Something weird, and it don’t look good
Full disclosure: no matter what anyone says, myself included, I’m on the fence about supernatural phenomena.
I’ve never actually seen one, mind you. My mother maintains that I was friendly with an old man’s ghost as a child, but I tend to fall on the side of “imaginary friend” on that one.
Even so, I’m just enough inclined toward magical thinking that I won’t say this stuff is definitely horseshit. I might believe it is, but I can’t accept it as absolute fact, because even if I can’t say for certain that it is legit, neither can I say for certain that it’s not. (Debunkery notwithstanding.)
For me, it comes down to how stupid the story is.
I won’t say there aren’t aliens among us, but I will say that the lady who told me aliens glued her eyes shut so they could hide her hairbrush probably had some untreated psychological challenges. (Come on, lady. They’re aliens. They can take your hairbrush whenever they want.)
I won’t say my apartment isn’t haunted, but I will say that ghosts didn’t tear down the blinds on my kitchen window. They had been held in place with cheap packing tape and a dirty old twist tie.
I won’t say that the little boy on Ghostly Encounters didn’t see a ghost in his sister’s bedroom, but I will say it’s kind of a funny coincidence that he saw it after spending hours painting a huge model car with nail polish.
Ghostly Encounters is the greatest show on television right now. I’m so sad that they haven’t put it out on DVD. (You can watch clips on YouTube, though, and you absolutely should.)
Every episode features one-on-one interviews with people who look like they don’t really understand where they are, talking about some spoooooky paranormal experience they had.
Then, just when you’re staring at your TV, mouth agape, thinking “Are you fucking kidding me with this shit?” they go to a re-enactment of the haunting, with a helpful voiceover from the victim to explain what you’re looking at and fill in the emotional blanks.
You might think such voiceovers are unnecessary, considering that all they’re doing is explaining a one-minute clip of someone sprawled in bed looking kind of scared and kind of bored while a shadowy wraith walks into the room, does the hokey-pokey or whatever and then shags ass back to the afterlife, but lookit: although DuskTV shows Ghostly Encounters at all hours of the day and night, pretty much the only time I ever watch it is at the asscrack of dawn, hung over and trying to stay conscious while I medicate my cat.
At a time like that, you need some mushmouthed simpleton to explain that she was scared when she saw a huge black figure behind the shower curtain while she was trying to have a pee.
People come on Ghostly Encounters and say the dumbest shit you’ve ever heard in your life, without a trace of embarrassment or hesitation.
I saw one a couple of weeks ago with a woman whose father’s ghost appeared to her, not to pass on some important message or even to say goodbye, but merely to remind her that he was dead. He hadn’t gone missing or anything; he just wanted to drive it home for her so she could move on.
(I ask you: how could anybody truly move on from the loss of a loved one if they thought his ghost might return to them at any time? Get off the stage, you undead maroon!)
This morning I watched in awe as one of those people who phrase every comment as a question spoke of a man dressed in black who sometimes appeared next to her bed, did absolutely nothing, then disappeared.
“I called him The Man in Black?” she said. “Because that’s what he was?” (She was not referring to Johnny Cash.) Then she went on to say she was sad when her dog died, because she loved him.
This was a grown-ass woman, okay? This was a voter. For all you and I know, she could be the medical technician responsible for finding cancer in your blood.
Each segment ends with a cartoon pendulum sweeping it away like one of those cheesy flashbacks on Highlander: The Series, followed by barely credulous commentary from series presenter Lawrence Chau: a tragic man who is very obviously struggling to support these people respectfully.
If I believed that the stories of Ghostly Encounters were even based on supposedly real-life events, I might feel like a jerky jerk jerkface for making fun of them this way. I’m related to several people who tell ghost stories about their own lives, and I’d burn in hell before I’d make fun of them in public.
I just… refuse to believe that the doughy, mumbling dickweeds who give these interviews really encountered ghosts. Okay? I refuse this. To me, the only thing missing from Ghostly Encounters is a Maury-style graphic at the end, urging you to appear in an upcoming episode.
Have YOU ever seen a ghost in a police uniform while you were smoking hash in your truck at 3am and listening to Air Supply with the volume turned all the way up?
Ghosts are not the scariest thing, is all I’m saying.
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What about the HAUNTED DOLL?
Will you come watch it with me on YouTube? People’s dumbness is too scary for me to watch it alone.
I’ll watch it with you anytime you say.
Regrettably, the haunted doll one doesn’t seem to be on YouTube (yet.) It’s a damn shame, because they gave the whole episode to that horseshit. Most people only get half.
PS: they went ahead and called the episode Puppet Master, and Lawrence Chau said a few words about Chucky.
Instant classic. I mean it.
I believe!! I’ve seen some weird shit in my time.
I think you’re meant to give an example after you say something like that, Penni.
You know, unless you served in ‘Nam.