Scared, Silly

My mother said there were ghosts in the old house in North Grosvenordale, Connecticut. One scenario was oft- repeated. In the dark of night the rattling front door glass and the lock snapping securely in place was audible throughout the house. The ascending creaks on stairs indicated someone was climbing to the second floor. Yet, the hallway was empty each time her aunt walked from the bedroom.
Reality bends with the mind.
Every kid I knew when I was growing up loved to get scared. Before Channel 7's Early Show in Boston aired Frankenstein, staring Boris Karloff, my neighborhood and house assumed a heavy, eerie presence.

More than graphic violence that anticipatory feeling was an awesome power.

I knew the same feeling when on Friday nights in the 1960's the Twilight Zone first flickered across my parent's black and white Emerson TV. It was the persona of Rod Serling that heightened the credibility of each episode.

I didn't realize until years later that Serling wrote most the episodes. While childhood's eerie, anticipatory feeling had waned, I had a deep appreciation of Serling's allegorical considerations and sharp dialogue.

Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote a short story called Young Goodman Brown, not up at the top of his greatest hits, but a surreal look at the villagers and what lies beneath the superficiality of everyday life.
Reading Edgar Allen Poe is a nineteenth century example of stepping through Rod Serling's door of imagination. I entered the world of the sublime without being cognizant of the meaning of the word.

It is this transition from the everyday world, either by a threatening scenario or a world world existing outside the realm of our everyday experiences. For after all, aren't we creatures of perception and sometime self-deception?

I won't say there is No Exit from this page. (exit above) This isn't a philosophy page nor a tribute to existentialism. I culled an awareness of the power of human self-deception and perception when I plowed through Being and Nothingness and that realization is a component of fantasy writing.

The Ancient Mariner should have listened to Satre's quote before he left town on his fantasy. I get the same feeling ready Samuel Taylor Coleridge's Poem as I did waiting for The Early Show.