A Ghoulish Monday Five

Do you enjoy a good fright?
"Good" as in briefly shocking moment during a well-made thriller -- yes. "Good" as in, say, doing a 180 with your vehicle on glare ice in January, or contemplating the collective IQ of your state Legislature -- not so much.

Scariest movie you've ever seen
I don't think that gory movies are particularly scary. To me The Birds was one of the better cinematic thrill rides...remember that scene where the birds slowly collect on the telephone wire?


Bobbing for apples: choose one and discuss:
a) Nothing scary about that! Good wholesome fun.
b) Are you *kidding* me?!? The germs, the germs!

I'd have to pick A, although to me biting into a fresh, handmade caramel apple is much more fun than bobbing for one. When I was a kid I had buck teeth...I never had the opportunity to bob for an apple, but I think I would have had excellent luck stabbing an apple.

Real-life phobia
Just one? Heights; don't much care for them.

Favorite "ghost story"
My paternal grandmother -- to m knowledge not a particularly superstitious or easily frightened woman -- related that she once met a ghost on the road next to the family farm; she was walking down the road for some reason, looked up and saw her deceased neighbor, walking in the other direction. According to the family story, he even acknowledged her; then he was gone.

This is just the first part of the ghost story. The second part, which is actually much creepier than the first, is that, when was a small child, I was afraid to walk the fence line on the west side of our house, which ran parallel to our road from our toolshed, along our west hayfield, all the way to the corner. For some reason, once I got behind the toolshed, the hair at the back of my neck would stand up. Perhaps it was because there was a dead, creeper-draped elm tree there along the fence -- when I was a kid I had a phobia about dead trees -- or perhaps it was because, as my father pointed out when I later admitted my squeamishness about being in that particular place, that was exactly the spot where my grandmother, many years before, had seen the ghost.