DUANE SHERRILLEditor

Don’t you just hate that one guy who claims he isn’t scared of anything and is all the time bragging about what a tough guy he is? You know, he walks around like he’s an alpha male, talking about how nothing ever phases him. Don’t you want to see him get his come-up-ins just once? Don’t you want to see him get taken down a notch and knocked off that high horse? You know he’s all blow and just waiting to be exposed for the chicken he really is.

Hello. Glad to meet you. I was that guy. To hear me say it back in the day, I wasn’t scared of a thing and folks who jumped when something went bump in the night were just plain sissies and should go back home to their mamas. If you took my blow as fact, you would have sworn I was a cross between Rambo and Chuck Norris, only a tougher version.

Of course, pride goes before the fall and, little did I know it at the time, but I was about to be exposed as the fake-tough guy I really was, thanks to my friends who were sick of hearing me bloviate about my fearlessness. And, what better time to expose fake tough guys but Halloween?

It was really the perfect storm. It was a windy autumn evening, the leaves swept around by the howling breeze that had just a hint to chill, just enough to give you that random shiver down your spine. Being in my early 20s, I was too old to trick-or-treat but old enough to know I wanted to do something cool for Halloween. What better Halloween-y thing to do than a séance? Okay, before you say it, I know that’s messing with the forces of darkness but hey, I was young and full of vinegar and didn’t believe in ghosts or spirts from the beyond.

So, as luck would have it, a friend who lived in an old plantation house, something right out of The Amityville Horror, had the house to himself since his parents were out of town and was able to play host to our Halloween night tomfoolery. Now, for starters, the place was creepy even on a regular night and there was legend that a guy had died there back in the 1800s and would walk around at night. My friend, Jason, and his older brother Chris, both of whom lived there, swore they could hear footsteps up in the attic some nights.

“You big sissy,” I laughed at the younger brother Jason. “There aren’t no such thing as ghosts. You’re hearing the wind or maybe there’s a squirrel stashing his nuts up there.”

“Oh yeah, well, you’ll see,” Jason said, obviously annoyed by my dismissal of his account as so much paranoia. “It’s real.”

With this in mind, I climbed the winding staircase to the second floor around 10 p.m. Halloween night and found Jason and several of our friends already waiting on me around a table that sat in the middle of a large room.

“We thought you’d chickened out,” Jason teased by the flickering candlelight, shadows dancing on the high walls like spooks surrounding our little gathering.

“Please,” I said as I sat down at the table. “The only spirit that’s going to be raised tonight is that bottle of Jack your brother keeps hidden under his bed.”

You know, had I been a bit wiser, I would have noticed that Chris was not present at our meeting. However, I was too focused on making fun of the fear of Jason and our friends to realize what was in store for me.

So anyway, we begin, like any good séance will begin, by doing some chants and calling out that spirit of the old man who reportedly died in the house. Minutes passed and nothing happened.

“See,” I said. “What did I say? There’s no such things as …”

BOOM! The door to the room we were in slammed with a bang, making all of us, including me, jump straight up.

“IT’S A SIGN!” Jason yelled, pointing at the door.

“It’s the wind,” I shot back, my heart still pounding from the noise as I walked over and pushed the door back open into the hall and stuck my head out. “See? Nothing here.”

I had no more than taken two steps back toward the table when the door slammed again, this time making me stop in my tracks.

“That ain’t no wind!” Jason said, his eyes wide.

“I … I …” I stammered just as one of the windows nearest us flew open, the wind sweeping through the room, extinguishing all but a single candle.

“What the …” I said as I ambled toward the open window.

“IT’S THE GHOST. WE’VE MADE HIM MAD!” Jason jumped up.

By this time I had reached the window and pulled it to. “Don’t you hear good?” I said as I secured the window. “There’s no such things as …”

At that moment the tall curtains that covered the 2o-foot-high window where I stood, flew open wide. I caught my breath.

“IT’S HERE!!!” Jason yelled, making a step for the door. “WE’RE ALL GOING TO DIE!”

Trying to gather my breath, I began to respond. “There’s isn’t no one going to die, it’s just …”

That’s when the large screen television that I was standing by came on – all by itself. The sound of the static, right out of Poltergeist (They’re here) was deafening.

The next thing I know I’m running down that spiral staircase, taking the red-carpet-clad steps two at a time, all the while hearing a high pitched woman’s scream. Who was that? There weren’t any woman at our gathering – which was a norm for us back then. That’s when it hit me. The screams I was hearing were mine.

I burst out the door into the blustery evening and leaned over to catch my breath, waiting for my friends to catch up. However, they were nowhere in sight. Did the ghost get them?

Summoning my courage, I slowly crept back up the porch, between the two stone lions that guarded the historic mansion. That’s when I saw it, something more frightening than any ghosts. It was my friends, standing on the staircase, cackling to the point that some of them couldn’t catch their breath. I’d been had.

Chris had now joined them. “No such thing as ghosts, huh?” Chris laughed. “You sure looked like you’d seen one.”

I dropped my head. I’d been humbled. It was all a clever ruse to bring me down a notch. They had set the whole thing up earlier in the day, wiring the windows and doors with fishing line. The single candle that kept burning when the wind swept in was a trick candle and the television was trigged with a remote that Chris had in the command center where he had hidden in the next room. The guys all played along, acting scared the whole time, giving it a mob mentality as fear feeds off fear.

Are there such things as ghosts? I don’t know. What I do know is that was my last séance. Oh, and never trust a friend carrying a Ouija board.