It's Friday the 13th, so for Day 13 I am going to go with the scary stuff that has happened this year. I host a camping spot, so pull up a stump, take a sip of hot cocoa, and lean in so our faces appear in a ring in the flickering firelight.
The first one, I already mentioned here in the forum:
Scary Story #1
I ask my guests to park beside the tin man (one a friend had made for fun and was throwing out - corrugated iron man would be more precise) on the driveway near the road.
A guest who was here in February, the boyfriend of the primary booker who had not received the parking instructions himself and had not noticed the tin man when they parked as a snowstorm was brewing, was sent back to the car after dark to get something. It was still storming, and he fought his way the kilometre up the footpath to the car in snow and wind by flashlight. He felt his way around to the passenger door, where the tin man suddenly appeared in his beam.
He screamed.You would scream too.
Scary Story #2
Since apparently nothing happened in history in Canada in August, we have a made-up day off called the Civic Holiday. We're cool like that.
My neighbours had leftover Canada Day fireworks, about four small rockets, and shot them off that night to entertain their visiting relatives. They are well down the road, so it was four short pops faraway and some brief sparkles on an otherwise dead quiet evening.
My guests that night were from Detroit, Michigan, a city in which four short pops can mean something other than fireworks. They told me, the next morning, that at the sound of the first they ducked below the windows, and stayed there.
They napped in the hammock the next day to make up for their mostly sleepless night.
Hideout
Scary Story #3
A friend was throwing out (you are seeing a decorating theme here "A friend was throwing out...") a fake bronze, painted plaster bust of Franz Liszt last year, and I scooped it up to add to the bend in the footpath. Bit of fun for guests to spot.
Weather gradually made him super scary.
He has been moved to the barn where I store the firewood. Now the barn is super scary. I keep forgetting he is there when I walk in.
FunScary
Scary Story #4
Although I work with the conservation authority to defend the fox snakes and milk snakes that are species-at-risk here, they make me shudder. As my guests are mostly experienced hikers, they are mostly cool with them. So I play it cool.
This fall I was guiding new guests down the trail to the treehouse when I was startled by a snake on the path. I played it cool, and pretended my sudden intake of breath was delight. "Oh look, a snake!"
My guests chimed in with "Oh, nice!" but all three of us were backing up. They were playing it cool for the host; I was playing it cool for them. None of us cracked.
The snake took her time moving off, possibly interested in the mini lecture, How Snakes Help Maintain a Healthy Ecosystem,* I was making to fill the time, but more likely having a laugh.
It is winter now. No snakes.
* For information on How Snakes Help Maintain a Healthy Ecosystem, just book my treehouse and catch me on the trail pretending not to be scared of snakes by lecturing about them.