"Everyone's Entitled To One Good Scare"

In high school, when I lived in Southern California, our house was fairly close to a funeral home. The funeral home was also close to a 7-11. Coincidence? I think not. The funeral home was always something that your eyes just sort of drifted over as you went past it; you knew it was there, but you didn't need to register the fact.

Our apartment here in Seattle is also fairly close a funeral home. I was walking past it once when some employees were leaving. I overheard one of them mention that he had quit smoking. The quitter's coworker said, "Congratulations. Then again, that's not necessarily good for our line of business." I had this strange double reaction to that statement. I thought it was really funny, but I was also a little offended by it, which disturbed me more than the statement. Forever in denial of death...

But, let’s go back to the funeral home in California. I remember riding my bike around the building with my brother once. We were looking in the windows as we rode by, and in one of them towards the back, there was a dress hanging. We thought it was someone standing in the window and it gave us both a start. We continued to circle the place and continued looking at the window with the dress hanging in it. I don't know, it's one of those kid things where you dare yourself not to be scared, but sort of revel in the being scared at the same time; it's walking past a haunted house, walking through a graveyard at night. On about the fourth loop around the funeral home, on looking through the same window, there was an actual person now standing in the window. My brother and I both shrieked and rode off home.

On a Halloween night, so many years ago, a friend and I were walking past this funeral home on the way to my house. As it was Halloween, our eyes naturally drifted to the place. And then, just as we were right before it, the front doors flew open and a guy came charging down the stairs. My friend and I gave a yelp and ran off down Alicia Parkway as quickly as possible.

I think that one of the guys working there got a kick out of scaring the shit out of kids, and I appreciate that.

It was one of those good scares, surprising and ultimately non-threatening. Not like when a guy with a burlap sack on his head ties you up and leaves you in his earthen floored basement where there’s this makeshift shrine to Satan.


Rocktober song of the day: For the last, the final, the Halloween edition, I present to you Doug Martsch dressed up in full Neil Young drag. I present to you the mighty 20 minutes of Cortez The Killer (Live) by Built To Spill.