OLD HABITS DIE HARD. Who has not heard that hoary saw? Whether it’s always so, I don’t know, but I do know that certain habits that I formed while sharing a bed with my brother Charles when we were kids became SO much a part of me, that I simply ceased to notice their presence in my nightly rituals.
In our shared bedroom on Warren Avenue, the left side of the bed facing the door that led into the hall and then to the stairs that led to the first floor. Since I was the oldest, I claimed the left side of the bed. My reasoning?
It gave me a beeline to that door, and I could, therefore, exit faster when the things-who-dare-not-be-named-that-lurk-in-the-closet and their even more frightening brethren under the bed made their presence known. You know, those things that only come into existence at night and scare the crap out of kids everywhere …
(Bump. What’s that?)
As a further precaution against those nameless creatures, my brother and I slept with our backs pressed together in the center of the bed. The foot or so that remained on the two sides that were between us and a fall from the bed to the floor was a sort of no-man’s-land.
As long as we kept the blanket over ourselves and no-man’s land, we were safe!
Defensive measures were taken
Two other defensive measures were a part of our preparations for bed: we always turned our pillows so that the open end of the pillowcases faced inward. That left no open end facing out and tempting the monsters to crawl up the bed and into our pillow!
We also positioned ourselves as close to the headboard as possible: feet hanging over the end of the bed was also far too tempting to the lurkers under the bed.
(Bump, bump shooosh. It’s moving!)
The closet was also on my side of the bed, so it’s not like I wasn’t taking chances. I mean, on Charles’ side of the bed were just two windows looking down onto the front porch roof and then onto the street.
He was fairly safe, as, for reasons we never understood, the monsters NEVER entered from the outside. So, in hindsight, I guess you could say that I was being heroic by taking the left side of the bed, seeing to my little brother’s well-being.
Sort of …
Anyway, the closet was, you know, a closet. Open the door and it was four feet deep and four feet across. There was the usual bar at head height (I was always tall) holding our clothes and there was lots of room on the floor for shoes and boxes of stuff our parents stored there.
The scary thing about our closet was that it was wider than its door. That left a foot or so of closet to the right of the door that was MUCH creepier than the rest of the closet.
And that’s where THEY lived.
Of course …
Picking up bad vibrations
Now, know you that in all the years that we shared that bed and that room, neither Charles nor I ever actually saw a ghost or a ghoul or anything else that could go bump in the night and that threaten our sanity, if not our very safety.
But—and here’s the operative aspect of the situation—we could feel them. We could feel their presence, their bad, bad, bad vibrations. Sometimes, we thought we could hear them.
(Bump, bump shooosh.
Bump, bump shooosh.
Uh oh …)
Well, I am happy to report that both Umphred boys survived their years of terror. But, I was not left unscarred: It was not until I was in my thirties that I became aware that I still turned my pillows so that the open end of the casings faced inward. When I finally became aware of this, I was sleeping on a large futon on the floor of my house in St. Helena.
As I had no bed for there to be an “under the bed,” I daringly took to turning my pillows open-end out! It was invigorating!
Also, futons on the floor do not have headboards, so there was no unconscious need to press my head in that direction.
There was still the matter of my feet, which were so used to lying atop a softish surface that I didn’t really consider any need to alter that part of my sleeping pattern.
In my forties, I discovered that I actually LIKED sleeping with my feet hanging over the end of the mattress or futon! (As long as they were covered by a sheet.) I had been liberated from my neurotic childhood fears and trepidations!
And it all just … happened!
(Bump, bump shooosh.
Bump, bump shooosh.
Bump, bump shooosh.
I think it’s getting closer …)
HEADER IMAGE: All the photos in this piece were taken from Robert Wise’s brilliant 1963 movie The Haunting. Based on Shirley Jackson’s novel The Haunting of Hill House (1959), the movie starred Julie Harris, Claire Bloom, Richard Johnson, and Russ Tamblyn. It is both the most intelligent haunted house/ghost movie ever made and the scariest, despite nothing much happening.
Hahaha. When the movie “The Tingler” came out, the husband was trying to scare his wife to death and there was this scene where she steps into the bathroom and the tub is filled with blood and a hand rises from it, and she whips away from it to see the medicine cabinet fly open and her death certificate is on the back of the door. The bathroom was laid out exactly like ours, and for years, every time I stepped into the bathroom, I had to look behind the shower curtain to make sure the tub wasn’t filling up with blood. Now why is it I remember junk like that, when I can’t remember what I had for breakfast yesterday?
THE TINGLER was the first movie that our parents allowed me and my brother and our best friend to walk home alone. We were maybe 12-13, and the movie scared the behayzoos outta us! We left the Forty Fort Theatre after 5:00 pm and by the time we were on Chester Street, we were walking down the middle of the street, too afraid to walk too close to the shadows and the bushes and the old garages!
A few years later, I saw it again and laughed at the rubber centipede with the visible wire pulling it across the screen!!
Years later, I saw it yet again: guess what? When Vincent Price decides to use the paranoid mute woman as an experiment to locate the Tingler (that’s the scene with the blood in the tub you remember), he doses her with LSD!!! THE TINGLER was the first ever “acid exploitation movie”!!!
Butch must have predated Sam & Toy.
Affirmative. You will NEVER forget Toy …
you got it wrong neal, if you sleep close to the door of the room or of the tent anything that comes in will get you first. that’s why i always let my wife sleep next to the door of the tent or the room so if a bear or wolverine or something came in thru the door i’d have plenty of time to get away while she was fighting it off.
I understand your point of view. Respect it even. But I placed a greater value on having access to the closest avenue of escape than in who got to fight the critters in the closet or under the bed. (There are four movies in the CRITTER series, and it is one of the few instances where the later films are as good as or better than the original! Recommended for lovers of silly science-fiction/horror movies of all ages.)