I am able to freak myself out really easily. So a few months ago when I was reading a book called The Monster of Florence about about a dozen murders in the hillsides surrounding Florence 20 years ago, I would get up to double check that the front door was locked. I would also be too scared to get up to go to the bathroom because I knew that the murderer was waiting by the refrigerator to kill me.
This isn't the first time this has happened to me. Throughout my life things I've read or heard about have freaked me out to the point where I couldn't sleep or get out of bed for fear of being murdered. In high school I read Jurassic Park, and couldn't go downstairs to put clothes in the dryer because I knew there was a velociraptor in the laundry room waiting to get me. I think this would be called having an over-active imagination.
But the thing is, I can't stop myself from reading "scary" stuff. Most people probably don't get freaked out by what I find scary, or they don't find it scary to the extent that I do. I don't know what it is about the human psyche that leads us to want to be scared. Maybe not enough real threats in our lives? Who knows. You'd think sleepless nights over 20 year old Italian murders wouldn't be high on someone's list of "things they enjoy in life." At least as I've gotten older I've been able to handle it a little better. Seeing a scary movie only leads to a night or two of being scared. Not a month.
Last night Ben says, "well yeah, they found at least one of the Hillside Strangler victims down the street" and I got freaked out. I don't even know what we were talking about that started it. Maybe the fact that Leslie is reading the Florence murder book? Tonight I started thinking about it again, so I have of course double checked that the door is locked (it is.) And then I HAD to start researching on line. What if Ben was wrong? Maybe its not my street. So far all I can find is that victims were found in Elysian Park (basically my backyard) and a remote hillside in Echo Park (a description that absolutely fits my street.)
I used to think my street was safe because it was so out of the way no one would come up here unless they needed to. I won't be thinking that any more.
4 comments:
I loved Monster of Florence. And I get freaked out by stuff, too.
Ever since the G'ville murders I've been convinced we'll all be killed in our beds if we leave one of the doors unlocked.
yeah, knowing im living over or near a dead body or where something brutal happened freaks me out too.
i even try to not think about how someone lived and slept in my house before i did.
i know exactly where you are coming from. its the proximity comfort thats now lost.
Didn't you wonder, when you moved to Echo Park and people told you "That's where they dump the bodies," what they were talking about?
Now you know.
(But it's still a cool location.)
you live on a remote hillside? that alone sounds scary to me. i think being scared over this kind of stuff is fun, especially around halloween.
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