided to take turns wearing it. And, of course, as they love to do, whenever they have a new Fashion, they insist on a photo shoot. So below you will find the results of their pre-Halloween photo-shoots, along with a description, in their own words, of what scares them the most.
TILLIE
(During our recent bad weather, Tillie fell in love with the flameless candle and decided it would work just perfectly to create an eerie mood for her scary story.)
Everybody knows you have to dig deep into the traumatic events of your childhood to find your deepest fears. Problem is…for me, unlike Tessie and Trixie, I have no traumatic events that would cause deep-rooted fears. My childhood, growing up with Jennifer in the Professors’ House, was relatively pleasant. But then, if I think about a certain Halloween celebration, I might have to change my mind.
The Professors were big fans of Halloween, and often hosted parties to which they would invite their other Professor friends. It was a party for Grown Ups, but Jennifer and I sometimes snuck in. One year, the Film Studies Professor brought the movie Nosferatu for everybody to watch. Now, you have to remember, this was back in the days before Blu-ray and DVD, even before the days of video tapes. So this Professor brought a reel to reel film, and a projector. No, it was not an original film, because the original movie is from the 1920’s, so even back then it was very old, and prone to get damaged in the playing (according to the Firm Studies Professor), but somehow he had managed to make a movie of the movie with his own movie camera, and that was what we were about to watch.
The Peter Max poster was taken off the wall in the den, and a big white sheet was hung up in its place. (Jennifer’s Professor parents were very modern, so their walls were never white, they were always some strong, almost psychedelic color, and the way I remember it, the walls of the den were some shade of….gold…) Anyway, I’d been to the movies before with Jennifer and her parents, so I was no stranger to BIG movie images, but never before in our own house! And it was also strange to be watching a movie in grainy black-and-white, rather than Technicolor. Add on top of all that: it’s a silent movie!
You would think all of these odd stylistic elements would have made the movie less realistic to me, and yes, it was less realistic, but that doesn’t mean I found it any less creepy. In fact, those stylistic elements made the movie seem even more creepy than it would have otherwise!
Of course, the creepiest thing of all about this movie, is Nosferatu himself. Nosferatu is a vampire, and if I’m remembering this right, he is the first vampire to ever appear in a movie. And he’s nothing like the vampires from movies that we’ve seen since then. Frank Langella in the 1970’s was absolutely handsome, as was George Hamilton in Love at First Bite (which doesn’t really count, because it’s a comedy, and boy! Is that movie funny!) Even Barnabas Collins from TV’s Dark Shadows looks better than Noferatu! This first movie vampire has a huge bald head, pointed ears, dark eyes, long fingernails, bad teeth—nothing you would consider even remotely attractive in a vampire, never mind a human being! Add to all this the dramatically creepy background organ music, the black-and-white, he doesn’t even talk so you have no idea what he’s thinking, and frankly…he’s absolutely terrifying!
That’s how I felt, and Jennifer agreed, because she held me tight and ran to her mother sitting on the edge of the couch, and cuddled up in her lap, hiding her eyes. And then Jennifer was considerate enough to reach out and cover my eyes with her hands, for which I was most grateful. We sat together with Jennifer’s mother and could still hear the music, and all the party guests gasping, and then bursting out in laughter, but at least we didn’t have to look at Nosferatu anymore!
As for that laughing, I have a theory. I think the other partygoers, the Grown-Up Professors, were also frightened by Nosferatu, but too embarrassed to admit it, so they chose to cover their fear with laughter, so nobody would know how they really felt. People do that sometimes, you know.
So that’s what I’m afraid of. Oh! And also, I’m not really fond of the Wicked Witch of the West, from The Wizard of Oz. I was very glad when she melted.
TRIXIE
(Trixie puts on the Halloween pajammy to cuddle up with several dozen scary movies! Here’s what she has to say about them.)
Tillie has begun our discussion of scary things by noting that our childhood fears are our deepest, and that’s no secret as far as I’m concerned. It’s well known that I am afraid of swimming pools and other large bodies of water, because of what happened to me when I lived with my Human, Aggie, so I’m not going to dwell on that. But Tillie mentioning a scary character from a movie makes me remember some of the scary movie characters I’ve run into, and I’m going to mention a couple—or, um, I mean three.
I say three, because one of them is really two: Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Dr. Jekyll himself is not scary, at least not the way he looks. But it is kind of scary when you think about a man who is a scientist and wants to mess around with human nature. Sure, human nature is not always the best, but everything in books and movies paints a pretty convincing argument that trying to mess around with human nature never makes it better, it only makes it worse! So why keep trying? All you get is this monster, who’s ugly, and rude, and very scary. Not the sort of fellow you’d like to run into in the grocery store…never mind in a dark alley at midnight!
For me, the scariest part of Jekyll and Hyde is the idea that there could be TWO different people living inside one body. Back when I lived with Aggie, she and her brother were sort of like that. When they were with their parents, they were both very polite and well-behaved, perfect little lying angels, but as soon as their parents disappeared, they became…dare I say it?….monsters. They both kind of reminded me of Jekyll and Hyde, and they didn’t even have to take a magic potion to switch between the two personalities, they just did it all on their own…on purpose.
That was a very bad time of my life, having to live with them, and I’m not going to dwell on it. Let’s go back to the movies. How about this one: Is anyone really in love with the Frankenstein monster? Talk about scary-looking! Flat head, scars all over, bolts in his neck! There’s never been anyone like him. He’s sort of alive…but also sort of dead. What is he? A monster? An ogre? But he’s nice to the little girl, he doesn’t want to hurt anyone. Like Hulk (who is also scary-looking) he just wants to be left alone. Of course, it’s his creator, Dr. Frankenstein, who’s the real monster. But that’s a whole ‘nother story that I won’t go into here.
TESSIE
(Tessie feels nothing says “Halloween” better than a black cat! So here she is with our resident black cat—Mr. Squee!)
Everybody knows my story about being abducted by wolves, so I’m afraid of wolves. And dogs. But I’m not going to go into that too much here, because I don’t really want to upset myself too much by reliving the past. Sticking with the movies is a better way to think about what’s scary, because it’s not so personal. We watch, we’re scared, and then we go away, back to our own lives. I love movies for that very reason.
I could tell you all about mummies, ghosts and ventriloquists, but the most unsettling thing I’ve ever seen in the movies is a “comedy” team called Abbott and Costello. The big one, Abbott, is domineering and mean, and the short fat one, Costello, is just plain stupid. He’s always doing things that get them in trouble. These two have run into Trixie’s Frankenstein AND Jekyll and Hyde in their movies, as well as Count Dracula, and every time, they muff it up big-time. It’s supposed to be funny, but to me it’s just frustrating, and the scary part is that there might really be people in the world as dim-witted as the chubby guy in the goofy hat.
So! Both Tillie and Trixie think it’s good to laugh when you’re scared. But I say…what if it’s the stuff that’s supposed to be funny that makes you scared? Then that’s really the scariest thing of all…isn’t it?
