2012 And Ghost Stories

Do you remember when you were a kid and loved to scare yourself half to death with thoughts about what might be under the bed or lurking beyond the half open door to the closet? A walk down the dimly lit hall to the bathroom was a trip through the canyons of hell and monsters were waiting to eat you alive.

It seems to be a rite of passage. Things that go bump or skritch in the night and bring up half-choked screams are rather embarrassing by the light of day. But we do have our adult versions of them.

You may remember 1989 when people sold their homes and went to stand on a California hilltop in a circle, waiting for the Harmonic Convergence to carry away the world. Scallion predicted California was going to fall into the ocean by the year 2000 and even made a new USA map of rising ocean shorelines, coming right up to lap at Dallas. People hung onto to his words of crashdom. Subscribed to his newsletter, even when his dates kept shifting and explanations about how things hadn't quite lined up yet, but it was coming. . . and they should have known better.

How about when everything was supposed to quit working because of a computer glitch the second midnight clicked over to 12:01am back in 2000. People had extra water and rations for that inevitable disaster.

This is not new. Back in the years after Jesus's death, the Christians waited for the end of the world. It has many, many permutations and incarnations, this primitive fear bubble-up dread phenomenon. Ohhh, how well we manufacture fear in the mind, produce anxiety to hang onto, imaginings of the unbearable to keep us in heightened alert mode. Keeps us from being bored by the daily grind of life. And...

I think we're still just kids listening for things to go bump or skritch in the night, even by the light of day. We love the delicious adrenaline rush of imagining scenes of disaster and getting all worked up, shivery with the fright of it. Maybe it's the reptilian brain hungering for the daily challenge of battle against leopards, lions, snakes, other humanoids, and the elements, just to stay alive another hour, another day. Battle withdrawl. You can't reason with the reptilian brain 'cause it doesn't think.

Maybe it's Mom's voice telling us to be prepared, and warning of dire results if you don't stay on top of the worst the world can offer up. So you are always waiting for the proverbial other shoe to drop ... or drip ... or fall on your head.

Or maybe it's just that we love ghost stories. It makes for great tv programs and sells a lot of books. But when the pumpkin hour strikes, you still have to get in bed so you can get up tomorrow and do these things all over again, like go to work, mow the lawn, pay the bills and watch another scary docu-ghostentary story about 2012, astroids, super volcanoes, perfect storms and even resurrected dinosaurs. Shiver!

Hey, it's entertaining!